Day 1 at AAI

There is a lot about Thak's new job that he can't tell me. He is working at a higher level of security than he has ever worked before, so we will not always know the things he does at work. That's ok. I know that he is very good at what he does, whatever that may be, so it's fine with me. We do know a few things, though.

First of all, no, we do not yet know where we are going when he finishes training, or for certain if he will deploy right away or not. We get the feeling that he will not be deploying right away, just because there are a few in his class who want to deploy right away, so if they need people to do that, there will be volunteers. We still have a semi-good shot at Ft. Stewart, although there's another guy who wants to go there, too, and he owns a house there already, so he may take priority over us. He also wants to deploy right away, though (to pay off the mortgage of said house) so he may or may not be competition for Thak when it comes to Ft. Stewart. There are also some things that can be done to sort of make the right people more aware of his positive work history with the crew at Ft. Stewart, and that is an angle that is worth pursuing. We'll find out more about that tomorrow. For now, though, Ft. Stewart is still likely, but a bit shaky. Bragg seems like a better shot right now, and we just found out there's a pretty high chance that if neither of those comes through, we'll be going to Ft. Lewis. That's near Seattle. I don't particularly want to go to Ft. Lewis, but if that's where they put us, then we'll do our best with it. Thak is still pushing hard for Stewart or Bragg, and hopefully one of those comes through. Just, Ft. Lewis having three open positions, that's something that changes the game a little.

We also found out a lot of relevant information about benefits, pay, and everything else, and I have to go over stuff, and give Thak my opinion on a lot of it tomorrow. He has to fill out paperwork at the end of the week for it all, so I definitely need to get going on that. I understand these things better than he does, so I handle this end of things. He fixes engines and circuits, and he does it incredibly well. That's his end of things. I deal with the behind the scenes decisions.

We also found out that after he comes home for the holidays, he will not be going back to Maryland. Instead, he will be training for the next couple months in Utah, at the same facility he almost got hired at before. That is good news, because plane tickets from there to here are like less than he makes each week in per diem, so we'll be able to afford to fly him home very frequently at really no cost to us (out of regular pay, that is). We will DEFINITELY be doing that as often as we can.

In other news, Orren is having a VERY hard time with daddy being gone. He is totally heartbroken, and just all out of sorts. He has had a hard time sleeping, and was asking on the phone today if daddy would come home. It's really bad to see him this way, poor little guy. Erin and Chai are both totally fine. Erin's a pro at this. She was there for two out of three Iraq deployments, so she knows a month and a half, followed by two and a half more months, is really not very much. Chai is happy as long someone feeds and changes him, and that's usually me anyway, so his life has not changed much. Poor little Orren is the one who's gotten the brunt of this thing, which is exactly what we'd expected, unfortunately.

So we're just getting through it one day at a time. This defense contractor wife gig is weird already, and I'm only a day into it. I'll tell more about that later. I'm really tired now, so I'm going to go to bed, because tomorrow, we will spend the morning belly dancing, and the afternoon doing whatever else we can figure out to do, and the end of this thing will be that much closer.