Updates from drill, and VT stuff

I had drill this weekend. It started Friday night with a "mess night," which evidently is this traditional formal dinner where you wear your senior uniform and everything's very regimented, including a lot of "fines" of a buck or two to raise money for the Ball. The night ends with eleven toasts, to the President, the Continental Marines, Marines of World War I and World War II, etc. Saturday was a lot of running around trying to finish our check-in sheet, a dental exam, HIV blood draw, and a lot of waiting. Since we had the mess night on Friday night, Sunday's drill only went til noon. I found out just before I left Sunday that I don't have to do a new MOS school until the next fiscal year, so it's more likely to be summer of '08 or something. Big relief there. I was also asked and agreed to be a shooting range coach in Quantico from April 28th to May 4th. A number of the unit's Marines have volunteered to be attached to units heading to Iraq, so in preparation they're doing some training in Quantico, and need some accomplished shooters to help teach those Marines.

McBride took me to an Italian restaurant he used to work at yesterday for a never-ending pasta special, and while we were there I caught the news about Virginia Tech. Two of my friends from Iraq, Matt Neely and Kurt Nario, are VT students, so I immediately called Neely to see if he was alright and he didn't answer, which made me nervous. He called back about five minutes later saying he was fine, having been off campus at the time and only hearing about it afterwards. He said when he heard the gunman was described as a man of Asian decent wearing a Marines hat, he called Nario, who's Filipino and a Marine, to make sure he hadn't gone crazy, which of course he hadn't, and he was well too. So that was a bit of relief. Still, it's a massive tragedy, and McBride and I spent most of our dinner in quiet disbelief. I'm not looking forward to the anti-gun outrage that's sure to follow, like it did in Columbine, as though it's related.

Here's a picture of Neely to refresh your memories (he's on the right):