It’ll be a light day for posting at these our humble digs today, as your correspondent is scheduled to slip the surly bonds not once but four times, in the carriage of passengers (for hire) while simulating air combat. In preparation for which he had been required and desired to provide a sample to the local drug testing facility earlier in the week. On the off chance that he might gamble a twenty-six year retirement check on the chance to toke on a blunt. After all these years of clean, clear-eyed sobriety.
And as for the testing itself, it was a kind of a relief (get it?) to find that what passes for a drug test in the civilian world amounts to instructions to 1) wash your hands, 2) go in that room and do your business, and 3) holler when you’re done. A relief I say (there he goes again) as contrasted to the Navy method, wherein you try to summon the will to provide while some guy who volunteered for the collateral duty of watching other people go to the bathroom breathes heavily over your shoulder, a-rattling on his key chain. The bastard.
Of all the things I will miss in this Great Navy of Ours, I’m quite certain that I’ll miss that least.
But, getting back to the matter at hand (I can’t help myself), four flights today so long as for each take-off there occurs no less than exactly one landing and the machine holds together between iterations.
It’s cool and clear, and I can’t wait to get started.
Awesome! (I’d been meaning to ask when the flying would begin again).
I’ll give you a wave if you’re down my way.
Lex, I have a question about your log book.Do you keep a separate book for this activity?I have not been current for 12 years now, but I still have my log books…don’t have a clue why but I just can’t throw them away.
Have a great time! I got up after two months of being grounded by the snow- thank God for the January Thaw. After getting past the first couple of ugly landings- life is good again.
Sitting here at the Day Job…on a Saturday…I’d say its definitely worth the wee-wee test.
Test? There’s a test now? We called that particular pastime, “The pause that refreshes”.
Yeah, but in the Navy, there is at least an opportunity for eyewitness testimony to help decide the old question:
Do admirals _have_ bigger ones, or is it just that they _are_ bigger ones?
After all these years of clean, clear-eyed sobriety.
*snerk*
Good thing they don’t test for Guinness.
“… you try to summon the will to provide while some guy who volunteered for the collateral duty of watching other people go to the bathroom …”
Cap’n, I can tell you from the personal experience as a PO-1 and CPO in 3 VP squadrons and one CVN, I have never seen ANYONE volunteer for this collateral. It must be a VFA thing…
Have fun Lex! If you’re enjoying yourself, so will your pax, and it will feel like less of a sin
The unrinalysis observer is the only one who knows how you truly” measure up”………….
It’s bad enough for guys-it has to be really annoying for women I would think.
It’s bad enough for guys-it has to be really annoying for women I would think.
They let women observe? Wow…
hee hee
Concur with what Grey Goat said… had an easier time finding bilge divers than point-to-point observation techs. XO always had to threaten all with the old liberty before enough would venture forth to accomplish the task (usually, he just pointed, and if you weren’t quick on the dodge, you were “it”). Agreed, definitely a “brown shoe” deal, that whole benevolant attitude of “volunteering” for the task at hand (to use your own pun).
Actually Lex, you might wish you were still in the Navy doing the old sample thingmie. In more than one place, a hidden video camero does the watching….and it’s on tape.
Volunteer???? A volunteer for Operation Golden Flow would surely compromise his protection under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
I got drafted after AOCS while waiting my VT start date. The Navy can be very creative in the Keep-Ensigns-Busy Department! That job was draining (heh).
An appropriate homily comed to mind … ” whether standing or sitting it is always better to be pissed off… than pissed on” … Best
Attention Michelle:
If you are reading this, I would like your response to this recent “human rights” case in Canada:
http://www.ezralevant.com/
Start at the bottom with his video statement and proceed to the top.
What say you?
Babs, I started to respond to this but my comment was getting quite long. So I moved it over to The Flight Deck.
Women watch women. Guys pay money to see that!
Lex,
My A Gang Chief was the urinalysis coordinator. One day my number came up and I went to the goat locker (CPO quarters) to find some one to observe me deliver my sample. Chief Elliott was the only Chief Petty Officer there and a First Class Petty Officer was sitting next to him.
Since the First Class couldn’t observe me (I was a LCDR at the time and the Senior Department Head onboard, but suffice it to say only CPOs and above could observe officers deliver their samples), Chief Elliott reluctantly signed over the urine samples to the other guy and read me the instructions for the millionth time since I had joined the Navy, making sure I had a clean bottle, his tape to seal the sample was ready, filled out the label but didn’t put it on the bottle, made me check my Social Security Number, asked me when the last time I smoked weed, yada, yada, yada, etc….. told me not to pee on the outside of the bottle (he told everyone this) and if I did to wipe it off with a towel or he would make me do it all over again, and gave me the bottle.
We went to the head with me holding the bottle in his view at all times (you ever see a guy walk down a passageway proudly holding a urinalysis bottle over his head so everyone else can make fun of him?), and he follows me in to the head, standing behind me and to the left side to observe, joking about work all the way.
I place the sample bottle on the urinal flush valve, and begin to “address the functional tool of the minute” and deliver said sample, grabbing the bottle as I begin and delivering on time and on target. Just when I get satisfied that I am gonna be able to finally get back to work without wetting myself, Chief Elliott leans his chin on my left shoulder, looks down, laughs out loud and says,” Ha! How do you find that thing without a microscope and a pair of tweezers?”
Of course I had to change clothes and wash my hands after that. And Chief Elliott had the best story of the week onboard USS Ustafish.
Subsunk
The names have been changed to protect the goat. A better story is the time Elliott had to show the CPO wives his “Scorpion”. But you knew that was coming, didn’t you?
Subsunk out.
Subsunk,
I’ve said this before, but you really do need to start your own blog. That was a riot! I’m so glad I didn’t have a drink in my hand at the time, or I’d surely be replacing my keyboard. Hilarious!!
Only CPO’s could observe????? I wasn’t familiar with that rule, and I was around when the “zero tolerance – get tough policy” was enacted. Was that a command rule, or, what? Prolly somebody lost bet at PB4T that enacted THAT rule…(although it does gives the Chiefs more fodder when layin’ about in the Goat Locker… levels the playing field, so to speak!).