I actually started off the day doing alright. The dog was a little antsy this morning, so I took his leash and walked him around for a little bit before I got to the gym. Then, I tied him up to the parallel bars there and did my workout. I biked for only about 10 minutes before feeling bad for the dog, all tied up...so I stepped outside to do an exercise that would keep the dog in my field of view....Russian kettlebells. That's right, Ben. Someone must've watched the same video that Ben did because there are about half a dozen kettlebells lying around the gym now. I'd forgotten a lot of the exercises that Ben taught me back home, but I think I did alright. Anyway, I did that for a little bit before walking Tripod home. Then when I got back, Tripod ended up chewing through his leash and I wasted another twenty minutes getting him back. Hmm...maybe there's a reason why they frown on keeping pets in a war zone. Oh well...
Anyway, if you haven't figured it out already, I'm on another night shift here. If I were back home, I guess I'd be prepping for the first day of school. It's always so exciting, seeing all of the new faces...and all the familiar ones too. Oh, how I miss my little nerds. I actually jumped on AIM this morning, about 20 minutes before my shift. I talked to Crystal, who still had a handful of summer assignments left to do before morning. I'm sure she wasn't alone in that respect. I was fortunate enough to never have had summer assignments when I was going through school. I guess that have to do it these days, though, since the kids are so lazy...hehe. Yeah, you know I miss school. I miss being called Mr.Louie and I miss giving the kids the stare. One of my soldiers is 18...fresh out of high school and basic...a real smartbutt too. He comments that I give him the look all the time, I probably do without even realizing it. You like that, don't you...smartbutt. That's my teacher talk. I remember calling one of my students that one day. I forget who it was though...probably Jarvis. Oh well. I'm off to do some work. I'll write more soon.
05 September 2004 1725z - Today was a pretty light day. We only had a few trucks to offload, and they showed up early. So the afternoon ended up being pretty light. I even snuck in a nap...or two. Well, technically, I probably ended taking about a dozen short ones. I napped during a three hour period, but I was awoken about a dozen times by someone calling me on the radio and asking me to take care of one thing or another, whether to borrow a vehicle or to escort a local national or a vehicle in from the front gate. For most of those issues, I really wasn't the person who needed to be contacted, so I pointed them in the right direction. I was actually able to deflect most of the radio calls without putting my boots back on and getting out of the tent. But I guess that's my fault for trying to nap during the day. My soldiers are always trying to convince me to just turn off the radio, but I can't do that. I like being helpful.
Beyond that, there isn't really anything significant to report today. It was a typical Sunday here. We had steak and crab legs for dinner. I skipped on the crab legs though. And I played a few games of basketball after dinner before the BUB, which, by the way, is getting longer and longer. It ran about an hour and twenty minutes today. The sad part is that it's only getting longer. I think there are a lot of people who just enjoy listening to themselves talk. And now, it seems like half of them are working on developing stand-up routines or something. It's actually starting to get a bit unprofessional with prank powerpoint slides and other attempts at humor. It's so bad, that I don't even feel guilty for looking at the Maxim slideshow running for all the people in the back row...well, I still feel a little guilty, but not much.
04 September 2004 0100z - So last night was pretty cool after my shift. I would go as far as to say that it was "the bomb." It was about 0030 local when I wrapped up yesterday, so I was able to sneak into the MWR building to get on the computer without waiting in line. I actually spent a little over an hour there and got to hang out with the sisters, Ben, and Michelle in an AIM chat room. Pretty cool, huh? It was almost like being at home and IMing with them. But hey, during the conversation, I heard some disturbing rumors about my buddy Thuy. Apparently, he's picked up a bad habit. *boo* *hiss* Yes, that's right, kids...Thuy started smoking. *gasp* Thuy, to help you stop, I order you to watch The Insider starring Russell Crowe. I don't care if you've seen it already because you obviously didn't get the message. Smoking is not cool, you dork!
Hehe...okay, enough of that. I can't really think about all that much to write about today. Intel went crashing in the market today, so it's a good thing that I was too lazy to put my order in during the day yesterday. Instead, I picked up my contracts at 65 cents instead. What's funny is that I really don't care that much because I'm making so much money while I'm here. Yesterday, the bank had another deposit from the Army. This was my tax refund for my first two months pay because you don't have to pay taxes when you're deployed in a foreign country. I got back over $1200!!! Not bad, huh? Considering that my base pay with hazardous duty pay, housing allowance, and subsistence allowance, I'm already taking home over four grand each month, I should have a decent little nestegg by the time I wrap up a year here. I wouldn't even mind getting extended for six months...well...maybe a little.
No, the best part about being over here is that you don't have to pay for anything. I mean, back home, I don't think I waste my money, but I somehow produced a consistent credit card bill of about $1000-$2000 dollars each month. Over here, there is practically nothing to buy. I mean, every wednesday when the bazaar shows up, I might spend a few dollars on bootleg DVDs, but that's barely anything. Even if I decided to buy a rug every week, it wouldn't even come close to my grocery and office supply bills back home. The Army's paying for my food, my housing, my internet access, everything. Granted, the quality of each of those is a little lacking compared to what I had back home, but all in all, it's not a bad deal. (Note: the preceding message was brought to you buy the Virginia Army National Guard, where You Can!)
But yeah, another week's over now, so that's one more less to go. I hear that the skins did well tonight, so that's cool too. Unfortunately, Vick didn't have nearly as good of a game. Hopefully, he'll pick up once the season starts. Oh, I forgot one more thing. I got an e-mail from a friend of Craig's mom yesterday. That was pretty cool. Apparently, I have a few more people reading my page now...always cool to get more traffic. Nothing pains me more than to look at Jane's web stats and see that her traffic is just towering over mine. I'm averaging about 70 hits a day, which means my mom is probably checking twice a day and I'm reloading it about ten times. The other 58, I don't know. But hey, I've got an idea for those of you who enjoy reading this page. Go to your internet explorer options and set http://hokie.us as your home page. And while you're at it, change your buddy's internet setting to do the same. And for those of you who read this page at school, you can do the same. Together, we can make a difference. And on that note, I'm out. Enjoy your weekend.
02 September 2004 1750z - Boo!! Boo!! I can't believe that I lost today, falling out of the running for the chess championship...and after all the smack I was talking, I am just very upset with myself. I would cry right now if only I weren't so hard. Enough about that.
Happy birthday, sister! Yay! Yes, my angry sister Yenny turns 28 today. Wow, that's almost 30. Just the thought of her getting old makes me feel old. Isn't that horrible? Yes...moving on.
Today, we had a bunch of helicopters show up with mail. I got another letter from Ben (hilarious again...and I hear that he's really hot now. How is he still single?) and a package from the Nguyens. Cool stuff inside, including more hand sanitizer and brush-ups. There was some Axe too...I'll save that for when I go for R&R in Europe somewhere...you know, when I'll start showering again...for the ladies and all. I mean, I saw EuroTrip. I know what the ladies are like in Europe.
Grr...can't...stop...thinking...about...losing...chess...game...
But yeah, cool stuff. I gave some of the mouse traps to one of my soldiers to put up around the tent. Personally, mice don't worry me. They'd actually be nice to have around. The only problem is that mice will bring snakes...and we don't want snakes around here. Cats, I don't mind, but no snakes. And with snakes, come camel spiders, so none of that stuff. I'll stick with the puppy.
Oh well...another night shift tonight. I've got three hours left and they promise to be very quiet because we have no operations going on. Everyone is sleeping, so I don't foresee anything unless we get attacked tonight (very doubtful). I mean, seriously, if you saw my shadow in that picture that I posted, would you want to attack? Heck no.
In about an hour or two, one of the intel officers will stop by the TOC to do some investment stuff with me. I've been his informal investment planner these last few weeks, teaching him about retirement accounts and options and stuff. I warned him about the risks and told him about all the money I've lost in the past, but he's convinced that he wants to shadow me in some of my investments. Intel is the company of choice for the moment. We've been tracking the April 25 Call option for a week or so now, and we'll probably pick up a few contracts each around 90 cents to a dollar, about a two thousand dollar investment total. We'll see how that works out...(translated in weBlog talk: I will update and share the results if I end up making lots of money and I will fail to mention it again if it goes South.)
As you can tell, today is short attention span day, as I can't write a paragraph on the same topic lasting longer than three sentences.
Oh, let's talk about Tripod some more. My soldiers told me about something this morning that impressed the heck out of me. Well, lets go back a night to the first night Tripod was around. In the morning, I was awoken by the sound of a crying dog...not good considering that the colonel lives in the tent right next to me. If the dog wakes me up, then he might wake the colonel up...which is not good considering that my platoon is the official owner. So I wake up and spend a few minutes with the puppy, undoing his leash and bringing him inside from his box. Well, after that night, Tripod's been sleeping inside the tent. Now, knowing puppies, this could be a bad thing, having a puppy inside a tent. You can probably imagine why if you know anything about dogs. What do doggies like to do? Yes, poop. Well, get this. This morning, as I was out doing my things, my soldiers tell me this amazing story of how Tripod ran out of the tent this morning for some reason; and when they followed him outside of the tent, they saw him poop on the ground and then cover it up by pushing rocks over it with his nose. Is that not amazing? That's my kind of dog. I might have to take him home with me when this is all said and done. Anyway, if I ever catch him in the act, I'll try to video-tape it for you.
Oh well...that's all for today. Happy birthday, again, Yenny. And Ben, update your webpage.
...or maybe not. Maybe I'll make today my stream of consciousness weblog entry. Two and a half hours left in shift and still nothing happening. There are about a half dozen people in here right now. Maybe two are actually doing work. Two are doing e-mail, one is listening to MP3s, and one is taking a smoke break outside. In the background, the bugler is playing Taps. There's just something about hearing that every night that still gets me. It's both somber and uplifting at the same time...kinda like when you listen to sappy music after being dumped by your girlfriend, but a little more poignent. I don't know...maybe it's not like that.
I had a conversation with one of the commo guys today. He's our education officer and he was looking through the CLEP tests, basically credit-by-exam stuff. Anyway, I think I convinced him to learn calculus while here in Afghanistan. I'm going to see who else I can convince to do it,and maybe I'll have a full class by the winter. *sigh* I miss teaching. If I were at home, I'd be wrapping up prep week for school and I'd be trying to decide how I was going to arrange the seats in the classroom this year. I'd have my clipboards up for signing up for after school, my hall pass clipboard, my swear jar, and my goldfish. I'd probably re-design my class web page a little bit, and when I got bored, I'd be working on my physics carols for the winter. I wonder if anyone else will do that this year. Probably not...that kinda makes me sad. I remember last year when we had that little sing-off with the choir group in the middle of the social studies hall. That's one of those moments that'll stick in my mind for the rest of my life. I hope the kids enjoyed it even half as much as I did. *sigh*
...two and a quarter hours left...I think I'm stuck in some sort of time anomaly here. (I had to spell-check that one, by the way. I mean, I spelled it right, but I thought I'd mention it to let you into my OCD mindset.) But yeah, at this pace, I'll be working on a 2MB update by the time my shift is over. What a nerd...I talked about the length of my weblog entry in terms of memory instead of words or paragraphs. Ha!
I got an e-mail from Tommy the other day. That was cool to hear from him. I know he's living in my house and all now, but it's still cool nonetheless. I didn't hear from him all summer because he was out having a blast on vacation...I think in South America or somewhere where they speak Spanish. Where ever he went, I'm sure he charmed the ladies and got a lot of surfing and tanning in while doing it.
Okay, I'm done for now. My shift still isn't even halfway over yet, but I've decided not to spend it all in front of my computer. I'll start writing letters and stuff. Maybe the physical activity will make time pass faster. It's worth a shot. Good night.
30 August 2004 2100z - Officially, CJTF-76 does not condone the practice of maintaining pets during Operation Enduring Freedom. Unofficially, though, there isn't a unit out here without a cat or a mouse or a dog or a camel or a snake as a mascot. Today, our platoon adopted Tripod. 
I won't go as far as to say that's he's a pet - I could probably get in a little bit of trouble - but we definitely don't mind having him around. He's about two or three in dog years, and he was found limping around the camp a few days ago due to a broken leg. We brought him to the Doc, where he received all of his shots and medications and now he's part of the tactical logistics team. He even has a call sign for when we need to get him on the radio. It's Lone Wolf. At one point today, after being left tied to the tent, it appeared that someone had kidnapped him. It was very sad and we spent quite a bit of time looking for him. After dinner, though, he wound up back around the area of our tent, and now he's back. I know...I feel kinda bad for keeping him cooped up like this. But he seems happy. I think he likes the attention.
In other happenings, even though I bit my cheek pretty badly today after getting a shoulder in the mouth during a basketball game, I started eating the cookies that the sisters sent me (I'm guessing Jane made them). Either way, they taste very good and they're almost gone. I don't want to send mixed signals though. I don't want people to send food...because if you do, I'll eat it. And I don't want to get fat. Believe me, there are times when I decide to eat just because I'm bored and there's nothing better to do. It is at those times that I do not need to have random snacks around. I appreciate it all, but I'll have to stop...soon...maybe tomorrow.
30 August 2004 2100z - So it was something that a "loggie" such as myself will probably never see again until we leave this place. We were actually the main effort in a mission. You see, infantry guys, especially, don't like to do paperwork and calculations...so logistics type missions aren't very glamorous in their book. Of course, these days, that's my major function. That's why yesterday was the first time I left this 200m x 200m box in over a month. Can you imagine that? Staying in one spot of land for a whole month? (and not taking a shower?!) But yeah, I finally left home yesterday and it felt good. There's just something about sitting in the truck with your goggles on, having the dust and wind blow by you. I don't know. They don't let me out much, so I'm just happy about that. I wish I could write more about that, but there's not much else to say.
Let's talk about showers though. The last time I took a shower was July 18th...which is not to say that I haven't been cleaning myself. I've just had to do it without running water. Because of this, I've started to categorize my cleaning. There's the minimal cleaning when I just take a baby wipe or two and cover all the major areas. We'll call that class 1 clean. That's pretty much a daily occurrence. Then there's a class 2 clean, which is accomplished by taking about half a liter of water and a face cloth in addition to the class 1 clean. The class 3 clean consists of washing my hair with the waterless shampoo, and the class 4 consists of Pert Plus in addition to another half liter of water for rinsing. The class 5 clean consists of a haircut afterward and a complete change in uniform...when normally it's just t-shirt and/or socks that get swapped out. And that summarizes the different classes of clean for Sonny. Interesting, huh?
28 August 2004 0120z - I was somewhat worried that I would have bowel problems after sampling the local cuisine, but I have maintained my regularity over the last two days - a good sign. There's only so much that can be done with bread, though. Once I start eating the meat, it might be a different story. There have been cases of the runs going around the base and other maladies have plagued some sections, the worst being extremely pungent gas. The gas source has been all but universal around here...and believe it or not, it's not the mess hall. The main cause of this gas has been protein supplements. About a third of the personnel on this camp have started drinking these protein-packed, body-building, weight-gainer type shakes. That's not surprising, I guess, if you think about the personality of your stereotypical soldier. Everyone's trying to bulk up while cutting fat so that they can look good when they come home after the year or when they decide to take leave. The nasty side effect, though, is that it seems like we are being bombarded by stink bombs throughout the day. It's just not natural how bad it smells around here. I'd almost prefer sticking my nose next to the burning poo cans - it's so bad.
I'll get off this subject though.......(trying to think of something to write about, but can't get my mind off of the gas...it's soo bad)
Oh, got it. I meant to mention it the other day, but I got another e-mail from Stora. It seems that he's started to keep a weblog of his own at stora.hokie.us. Hmm...sound familiar? For those of you who don't know who Stora is, we went to elementary school and junior high together; and he and Craig and I used to spend the summers in his basement playing Monopoly and Risk and Axis & Allies and the like. We kinda lost touch throughout high school, but our families were always close. So in the last year or so, we started talking again. Anyway, if you know him or not, his entries are pretty entertaining. He's a little more conservative than most of my friends. Now, I just need to get Thuy to start keeping a weblog...and I need to find a way to get Ben to update his more than once every other month.
In other news, talking to my sister, I've been informed of a new youth hostile in the Centreville area...also known as my house. Apparently, there are a lot of twenty-somethings taking shelter in my house now that I'm gone, including my brother, my friend Tommy, and sister's friend Tom. (Is there anyone else, Jane?) Rent isn't a big issue these days because the Army is currently paying me about twice as much as I used to make as a teacher. Included in that is my $1200+ tax-free housing allowance which pretty much covers my mortgage. It also makes me feel good that my magazine subscriptions are not going to waste. I hope that people are making a lot of local phone calls, too, because I've been paying 30 dollars a month for that line and I never use it myself. Speaking of which...I need to get my cell phone sent home soon so that someone can use it. I've been meaning to do that because I was too lazy to suspend my cell phone contract with Verizon before I left. I know that there's probably a way to do it from here...either online or whatever, but I've just been too lazy to do it. Oh well.
26 August 2004 1822z - So I was listening in to a conversation earlier today between some of my soldiers talking about birthdays and getting old and it got me to thinking. In two months, I turn twenty-five...that's a quarter of a century. Now, I know that's not really old, but it kinda is. I guess it's more the significance of turning twenty-five. It makes you think about losing a whole year. I mean, I mean, I know that it's not a waste of a year here. I'm learning a lot, building relationships, making good money, and getting a lot of experience. At the same time, I ended up putting grad school on hold for another year, and I think the odds of me getting a date in the next year are going to be pretty slim.
In other events today, a few people were missing from the TOC rotation today, so I ended up taking three shifts, including two day shifts, making for a very long day. I ended up spending sixteen hours on shift at the TOC...though I did sneak out for a few breaks. I jumped outside the wall for a little bit to ride the gators with my guys as we offloaded mail from a helicopter that landed here. Then around lunch time, I ended up sneaking back to my tent to air out my feet and take a nap. I needed it because I stayed up late last night playing Risk with a couple of my soldiers...hehe...I know that's bad. I'm such a bad role model. I did end up winning though. I had to redeem myself after my first outing.
Anyway, another thing happened today while I was on shift. A bunch of our soldiers went out into town to do some humanitarian type stuff. They visited an orphanage and gave them money and stuff. They brought back a few things from town too...including something called foot bread. Why do they call it foot bread, you ask? Well, it has to do with how it is made. At one point during its creation, people walk over the dough with their bare feet. I didn't ask for much more details out of fear that the extra knowledge might make me sick. But it did taste good. It reminded me of the bread sticks that I used to eat with Tommy at the OG. If only I had a little marinara sauce to go with it...mmmm. Anyway, we'll see tomorrow if my immune system can handle the local food. Until then...
24 August 2004 1712z - So now that the day's over, I can talk about all of the stuff going on today. We had three big visitors today, beginning with the brigade commander early this morning, followed by the commanding general here in Afghanistan around lunch time, and then the Secretary of the Army around dinner. Now, you'd think it'd be nice to have such people visiting, but it always tends to make it harder on everyone. Things always have to look better and run better than normal. The only good thing about visits like these, though, is chow. Tonight's dinner was great...chicken fajitas followed by cheesecake. Plus, we had real gatorade too...not the powdered stuff.
Anyway, got the work done early today after PT in the morning; so I had time for a nap and a game of Risk before my nightly meeting. Oh, by the way, they've cut out one of our nightly meetings and made our other meeting every other day instead of daily. So on an average day, I'm down to about an hour and a half of meetings, and two and a half hours on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That's actually an improvement, so I'm not going to complain...too much.
After my BUB tonight, I got online and got a chance to chat shortly with Ben, Rohit, and the sisters. That was cool, but it wasn't until afterwards that I realized that they were all probably at work...considering that it was around 11 or so in the morning. I guess it's nice to have a job like that. Though, for me, I guess I kinda do that kind of stuff during work hours too, considering that all hours are work hours. I mean, I talk about having days off from TOC shifts, but that doesn't mean there aren't normal everyday duties and random things that captains and colonels just come up with for you to do. Lots of times, I'm tempted to turn off my radio, so that they can't reach me. I've realized that that is one of the reasons why I tend to get tasked with a lot of things. Everyone else in similar positions just doesn't answer their radio or pretends that they don't have one. So they realize that it's pretty much to pointless to call anyone else. Of course, since I answer all the time, why not just task me to do everything? Good question. I feel bad because I guess my platoon gets hit more because of that too. There's got to be some sort of happy medium though. I just need to figure it out. For now, I'll just settle for my cat naps during the day.
24 August 2004 0912z - The last two days have been pretty good. I actually had a whole 24 hours off from my TOC shift, so I've been able to sleep during regular hours and even get some PT done on the stationary bike and in the weight room. That seems to make all the difference sometimes. I got a couple of intense games of basketball in too. I've been playing so much recently that I think I've got my shooting touch back. Not very many other officers play...in fact, I don't think I've seen any of them on the court. Not many do PT now that I mention it. Though I don't blame them. I know it'd be pretty intimidating if I saw me on the court too.
Besides that, we've been keeping busy. The AP wrote another article about our guys...again, not so good news, but at least we're getting press, right? Anyway, lots of stuff to offload, missions getting a little more frequent, and I'm still sitting here at the FOB every day. I'll try to get out on a few of the convoys coming up just to break up some of the boredom. There's talk of a flag football game coming up and possibly an intra-platoon game of Risk tonight. That'd be fun. Plus, the chess tournament should kick back in now that the people on the other side of the bracket are returning from missions. That's all I have for now. I'll update again soon.
22 August 2004 1758z - So today was supposed to be my day off. You see, after six or seven straight days of TOC shifts, you deserve a day off from TOC shifts. I mean, I still have all of my other duties, but I don't have to tie myself to a seat for 4-6 hours in the operations center. But yeah, today was supposed to be my day off, but my gracious company commander thought it'd be good to volunteer me for another night shift, making it four nights in a row...while he sits around with his headphones on playing Command and Conquer. Under other circumstances, I wouldn't mind it so much. But with the way things have been going, my sleep schedule has been pretty screwed up and I haven't really been doing PT. I was actually counting on tonight to get close to seven or eight hours of sleep before heading to the gym in the morning for an hour or so on the bike. Oh well...maybe if I can complain for three and a half more hours tonight, my shift will be over before I know it.
Actually, today was a very good day. We had some more mail come in on some special flights. Of course, my platoon was tasked with offloading everything from the birds. They're getting really good at it too. You see, it's actually pretty important because the birds hate staying on the ground for anything longer than 10-15 minutes. You can imagine that the longer they stay on the ground, the easier it is for the enemy to converge on their location and launch an attack. Unfortunately, when you have a few thousand pounds of mail and care packages being sent down, it can take a little bit of time to offload it. We're moving faster and faster each time though, and we were on fire today. It helps that we have the gators now, and with 4-6 guys, we can easily flip a 600 lb pallet on to the back. Plus, with the gators, you don't have to worry about the blades chopping off the top of the truck.
What cool mail did I get this time? Well, I got juice from the fam...my platoon almost polished off the first half gallon of Ocean Spray White Cranberry Strawberry...sooo good. I also got a letter from the Chus and a pile of magazines. I set them out on our makeshift coffee table (it's actually a big 2'x4' weapons box that sits down the middle of the tent) and my platoon went through them for a while. I also got a package from Tad Shuey, one of the guys that I went through OCS with. He had just gotten back from his almost two year deployment in Cuba when we left for ours. He sent some snackie foods and a pile of B-movies on DVD. He made the comment that after watching Blackhawk Down and We Were Soldiers for the bazillionth time, it's nice to have a good B-movie to laugh at. He's probably right. And it's funny, because I probably saw Blackhawk Down playing at least a dozen times when I was at Fort Bragg during our train-up.
21 August 2004 2158z - So there were a few things that I forgot to mention the other day. On Wednesday, the bazaar stopped by and I ended up picking up some DVDs while there. They had the first two seasons of Alias of all things and I picked that up for 16 dollars total. That's not bad considering how much I was going to pay for it back home. Of course, I have yet to get a chance to watch any of it. Maybe I'll get a day off in the next month or so, huh? Yeah, I know that's not going to happen. It'd be nice to even get a day off from these meetings, but I don't see that happening either. Plus, with everyone else going back and forth, I've ended up picking up and pulling three straight night shifts. Luckily for my guys, though, we've had a few days here without shipments, missions, or various other details. So that almost counts as a day or two off.
Anyway, I left out two pictures when I updated a few days ago. I'd talked about my chess set, but I didn't take a picture for some reason. I used two types of bottle caps for the pieces, Jeema for the white pieces and Emirates for the blue. I feel bad for the day I finished the chess set though. I had a night shift coming up and wanted to use those four hours to practice. So, with about 50 minutes left before my shift, I radioed to one of my guys at the tent and told him that I needed to have nine more white bottle caps by the end of the hour. He asked if that meant he had to drink nine bottles of water right away, and I told him that he could figure it out himself. Now, considering that he tends to do a lot of things like he is told, I'm not sure if he didn't drink the gallon+ all by himself. But anyway, the board is made from a manilla file folder that I colored in with a black sharpie. The board itself probably took close to two hours to construct, from the measuring of the lines to the coloring. The pieces probably took me an hour in total to finally get right. I probably discarded three or four that I screwed up.
The second picture that I forgot to take was of my pillow, a.k.a. rock. Sergeant P ended up picking it up from the construction site nearby. It's kinda like their version of hokie-stone. It's brought in from some of the local laborers from some nearby quarry and dropped in the middle of the camp. It adds a nice little touch to the semi-permanent buildings here in the camp. I forget if I'd talked about it much in a previous entry, but it has a nice slope to it of about 25-35 degrees, which makes it very comfortable. Plus it stays firm throughout the night and you don't have to worry about fluffing it. I did end up putting a brown towel on top of it though...I know that makes me soft, but maybe I'll toughen up by the time we leave this place.
20 August 2004 2118z - I hope you enjoyed the pictures from yesterday. I had a lot of fun taking them and playing with the new camera. While I was going around taking pictures of the burning poo, one of the sergeants even offered to let me stir the poo while it was burning so that he could take a picture of me. Though it was a very nice offer, I declined. I'll try to refrain from taking pictures of myself for a while. That way, when I return home, you all will be blown away by how incredibly good-looking I am and have become.
In other news, I did some sewing yesterday to add a twist to things. In the tradition of my dry-erase marker holster that I wore around school, I made an equally nerdy holster out of a nylon strap and a couple of strips of velcro. This holster is for one of my two-way radios that I picked up at Wal-mart back home. In the last month, I'd rotated locations for this radio from my left leg cargo pocket to my left shirt pocket to my right shirt pocket and back to my left. I'd been using the earpiece for a while too...enough so that people even got tired of making secret service jokes. The only problem was that after a month of switching the earpiece between my left and right ears, it had rubbed so much it started to hurt. So I decided it was time for a change. Also, the nice thing about having a holster is that I don't have to fumble with pulling the radio out of my pocket when I unblouse to do a heavy work detail with my guys.
My call sign, White Mule Zero Six, is probably the most frequently called name in all of this theater, as it feels like everyone just decides to call my name when they don't know who else to go to. "White Mule" is a name that carried over from Virginia. My support platoon was so named because they were truly the workhorses of the battalion. My section that I have down here in Afghanistan, though, didn't want that tradition to continue; so they tried to cut ties by renaming the platoon the "Tactical Logistics Team" or "Tango, Lima, Tango" (T.L.T.). Although the new name has stuck, the old tradition has continued...the "Zero Six" part of my call sign is usually the suffix designated for a commander, so I am supposed to specify which zero six when I'm on the battalion frequency. When I'm on my own platoon freq, though, there's really on one "zero six" and I can use that designator freely without having to worry about my guys getting me confused with the company, battalion, or brigade commander. My soldiers, though, have graciously dubbed me "double-0-six" to go along with the other creative call signs they've come up with for the platoon. My first team leader is Fat Sack, and his two soldiers are Dancing Queen and Poppy. My second team consists of Saint Pauli's Girl (N.A.), Speedloader, and Slow Motion. The maintenance section goes by Wrench, and the mess section, which has no radios to communicate with anyway, goes by the Black Sheep. I don't know if these call signs will stick throughout the whole deployment, but the guys are having fun with it for the time being.
Because my section does the majority of the manual labor and other work around the base camp, we're constantly talking over the net to help co-ordinate. That's good because most of the other young guys don't like talking over the radio even though it's essential when it comes to communication and reporting when out on patrols and convoys. At the same time, my guys tend to joke around a lot on the radio too. I guess it helps to make the work more enjoyable, and it helps the time to pass. It doesn't hurt, I guess. What's funny is that they joke around so much that we have a small cult following of soldiers who monitor our platoon freq just to listen to the banter. It's almost like a soap opera sometimes. Then at other times, it's like amateur night at the Apollo.
Anyway, if you're wondering why this update is so long, it's because I have the night shift again tonight. I'm still have a few hours to go though, so I'll get started on some reading and maybe some chess. Speaking of which...I made it through the first two rounds of the tournament already. My third game is against a captain I've already beaten twice before, so I'm not too worried about him. On the other side of the bracket, though, two of the 5 people remaining are away from the camp on various missions. So the final championship game may be delayed by a week or so. Oh well. We've got a whole year. I don't think there's a big rush.
19 August 2004 0730z - Fortunately, there was a convoy heading down from the mail hub place yesterday, and they just happened to drop off some extra stuff, including a registered package for me from the family. There were some vacuum-sealed baked goods, more hand sanitizer, random intellectual magazines from home, and a digital camera among other things. It was much appreciated. I mean, I'd been meaning to post pictures, but I just hadn't gotten around to using the platoon camera to do it. After all, that's really supposed to be for more mission-oriented picture-taking. Anyway, without any further ado, I present to you a morning in Afghanistan:
Morning starts off with the sunrise. It usually occurs around 0030z, and almost every sunrise here is amazing, including this one. This was one of my first pictures with the camera, though, so it probably would have come out better if I'd used another setting.
After the sun comes up, the various duties begin. Of course, I don't have to do much these days besides tell people what to do. I'll jump in and help out occasionally though. While circulating the fuel at the fuel point, you can look back at Tower One and see the mountains in the background. Actually, you can pretty much look in any direction and see mountains...but that's not the point. The point is that mountains are pretty.
Usually, around this time, I'll need to stop by the latrine for a class one download. The scenery from inside the latrine stalls is also breathtaking...but in a different sense. It's not much unlike a high school bathroom stall, I guess. And while we're on the topic of bathrooms, a morning in Afghanistan would not be complete without piss tubes and burning poo. Note how awesome this camera is. You can read the text off the wall and the urine absorption into the ground.
Also around this time, the flag is raised above the camp. The US flag always flies in the center, and the Afghan flag on the right. Depending on the day, though, they rotate the left flag between Virginia and Iowa state flags. One day, I'm hoping we can get a hokie flag up there. Out of the hundreds of soldiers we have here, probably close to 70 or 80 attended Virginia Tech...and some of them even graduated.
After the flags go up, the real details start, the most popular and labor intensive being off-loading bottled water off of jingle trucks. Sometimes we stack water behind the half-basketball court, sometimes we stack it behind the dining facility, and sometimes we stack it behind the wellhouse. Then, if we ever run out of water, there's the emergency supply. The worst water to move is the Emirates type...bottled in the United Arab Emirates of all places. After moving a few thousand gallons of water, you'll notice a blue stain on your clothes and hands because they either use a cheap cardboard or a cheap ink that ends up rubbing off. My favorite water to move is the Oasis type. Those are the ones in the sturdy white boxes that you can throw from one end of the jingle truck to the other. I often jump in to do this with my soldiers, partly because I know that no other officer around here would do the same and partly because I get to brag about being the highest paid jingle truck bottled water offloader in all of Afghanistan.
And since I'm tired of coming up with witty things to say, I'll just end today with a few more pictures. The first is kind of a rorschache...not really. The previous occupants of this operating base had to purchase tons and tons of gravel in order to keep the dust down during windstorms. Here is a picture of that very gravel. The second is a picture of my gator, which just arrived in one of our equipment shipments. It'll be nice to drive around in this instead of having to walk everywhere. I'm going to be spoiled, I know.
Oh well...that's it for now. I apologize for the large images, but I figured that most of you who read this page have at least a cable modem to connect to and the rest can just wait a minute or two for the pictures to download. I mean, if I can wait for this to upload from all the way out here in Afghanistan, you all can wait from where ever you are. Okay, enough...back to work now.
18 August 2004 1756z - So I was in the middle of the nightly Battle Update Brief (BUB) today when I realized what made me laugh so hard the night before. You see, I don't really have a particular spot to sit/stand in the BUB, so I tend to rotate throughout the tent each night. Well, last night, I ended up at the table behind the Fire Support Officer (FSO). The FSO is a pretty cool guy. He's a young looking captain who takes these supplements, though, that give him very strong gas. I mean this stuff literally makes people gasp and run out of rooms. That's not the funny part though. He lets one rip almost every night. But last night was the first night I stood behind him...no, not what you're thinking. Because I stood behind him last night, I got to look at his computer during the brief. It ends up that he saved all of these pictures from Maxim's Hometown Hotties, and he cycles them through in a powerpoint presentation that runs throughout the hour long meeting. It was quite entertaining to say the least. There was even a female from Fairfax, Va, if you can believe that. By the way, that's what we call women in military talk...females.
Anyway, I'd keep talking, but my computer screen is the only thing left shining in the tent and all of the bugs keep on flying at it. It's making me feel bad for those litte buggers, so I'm going to stop. As always, I will write again soon.
18 August 2004 0235z - Some of you can understand this feeling that I have right now. Last night, as I was going to sleep, I was going to write something completely mind-blowing for my weblog entry today...but then I woke up and forgot it. Under normal circumstances, I would have turned on the computer and typed it out before going to bed. But since I had the 0000-0400z shift today, I figured that I'd probably have some quiet time during my shift to work it all out. I was wrong...not about the quiet time; but now I'm here trying to think of what I wanted to write yesterday and my memory is failing. Oh well.
I had a chance to jump on to AIM yesterday. Every couple of days, I find that luxury. Of course, I can't stay online for much more than 15 minutes or so, but it's nice. Because of the time difference, I don't usually catch people online except for the weirdo night owls like my sisters and former student, Matt Self. That doesn't keep me from away message stalking though. I can usually find a half dozen people with away messages that I read, mostly female acquaintances and students. Now, don't give me that look. I know everyone does it.
Anyway, I guess I'll go ahead and reflect a little bit today. We've been in country for a month now. I've been out on one convoy so far, run about nine miles, biked for six hours for a total distance of exactly zero feet, played close to 100 games of chess, updated my web page twenty-one times, and taken one shower. On the log side of things, we've unpacked enough food and bottled water to feed a few hundred people for breakfast lunch and dinner for close to thirty days now. At eight pounds per gallon of water, and three gallons per person per day times those same few hundred people, my platoon and I are getting in pretty good shape considering the forklift hasn't worked since we got here. Besides that, take comfort that I've been sneaking in naps almost daily and hopefully, I'll be all caught up on sleep by the time I get home. It's amazing how nice it is when you don't have to commute to work. I can work a fourteen hour day, get 7-8 hours of sleep, eat three meals, and even squeeze in a little bit of down time every day. Is the rest of the deployment going to be like this? Who knows. I should probably use some of this time to brush up on some physics though. Hey, Jane, if you can pack up my GRE books and a vector calculus text (just something so I can re-learn Green's and Stoke's theorems, surface integrals, diffEQs, etc) and send that some time in the next month or so, that'd be great. Oh, a little fabreze wouldn't hurt either.
That's it for now...I'm sure I'll update again soon.