A word from our Voter

Dear Diary,

I’ve been in Army Basic Training for 10 weeks this Fall, and just recently graduated and moved into AIT-- Accurately Imitating Travis. For the next 9 weeks, my comrades and I will be Awesomely Imitating Travis as we learn how to operate heavy equipment. Here are a few highlights of my training so far:

9.1.10 First day of training. I did a few pushups, ate 3 square meals and one rounded snack.

10.17.10 Today while building a barbed-wire fence along the Texas/Louisiana border, my comrade Roger Hartman made a few mistakes. 1) He danced an Irish Jig on Texas soil, which is a severe disgrace to the Alamo and all who fought there. 2) He intentionally crossed the national boundary into Louisiana. This violates several Federal treaties. 3) He wrapped poor Adam up in barbed-wire as if he were a Christmas tree and barbed-wire was strings of popcorn. I now know what a barbed-wire Christmas Human looks like.

10.25.10 We did our first jump today from a C-130 Transport. I like sky-diving! The only difficult part was shooting practice during free-fall. We were all given paintball guns and ordered to shoot each other as many times as possible on the way down. Whomever reached the ground with the least amount of paint would win the contest. Once our parachutes opened, a severe aerial paint war ensued. It was difficult to adjust to warfare in an environment with not only left and right, forward and backward but also up and down. Recruit Thompson won the contest. He was hit a total of zero times because he forgot his parachute.

10.31.10. Halloween Dinner. We had just come in from firing anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and PFC Roger Hartman. The juice wasn’t ready, so the chef had me and Rolly go out back and drive a tank over a few pumpkins.

11.9.10 Today we finally got around to flying airplanes and helicopters. They let us loose on the airfield and we could practice on whatever we wanted. Lots of people fought over the fighter jets, but I went straight for the Space Shuttle. I liked the lift-off a lot, but found that landing it was very difficult, especially with all the fighter jets and helicopters flying around, and for some inane reason they scheduled another group to have their aerial paint fight that day, so the skies were a bit congested.

11.15.10 I graduated yesterday and moved on to heavy equipment operating. Don’t be fooled. This equipment is HEAVY.

Here's a video of some driving I did yesterday:



Time for lights out.
Till next time,

The Voter
-Moving heavy equipment like Sgt. Oaks

Travis

Travis:
-runs away by himself while the other kids are singing songs
-wrestles with his friend and gets in trouble
-loves "4 hugs a day" song. Giggles
-Miss Alicia has to tell him to sit still a lot because he keeps wiggling
-Teacher holds him on her lap because the other kids are annoyed-trying to listen to the teacher
-drew on the dry erase board. shapes & letters
-"If I could have anything in the world, it would be a car"
-makes noises and plays with his nametag, pretending to choke himself with it
-experiments with nametag, putting his hand inside, slinging it over his arm, etc.
-holds up 4 fingers to represent the number 4
-punts things in the story act to the teacher
-asks questions during storytime ---> "Who is that guy?"
-knows what the word "miserable" means.
-puts his fingers in his mouth a lot. Plays with his tongue
-pretends to be asleep ---> starts shoving
-shows his teacher Miss Alicia his "sad face"



I was picking up trash on campus as I'm prone to do, and imagine my surprise when I found a page of my own journal lying in the lobby of the SWKT!


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FOLLOW-UP:
From Kristina Stewart, December 1st 4:06PM
Travis, I know where that came from! That piece of paper that belongs to your..."journal" is in fact someone's pre-school observation notes. How do I know this? Because I observed Travis TOO! He was a funny stick of a boy with fluffy floppy bull cut hair. Purely adorable, but prone to get into mischief. I am so glad you shared that. They're probably in Nelson's Human Development Class which meets in room 250 of the SWKT, so that's why you found the paper there. Mystery solved. You know, that little kid actually reminded me of you, and as you read the notes, I'm sure you can understand why......just kidding

Thank you for your insight, Kristina!
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Travis Jay Moore
-Journaler