Glad tidings of great joy

Because I was at LSA Diamondback for Thanksgiving I missed Aaron Tippin, who, according to photos, looks dashing in body armor and a kevlar helmet. All joking aside, there are two types of celebrities (and I will grant him celebrity status, not having any clue who he is): the type that entertains soldiers and the type who does not. Even the ones who do it as some self-serving PR campaign, and I suspect it is many, are still bothing to come out here, and it gets the soldiers excited. Hell, it gets the Generals excited, as they hustle themselves to the front of the line to be "escorts" or have meetings with the various celebs. We don't care your reasoning, we care that you are here. Which is why we have a signed flag from Aaron Tippin hanging in our office.

I also missed a visit from LTG Vines, but I did get to see the Secretary of the Army. Obviously the potential for people watching around the holiday season is quite good.

One of my NCOs was smart enough to have Mr. Tippin sign a document protector, so we have amused ourselves for a number of days by sliding various pictures in and scanning our new "signed" photos. Very exciting.

If, prior to this post, you were under the impression that my unit was full of ass-kickers, I hate to disappoint. We are more of the name-taking variety, and then we do various Excel and PowerPoint related activities with said name-taking. Thankfully most of the real work is not performed in an office environment, so the number of us who are certified computer monkeys is quite low. But it should explain the ready access to scanners, copiers, and a whole lot of internet-connected computers.