Happy Birthday

So, today is June 5 and I want to take thisopportunity to say "Happy Birthday" to my brother, Dean. I will not share how old he is, just that he is now much older than I am.

Happy Birthday, Dean!!!

Visitors and Gifts

Well today is 1 June and it is hard to believe time is flying by. Next month, our tour will be half over. Yippee. From time to time, US companies will send over items and some will be more useful than others. For example; a beer maker wants to send over some beer to help us celebrate July 4th. Although, it is great to see support from corporate America, I am not sure that beer is the best idea. One of the leading pizza makers will be sending some pizza for us adn that will be fun. During our memorial Day celebration, Vermont sent over some syrup to add some real yumminess to breakfast.

Today, we got a visit from some college football coaches. Now I did not go to a big school and I certainly do not favor one team over another, but it is always good to see people taking time out of their schedule and visit the troops. I am not sure who this guy was and I am not even sure I got hi name right, Mack something; Mack Black, White, some color is all I know. During all of the pictures, he was throwing some kind of gang sign and I am not sure what that was all about either.

Anyway, just another day at the office.

For those that don't know; Mack Brown from Texas.

Celebrations and more

Well today is Memorial Day and there were no parades and no celebrations, although like always, the Dining Facility out did themselves with USA colors everywhere and they are serving very American food; yummy.

I got word from Household 6 that she took the kids and the family dog to the local parade. There is nothing more American than having the family dog watching the local parade and maybe next year or for any July 4th celebration, she will get a red, white and blue bandana, which will make her even more American.

In the Army, as I am sure in the other services as well, we celebrate various ethnic groups where we learn about culture, share food and in the most recent case, shared some pagentry. One of my Soldiers is from American Somoa and this month we celebrated all things Asian-Pacific culminating in a dance festival.

There were performing groups from Fiji, Philipines and American Somoa and remember that these people are all here. The group from Fiji and the Philipines both work here and the group from American Somoa are all Soldiers. The evening was a festival of food as they cooked three pigs, one below ground and two on a spit, colorful costumes and music. My Soldier is extremely proud of her heritage, as she should be and she was the finale. It was truely an awesome show. Here is a picture of me and her taken after the Friday evening show.

This week, we will reach another milestone as it has officially gone over 110 degrees. They say it will get hotter, but right now it is like standing in front of the oven with the door open or walking around with a hairdryer blowing. Thankfully, the AC in both the room and the office are working keeping me comfortable.

Thats all for now and once again, happy Memorial Day.

Party Time

Well, today was a VERY special day!! I went to a party, and this was no ordinary party. First of all, this was my first party and secondly and most fun, the Commander of the Special Operations hosted this gathering. My buddy invited me and I jumped at the opportunity jst to do something different ad I had no idea what was in store for the night.

It was very strange because there we all kinds of people "not in uniform" and therefore hard to tell who is who, but suffice it to say it was an iinteresting crowd.

Here am with the host, who was a very gracious man.

And here was the spread. We did not sit and eat, but it was more of a gather around the table and take what you wanted. It was just like an old fashioned family picnic for 100 or so of your closest friends.

The food was great, chicken, lamb, rice, mutton kabobs; it was all very good. This might be have to be a recurring event. More to follow on this.......

Getting Warmer

Well, time continues to move along and this week, the temperature here hit 100 degrees. Altough, here I am a bit spoiled. I live in an air conditioned room and work in an air condioned office. When lunch time comes around, it is almost a joy to get out of the artificial light and cold air and walk the 500 meters in the warm, dry air and break up the routine of the day.

I am sure by now all of you have heard of the horrible tradgedy that happened here last week where one Soldier decided that the only way out of his problems was to take it out on fellow Soldiers and health care providers. This actually happened right in my back yard. There are plenty of people that have dployed more than once adn I work with pleny of them. Being here and seperated from loved ones is hard, but there ar epeople that can help. The news media will spin this particular incident in a way that only they can, but we may never really know what happened on that day to that Soldier. Don't beleive everything that you read.

The job continues to be interesting and I am learning new thinfs every day. There are signs that there is an end as last week, we began to talk to our replacement. We will take part in teaching them, just as our predeccessors tought us. Also, as I continue to watch the clock, I will be home on my R&R leave in less than 90 days. Yippee.

This week, Household 6 took the family to Sea World and I am sure that they had a good time. I am very proud of the family as they continue their routine of normalcy as much as possible.

Thank you all for everything that you do.

Happy Mother's Day

Let me take this opportunity to say Happy Mother's Day to everyone. To my Mom, Leigh and the other Ya-Yas, and other friends, you are all very special and your work often goes underappreciated. We are deployed here with a lot of Moms and just like birthdays and other holidays, this one day is just a little harder.

In a time and place for milestones, this week we I hit a big one. We all count days here, days till we go home, days till Sunday, everything is a big countdown. Well, I count the days until I go home on vacation and this week we went from triple digits to double. Yippee. Now as I sit here and write this, the clock is turning to 96. It might still seem lke a big number, but is a lot smaller than 200 which is where we started.

So, no pictures this week as it has been somewhat quiet, but all is well. The temp is starting to rise and we are getting consistant days over 95 degrees as we work our way to about 130.

So again, Happy Mother's Day.

Catching Up

Where has all the time gone? I cannot believe that it has been almost three weeks since my last update. I normally set aside some time on Sunday for this type of stuff and I just have been delinquent.

Well, it has been a busy and varied few weeks. So far for visitors, we have had President Obama, Secretary Clinton and most recently, and one much closer to me, the Commandant of the Chemical Corps paid us a visit last week and I had the fortunate opportunity to spend some quality time with him. Probably more than I originally thought. He was going to fly to visit some training in my area, but the helicopter was unsupported, so we ended up driving and a ten minute flight turned into a two hour drive in an MRAP, where he and I had had some quality time together. :) The training was very good and the feedback that we received was all very positive.

Actually, it was not that bad and on the way back, the jetlag started to kick in for him and he began to doze a little bit. Anyway, at the culmination of his visit, he had a little social gathering and I wanted to take this picture.

More recently, I finally had the opportunity to take that helicopter ride and we flew from Baghdad to Taji, where we were met by some Guardsmen from the Great Keystone State (PA). On this particular outing, the flight was not going to be the highlight, it was the ride on a Stryker. Here is a recent picture of me enjoying life somewhere north of the city of Taji.............

and here is a picture of the Stryker vehicle that took us all over the coutryside. These things are awesome. They are much more comfortable than an MRAP and quieter as well. Although, it might look like some gypsy wagon with everything hanging off, it is a mobile home to a crew of highly dedicated Citizen-Soldiers and for one day, they protected our team.

We are now in May and time continues to roll along. I am almost four months (1/3) finished and vacation will come in 104 days. Yippee. I promise that I will do better in keeping this updated. Thank you all for what you do and I would be very remiss if I did not give a BIG shout out to my WILD HOG buddy, Kareem who just got promoted. Congratulations!! Good Job.