It was really hard to say goodbye today to Malosi and Kelly. 

Check in at the airport involved a new process for me as I checked two handguns. I thought I had the bases covered but failed to empty the magazines into the original ammo box. The attendant was very patient and liked my .45. She had a concealed carry permit as well. After the gun case and ammo case were inspected we went to the TSA oversized bag check in area where the guy was a complete tool. Most of my limited experience with these chaps is fairly good but not this turkey. He kept asking me the same questions and then asked if I was a LEO. I had to ask him to repeat the question three times and finally he decoded his acronym and said Law Enforcement Officer. I explained I was a normal citizen and joked that I thought he was asking for my sign. He didn’t think that was funny.

Other than that and a guy cutting in line at the security check-point it was a pretty uneventful first leg of the trip to DC. 

I’m now in the air typing out this entry on an iPhone. As a long term BlackBerry user I have to admit the typing on the screen isn’t really that bad (at least in landscape mode).  It is frustrating at times when my fat thumbs can’t get between words or at corners of the screen. The story is they ‘learn’ your typing habits so I’ll keep pounding away about nothing in an attempt to better school my loaner iPhone. 

Coming up next is orientation at main state and then three weeks of training at FSI. Our class is the 123rd specialist class. It appears there are three or four construction engineers in the group and hopefully there will be a good showing at tomorrow’s happy hour to make informal introductions. 

Construction engineers have the shortest training of all the specialist which may be a blessing and a curse. The good thing is I get to start doing the actual work I was hired for earlier but the bad news is I have to find housing ASAP as we are on our own (in terms of no per diem and furnished apt) by the end of October. 

Since we’ve rented our house I’m not too stressed but renting with reasonable commutes from the Hill will probably push the limits of my new gov’t salary. Plus we have to take possession of all our goods being transferred to storage 90 days after training. We only have about 6000 lbs of HHE (compared to the 18k) allowance, which will make squeezing all that, two adults, and a seven month old into 500 sf much easier.