What's up? Nothing

My military career is winding to a sputtering closure, and it seems like my life has just settled into a very predictable routine of waiting for what's next.

There are ETS briefings to attend, appointments with Reserve Component career counselors, and gathering together the things I need to give back to the Army -- a canteen, some raingear, a couple laundry bags, Kevlar helmet, load-bearing equipment... nothing I'll miss.

The things I've worn on a daily basis -- the uniforms I've gone to work in, sweated in, basically everything I've gotten sweat on -- I'll get to keep, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. I'm a bit of a pack rat, so they'll probably go into boxes until such a time as someone else decides to throw them away.

It's a funny time to be leaving the military. Fort Knox has been under a hiring freeze since the War Supplemental bill got hung up in a pissing match between Congress and the White House, and now it seems that Our Dear Leader has finally gotten his way -- buying off the Democratic war opposition by "compromising" and allowing certain pork-barrel projects to be tacked on to the revised bill, which now excludes any language demanding a troop pullout by any specific date.

It goes to show how craven the supposed opposition is -- the ones who ran on platforms of "End the War" and "Bring Home the Troops" during the mid-term election last year. So much for reform.

What else? At the moment, I can't think of a thing. The end.

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