Foxholes and Dogtags

NCO of the Quarter Board, coming right up. . .

I get the opportunity to prepare for my first Board. I'm not exactly sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, as I have less then two weeks to prepare for it.

I've decided I'll finally get the NCO creed by heart, I almost had it down during PLDC but something kept me from memorizing it entirely. Meanwhile, I think I'll also make sure I have the Army Song down pact, though heaven forbid the President of the Board ask me to sing it. I also need to get the Soldier's Creed down again.

The Soldier's Creed is different from when I went through in Basic, because I had it down back then. Then a few years back they decided to change it. And being a reservist, I never really had a good opportunity to commit the current one to memory.

Meanwhile, on top of learning songs and creeds, and refreshing my memory on the Army Values. . . I have to study up on things of military importance.

With my luck, I'll get real nervous and turn beet red in the middle of the question and answer period. I just hope I can get through this learning something about how Boards work, if nothing else.

Vector Control

Last week I got an opportunity to work in one of my more neglected job fields in the army, that of Vector Control.

See, Preventive Medicine has a broad variety of duties, to include entomology and medically important arthropod control, meaning if there is a problem with bugs that make people sick, it is our job to control them.

Or, well, it was at one time. That is one of the job duties that got contracted out to civilians.

But that's ok, because the Civilians don't mind if we tag along a bit to train up on these tasks. Besides, it means more labor for them!

So, to brush up on the tasks of Vector Control, I got to hang out with Vector Control for a morning.

I drove over fairly early and they gave me a pimpin' suit to wear!

And then I got to spray some weeds. Usually Prev Med doesn't care about weeds, but the fact was we were getting familiar with spraying. Which is also used to control things like icky bugs.

So I got to spray some weeds! Yay!

Well, actually I was spraying mostly a ditch to prevent weeds from growing. Prevention! That's what I'm best at! (well, not really but I like to pretend I am)

We also had some minor weed control around the flag pole so I got to whip out my trusty two gallon sprayer and work with that.

This is for spot spraying so you're not dousing huge areas with herbicide (or pesticide) all at once and can get into smaller areas. You basically have more control.

Finally, I got to deal with the rats too. They have these bait stations around what we like to call the 'Crack Houses' (it is where we get to go right before we finally leave this place!)

I'm still wearing my pimpin' suit. It is oh so flattering on me as well. I think I should invest in a few more.

Anyway, Jon the Vector Control Guy reads my blog. He noticed that I was taking pictures and asked if these were going to go in the blog. I said of course and he wanted to be in it. So I obliged him, because Jon is a cool guy.

I get to do more Vector Control sometime this month too. I just don't know when. We'll see about that.