Yesterday was sweet. After a successful week underway I got to play picket boat on the way into 32nd street. It was just like on the way out but I didn't have a bogey to dance with. That's too bad though, I actually wanted a rematch after the last excersize. Last time we headed out to sea one of the other ship's sent one their boats to play bad guy so we could practice on shouldering techniques. I got a couple of times but couple other times instead of matching turn for turn I kicked the boat into reverse and let him get by. another time I DID match him turn for turn and ended up going head to head with him. Now if this were an actual game of tag with an actual bad guy I could have pulled it off pulling hard over at the last second right into his pivot zone, but for this dance it didn't because he got by. But the second time as picket boat I just checked out other boater as if we were going through the straits of Malaca. The first boat to be Interigated was a sail boat headed out fish. Right when we got alongside the sail boat the ship told us to break off and take station off of the port bow. I tried to keep the turn light before kicking the throttle up but I still left a good bit of wake behind to leave a lasting impression. We had along with us on this little stroll the chief of staff for the battle group. He was a pretty fun guy for a capt. every time we caught air going across the ships wake, take a hard roll while doing high speed turns he was like a kid in a candy store whooping and hollering. As we passed under the Cornado bridge he mention how bad traffic to North Island was so bad that he rode his bicycle in most times. I figured, Okay he must live at Point Loma or somewhere else equally close by. Nope, he rides in from Rancho Benardo. He says it takes him 2 hours to get to work by bike. It takes me two hours to get to the Gas Lamp from from Mission Valley. Of course that should drop off with my new bike, but more on that later.
It took me awhile to get off work after the ship tied up in San Diego. The rest of the division left at about 10:00, but since the holiday period straddles the end of the quarter the work center supervisors have to submit their boards for the next quarter to OP's before we can go home. As usual though I was the last one. I made some changes as we went through inspection after inspection on our way to INSURV. So before I could generate QTR 13 I had to have my edits finalized by the dept. rep.. I asked BMC to ask him, that was the right thing to do. However when I thought that avenue was taking to long I approached him on my own, that was a stupid thing to do. After I talked to him he went and told OP's my dilemma, and OP's being the wonderful sweet boss that he is automatically started acting like I was a liar and a cheat. This man is a knucklehead I could keep his ass out of hot water for his entire career but could I expect a break. NOOOOOO, in the end I just abandoned the the edits and put them in after I generated the new quarter. So after printing up the next QTR I sat after hours with chief Jones going line by line making the corrections that I had in there oringally. I got out there at about 14:30, just in time for a nap and the Christmas party.
I planned on heading out from my house to the party at about 16:30 so even if I hit traffic I could still be there 30 minutes before the party. Of course I didn't count on how tired I usually get after being underway. So when I woke up at 1730 I freaked, I just threw on some clothes that were lying about and took off. Of course the clothes I threw on were the same clothes I had on at work. Though they were still clean and good enough for a casual party they were noticed. actually I only cared a little, I didn't come to the party to socialize. I came to the party because it was $5.00 a plate, which is a pretty good price for dinner. Of course when I saw what they were giving away for the raffle I had another reason to stay. One of the prizes was a soft tail Mongoose mountain bike, so I stayed just for the off chance that my name would be called, just to see who won the bike. It was a long wait I'm telling you, just before the music started they raffled some gifts. After that was an hour of music and then we could finally get to the raffling again. I didn't have a date so the dancing was excruciatetingly long. There is also the minor detail that I really don't like any of the people I work with. By the time the second raffle started I was begging quietly that someone should put an end to my agony and gave away the bike so I could finally go home. The first bike to be given away was a soft tail Mongoose mountain bike, oh joy, oh joy. After the first four numbers I could tell it wasn't going to me, instead it went to WEP's. I was little upset but I don't really pin my hopes on a lottery I was just happy that I didn't have to wait around just to make sure that I didn't have my name called for and wasn't there for the valued prize. So as I was readying myself to leave they announced a second Mongoose to give away. So I waited. I followed along as they read the numbers, and viola I won. I jumped up and ran and danced my way to collect my prize, god has been good to me this year.

Fun, fun, fun, another fun underway period. I'm rotation this time. BM1 woke me up at 0300 to tell me that Vic' had to attend I-div this week so Taylor had to go into rotation. That means I have to fill the gap. It isn't so bad I figure since most of the BMOW's are still having trouble piping calls over the 1mc then if I gaff one from lack of practice then oh well. That in itself takes most of the edge off. I even with all that I still felt a little twinge of nervousness piping chow because chow is such a long call to make.

What a duty day. I didn't get much sleep the night before. I just couldn't go to sleep so spent the rest of the night reading and studying. I did manage to get in about an hour of zzzz's and it did get me through to 20:00. However after that I was beat. Unfortunately at 20:00 I was on watch till 23:45. At about 21:00 I couldn't even keep my eyes open. I brought a deck publication to read on watch because OP's was the CDO. He's already told me once a couple months ago that if I were to read he wants me to read navy stuff. Either way though I didn't get much studying done. I actually read maybe a couple of paragraphs before I started drifting off. After awhile I would stand at the doorway of the Quarterdeck and just drift off. I would wake up just in time to arrest my fall. The funny thing is that I was like this until 15 minutes prior to the end of my watch, after that I was wide awake.
The next day it took forever to get home. I spent till 0900 working on the sides. For some strange reason the zer' 0 ' crew in the wardroom decided that over the weekend we're going to replace all the missing PCMS tiles on the gunwales. 15 of them are missing and they've been missing since August. It took two people all day to clean and prep four spots. Anyway after I left the ship I had trouble finding my car. I guess it was a little bit of the tiredness. I took a nap that lasted from 1300 till 1600, and did my laundry.