The XO

Stephen has officially become XO, or for those of you who don’t know the million military acronyms, Executive Officer. What is the job of the XO? The XO is basically the assistant to the commander, or as Stephen likes to say "assistant commander." So Stephen is in charge of keeping track of all kinds of things for his company and making his Captain look good.

Stephen has been rather bipolar on whether or not he is excited about it. He was really excited when he first found out that he was going to be XO and then a week later he kept saying how much he was going to hate it and he wishes he wasn’t going to be it, and then now he is really excited about it. He is difficult to keep up with. You just learn to roll with it.

So Sunday after church we set up his new office. He was really excited to do this. He had an office as a platoon leader but he shared it with the people in his platoon so it wasn’t really “his” office. When I say he was “excited” to set up his office, I mean he thought for hours about how he wanted it to look, what arrangement of the desks, his philosophy of the room (he has a philosophy of everything). He wanted it to be professional but inviting.

The Before Picture.



After changing around the arraignment of the desks at least 4 times we finally found one that worked.

The After Picture.



The XO.



I told him to look professional and this is what he did. I guess "looking professional" to him means "pretend you're typing on an invisible key board". I love making him model, it’s always funny.

I had to show him how it’s done of course.