Guest Blog Night Means No Pictures!

Hello Everyone. Samantha asked me to blog tonight, just briefly, to give an update on what is going on with our orders.

There are couple factors at play that are affecting the likely-hood that we get out of here on our rotation date (July 2011 by the way).

First, in order to get me out, we need to get someone in. Guam 'billets' are relatively hard to fill. Especially for the more senior positions since the person is typically older with a family with older kids (likely high schoolers). Up-rooting the family to come out to Guam is not high on many people's list. The EOD detailer was struggling to fill the job with another EOD guy, and was asking other 'community' detailers to fill it (in other words, he was asking the ship and submarine guys if they would like to fill it). He wasn't having much luck.

The good news is that as of this week, the billet has been officially converted from a discrete EOD billet to any unrestricted line officer can fill it. So now my detailer is no longer on the hook to find my replacement. That responsibility goes to the placement officer who can go to specific detailers and make them find a replacement (they'll still look for volunteers though).

What all this means to me is the my detailer can now simply write me my orders out of here in July without worrying about the replacement.

The other problem still out there is the budget. Congress has yet to pass a budget, so the government (and military) has been operating under a continuing resolution authorization (CRA). Unfortunately, the CRA doesn't fully fund everything the military needs to do, including move people around, so the Navy has prioritized the moves. People going to or coming from sea duty or other operational billets have priority. People (like me) trying to go from one shore duty assignment to another shore duty assignment are a lower priority. So, there is a chance the detailer will write and submit the orders but then they will sit in the queue and not be approved for funding. I've been seeing people detaching in April not getting their orders till this month. So I may not know my fate until mid-June whether we are moving in July! And if my relief is coming from sea duty, his orders may get funded while mine might not resulting in "double-stuffing" the billet.

From what I am reading, Congress will probably not get a budget passed, and will probably pass another CRA lasting until April 8th, when we can hope again for a final budget.

I think worst case, we'll be here until October or November, which puts us into the next fiscal year when hopefully we can get a budget passed for 2012.

BTW, no worries with respect to the events going on in Japan. Guam remains largely unaffected although we may see delays in some perishables as most air assets get diverted to help Japan (and rightly so). We won't starve - we have coconut trees right outside in our front yard.

Thanks for listening,

-Kevin