Going home sooner than I thought - and I won an award!

I have more information regarding my departure from Walter Reed. I ran around today getting paperwork completed so that I can leave soon. Now I’m only waiting for my leave form to be approved so that they can create orders for me – then I’ll be set to go. As it stands right now, my last day of duty will be Friday, March 14th. I begin my 70 days of leave on Saturday, March 15. Holly is flying to DC early next week and we have to do a few admin things together to prepare me for my retirement pay. We’re planning to have some type of get together for our entire group of GCC/DC circle of friends the evening of Friday, March 14. An Evite is forthcoming. We’ll be driving back to Texas on Saturday. My leave will end Friday, May 23 and I’ll be officially medically retired on Saturday, May 24. Right now I’m a little flustered because I thought I’d have more time to say goodbye to people, so I’m trying to see people when I can. Today I had dinner with my friend Erika and then went over to see Buddy & Amanda and their handsome baby boy. At least I have more definite info on the dates – everything is pretty solid from here. I’ll believe it when I have my leave approved and my orders in hand. I’ll keep you updated.

Oh – a quick note… this came out a while ago, but I’m lazy and never posted it. As you know, I photograph for the Stripe newspaper here at Walter Reed on an as needed basis. Basically, I’m considered a freelancer or a stringer. Check it out:

Subject: Journalism competition
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Judging for the annual MEDCOM Journalism Competition and to choose MEDCOM representatives in the Army's Keith L. Ware Award competition was held Friday, Jan. 25 at MEDCOM HQ. Walter Reed Army Medical Center staged a near sweep of the awards, but the Fort Detrick Standard pulled out the win in the category of best Tabloid Newspaper. Individual winners were Walter Reed Stripe editor Bernard S. Little in Feature Writing, Commentary, Sports Writing and Single Photograph; and the Stripe's Kristin Ellis in News Writing and Photojournalism.

Serving as judges for the competition were Jerry Townsend, former chair of the journalism department at San Antonio College; Rich Lamance, print team leader for the Army/Air Force Hometown News Center; and SGM Paul Stevenson, NCOIC at U.S. Army North Public Affairs.

The winners will each receive a certificate from MEDCOM, and will go forward to compete for Keith L. Ware Awards. Also going on to Army will be entries with no MEDCOM competition: The CHPPM Sentinel in Magazine Format Publications; Kristin Ellis in Art/Graphics; SFC Roger J. Mommaerts Jr. of Walter Reed in Photography by a Stringer and COL Paul Little of CHPPM in the broadcast category for Television Information Program.

Thank you to all who participated. Congratulations and good luck to our representatives in the Army contest.

I was happy to hear this news – especially since I didn’t even enter a picture – Bernard picked one and entered it for me. Thanks Bernard and congrats to you and Kristin on your awards! Here’s the picture that won the award and is going up for another one:

Roger's Christmas Presents

I mentioned in a post about a month ago that I was working on a personal Christmas present for Roger but I couldn't say what it was because he would find out. Well, it's after Christmas and he knows what it is now, so I'll share it with you all. Since Roger has had many photographs published in the Walter Reed post newspaper, The Stripe, our stack of newspapers was getting quite large. And I started to think about what the heck we were going to do with all of them. He wanted to keep them for memories and proof of his published photos but there had to be a better way to store them. Not to mention every time he wanted to show someone his handy work, they would have to strum through pages of pages of newspapers to find only his photos. So I thought about it for a bit and decided he needed something he could just hand someone kind of like a model's portfolio. Then it struck me, duh, photographer's have portfolios also. So I did some research online for a few weeks then went to our favorite local photography store, Precision Camera to see if they had the supplies I would need. I wanted to also see the items in person before I had to order online. It would give me a better idea of what I wanted or needed to order. But of course, they had exactly what I needed and cheap. As soon as the semester ended, I organized the newspapers in date order and the Sunday before Roger flew home, I printed blank pages with the citation for each article one of Roger's photographs were used in. It took me all night. I didn't realize how many of his photographs were published. Especially since the Stripe doesn't have a photographer on staff at all, Roger's used as much as possible. I almost filled up the entire portfolio which has 24 pages, front and back, so 48 pages total. And some pages have several photos on a page. He had many photos published on the front page. I was quite impressed with his work. I took some pictures of the portfolio to give you an idea of what it looks like and I will post those tomorrow with all the other pictures from Roger's Christmas leave. There are only four pages left in the portfolio and I know it will fill up soon. Now that he's going back for at least another three months, I'm sure the newspaper staff will take full advantage of him. And many of his photos have been published in other periodicals and brochures, so those will go in there as soon as Roger gets a copy of them. Some of his pictures are being published in a USO brochure. I'll probably have to buy another portfolio. That's not a bad thing though.

So his other Christmas present, although he's estatic about it, is for both of us, but really for me. We normally have five remotes to control the TV, cable box, dvd/cd player, stereo receiver, etc. And it drove me crazy. So I got him one of those universal remotes. Not the simple, easy ones. This one is a bad, mamma jamma. Roger had to download software to the computer and program all our devices into it and program all the settings for each possible activity we would do. And no, I did not pay the price shown on that link above. I did my research and found it way cheaper. It controls up to 15 devices and can even control your lights and curtains if you have those wired too. Of course, we don't but it is so nice to push one button on one remote and all the devices you need to turn on and go to a certain setting do it. I definitely don't miss all those other remotes.

MRI done and Published!

The MRI went fine this afternoon. I spoke to my Rad/Onc, Dr. Duelge, right before and we agreed that he would take a look at the scan tomorrow and if it looks fine, he wouldn’t need to give me a call. I’ll see him on Nov 6 anyway. He’ll only call me if there’s a problem, but we don’t think that will happen. And I’m going to get a copy of the scan tomorrow so I can see for myself.

I covered a story last week involving Miss Utah 2007 and her visit to the hospital to visit injured soldiers. She is an Army combat medic and really wanted to visit with them. We found out today that the story was picked up by the Army News Service and appeared as a press release and on the Army webpage. The article gives all the details about her, so be sure to read it. I wasn’t too sure about the picture because it seemed kind of dark, but I turned off the flash and just used the ambient light in the room. It gave a bit of a dramatic effect and lit up their faces quite nicely. Apparently the paper here sent them several pictures, but they liked the one on the page the best. It’s nice to see my work published elsewhere! Here’s the story: Miss Utah Visits Wounded Warriors.

Busy, Busy Weekend

I'm blogging right now because I'm avoiding reading my anthropology homework. And I'm really behind! Okay, I'm really not that far behind, but I don't like to be behind at all. I'm trying to finish reading Tuesday's reading. Chapter 6: Deep Time and Evolution is killing me. That's why I'm doing this. I'm so avoiding it. I'm only half way through and there's 18 pages left. Then I have to start Thursday's reading. I'm sure Chapter 7: Hominid Evolution in the Pliocene and Pleistocene Epochs is going to be great! The class lectures and the secondary sources he assigns are really interesting, but the textbook for this class is awful! I mean, it's science, so it's not like the textbook is going to be like reading a novel or something. And thank goodness the professor doesn't know this blog exists because he wrote the textbook. But it's awful! Thank goodness next week's reading is completely from secondary sources and will go fast while Roger's here. I've got to get through this reading though. I have so much to do this weekend. I have a plan for every waking moment of the weekend in order to get ahead on my history research paper so I don't have as much to do while Roger's here. Tonight I'm going to organize and complete my source research. Tomorrow will be start and complete my primary source summary and presentation. Monday will be anthropology reading, maybe, and start the introduction and outline for my research paper. I'm going to need a lot of caffeine this weekend.

I'm not sure what Roger's up to this weekend. He's staying with John & Tamra. He had to get away from Walter Reed. He had a really trying day on Thursday. Thank goodness he's coming home Tuesday because he really needs to get away from there. It's hard enough to live there every day, but it seems like once a week something happens to make the place even more unbearable. And Thursday was a doozy with several things happening on the same day. I can hear the frustration in his voice. And it sucks for me because I can't do anything to help except listen and allow him to vent and pray for him. So please pray for him. I know he's more than ready to leave that place for good. He just called me. They are on there way to the church's softball team "practice" then over to another guys house to play Xbox. He needs to decompress. Don't worry, Roger doesn't play softball, although if he hadn't fractured his finger he could. He just takes pictures. And he really enjoys that. He's been bitten by the photography bug.

Okay, okay, I'm going to get back to reading. Please pray for me!