USTommyMC

Today is our first day back to work after having five “complete” days off. Its going to take a few hours to recalibrate our brains to accept that its really Wednesday and not Monday.

This will be a short week but a busy one. Today we start something called “IsoPrep”. When I think of ISO, I think of huge containers that go on tractor-trailer trucks. We use these containers to pack our gear when we get deployed. But that is not what IsoPrep is all about.

From the short brief that we got this morning, IsoPrep is short for Isolation Personnel Report. I haven’t gone through it yet but it’s basically a questionnaire that we fill out, along with a picture taken, which is used by a joint rescue team. In the case that we get lost, killed or captured, this information is used to identify our bodies or us in the event that we are alive when we’re rescued. I’ll have more information once I go through the process.

Aside from this IsoPrep, we are also having a retirement ceremony for Staff Sergeant Lejeune. He is a fellow Tech Controller, whom I’ve never met, that got wounded when a rocket hit his tent in the middle of the night. I heard about this through email circulation last year and he has been in recovery ever since. He was one of two Tech Controllers that got injured that night.

The ceremony goes tomorrow and we will be rehearsing today. Aside from those two things we are also getting ready for another communications exercise next week. Days will only get busier during the next few days as all the Marines who are deploying participate in brief after brief after brief. Hopefully the days will go by fast.