We're Moving Again

No, I don’t mean boot camp. That’s cake compared to this. I don’t mean the second day of a deployment, either.

It’s transferring between commands, and I’m dead in the middle of it.

In no other profession does one completely pack up and move home, spouse, vehicles, kids and pets (kids and pets may be the same things) every three to four years. I like to say that there’s good and bad in just about everything, and this settles squarely in the “bad” category of Navy life.

Luckily, the Navy makes it as easy as possible. They hire the packers and movers, they pay for it, assuming you don’t go over your weight limit, and then store it until you find a new place in the new town. Of course, as soon as your stuff gets to the new location, they call and ask you where you want it delivered. Yeah, they call you… at your old house, in the old location, when you haven’t even left your old command yet. It’s a good thing that reasoning ability isn’t a job requirement for DoD civilians or we’d be in serious trouble.

Then they give you just a little bit less money than you’ll actually need to get the new place in the new town and find a new place to live. Whoever thought up the new dislocation allowance system should be dragged out into the street and shot, by the way. The man was financially insane, I think. Yet again, an allowance for something that is required by the Navy to be done (in this case, moving), intentionally doesn’t cover the costs of doing it. I never have understood that.

Once you get where you’re going, not only have you dealt with all that stuff, you have to get a phone, move all your stuff back in, get cable (I can’t live without SportsCenter), get new car registries and driver’s licenses, and change every magazine subscription you own. And those magazines don’t cut you any slack on that either. You better change them or you lose those upcoming issues.

It’s not all bad though. You get to meet new people, get new neighbors to butt into your business (as if the old ones weren’t aggravating enough), and trade the politics and backbiting of one command for the greener pastures of the politics and backbiting of another. And you get to learn a new job,

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