And finally, the important stuff

I'm certainly not going to say things are going well, nor have the snafus decreased in frequency or buffoonosity. Perhaps I'm just getting tired of complaining about this after-thought they call coordinated training. We'll see.

Today was the first time the security force and main body (engineers, civil affairs, etc) actually did a "full mission", together. Though the mission was relatively benign, keep in mind that we've been together since August 1st, many of us have been here for 7 weeks, and I've been training en toto for this for 5-1/2 months. And today was the first time we did something really mission-oriented and together, real-time.

As you might imagine, it had a few debrief points. I won't go into details, partly for OPSEC, partly for brevity, but many people were slapped in the face ("that's not what we've been told we're training for!"). Not surprising, really, and though certainly not completely unavoidable, for all practical purposes the previous training was not necessarily inconsistent with this new shift.

No, the quote was not mine. In fact, the "mission" went about like I thought it would, and those "slapped" were behaving like I thought they would, and arguably the way they should given the information they were provided.

Anyway, today was certainly productive, though a lot of people are perhaps not thrilled with the arrangement. We'll see.

Based on stories of other PRTs training in parallel, honestly, our problems seem smaller. Others (again, no names mentioned, non attributable) are already at odds within the staff (i.e. department heads) and they haven't even arrived in country yet.

189th still has issues.

Though today was certainly not a "success" mission-wise, it was certainly a very productive training session, and that's ultimately what we're doing here. I just wish this point had been intentionally derived (other teams did not quite get this response). Okay, I'll turn my complaining back on. ;-)

In other news, my shoulder is nearing the point where I can move it around without feeling pangs of pain. Though it was rarely full-up "searing pain", it was truly annoying and unavoidable. Now, though I think I can trigger it if I try, it's getting better. Why is this relevant? Well, I haven't been doing any workouts or exercises that work the shoulders, now going on almost 2 weeks. This includes pull-ups, push-ups, any barbell work, any dumbbell work, etc. This has severely limited the work-out combinations and WODs I've been able to do. It's been getting boring.

I'm giving it until the weekend, and then I'll try it again. I'll probably go light again for a couple of weeks to warm it back up. We'll see.

So, I ran 4-1/2-ish miles yesterday. I haven't done that in a while. Probably won't do it again for a while.