Looking up?

This week was one of the best I've had so far. The biggest reason was that I didn't mess up any upperclassmen's names, so I had no extra papers to write. As you know, I've had a lot of trouble with that in the past. The weather has also been a bit nicer, with temperatures recently maxing out at about 70 degrees. You have no idea how much of a difference clear skies and comfortable afternoons makes when you have to be running around outside as often as I do.

Last weekend was "traditions weekend" for Squadron Sixteen, so after getting smoked for a while (though I wasn't there for all of it, courtesy of AFROTC), we were taken out to some of the important statues and historical locations on campus, such as Sully (Lawrence Sullivan Ross statue) and the West Gate Memorial. After We visited those places, we were taken to the Bonfire Memorial and told the story of Tim Kerlee, who died in the collapse. When we got back to the dorm, we were met in our holes by the sophomores, who gave us hand-down bonfire shirts. These shirts are a big deal, since they are the same ones our seniors, juniors, and sophomores wore to bonfire in the past. They also have never been washed, so they smell like a barbecue pit.

This Friday the Air Force ROTC class had nothing to do with anything we would be expected to do in the military. They took us out to the Rec center had paid for us to climb the rock wall for two hours, then said "go have fun". We had a blast. That rock wall beats the socks off of any I've done before, as it has at least ten different ways to climb, as well as obstacles like backwards angling walls, overhangs, and one spot which has a ridge you have to climb around (it's a lot harder than it sounds). By the end of that session, my arms were exhausted and they're still prone to cramping up if I grab something too hard.

Training has been going about the same as usual, though I think they're having a little more trouble finding things to smoke us about. There's been a couple of hard smokings due to a couple of my buddies doing stupid things like playing World of Warcraft during CQ, or pinning their wheets, both of which are "honor violations", the hardest category of smoking we can get. Needless to say, everyone was pretty mad when they heard about one of our buddies playing games during CQ. The most expressed sentiment is "If you're going to play games, at least aviod doing it during the time you're most likely to be caught".

Since the smokings have generally been shorter, we are now doing things like rack drills and hallway cleaning drill more often. A rack drill is where you have to remake your bed in a certain amount of time. Usually, we have about seven to eight minutes to make all the beds of the fish who are present. So far, we haven't succeeded once. We are getting closer, but I don't expect we'll actually meet one of those goals until second semester.

Speaking of second semester, did you know that I am now done with one twelfth of my Corps career? That's right, two thirds of the way through first semester and one third of the way through fish year. Can you tell I'm looking forward to Christmas break?

Besides approaching Christmas break, we're getting close to starting our push for Corps brass. Corps brass is the pin that you can see on the collar of upperclassmen, with the helmet and crossed swords. During push for brass, we will be doing a whole lot of PT and various other forms of training. It should finish up about the time of the t.u. game, so we can wear our new Corps brass to Austin. We're also going to begin training to earn the Guidon, but we won't earn that until late next semester.

We have two assignments over the weekend. The first is to obtain the largest pumkin we can physically fit into the dorm. The second is to create a "fish guidon". The fish guidon is apparently a very competitive thing among the Corps, so we're going to spend a lot of time on that over the weekend and next week. I'll try to keep you posted on how Corps brass, fish guidon, and "Mr. O'Lantern" are going, so expect an update somtime next weekend.