Today will mark one full set of day watches with the new LT. It’s been a baptism by fire.

We started out with the fiasco of Airman Woods, an uncertified op, training Airman Pedersen; then we had the fiasco when SN Judd’s records hit the front office with no training documented. We’re still getting fallout from the explosion that the Morse aisle set off when they vaulted into 1st place in the Stats Wars. And yesterday I watched him [the LT] fight off SMSgt Holland on the subject of Bennett’s EPR.

Even with flames up his backside, Lt Griffin’s a very cool customer. Not very happy with the fiascos, but very cool. Getting an LT who was prior enlisted can be a plus or a minus; I’m sure Lt Griffin has his minuses, but to date he’s been careful to show us only his pluses.

[11/30/14: In the short time that Second Lieutenant Griffin was Dawg’s watch officer, we got quite a few messes cleaned up. If only he’d stuck around a little longer before he left for a day shop desk.]

Seaman Judd pointed out to me that, because she’s on the First Aid Team, she’s carried on the rolls as “SN Judd, FAT.” She added that, at her last station, she was on the first aid team for the stern section, so she was “SN Judd, FAT STERN.” She figures it’s only a matter of time before some wag figures out a way to expand ASS to a usable acronym.

I’m rapidly approaching the time when I dread reporting to work while the day shop is in. One more example of little to no documentation in training records landed us all in the shitter again today. They say it rolls downhill, so I set fire to every block controller’s ass. It’ll take weeks to shake everybody into line on this, though. I may be alcoholic by then.

(“Do you drink?” Godwin asked me, during one of our meetings. I shook my head. “I give you six months; you’ll be drinking heavily.” Very encouraging.)

Shoddy training records … uncertified ops signing for JQS items … no certified ops in the section … and the Superintendent of J34 calling the Watch Officer into her office, as well as the Mission Soup, the CHFS and anybody else worthy of a good ass-chewing. I’ve had better days.

The Morse aisle has managed not only to boost their stats to their highest levels in 16 months, but they’ve managed to take first place over three other flights, also the first time in over a year. To celebrate, day workers from all offices came out to clap Mark Ursich on the back and offer other congratulations. Also asked how he cheated to do it.

I’ve never liked the shift-worker/day-shop rivalry that existed at every single site I’ve been stationed. It always seemed to be a counter-productive negativism that was easily overcome with just a little understanding. I’m starting to think, however, that this place may surpass my ability to understand.

[11/30/14: There was a day shop with the job of tracking everything we did, then presenting the statistics every Monday morning to the commander. The operators on all four flights knew every trick to inflate their statistics, but on Dawg flight we didn’t resort to tricks, we just did the job. Unsurprisingly, Dawg did not do very well in what were called the “stats wars.” But during this one set of watches, Mark Ursich did such a savvy job of managing his team that they were out in front of all the others. To recognize his leadership, he was half-jokingly accused by almost everyone in day shop of gaming the system. And that’s why I was so puzzled.]

I’ve probably mentioned to you that I work in poorly-heated rooms. Turns out I was wrong. The place where I work doesn’t, in fact, have any heat at all. None. The building was designed back when computing equipment generated so much heat you could barbecue ribs over them, so the builders installed Godzilla-sized air-conditioning units that ran full-blast, day and night, even in the winter. Now all of that equipment has been replaced by desk-top computers, which are warm, but not nearly warm enough to thaw your fingers after they’ve gone blue and numb, something that happens to me regularly at work.

In every refrigerated place I’ve worked, we’ve complained about the cold, not necessarily because the kind of people I work with are complainers – they are, but it’s more because we’re expected to type a lot, which gets hard to do when you can’t feel your fingertips. The complaints start out as grumbles at first, but by mid-winter we’re openly bitching to whoever will listen. Shortly after that, The Powers That Be whip out the thermometers. It always turns out to be about 64 degrees Fahrenheit, which sounds like a balmy spring day, but even though everybody realizes that we don’t work out in the sunshine, The Powers That Be seem to be using a line of reasoning that goes something like this: “32 is freezing. 64 is twice that number! Heck, that’s practically hot!”

I’m very protective of my body heat. It’s a safe bet you probably don’t want to hear about my underwear, but I’m going to mention that, even though I pad my clothes with several layers of polypropylene and wool, it’s barely enough to keep my blood circulating. I was talking to Richard Bennett and mentioned that after I get home from working a mid, I stand in a hot shower for about twenty minutes or I don’t feel human. “But what’s that got to do with the heat?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

The Air Force gave me an official e-mail account so it could send me pictures of horribly mutilated and dead people. Used to be, I would’ve had to go to war to see disfigured corpses smeared with gore; now, I can study them over a cup of tea from the comfort of my desk. Thank goodness for technology.

The question you’re naturally asking yourself now, presuming you have the stomach to keep reading this not-very-funny drivel, is: Why would the Air Force send me pictures of bloody death? Am I engaged in some new study of battlefield action? No, this has nothing to do with the Air Force’s official business of blowing up stuff with big bombs. Last night’s e-mail, filled with distressingly detailed close-ups of children horribly injured in road accidents, was sent to everybody at work in the hope that it would somehow discourage excessive drinking over the holidays. I may be wrong, but I suspect those pictures will instead make many people want to drink a whole lot more than usual. I know after seeing them, I sure want to.

This is the fourth time in four months that somebody working for an Air Force safety office has sent me photos like this in the name of making the world better for all of us, bless their hearts. Shortly after arriving here, I had to sit through a safety briefing that bored me numb, then ended with a short film clip of a pedestrian hit by one car, then another, as he crossed the road. The moral of the story, which my mother taught me years ago, was “Look both ways.” If memory serves, Mom somehow got the same message across without the scared-straight video.

A winter safety brief featured pictures of people’s mutilated limbs, blackened by gangrene from frostbite, or chopped into little pieces after operating a snow blower without reading the operator’s manual. So the message I’m getting from the Air Force, over and over ad nauseum, is that people are stupid. Or have misinterpreted?