Long absences from the blog before were usually 2-3 weeks.  It's been nearly 2 months now since I've last written and I've got far more to cover than I can do in just one post.  I want to talk about a few things, but some it is just going to have to be left out.

I graduated from The Judge Advocate Graduate Course on 20 May and shortly thereafter set off on a 3-week cross-country odyssey with my family.  Preparing to move -- as it always is in the Army -- is both easier and harder than it should be.  The easy part is that the Army contracts with moving companies across the country to pack and ship household goods for Soldiers and officers.  This means we don't have to spend weeks putting things in boxes and packing furniture into a u-haul.  On moving day, we just open the front door and watch everything get packed up, carried out, and loaded onto the truck.  (And on the receiving end, we watch them unload, set the furniture where we want it, and unpack all the boxes for us.)  Easy.  Not so easy is the paperwork required to leave one military installation and get 'enrolled' at another.  This can be as much as a 2 week process.  Thankfully, things here at Fort Lewis, Washington (now, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, or JBLM), have gone really well and I've been settling into my new office and my new role for almost 2 weeks.

I've recently taken over as the Senior Defense Counsel for the JBLM Trial Defense Service office.  My team of military attorneys here makes sure that every Soldier accused of a crime gets a zealous defense at trial.  It's a great group of folks, handling some very tough cases.  We're going to be busy, and they're going to get some great experience.  And, hopefully, so will I.