navygreen | "SSgt. Cleghorn? Uh... we got a problem."

Well, we're all in great spirits this morning, but I honestly have no idea how, after the night of "sleep" that we had.

Philip fell asleep on the couch last night while I was posting two columns for MuggleNet, around 10pm. I went in, woke him up and had him move to the bed, knowing he needed to have a good night's sleep after not having one the night before*. Myself, I went to bed at just minutes after midnight, and he was dead to the world when I got in bed.

At 2am, Jack got out of bed to ask for a drink. We'd had the heat on a bit too high, I think, because I was quite thirsty myself. It's a good thing that Jack woke up then because we were then still semi-awake when the phone rang at 2:12. It was STRATCOM calling Philip, telling him that one of their guys (though not one of Philip's troops) had gotten so drunk that he'd been taken by ambulance to Midlands Hospital, and they needed Philip to go pick him up. To say that Philip was ticked off would be putting it VERY MILDLY. This is the second alcohol-related incident in recent weeks, and it is unacceptable.

So Philip left. He called the guy's supervisor's phone first (the one that SHOULD be dealing with this), but there was no answer. A few minutes later, Philip tried again but the phone was turned off. *steam* He had been calling him while driving to his house, but when he got there the guy wasn't home (some people on flight only sleep in the daytime, so they're free to party at night). Philip turned the other direction and headed for the hospital. While he was waiting there, he tried calling a number of people on the flight, in STRATCOM and in the squadron. No one was answering last night. That is NOT the way things are supposed to be, especially just one day after running an exercise. The hospital released Drunk!guy to him, giving him some instructions first. Philip drove him home, and he finally got hold of one other guy to come and watch him, making sure he didn't get sick in the next few hours and die in his own vomit or something.

Philip activated their 'phone tree' and began leaving messages for everyone to show up at work an hour early tonight - he's the flight chief, and he's got a very not-nice, very strict lecture planned, I'm sure. *I* would NOT want to be working with him tonight! Meanwhile, Drunk!guy will be in deep - his only saving grace is that he wasn't driving. He'd likely be dead if his drinking buddy hadn't called 911 when he passed out. That's certainly not "drinking responsibly" there.

I woke up again at 5am, and I was stunned to find Philip not in bed yet. I was thinking that he'd only be gone about 45 minutes. I came into the kitchen to get the phone and call him and see where he was and if things had gotten worse, but instead I found him sitting here in the office. He'd actually gotten home around 4am, but he'd been so worked up still that he wasn't sleepy, and he'd been up shining his boots and ironing his uniform. We got back in bed at 5:15, but we talked about everything until almost 6am. Even after we shut up, neither of us could fall asleep easily - I got a case of bad belly, and I had to dash to the bathroom for a few minutes, and then it took me a while to get comfortable in bed again. I think we both finally dozed off again somewhere around 6:30am or so.

And the alarm went off at 7:38am. *sigh*

* Philip was supposed to have Monday and Tuesday night off this week (he works a rotating, Panama-schedule shift). He worked all Sunday night per normal, came home around 6am, shoveled a bit of snow, and finally got in bed at about 6:30. The phone rang at 7:12am, letting him know that the exercise was kicking in, and that he was now on "6-ring standby." Around 9am, he got recalled, telling him to come in for the exercise that night. He ended up working the entire night like normal, coming home at 6am Tuesday morning, even though it was supposed to be his night off.