I was able to sleep surprisingly well last night once I went back to bed after my twelve hour “snooze” following the Super Bowl. It’s strange how a day can get lost when you go to sleep at 8am and get up at 9pm. I guess in this situation I’m in, any way to make a day go by fast is a good way.
Today was a good day. We went over to the ANA camp early this morning for a mock press conference with the Commander. It’s the norm during exercises to have the commander speak to the press regarding what is happening. In this case, as I said before, the event was an earthquake exercise, so the commander had to respond to questions about that. Generally, our job as Public Affairs is to prepare the commander for the questions he’ll be asked and take care of the media. In this case, with us mentoring the ANA PA soldiers, we had to teach them how to prepare the commander, show them how to set up cameras, deal with the media, and so forth. Most of this was done by Sandy, as she is kind of “shadowing” the Public Affairs Officer. I videotaped the event along with my ANA soldiers, and talked them through some things on how they should prepare their equipment. The ultimate goal is to make the commander look good, and have him say the right things to the media. Sandy came up with some tough questions, but the commander handled himself very well. After it was over, LtCol Niem said that the commander was very happy with him and his PA office, and felt that things went well. That was great to hear. We discovered that this was the first time in four years of exercises that the PA office was even involved. WOW. I can’t imagine how things were before, as press conferences are normally a PA-controlled event. We heard that many people didn’t even know about LtCol Niem and what he did, so putting him “on the map” was a good thing. Ultimately, the commander was happy and again, that was great to hear. It means we’re doing our job…and doing it well. How they got along doing this stuff for four years without PA is beyond me.
Of course, after the press conference, everyone in their office had somewhere else to be, so that ended training for today. I interviewed Sandy after the press conference so I could use her words to put a story together, so we made our way back to our office where I started working on it, along with finishing up what I was working on the past two days. Sandy and I kicked around the idea of creating our own Facebook, and YouTube pages to give us another outlet for our media. I created a Facebook account, but we’re still working on it. Once we get it done and ready, I’ll send out the link and friend requests.
I decided after a while that I had to run, since I didn’t run yesterday due to my long Rip Van Winkle type day. As luck would have it, neither Chris nor Sandy ran yesterday, so I didn’t lose any more ground than I already had starting a day after they did. Chris ran for four miles putting him at fifty three total. Sandy ran later for six miles putting her at fifty three total as well. I was sitting at forty six when she got done, so you can probably guess what I did. Yes sir…I ran for seven miles to tie us all up at fifty three total. I’m back in the game! I have to be fair though and say that Chris just started marathon training and is on a strict schedule. The schedule for today was for him to run only four miles. I’ll be honest and say that Chris is a much better runner than I am.
He could probably run ten miles per day without any trouble, whereas I struggled mightily to do that myself the other day. I have never, nor will I ever, have the desire to think about, train for, or ever run a marathon. There’s just no way. Running for one hour straight has been hard enough…running for three plus hours is unthinkable. So give Chris some credit here. The numbers might say differently, but he would whip me good if he wanted to. If he does happen to run that marathon in Kansas City he keeps talking about, I might just be there…not to run it…but to support him of course. (I just said I would never think of running it myself…weren’t you reading?) Kansas City isn’t far from where I live in the states, and I might just make the trip. I have much respect for him and the goals he has set for himself.It’s cold sitting here, as it’s about 15 degrees outside and the heater is NOT working in here. I really hope the heater in my tent is working tonight. Can you picture me in my fleece jacket and hat covering my ears while I type with gloves on? OK, so I don’t really have gloves on. You’d probably be able to tell if that was the case as mie ryting wood prolly luk sumting lyke ths if eye wuz. Yes, that was done strictly for entertainment value. If you’re laughing, good…if not, then…ummmm…whatever. Pretend you didn’t see it. [Wow...spellcheck just went nuts on me!]
I’m ready for bed and ready to do this all over again tomorrow. Hopefully another good day is in store for us as we trek along this road to advance the capabilities of our ANA partners. We’re taking small steps in the right direction now it seems, so I’ll keep my head up and hope it stays that way. It’s working well so far.
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