MEPS

Friday we took off for MEPS in Houston around 11:15am from the Army recruiting office in College Station. We kind of took the long route to Houston through Huntsville, Conroe, Livingston, and then to Houston because we were picking up more recruits. We finally arrived at the hotel around 4pm only to find out that me and a couple of others needed to go to MEPS right then to take the ASVAB. So we got over there, went through security, and took the ASVAB. It was an interesting exam, to say the least. I was digging back into my high school science classes for some of the questions. There were some electrical questions I was able to answer after digging back to my first electrical engineering class my Freshman year at Texas A&M. When it was all said and done, I wound up doing better than I thought I would.

After the exam, we returned to the hotel to check-in. We had to fill out a form and talk to what looked like a retired Army officer who had been having a bad week, not day....week. After he tersely informed us of the rules, curfew, etc. we got out keys and put our bags in our respective rooms and headed down to the restaurant for "supper." The MEPS food they had for us was pretty bad, but at least it wasn't spam!:)

After almost eating what I think was or used to be chicken "tenders," I went back up to my room and talked a bit with my roommate. Shortly thereafter, I went swimming and sat in the hot tub for a little over an hour. I went back upstairs and talked with my roommate who said he used to be afraid of the dark until about a month ago because he had seen dragons and monsters (he's ). I was told I would see weird people there, but......?

Apparently my roommate wasn't lying when he said he only slept two hours a night. After tossing and turning at the sound of hisracket, my alarm went off at 3:50am. Then it was down to breakfast and on the bus promptly by 4:59am. 10 minutes later, we arrived at MEPS for medical screening. After securing our bags and getting our paperwork, we were briefed on the agenda for the day and then began all the medical screening. First, it was a breathalyzer test, ears checked, hearing checked, vision checked, blood test & other things, then the physical. I won't bother to go into detail.

When it was all over around 1:00pm, I found out I was put on hold and not allowed to continue on to signing the contract. The doctors didn't seem to like some of my medical history so I have to get all this paperwork and consult with two more doctors before they'll consider letting me pass. It will probably take about two weeks to get everything cleared up, so until then I'm still the civilian Justin Latimer.

Thanks for all the prayers.