My brushes are untouched.
I've played one game since Hotlead, and only because Patrick had some armies completed (1/72nd scale Chinese Civil War forces) and wanted to give the World In Flames rules by Osprey a try.
Many of the loose ends from Hotlead are still untied.
What I have been doing is a lot of cadet stuff.
A week before Hotlead I got an email telling me I was loaded onto the Intermediate Officer's Training Course and the Distance Learning segment started pretty much that evening. This has been an amusing 6 week course with almost daily deadlines covering diverse subjects like policies and procedures, enforcement of regulations, supervision of subordinates (as a Lieutenant now it's assumed I will have 2nd Lieutenants and Officer Cadets to keep an eye on), more adolescent development and group dynamics, environmental impact assessments for training exercises, safety and emergency response plans, correspondence and warning orders. Fun stuff.
Good professional development, but pretty time consuming.
I was also preoccupied developing my magnum opus; a lesson for M420.02 The History of the Canadian Army. The official lesson plan had a lot of bureaucratic details like Militia Acts and the various reorganizations the Army went through. Do some 17 year olds really need to know how the CF was organized back in the 1980s? I threw that out and started with some First Nations warriors hiding in the bushes and worked my through the siege of Quebec, the War of 1812, the Fenian Raids and North West Rebellion of 1885, WW1, WW2, Korea and Afghanistan to try and tell a story. It also happened to be Vimy Ridge Day. I had 90 minutes, elaborated too much sometimes and ran out of time. But they were quiet and paid attention and they even learned about a few Militia Acts.
Another distraction was that my Cadet unit went through a change of command. My friend Chris took over as CO mid-year (and a couple of years early) due to our old CO having a change in her situation. So we had to step up the ceremonial review practice for the cadets.
Usually the cadets do the parades and we officers just watch from the edge of the parade square.
But this time the CIC officers had to fall in.
I hadn't been in command of a formation on a ceremonial parade for 30 plus years!
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| Lt. Rabbitman on parade! |
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| Taking the Reviewing Officer through the inspection |
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| March past |
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| Advance in Review Order |
Here we've just finished the Advance in Review Order, the climax of the parade. For a bunch of kids their dressing is really quite good (and they all halted at the same time!). The observant among you will notice the flight of Air Cadets in their sky blue on the left of our line. We've developed a pretty cordial relationship with the local Air Cadet Squadron, mostly based upon a standing invitation from their officers to join them for drinks at a local bar at the end of cadet nights. Their facility has more elbow room for march pasts, so they were our hosts for the evening. It would have been rude not to let them parade with us.
As soon as Chris was made acting CO he made me his Training Officer (TrgO). It will now be my responsibility to generate all the Warning Orders, Operations Orders, RSS, MOARs, Emergency Response Plans, Briefings and O Groups. Plus devise the training plan for the next training year.
I have also been stepping up my efforts to find better employment. So resumes, finding my footing with the TrgO position and my DL have been absorbing all of my spare time lately.
But the course is done this weekend, so I hope next week to find some time to pick up my paint brushes again.
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