I'm outta here for a while.

je n'est pas toujours été de ton bord dans tes opinions (presque jamais même) et je ne supporte pas cette guerre en Iraq mais je suis conscient des risques que tu vas vivre pour toi et ta famille. alors pour l'amour de Dieu, soit prudent et qu'il te protège quoi qu'il arrive.

Well, it was a fine induction. In typical military fashion, what I was told would be my situation was not what I got once I got there.

Friday I arrived at the induction center in San Diego and reported in. I arrived in uniform and ready-to-go and after sitting on my butt reading old magazines for a couple hours was sent to an offsite orthopaedic surgeon for an evaluation of my leg - stress testing and the whole nine yards. I passed. My orders to Quantico were rescinded and I basically had the weekend to eff around in San Diego so I made the best of it and visted some friends in Santee and then back to SD on Monday morning.

My first surprise of the day was that a CWO comes up and asks me to report to the CO. Oh, sh*t, was my first thought, to be honest. So I haul on over and get ushered in and he says, "Good morning, Captain."

My day improved from there.

The next good news is that the promotion was permanent (this will mean something to military folks).

The next news was that I am not being deployed overseas. I am active reserve detached to the new Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MarSOC) and will have a fun job with a training detachment that can probably be deduced from my previous posts here. I'll be a REMF but my wife is happy about it. SOC at Pendleton goes active sometime next month and at that point I'll be earning frequent flyer miles going between Sacramento & SD. My employer is being extremely cool with this by keeping me on full pay...this is extremely cool.

I'll admit to being disappointed, really, that I am not deploying overseas. It's funny that you get all worked up to expect something that really isn't all that good, and then you get not a sense of relief, but a disappointment when it doesn't happen. There's a certain je ne sais quois that comes from knowing that the front line begins at the end of my rifle barrel and while I'm happy to be staying home I'm still a bit disappointed not to have that feeling again.

So there it is.

I deeply appreciate all the good wishes and thoughts and I will pass those along to the young men and women who I will be honored to work with in the immediate future.

- Cpt. Bart Simpson