NJS, Part 1

I am safe and sound up in Rhode Island again, and things are a bit different this time. For example, I'm in a hotel room and not in a dorm. No one has told me to make a bed using mismatched hospital sheets. In fact, while I was out of my room today someone came in and made my bed FOR me. A small part of me is expecting Chief to kick down my door and say "GOTCHA! Now get out of here and go make our bed in King Hall!" Coming from the ODS experience, it's just all far too nice and I don't think any of us here feel like we deserve it.

This isn't to say that NJS isn't busy. As they explained it the first day, they will be giving us ten hours of homework per night and the true challenge of NJS is figuring out how to triage that homework and still get enough sleep.

The one remaining vestige of ODS comes on Wednesdays, when we have our "pain before breakfast" run. This run is voluntary in the sense that they said it was voluntary but no one believes them. We run out 2.5 miles into downtown Newport at 5AM at a 9-10 minute mile pace and then can come back as fast as we like. It is going to be very, very cold every Wednesday that we are here. My goal is to eventually be able to keep up with our fastest runner on the way back. I stayed with him for about a mile this first time and felt good about that.

On Thursday I commissioned Ben into the Navy. It was a privilege to be a part of such a special ceremony and I am so relieved that he is finally in. He'll be starting ODS sometime shortly after I leave Newport, but until then he'll be able to come on base because he will be getting a reserve ID.

I've been working on homework today, but Ben came over and took me to a rock climbing gym this afternoon for a break. It has been ten years since my days of head ropes course instructor at Woodberry, and I seem to have forgotten everything about climbing. It was a great workout and hopefully I will be able to progress past the beginner walls when I go back.

Everything else is going well. All of my JAG friends from ODS are here and we all still get along very well. We're doing our best to get to know the new folks from the Navy and Marines- a couple of them have already been working at my first duty station and have been giving me some excellent advice as to what I can expect.