Because the National Guard and the Army as a whole enjoy fucking soldiers out of money, we're doing two back to back AT's (2011 followed the next day by 2012) in order to not pay everyone BAH and the other entitlements we would normally receive on active orders for 6 weeks or so. Then we're off. I feel confident in the COIST team and I know we'll be able to perform whatever tasks the commander has for us. The largest part of our job is receiving intelligence and processing it to make it useful to the commander and higher headquarters. We're all college educated, anal retentive/borderline OCD neat freaks, so we fit well together. Not sure how the blog thing will work out this time. If anything, I'll keep a digital journal and then publish it all once we get back.