WANTED!

I have noticed a trend of horrific, bloody violence on ABOT. It is unavoidable, dangerous, and scary.

The suspect?

















These boots are WANTED in the gruesome torture and unrelenting pain that they inflict on the feet of anyone who occupies them.

Their modus operandi includes blisters, bleeding and swollen heels; resulting in Exhibit A and a hilarious limp for anyone who is plagued with such destruction:














Yeah, it's that bad. Apparently it gets better in a few weeks. Great- I'm looking forward to the long days of walking back and forth down the catwalks and up and down the stairs with these instruments of torture.

Anyways. I survived my first day on ABOT! I have to tell you, I think it beats the heck out of being on a ship! Mainly because we have a set watchbill which means you stand the same watch every day. I was blessed with the noon-6pm watch which gives me plenty of time to sleep, work out, blog and skype in the evening and get my work done during the morning.

I stood my first watch today in the TOC (remember, that's tactical operations center) with the STWO (staff tactical watch officer), which is what I am training to become. It looks like they would like me to qualify by the end of the week because 2 of our LT's are leaving for Umm Quasr, the Iraqi Naval Base from which we are training a lot of the Iraqi Navy (in addition to the ones stationed out here on ABOT) to work on their training plan so I have to take over one of the watch sections. It was a VERY exciting watch and I really enjoy it. One- because it is air conditioned (actually, it's quite chilly in the TOC!) and two because you can sit down :)

I feel like I have learned more in 6 hours today than I did at 2 weeks of STWO school. Everything we are doing is SO tactical, real-time, and fast paced. For the first time in my Navy "career" (you know, all 2 1/2 years of it.... :) I feel like I am doing something actually related to the mission. And a cool mission at that.

I really wanted to show some pictures of ABOT or maybe discuss my love for the only thing I like here more than Skype--- the FOOD! but alas it is late and I am very sleepy and my watch ran late today so I didn't get a time to take any photos before the sun went down. We are in the eastern portion of this time zone and also do not observe daylight savings time so it gets sunny here around 5:30AM but when I finally got out of my almost 7 hour watch at 6:47, it was pitch black out. We did get to watch the sunset on one of our cameras that surveys the terminal and it was very nice, although the sand storms coming in from the desert have made the horizon very difficult to see.

I will hopefully get a chance tomorrow to write more about life on here, but til then- goodnight!

And Gaby- ABOT is great and all to live on, but it would make for a VERY unexciting Tiger Cruise- the NIMITZ will be WAY cooler from a Tiger perspective :)