the other side of the coin

We had a few visitors today. People have been coming and going, meeting with various parties and groups to ensure that all will run smoothly when it’s time for this unit to depart.

One of the groups was a pair of journalists from our division higher headquarters down south. It’s not often that my boss and I get a chance to talk with other journalist folk. Passersby gape in wonderment at our strange language–our mentioning of terms and phrases like “making good leads” or “putting up with grip-n-grins”, f-stops, diffused flash, and pagination.

As fate would have it, both of them were female, which got the guys crowing. Salmons the playa’. Don’t know about that one.

I had granted myself one blog post and one day of pouting over the award fiasco. Yesterday was it, so I was on the mend.

Our guests were making rounds of all the brigades in the division’s area of operation, touching base and scouting for material to be used in the divisions final yearbook-style project–dubbed “historical report” nowadays, as “yearbooks” never get funding. Our own “historical report” still got the axe, due to the fact that the Army is flat broke for the remainder of the year…still, generals get their toys, so division gets the goods.

They said they wanted to come to us specifically because we were the source of a lot of examples they used down south.

Now, I usually don’t toot my own horn, but thought it was appropriately humbling after my tirade the other day. Apparently, my higher headquarters uses my newsletter as an example that other brigades should follow. There were even a couple of specific pictures that our guests requested because they had seen them earlier in the year and wanted them in the final magazine.

That’s a lot better than any medal could have made me feel. The print journalist (one was a broadcaster, whom we won’t speak of…finch and brogonzo can fill you in) even asked for some photography advice. It felt amazing to have someone come in and say they liked my product! My command has never said two words about it, other than “another issue?” and a sigh, since they have to approve it before it’s published. After a year of that sort of thing, you get pretty down in the dumps about your war effort.

But I guess I had been doing okay after all. Didn’t even see that coming. That made my month–hell, my deployment!

So there! You got a taste of bitter Josh, now here’s a little beaming Josh. We’ll get back to normal soon enough!

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