Saturday, April 10, 2010

A bad start to a good day.

I woke up early, having gone to bed early after meditation and prayers last night. I had slept on my back, which generally isn’t a problem for me. What is a problem for me is that I cannot feel my right thigh, due to the skin grafts and nerve damage.

What this led to was my inability to realize that my right leg had fallen asleep. So when I stood up out of bed this morning, I immediately fell over, right on to my face, hurting my back. I have a keen awareness for when I’ve been beat, and decided that the milblogcon would have to wait; I was going back to bed, and would try again in a couple hours.

Two hours later, I awoke to a beautiful Northern Virginia Spring day, feeling like almost ten dollars, I got dressed and hobbled down to the conference. Now I am sitting in the opening speaker’s conference, listening to GEN David Petraeus’ canned speech, all the way from CENTCOM. I’ve been keenly aware of the warming of senior leadership to the milblogosphere. I met yesterday with other bloggers at the Pentagon, and we all engaged with the various services Public Affairs Officers, and even with ADM Mullen’s Public Affairs Maven, a Major who is participating in the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff internship program, an Armor Guy, who was handed the Chairman’s entire online presence and told to engage.

Also in attendance today is Gary Trudeau, the author of Doonesbury, Jack Holt, from the Pentagon’s public affairs office, members of the Golden Knights Army Parachute team (who knew they had a blog?) And many authors, bloggers, public affairs representatives from the various services. It is, literally, a packed house. Milblogcon 2010 sold out this year and the room is filled to capacity!

I am now sitting in the first panel, The Charitable Landscape. They are discussing the various charities and the roles of milblogs in particular that reach out to service members, their families, and the wounded.  I’ve heard of this kind of thing before.    (Follow each of the links for different charitable organizations.)
It's hard to write and pay attention, so I will write more later.

--Chuck

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