Hurry Up and Wait

"Hurry up and Wait"; If you're a Marine this is by far your least favorite feeling. Your basically told to be somewhere at a certain time for formation (a meeting essentially). My formation was at 1430 (subtract 12 hours to get civilian time). So you wrap yourself around that time, when knowing things don't normally go as plan. So there I am showed up at 1100 to drop my bags off at the formation location. You're wondering why so early? We'll I had to return my rental and ensure I had enough time to do my travel claim with our Admin department. Travel claim process went very smooth and it only took me an hour to knock it out, inputting what I paid for gas, room and rental. Then of course I had to fax in all of the receipts. So around noon my buddy Joe had planned to meet me for lunch. So we had lunch and I left him with a sea bag half full of all the stuff I can't take. Then back for formation. And you know this Jarhead is early, so
I'm sitting there ready for formation at 1400 for the 1430 formation. They tell us it's time to go, say your goodbyes, and hang your cell phones up. It seemed so final, picking up my M9 I felt like we were about to leave. Let's just say I waited over 12 hours for my original flight to leave…. Its amazing what you find out about people when you're sitting there and they are just as miserable as you. A few stops and a couple of days in the future, I'm now in a location that is by far the coldest place I've ever been my entire life (almost 20 something below freezing). Then we had to go grab our bags for our next flight. So an Air Force MSgt tells us we have to take them like 3 blocks over. Being Marines we listen to orders. I carry my 3 70 pound bags 3 blocks over along with like 30 plus other Jarheads to find another Air Force MSgt tell us to take them back exactly where we just brought them from. At least I got to be front row as our Full
Bird Colonel told him to unfu%k himself. In the end we dragged all our bags back to the exact same location we had brought them from. Was I angry? No I just laughed as it doesn't really pay to get pissed over something so redonkulus. As the snow flurries so do the tempers of those around me. But I'm feeling great. Why? For two reasons, I got to Skype with my wife and I also ate a Snickers bar.