The · Doctor's · Journal

I hate weekend duty.

For the unenlightened, this means no liberty, not being out of the detachment for more than two hours (and only can go to a few certain places), no civvies, no drinking alcohol, and lots of cleaning and watchstanding.

Tomorrow, I have the dreadful five-hour watch from 1200 to 1700. That's going to suck simply because I'll be bored out of my mind. No eating and drinking is allowed (except a bottle of water), but I am allowed to go to chow for lunch. No reading except for school work (and I don't have much to do so that won't help much) and certain books that appear on an approved Navy book reading list. I'm hoping the book I'm currently reading, Six Frigates by Ian Toll, which is about the birth of the Navy is allowed even though it's not on the list.

The "no drinking" bit is killing me the most (although not wearing civvies for the whole weekend sucks, too). I didn't get to go out drinking last weekend because I didn't have civvies until the end of the weekend. I couldn't go drinking the previous weekend because I was still on Phase I. This long drought of not being able to go out drinking is killing me. But on the flip side, it's not like I went out drinking every weekend while I was at Earlham.

This weekend duty could have sucked even worse. Early afternoon yesterday, a transformer near the detachment exploded and knocked out the power for most of the day. For the briefest of moments, I feared I would have to go through the whole weekend without any internet or television. That would have REALLY sucked. Fortunately, the power came back around 1830. Thank god because I was able to watch Battlestar Galactica later that night.

It's going to be a lllooonnnggg weekend...