What's been happening...

Rambling information follows... Well, last week we went to the range. I zeroed my iron sites, an easy task. I zeroed my CCO's, not an easy task. I had never used the new optics before. I eventually got a decent shot group in the box, so I went on to qualify. I qualified, but that's about it. I'm no eagle eye sniper. Then later that evening we went to do night fire with our PEQ2's. It's an inferred laser mounted to the top of the M4 Carbine. You can only see it with Night Vision. I wasn't doing so hot with this gizmo when I went up to fire. Mostly, my difficulties were due to lying in the prone position. Body armor pushes down on your helmet. The helmet is weighed down in the front by the night vision goggles. So, you can have you NODs all squared away, seeing perfectly through them, and then when you get in the prone you can't see anything. Well, right about halfway through my qualification attempt, half the power on Fort Riley went down and the range was shut down. We went back out on a different range the following evening. I was having a lot of the same problems, but was beginning to feel like I had over come them. Once I fired, I was sure that I had qualified. It turned out that I had only hit 7 targets out of 40! I was so upset with myself. I had never scored that low firring a weapon of any kind. So, I went back to the warming shed (it was cold and windy because of it being Kansastan) and realigned my laser with the bore site. I went back out and hit 22 out of 40... still not a super star, but once I "re-zeroed" the laser, I was good to go. The next day (Thursday) we were all just not quite 100% into the training. We were all thinking of seeing our families over the 4 day weekend. Anne came out that evening and it was really good to see her. I missed her so much. Being away from her and Penny for over a year will be a real drag. I know others have had to do it and we will get through it too. It just a sacrifice that has to be made. Anne and I spent 3 days in KC. We had a good time, we ate too much, slept too much, etc. We watched the St. Patrick's Day Parade and also saw the movie 300. 300 was pretty good. I think they went a little overboard with some of the chest waxing of the Spartans. If you go see it, you'll know what I mean. All in all it was good and I would recommend it. I think that you need to watch the show on the history channel about the battle of Thermopylae in order to really understand what happened. The 300 movie isn't exactly accurate, but it's in the ball park and has some great battle scenes. Anne called me this morning. Penny has the flu. My poor little girl. I wish I could be there to comfort her. Anne brought me some great pictures of Penelope and I can already see that she has grown in the month that I've been gone. I can't wait to see her over Easter. We get a 4 day weekend for Easter and then that's supposed to be it. I'm hoping that we will get block leave to come home for a week prior to going to Afghanistan, but we were told that it wasn't going to happened. I'll just keep hoping, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Tractor and I are sitting here at Kansas City International Airport, waiting for Doc and Tree to get back from their trips home. Once they get here we'll all pile into Doc's Jeep and move back out to Fort Riley... hooah.