Hurry Up And Wait.

I knew that was the military motto going in, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. After e-mailing my recruiter last Friday, and then again on Tuesday, and calling on Wednesday night, and then again Friday morning leaving messages both times, I decided to call one more time last night around 5 on the off chance he would actually pick up. Turns out for some reason he did, so I finally got the results I'd been waiting for. Well actually turns out there were no actual results. When he said "I have some bad news" I thought I knew what he was going to say, but it turned out that I hadn't been rejected by the October OTS Board, my package had never gone before the Board at all. Apparently on the way there somehow my interview was lost in the shuffle. I remember being surprised that I was able to get everything together for the October Board deadline, and the interview was the last thing I did, so I assume the rest of the package got accidentally sent without it, or something. Apparently my recruiter tried contacting the Captain who interviewed me to try to get another copy, but it got sent to him in a format he couldn't open, or something. He then tried to get in touch with him again and found out he'd moved to another base. Luckily from my interview I remembered him saying he was heading for Seattle, so my recruiter seemed like he was going to be able to track him down and get another copy of the interview. If that doesn't actually happen, I'll have to redo the interview with someone else, which would be qutie bothersome. I've always been talkative, it's not the stress or anything that's the problem, but I really felt that the previous interview was one of the best I'd ever had, and he genuinely seemed to believe in me.

So, since all this screwing around has managed to take us past the deadline for the November Board which meets next week, and there is no Board in December, it turns out I'll actually be meeting the Board that meets in mid January. The results for that Board will theoretically arrive February 7th barring the usual delays.

There is sort of some good news about this whole thing. I did manage to get both my physicals scheduled, with the MEPS portion in L.A. being on November 21st, and the Flight 1A portion at Vandenberg AFB being on December 3rd. So next Wednesday night I'll be heading down to the hotel they're putting me up in, then arising bright and early the next morning in order to be over at MEPS to start the process at 5am. I hear it's quite long. A whole lot of standing around, and waiting in line. It's probably a good idea I'm doing all this though given I haven't had a physical since high school and there might actually be something wrong with me (other than all the mental deformities, I mean really). So after I finish up with that I drive on back up here with all the paperwork from it, and then end up going back down to L.A. for Thanksgiving the following Wednesday or Thursday. I actually can take someone for free to Magic Mountain on Wednesday due to a special deal, so might do that who knows. Then after coming back up here on Sunday or Monday I end up heading out to Vandenberg AFB again for the Flight 1A portion of the physical, which is a bit more complicated. To give you an idea, he sent me a sort of basic schedule for the day, with the first Technical testing being done at 7:30am, the Doctor related testing at 10:20am, a full Dental exam at 11:00am, and a full Optometry exam at 2:30pm. So that looks like it'll be another nice long day. The real bummer with that one is they dilate your pupils during the optometry exam, so you're suposed to have someone else there to drive you home. Haven't yet decided how that's going to work.

So the one positive aspect of the whole ordeal is it takes about a month for the Surgeon General to approve each Flight physical, so I'll hear about that sometime in early January. That means if I pass both physicals, I'll have nothing else to wait for other than getting into OTS. Even if I had gotten into OTS this week, I would still have had to wait until January to find out if there were any snags medically. So by doing it this way, if I do finally get that phone call telling me the good news, it will be a sure thing, and I can be a lot more excited.

Guess that's all there is to update on that whole situation. I'm going to sleep for three months, someone wake me up in February.