Quiet is Good

Things here have been pretty quiet, aside from a few minor offenses, the Soldiers have been pretty well behaved. The average temperature has increased about 5 - 10 degrees. I haven't checked the weather lately, but on Thursday they were predicting a major sandstorm to roll in Sunday or Monday. Hopefully it doesn't. They're the worst.

As for me things have been pretty good. I have been going through a battle with "Big" Navy lately though. It seems to have been fixed, but it will be about a month before I know for sure.

The whole thing is really complicated, especially for someone not familiar with the military, but I will try to break it down.

On Mar 5th 2002 I joined the Navy. I enlisted for a total of 8 years. 5 Active Duty and 3 inactive ready reserves. So I would have been getting out of the Navy all together on Mar 5th 2010.

On Mar 5th 2007, I got off of Active duty and decided to go active reserves instead of inactive in order to receive an enlistment bonus. The bonus required me to enlist for a total of 6 years reserves to qualify. Since I was already required to do 3 years in the reserves I just extended that contract for 3 years. Thus fulfilling the 6 years. My new contract would expire on Mar 5th 2013.

With me so far?

Now this is where no one seems to have a clue as to what happened.
"All of the sudden" all of the Navy computer systems say that my contract will expire on Jun 25th 2009. No one has an explanation as to what triggered this. So on Jun 25th, I was technically discharged from the Navy. The original contracts I signed cannot be found.

So now that I'm discharged things start to happen. My pay stops. My benefits stop. I'm basically non-existent as far as the computers are concerned. So after 3 weeks of people passing the buck on whose fault it was and who was going to fix it, they finally decided that I would have to re-enlist and they would back date the paperwork to Jun 25th. You would not believe the drama that went on, and is still going on about this paperwork. Meanwhile I just sat here watching, waiting, not getting paid and not receiving benefits.

Now the new date for my contract to expire will be Jun 25th 2012. Which is fine with me except for the fact that I received a nice bonus for the extension till 2013 I did back in 2007. Now that that contract has been "breached", I'm worried they will try to recoup my bonus. Only time will tell. I have been assured they wont, but when this all came about I was assured my pay wouldn't stop too.

Hope everyone is doing well back home! 230 more days....