Got hailed at the Dawg flight Hail & Farewell, where I sat all night NOT drinking beer. Wasn’t thinking ahead when I volunteered to be a designated driver. Like the Air Force Ball, this get-together was a bit of a disappointment for me, but this time mostly because I’m the new guy. Without any common ground, it’s hard to stay with the conversation; not for the first time in my life, I’ve thought that I may have to take up football or baseball just so I can do something other than sit there like a slack-jawed ignoramus when somebody tries to jump-start the conversation by asking me, “Did you see the game last night?” I get such a kick out of the way the game is automatically about football. If I started talking sumo or rugby, somehow I’d be the weirdo.

[11/21/14: A guy at the hail & farewell introduced himself to My Darling B, said they used to work together up on the hill. “Remember me?” he kept on asking, but no matter how many different ways he tried to remind her of where they worked and what they did, she could not get the neurons to fire so that she could recall who this guy was. He left us utterly deflated. Weirdly, this same scene would play out the other way around when B and I went to her favorite noodle shop and the owner, who she seemed to remember as a good friend, had no idea who she was.]

And I was having such a good day today.

It started off with PT, which is boring but not too bad, and I had to go in to work right after that, but I went in happily because I was writing up a letter of appreciation for a troop who was doing such uncommonly good work on duty that it was a crime not to recognize him by giving him a one-day pass. I finished by visiting a few office heads to tie up some loose ends, then set off to pick up B from school. I was already light of heart, but seeing her smiling face somehow lifted me even higher.

After we came home from the commissary, I went straight into the house to answer the ringing telephone and, in an almost magical moment, that is to say a moment afflicted by a curse, my hand paused over the receiver and I said out loud to myself, “Do I really want to answer this?” But, shaking off the fear as irrational and stupid, I picked up the phone and said hello to the NCOIC of Operations, SMSgt Holland, who was looking for SrA Ball’s supervisor. Lucky me. SMSgt Holland had a few curt words to say about SrA Ball’s conduct and then left the matter for me to resolve immediately.

I supervise just three people, which means that I’m supposed to look after them personally and professionally; not just write regular evaluations, but provide them insights to military life that will lead to their appreciation of the Air Force. I’m supposed to ensure the good ones to stick to their standards, and to encourage the not-so-good ones to do better.

I have to encourage SrA Ball. This is challenging in so many ways, first and foremost because she, like many airmen new to military culture, has a tendency toward flippant familiarity bordering on insubordination, which is not a bad thing if it can be controlled and used to foster positive traits such as self-determination.

Communication is also a problem, because it’s nearly always a one-way stream of almost nothing but self-criticism, and wow, the girl can talk. Weapons experts the world over can only dream of delivering the kind of rapid fire SrA Ball routinely uses. I have to forcibly break in to every conversation I have with her to get any kind of message across, and I feel pretty rude about doing it, but unless I do, little communication takes place, if any at all.

Probably the next biggest challenge is representing her to command staff – well, to anybody above me, really. From what I can tell, she’s alienated just about everybody on site with four stripes or more. I don’t know what to do about SrA Ball except just keep listening to her stories, and keep documenting every incident she gets involved in.

[11/20/14: Somehow, I left out the best part of this day, the phone conversation I had with airman Ball immediately after the NCOIC of Ops directed me in no uncertain terms to straighten her shit out. Her infraction this time, as best as I can remember it, was a string of parking tickets she had put off paying for a leetle bit too long.

Ball was attending Airman Leadership School at the time and it must have stressed her out a bit more than usual, although almost everything stressed out airman Ball. She was in class when I called the school, so I left a message and when she called me back she was apoplectic with rage when she found out why I was calling, and I mean she was screaming into the receiver so loudly that she probably didn’t need a telephone to get her message across. If I’d stood at my open front door, I might have heard what she was saying from the other side of the base.

When she was done venting, and it took a while, I directed her to pay the parking tickets, then report to me at work that evening with a copy of the receipt in hand. I tried to keep it brief because I was speaking through clenched teeth and didn’t trust myself to say much else. If I recall correctly, she did manage to take care of the tickets the same day, and I think she even apologized to me later for blowing up on the phone. Oh, the joys of supervising.]

I’m a certified Chief of HF Systems now. That means if anything goes wrong on the ops floor, the Mission Soup chews my ass first, which happens more often than you might think. The Soup, MSgt Godwin, is a teensy bit excitable; tends to go off like a hatful of nitroglycerine at the slightest provocation, scuttle back and forth across the ops floor, spewing expletives, until he gets it all out of his system. Giving him the chance to vent is written into my job description. When he’s not wound up, though, he’s a decent guy, and seems genuinely interested in making Dawg flight a good place to work.

[10/20/14: I’m not sure why I cut this so short. Godwin was a good guy. Gave me rides to work and back home all the time, told me stories on the way about his days as a crew member on a tanker or a cargo plane, one or the other. Tried his best to mentor me in The Ways Of The Air Force. I did not always take to his lessons, but looking back I can plainly see that I shoulda listened.]

First day of break between day watches, sort of. The flight’s PT-ing together now, which means that everybody on flight has to trudge over to the gym at least three times a week and sign in with the duty sergeant, go do something aerobic like play basketball or run on a treadmill, and then sign out. Most of the airmen don’t so much as try to pretend to work out; they get on a bike, for instance – if it’s broke, that’s perfect, but if it’s not, they put it on its lowest setting and pedal as slowly as they can for thirty minutes or so while they watch television. Sometimes they get off the bike after ten minutes or so and wander around as if they’re looking for something else to do. Airmen are so good at this that it should probably be considered an aerobic activity, although I rarely see many of them break a sweat. I get to be the duty sergeant next week, by the way.

There’s a definite nip in the air now, and not a friendly, bracing chill, more like a threat, really. We had our first snow of the season today. Barb says it snowed yesterday, but I didn’t see it and it didn’t stick, so I figure it doesn’t count. The world was white this morning and it came down on and off through the day, even though a lot of the stuff on the ground melted by afternoon.