Latest from Michael

I actually got to hear Michael's voice yesterday--several times! He called 4 or 5 times looking for names and addresses of people who have known him a long time. The security clearance process has begun! Today, we got a nice long letter. Here are a few highlights:

A bit of bad news. We lost one of our DIs (Drill Instructors). He had the funniest 'DIisms' like, "If, God forbid, you should graduate, don't tell anyone Drill Instructor C____ trained you. Tell them the chow lady trained you. That's all you're good for...chow and head calls." Or "If you ever refer to the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor [the Marine Corp emblem] as the 'EGA,' so help me, Staff Sargeant C_______ is gonna jump out of a bush and bloodchoke you!" Ah, I'll miss him.

I'm fairly excited about this upcoming week. Tomorrow, we start the confidence course...

So let me break down this Drill Instructor thing for you. Basically, you have the Senior whose kinda nice and more down to earth, but he has these two hell hounds that are on a constant leash. And every time we screw up (because when one person screws up, everyone screws up) the leash is let out a bit until finally you do enough things wrong he just lets go completely.

He goes on to say that they messed up on their drill, prompting the Sr. DI to "released the hounds." They knocked over all their racks (beds), made them dump all their gear, and then gave them 7 minutes to clean it up. Michael is taking it all in stride.

So far....so good. Keep Michael and Jason (who, by the way, made squad leader for Michael's squad) in your prayers. Michael says that he is the platoon scribe's assistant. They sound like they are both doing very well. They have a lot of folks sending up good thoughts and prayers for them. Thank you all!

Special Requests: Power Bars, Cough Drops, Emergen-C, pictures of friends and family and LETTERS