An Anzio Christmas

Last night was Lee's ship's Christmas party. Since I have only been to corporate Christmas parties, I had no idea what to expect. The main differences I saw:

• We had to pay for booze. Now, this is understandable because I can't even imagine what a mess it would be if you provided 400 dudes with an average age of 21 free booze. I am guessing there would be quite a few arrests. The annoying part was that you had to buy drink tickets and then get in line for the bar and get your actual drink. Annoying!


• The clothes. They made the rule that you couldn't wear jeans. Apparently a few people didn't get the memo. There were also people that wore khaki's, but with a sweatshirt. Even one of the ship big wigs was wearing a turtleneck sweater with a blazer over it... Not sure about that one... But, those were the more mild outfits. There was a girl, I kid you not, wearing a belly dancer outfit. There was a white dude that was dressed like some sort of mafia gangster. There was a guy wearing some of the brightest blue pants I have ever seen with blue dress shoes to match. I could have watched all night long.


• They had to BRIBE people to come. Basically, if you showed up to the FREE dinner, you got to take Friday off. Who in their right mind would choose to work on a Friday instead of eating a free meal on Thursday?


• The night started off with three guys bringing in the flags and playing the National Anthem. Then there was a prayer. Then there was a poem-type salute to the POW's & MIA's. This part was kind of cool. There was a small one person table set up at the front. It was left empty to symbolize the fact that the fallen sailors could not be with us there. Is it dusty in here?

(This is a really bad picture of the table for one...)


• The door prizes. Awesome! Of the 5 guys at our table, 3 of them won stuff. (Lee was not one of them. Boo!) The prizes ranged from a free day off work to a 42" flat screen tv. I would have loved to have that... Also, once all the door prizes were gone, people really bailed on the party.
(The losing ticket.)


• At the end of dinner, they turned on rap music and some people started dancing. This was the first time I got to see all ages of black dudes doing the "Soulja Boy" dance. It's pretty hard to describe, but part of the time it looks like they are riding a motorcycle, and everytime they say "Superman" they pretend like they're flying. At this point, the chick in the belly dancer outfit and her man were doing what looked like ballroom dancing. Where am I?

(Anzio's finest.)



• At the end of the night, I drank too much wine and now am at work feeling like crap while Lee sleeps in soundly on his day off. Somehow I feel screwed on this deal!

This picture has the USS Anzio's "Individual Augmentees". Now, I am NOT a big fan of the whole IA program. As a spouse, I am guessing that is no surprise. The IA program basically takes people that joined the Navy and sends them off to Iraq with the Army & Marines. This just seems like false advertising to me. In the real world, I could not get hired to be an actuary, then find out they are making me move to Alaska to be an accountant. I understand that the Army & Marines are short handed over in Iraq. But if this program continues, the Navy will soon be in the same situation. Every time someone reenlists or changes roles in the Navy, they get sent to Iraq for a year in the middle. This just means people aren't going to reenlist. It may cause people to not sign up in the first place.

There is a guy on Lee's ship who just got back from deployment in May. He is now going to Iraq for a year, so he will get home in 2009. Then he will have to go on another deployment with the ship 3 months later. How does that seem fair? He is doing his job in the Navy with an extra YEAR of Army work thrown in the middle. They already spent last Christmas in the Persian Gulf. Now they are spending this year on the ground in Iraq. I appreciate their service and I hope that they all return safely. And hopefully get a Christmas at home sometime in the next 3 years!