The song "Hanging by a moment" by Lifehouse reminds me of my time spent on the USCGC Mobile Bay. It's not because I was listening to it a lot but because while on the Mobile Bay, when I had to stand a watch from 12-4am, which was often, I was supposed to do an hourly round of the ship but instead would sit on the mess deck and watch VH1's show Insomniac, a four hour long show of nothing but music videos, and during this show I would not do a single round. Unfortunately, the songs music video was being played in heavy rotation. A round is an hourly walk-thru of the ship with the purpose of preventing fires and flooding, and whatever else might happen to a 140ft tug boat that might as well be welded to the fucking pier. The funny thing is, none of us were very honest about our watch standing and really how could you expect us to be. Not a single person on that ship could honestly see the importance of walking through every room in the ship every hour perpetually. Things you had to check on and write down included refrigerator temps, a few electrical gauge readings, and what the tiny dial said on every fire extinguisher on the entire ship, i.e. Full or Fill. Needless to say we would simply not do it at all and just make it look like we had in the log book. Once I forgot to fake it in the log book entirely and didn't realize it until I was already in bed. I got up out of my rack and went down to the mess deck to fill it in as if I had done something other than watch music videos and soft core porn but Dena, another deck dept loser who was on watch from 4-8am, got all pissed off about it as if she ever does any of her rounds. Ha! Ridiculous. She was one of the biggest skates on the ship, next to SN Jennifer Bauer of course. I talked her down and she never told on me but it was close. Dena was in an intimate relationship with the junior officer, LTJG Tom Crane, so she didn't have much room to talk and everyone knew it. We especially knew it when Dena almost got into a fist fight several months later when Cranes new girlfriend and her met at the aforementioned SN Bauer's wedding. Oddly enough, SN Bauer's marriage lasted a mere 6 months. What a circus.
