Now He Tells Me!

It was just one of those things. One of those situations that I hadn't had to deal with before (up to this point anyway) and didn't know what to do.

I had never been on the yard when count was so screwed up that we had to send all the workers back to the houses before. I knew that we had to do the inner perimeter (IP) check as soon as the yard was clear. I remembered hearing that one the radio before.

What I didn't know was that some body was supposed to immediately start doing the Del Norte check as soon as it happens.

And tonight, being Thursday night, was my turn. I didn't know I was supposed to go do it. I was concentrating on figuring out how count was screwed up. And we found the problem.

After we had counted three times.

Hey.....

But policy states that the Del Norte check has to be done when we go into an emergency count. And the Captain insisted, as was his right, that it be done.

So I trotted off as quick as I could to get started on it.

And about halfway through realized that the whole camp would be waiting for me to finish the check before they could clear count.

Oh.

Snap.

They really should have sent somebody younger.

I dog-trotted around the camp just as fast as my legs would go, hitting the zones and moving on. It's a good thing all that ice melted or I would have broken something.

Sgt Puddle says I got done with my check right about the time all of the houses called in their count. It was a close one.

By the time I made it back out to the yard they were about halfway done with dinner. At that point I wasn't moving as fast as I had been before. And I had to sit down on the cart for about fifteen minutes and rest.

I was pooped!

And all of that because of some idiot who didn't listen to directions when they told him where to stand for count. He was so caught up in talking to his buddies from a different house that he went to stand with them. What would normally be a twenty minute count took well over an hour.

I didn't feel sorry for him at all when they locked him up. The jerk.

At least somebody else did the evening Del Norte walk so I didn't have to do it twice in one evening. That would have sucked severely.

Anyway.

Tomorrow, aside from being Xmas Eve, is also national Egg Nog Day. Who would have imagined it? What is a nog, anyway?