Well, here's an update. Just got off the phone. I've got good news and bad news. Bad news is I won't be going off with my old battalion - at least not this time and more than likely as not, not ever. The good news is I found out the reason for the holdup with getting a date for my physical. It was a means of slowing the process down while things could be changed. It appears the higher authority (I won't name names) wasn't real happy about an officer who had not failed to be promoted taking a bust to Sergeant First Class. I was very good at my job and evidently would've been promoted had I stayed in longer. I just got fed up with the job I was in at the time and made what was, in retrospect, the wrong decision.
In the intervening years I have achieved my masters degree in education with an eye on becoming a high school teacher. I was lining up a job doing that this year. This is later in life stuff so you younger folk may not be all that familiar with the concept of "self-actualization" but that was what I was after. I've made my money in the investment world and from those incomes and my Army retirement pay I had nothing to worry about for my fiancial future. Being a teacher was all about making myself happy and a contribution to the community.
More about the good news: Getting the masters degree and the afore mentioned higher authority's feelings have meshed in that it now appears I will be re-activated as a Major and have every opportunity to make Lt. Colonel before my eventual final retirement. They want to keep me here stateside as an instructor. Right now the idea is that I will either go to the Vermont Military Academy and work with the OCS and NCO schools there as well as have something to do with the Mountain Warfare School that is co-located there, or I may wind up in an ROTC program instead. Norwich is about 10 miles from me. All too soon to say for sure where I'll go but the winds have changed and I'm off on a different course. I thought you folks would be interested.