Next flight...late at night. It's probably upper 30s outside and most of us are freezing because of the breeze kicked up by the blades. In the past, we've learned to avoid the exhaust from the helicopters just because it blows you back with the hot air. Yesterday, though, I placed myself about 30 feet behind the exhaust, and boy was it nice. I'm sure that the chemicals and whatnot are probably not good for me. But if you felt that gust of heat running over your body, you wouldn't care either. Ahh...just the thought of it.
Anyway, that's it for now. I've got night shift again tonight, so I'll have more adventures to share by then, I'm sure.
22 September 2004 1945z - It was a relatively short night shift today because of the incoming mail flight, which took up close to the first half of my shift. I'm starting to take over the role as the flight officer, which pretty much just makes me a pseudo air traffic controller in addition to a baggage handler. But it sounds cooler to say that I'm the air officer and support platoon leader, right? Anyway, it was fun either way and we brought in a few thousand pounds of mail into the compound and locked it up. Because it was so late, they decided not to sort the mail. So instead, when morning comes, it'll be Christmas, and we'll see whether I made the naughty or nice list.
As far as the rest of my day, it went pretty uneventfully. I had more time to spend with Marsden and Tromba, working past page 50 today, completing the first eleventh of the book. If I can keep up this pace, I'll be done by Thanksgiving. I woke up early to get a good workout this morning and even had time for a short nap this afternoon before dinner. Tomorrow will be more of the same. Honestly, things don't change much for me around here. It could be worse though, right? At least I have AIM. Speaking of which, I'm heading off shift now and heading over to the computers. Maybe I'll catch people online.
21 September 2004 0853z - I guess that I always say that I like night shift better, but day shifts are definitely more productive. On a typical 4-hour night shift, I'll do a little bit of work and then sit around and talk about stocks or watch a movie or play chess or read a book. It's nice and quiet, and I'll probably take a couple of breaks to stop by the D-fac or the latrine. During the day shift, my radios are going off constantly, and there always seems to be something to do. It's definitely louder...and there are more people around, so not as much goofing off is allowed. The last two day shifts, I've had a chance to work through quite a bit of my vector calc stuff. I guess that's a good thing. Plus, I have time to get sleep and PT in on day shifts, while I tend to slack off when I have nights
I actually meant to bring up math first today. I was really proud of myself last night. I know that I was talking about movie night; but by the time I got back from the BUB, I felt like doing something more productive. So instead, I listened to the Due South soundtrack for about three hours while I worked through section 1.2 of my vector calc book (which I will now refer to as Marsden and Tromba), reviewing dot products, projections, and the Cauchy-Schwartz inequality. It'd been so long since I'd done this stuff, but I still remember Doc Stallings back in senior year talking about Cauchy-Schwartz. I didn't remember what Cauchy-Schwartz was, but I remember him saying it all the time. Oh, the memories. I did really poorly in Doc Stalling's class, mainly because I was scared of him and because I was lazy. But in the long run, I think I learned a lot from him...enough to test out of those three classes at Tech, at least.
Enough talk though...I have another hour left in the shift and I just ate two corn dogs for lunch, so I'm all fueled up. More to come...
20 September 2004 1440z - It was a light day for my guys today...which is good because they've been working their butts off for the last few weeks. Today was a much-needed break. They spent the day lying in bed, watching movies, reading books, making phone calls, lifting weights, and all of those other things that people do on their days off. I did about the same. I napped for about an hour before getting up for an operations brief. We have a code-name for naps around here...my platoon at least. We call it taking an S-4. Ironically enough, the S-4 is also my boss. *whisper* I'm saying it's ironic just in case someone in my unit reads this. Honestly, though, it's ironic in the Ben sense...which is not at all. *end whisper*
Moving on before I get myself into any more trouble...we had a big storm today. If you blinked, you would have missed it. There was a little windstorm followed by about 20 seconds of rain. And when I say rain, I really mean "ra" because it was a little lacking. I'll give you a second. It was a weak joke, so I understand if it takes a while to recover. Okay, moving on...that was probably our first rain we had in close to six weeks. Suffice it to say that we don't have to worry about waterproofing things around here. Dust and sandproofing though...that's another story.
Anyway, day shift is tomorrow, so I'll try to pull myself away from the sleeping bag to get a workout in before shift. Hopefully, I can get through another section of the calc book too. We might do movie night tonight too. My NCOIC tossed me the Godfather collection today, and I'm hoping I'll have time to watch that soon. He's been doing his Marlon Brando impression these last few days, and he's Italian and all...so it's not too bad. It's annoying though because it's contagious and everyone else tries to do their own...usually each successive person is worse and worse. But yeah...we'll try movie night tonight and then it'll be lights out. I'm off to the BUB now though. Who knows what awaits me.
19 September 2004 2257z - I had the honor of typing up the battalion commander's SITREP again during the night shift today. It wasn't as exhilirating as doing it for the first time, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Unfortunately for me, I'd forgotten that I had lent my Evil Dead DVD to another officer...so instead, I'm watching Hellboy while I'm updating today. I'd been meaning to watch it for over a month now anyway, so it's not a bad substitute. I just started the movie about five minutes ago though, so I that's all I have to say about that for now.
Let's talk about regrets. I remember a few times when I've put things on top of my car, usually out of stupidity, but also out of a lack of hands. I can only recall a few instances at the moment, but I'm sure there were more. All of them have one thing in common though. Every time, as I place said object on the roof of my car - whether it be a wallet, a case of CDs, a wallet, a cup of coffee, or a wallet - I think to myself how I know I'm going to forget about it when I drive off. Of course, this is from experience...and moments later, or after I complete my trip, I realize my folly. Well, the reason I bring this up is that something similar happened today. As I placed my book on a stack of sandbags, all of those past instances flashed before my eyes...all at once. Has that ever happened to you? Well, you'd think that I would have learned my lesson, but I left the book there nonetheless. As you would expect, after completing the detail that I'd put it down for, I'd forgotten about the book. And when I returned to the scene of the crime, the book was gone. It kills me because I really liked the book. I was only about 50 pages into it, and now I have to order it through Amazon or something. I might be lucky and someone might return it...but without a lost and found around here, I'm not betting on it.
19 September 2004 0642z - This morning, I was finally able to escape from the clutches of my warm sleeping bag to go to the gym. I woke up just a little after 0100z, and put on my iPod, shoes, and rifle, before taking a quick pitstop at the piss tube before jumping on the bike. I was tempted to stop after twenty minutes as my legs started to get heavy; but since I hadn't exercised in a few days, I continued on until my watch hit the hour mark. By then, I had a pretty big wedgie and I was drenched in sweat. The good thing about this dry environment though, is that things evaporate quickly. Good for laundry and good for working out. I alternated between exercises for a bit, working out just about every muscle in my upper body and performing half a dozen abdominal exercises before finally calling it quits. By the time I was done, I could barely type an e-mail to my sister.
I've recovered in the time since then though. After supervising a lot of work being done this morning (hehe...you like that, don't you? I feel bad because I think I'm starting to become more and more of an officer. I'll try to hold off as much as possible though)...but yeah, after supervising for a few hours, I retired to my computer to catch up on e-mails. There were a lot of people I had been meaning to write, including my Latvian pen pal. After this, I'll probably take a short nap and then continue reading my book until someone else calls me on the radio or until it's time for dinner. It's Sunday, so it'll be steak tonight. I'm sure it'll be good.
Besides that, I've got the night shift again tonight. It's a little deeper into the night, so I'm sure it'll be quiet. One of my soldiers grabbed a magnetic pocket chess set for me out of some of the any soldier mail that came the other day, so I might christen that tonight. If not, I'm sure I can do some more reading and maybe get to Evil Dead II if I get too bored. We'll see. Until next time...
18 September 2004 1812z - I think I read more of my Vector Calculus book in one day than I did during the entire semester that I was actually taking the course at Tech nearly six years ago. I started at the very beginning of the book today, introduction and all, and I just started reading with the intent of going cover to cover until I have mastered all there is to master regarding vector calculus. I even followed along with the derivations, working out all the examples and solving all of the odd-numbered problems at the end of each section. I say "each" section as if I covered more than one section. Okay, I only finished section 1.1 today, which is a basic review of vectors and vector geometry. But I seriously think that I can get through the whole book. I knocked out 20 pages today, which is a much faster pace than I think I'll be able to keep up as the topics get more and more involved. But even if I cover ten pages a day, I should be able to finish the text by Christmas. That's my goal for now. I'll alternate between my vector calculus book and my World War II book until I finish both. I won't take leave until I am done with both. How's that for a deal?
Now, as exciting as a day of vector geometry in the TOC sounds, my day wasn't half bad. I finished up a little bit of laundry and straightened up a whole bunch around the tent. I stole a little bedstand from a couple of guys that moved on to another post and I consolidated a bunch of other boxes while getting rid of some clutter. It's funny, though...all this talk about Feng Shui and whatnot makes me think back to a conversation I had with one of my soldiers a few weeks ago. We were talking about growing grass at first...seeing if we could plant some seeds and try to get a lawn growing in front of our buildings when they're finally erected and ready for us to move in. It was then that we brought up the idea of writing to Trading Spaces. I know it's not a very manly thing to do, but I think it would be funny if we had them come out to Afghanistan as we swapped with another platoon and decorated our barracks for each other. I don't know....just a thought. Everyone around here seems to be writing random companies for free stuff anyways, so I figured this wouldn't be any different, right?
That's pretty much it for now. I need to stop writing soon so that I can get a full night's rest. I've slept in the last two days instead of doing PT. Bad Sonny, I know. It's just that it's so cold in the morning and that makes it hard to climb out of my warm sleeping bag. But the streak ends tomorrow. I haven't decided what I'll do yet, but I definitely need to get out of bed. And on that note, good night.
17 September 2004 1700z - I didn't think I'd be able to update this regularly when I first got out here. But believe it or not, yesterday was the first day I hadn't updated in two weeks. I guess the last few days were pretty busy. We had about ten truckloads of supplies coming in as well as a couple of helicopters full of mail. I got a package from the Chu's again with a postcard from Matt this time (all grows up and starting college) and another one from the Louie with my Vector Calculus book, Virginia Tech Bookstore sticker and all. After the bird came in this morning and all was unloaded and presents unwrapped, we had a family breakfast at the D-Fac. I finally broke out the Lucky Charms and everyone had a bowl of it along with some hash browns, bacon, and eggs-to-order: over easy for me. It was pretty cool, almost like being at home again...though I don't think I ever had eggs over easy with my lucky charms back home.
Let's rewind back a few nights though. I was on another night shift, and earlier in the day, I'd picked up a bootleg DVD at the bazaar. It was a pretty good collection. For two dollars, I picked up Evil Dead I, II, and III, the Exorcist, and the new one too...all on one disc. I don't know when I'll have the time to watch all of them, but I should be able to get through the movies by mid-autumn
I just got to thinking about the fall now that I mentioned it. I don't think I've seen more than one tree around here. That's definitely something I'll miss...the changing of the colors of the leaves. Over here, I think it'll get cold pretty quickly. It'll probably feel like winter by mid-October from the way things are going already.
Can't really stay on any one topic tonight. I'm kinda eavesdropping on some other conversations going on around me, so that may be contributing to the lack of cohesion in tonight's ramblings. I'm starting to take over more responsibilities with air operations today...kinda doing the ground control thing today. I'm sure it was kinda funny looking at me today. Usually, I have three radios on me - one on my left breast pocket, one on my homemade leg holster on my right thigh, and one velcroed to my rifle. Well, today, when I had to talk to the birds from the ground, I had to put on another radio pack on my back. So there I was, with my man-pack on and four foot whip antenna waving in the air, along with my three other radios. At one point, I was swapping through three of them on the LZ because I had to call back to the TOC on my battalion radio and I had to give some other instructions to my guys unpacking the jingle truck as the helicopters were about two minutes out. Yeah, funny sight indeed. But things got done and that's all that matters.
15 September 2004 2106z - Sometimes, I'm too much of a kid, I guess. You see, we have a lot of mundane details, so I tend to play around a little. You kinda have to in order to keep sane, I guess. I kinda turn into teacher mode, too, in order to encourage my guys to get some of the stuff done. Like when we had three trucks full of bottled water to offload by hand because the forklift is broken, we ended up playing the water game. It basically consisted of one person tossing a case of water (about 25-30 pounds) to the next until it was offloaded and in a nice stack. This is very similar to the MRE game, where we offload MREs by tossing one case of MREs from person to person until the truck is offloaded. There is the mail game, which is a little more fun because the mail gets put in multiple piles depending on who it is...and that usually comes after the helicopter game, when we offload the helicopter as quickly as possible. That's usually a little different because the boxes and pallets coming off the birds are a lot heavier and require teams of 3-6 people to lift. Yes, I know that everyone realizes that these are really not games...but I think it helps to bring at least a smile to their faces when we pretend that we're playing. Either that, or they're just putting on a front for me and are cursing me under their breath.
I think they have fun. One time, when we were offloading water for the third hour straight, I started to tell them stories of an alternate universe where people enjoyed offloading boxes of water. In this universe, people would even pay to play our "water game" and so my guys should feel privileged to be doing this for free...or so I told them. I think they had fun playing along. When one of my younger guys started to pass gas inside the truck, stinking up the whole place, we talked about another alternate universe where people would think that the smell of rotten eggs would smell good. And in fact, they would pay lots of money for fragrances such as the one emanating from his rear. I bring up this alternate universe often when things aren't quite going our way. Again, I don't know if they buy off on this or if they're secretly cursing me. It helps that I join in with them and play along. If I just joked while I stood around and watched, it'd be a different story.
Anyway, today was the wood game. There was a little twist to it though. I joined in kinda late, but I think I added some more flavor to it. Anyway, we had a truckload of 2"x6"x20' pieces of wood to offload...maybe a thousand or so total, each one weighing somewhere around 30-40 pounds - just an estimate - I didn't have a scale with me at the time. Anyway, the truck itself is about 4 feet off the ground...and with the wood stacked inside, the wood sat anywhere between four and twelve feet from the ground - so it was a task to get them all down in a neat pile...and you have to have neat piles. It's the military, after all. Unfortunately, I was too involved in the game to take a picture, so let me draw one for you:
While I think that the picture is pretty self-explanatory, I will go ahead and state the obvious and not-so-obvious from the picture. First off, let me explain why the truck in the picture has the word "ass" written on the side. The explanation is pretty simple...the truck itself had the word ASS written in no less than four places...in big letters! Anyway, by the time I came on the scene, they were about a third of the way done with the truck. They were just kicking the planks of wood off the truck into a pile and then using a forklift to get them from the ground. They'd already tried taking the wood off the truck with the forklift, but nothing would hold with the planks being so long. Anyway, as they were kicking the planks off, some would land farther and some shorter on the pile. I stood up a nearby pallet and suggested using it as a backstop. Lo and behold, they'd already thought of that a few minutes earlier, but the planks would shift and fly right through the gaps in the pallet and into the shins of my soldiers. They'd already learned the lesson the hard way. I guess dumb boys think alike, huh? Well, being the smart guy that I was, I suggested putting two pallets together, with each one filling in the gaps of the other. Uh oh...I think we've got a game now. We ended up having a couple people on the ground bracing the pallets while the rest of my guys were up in the truck kicking the planks off the truck as hard as they can...I know what you're thinking at this point...this is an accident waiting to happen. They started kicking the planks off so hard that the pallets started to break...so when we took the forklift to remove some wood from the pile on the ground during the intermission (something akin to the zamboni smoothing out the ice between periods), I picked up some plywood to help to reinforce the backstop. Believe it or not, this continued for almost an hour before our first injury. Fortunately enough, the injury was to me...I got my finger squashed after a stray plank bounced a few feet higher than expected. No break though...just a little cut and some blood. Not gushing blood...just dribbling. It was enough to make us re-evaluate our process though. Anyway, we played for a little bit longer before the sun sank behind the mountains and our day was over. It was a long day. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.
14 September 2004 1828z - Night shift wasn't any more exciting than I would have expected. But I did remember something that came up while I was on AIM today. They had an advertisement for the season premiere of Seventh Heaven. I'd almost forgotten about that show. Anyway, I was just wondering if they'd released the series on DVD yet...at least season one. Someone please say yes.
Oh well...I know that there was something else that I wanted to talk about today, but I forget what right now. I have started getting a little more frustrated during the BUBs though, as they are taking longer and longer every day. Today's lasted an hour and twenty. I've decided to start keeping track of how long everyone speaks, though...with the intent of trimming the length of these "briefs" to under a half hour. If I can accomplish that, I will have served my purpose here in Afghanistan.
14 September 2004 1144z - Birds showed up this morning, but there wasn't any more mail on it. I guess we were all mailed out after the last couple of flights. I mean, we did receive nearly 10,000 pounds of mail in about three days. For the amount of people we have here, I'd say that's a pretty big haul. Maybe I'll look for a job with USPS when I get back home. It is kinda fun. But we won't be without mail for long. We'll have Christmas again within a week or so.
I got up early this morning in order to get some exercise in before the birds showed up. I biked pretty hard for about 20 minutes before moving over to the weights. I played with the kettlebells a little too and did some biceps as well. Yes, very exciting when I go over workout regimen, huh? I don't know why I think anyone would care; but if you're reading this page, you'll probably read anything, right?
The rest of the day I can't go into details about without violating operational security? Hehe...I like saying that. I can leave it at that and it'd make you think about all of these cool things I might be doing. In reality though, I could say that about just about anything. Today was actually a pretty boring day for me. My guys did a lot of offloading and moving...a lot of gator and forklift work, but nothing outside the wire. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to go somewhere in the next few weeks. I think that some of them are starting to get restless. Considering the size of the FOB, it's like spending a month walking circles around University Mall and not going anywhere. What's worse is that there isn't a McDonald's, Blockbuster, or Kinkos to keep things interesting...that's one thing I miss, loitering around Blockbuster, making comments about all of the new releases and spending an hour to decide on what movie to watch. I miss grocery shopping too. I mean, it's nice to not have to pay for food and all...but there's just something very soothing about grocery shopping.
Anyway, to keep from rambling, I'll cut myself off here. Maybe I'll have something more exciting to write about tomorrow. I do have the early night shift tonight. So I'll probably head to the computer shack after shift and hang out for a while on AIM since there won't be a line by that time.
13 September 2004 1728z - Some bad news on the animal front today. First off, one of my guinea pigs from back home died today. For those who remember my pair from the janitor lady back at Mount Vernon, Chester's sister Hazel passed away this morning. That was pretty sad. Also, my platoon received notice that Tripod would be evicted from the Camp in the next few days. We'd tried to keep him tied up, but people have been coming around and cutting his leash or untying him. So he's been out around the base hanging out with Patches, a white dog with a patch on her eye, and they've been peeing and pooping everywhere (or so people say) and digging through the trash out by the mess hall. So after a week or so of that, the Captains around the camp said enough was enough and now Tripod will be released on the next convoy heading up North.
On the lighter side, we got two more big boxes from L.I.Smith today, including a whole bunch of Ramen and Hot & Sour Soup in a bowl. There was also a huuge box of Mrs.Smith's chocolate chip cookies, among other things. My platoon went ahead and claimed what they wanted from the boxes, and I just grabbed a bag of twizzlers. Like I said before...I'm already snacking too much and I need to stop. Help me out here, okay? Don't send more food.
I also had day shift today, so it led to a long day. I spent six hours in the TOC today, followed by a two hour nap where I dreamed about being in the TOC. That's not a good sign. I took my malaria medication tonight, though, so maybe I'll have some more exciting dreams tonight. But hmm...I also started reading a book today while I was in the TOC. There's only so much you can do in between radio checks during the day, so I started on "the Good War" by Studs Terkel. I've never tried reading a Pulitzer Prize winning book before, so I picked this one up while I was browsing through B&N when I was in Charleston on vacation. It's pretty good so far, but I still have about 500 pages to go...so we'll see. I also have a genetics book and a Bible for Blockheads book to hold me over until I get some more stuff from home. But yeah, time for dreams. I'll tell you about them tomorrow.
12 September 2004 1420z - So how about them hokies?! I woke up about a half hour early for my shift and just got dressed early to pop online for a few minutes before shift. An old student of mine IMed me and also updated me on the score of the Tech/Western Michigan game since he watched it now that he's living in Pritchard. Good deal, huh? That's two of my students already that I know of who ended up graduating and going to Tech from this last senior class. I wonder how many more there are.
I also searched through my site statistics since I was bored and didn't have much else to do this afternoon. It's always interesting to find out how people end up finding this site. It's always interesting to see the acquaintances of mine that people search and wind up at my site for, Greg Tseng and Alicia Bilby for instance. I think I've had people searching for Craig Tollin, Jeff Robidoux, and General Shinseki as well...the last one I wouldn't really say is an acquaintance though. But yeah...it's amazing how many people are looking for Alicia Bilby. She probably has quite a few admirers among the nerds of AOL Dulles. I've had a few people arrive at this page in search of Allison Bott too. I haven't seen her in *counting fingers* seven years, but hey...I guess I still talk about her every once in a while. Then there are the random search strings; the more interesting ones include "hokie stalker," "hokie vacuum," "hokie jungle," "hokie girls," "buff steve," "porn stars," "blind date spring break pics," and "eastern motors song." Note that I am singing that jingle in my head while I'm writing this.
After that, I decided to play around on google to see how easy it would be to find me online. I started by looking for "hokie" and found my page at #23, just barely missing the first page of links. Then I searched for "hokie sonny" and found an interesting description made by one of the CNET writers. It read: The most comprehensive MP3 link site ever created by a 150 pound Chinese-American physics graduate of Virginia Tech's class of 2000. It was a link to my old MP3 page from back in college...yeah, way back in the day. It was a nice reminder of how simple life used to be. *sigh*
I remember how nice it was to get a few thousand hits each day. Of course, back in college, I used to spend about 5-10 hours working on the page every day. It hurt my grades a little, I think, but it was worth it. My only regret was that I was never able to catch myself a cyber-stalker. That would have been nice. (Note the excessive use of the word stalker to follow, just in case more people decide to search for "hokie stalker") Now, of course I am saying this because I've never been stalked before...but I think it'd be nice to have the attention at least. Of course, I would have one of those really attractive, hollywood-type stalkers. You ever notice that in movies that stalkers are never really bad looking? In fact, they tend to glorify stalking...which is bad. Doing extensive research on random people on the internet is okay...but stalking, very bad. That's all I have to say about that.
11 September 2004 1300z - September 11th in Afghanistan...you'd think this'd be a pretty big day here - and it is - but I think we did some pretty selfish things today that took away from the significance. I guess it's a pretty cool thing to have a flag that was flown in Afghanistan, even more so if it was flown over the base on September 11th of all days. Well, how many people would you think would want to have this honor? Maybe 5 or 6...10? 20? Well, what if the number were closer to one or two hundred? What ended up happening is that they had to make a huge display so that they could hang about thirty flags at one time in addition to the three on the flagpoles by our front gate. Doing the math, yes...we had to swap these flags out three or four times today to get everything flown. That's not even the worst part. You see, the military is very formal with flag raising, as would be expected. So when a flag is about to be raised or lowered, a whistle is blown so that everyone knows to stop what they are doing to salute the flag. The salute is held until the flag is completely up or completely down, something that takes about a minute with a decent color guard. Well, consider the three flagpoles and the numerous changes of the colors. We probably had about half an hour of the workday wasted because of the constant raising and lowering of the flags. I don't know...it just seemed to take the whole meaning away from the day. I mean, seriously, is it that important that your flag is flown over Afghanistan? I got my flag for free with a tank of gas at a Shell station a few years back, and it hangs just as proudly in my basement back at home. I don't know...call me a grinch...I'll stop complaining now.
Let's talk about some good things for today now. Mail flight came in this morning...and with it came three packages. Not bad, huh? I got a postcard from Dorothy packed in with some magazines from the Chu's. That was cool, especially the entertainment weekly with the Fall movie preview because we don't get to see all of the trailers over here. I'm sure the bootlegs will show up at the bazaar in a few weeks for some of the big movies. I also got a package from Craig's mom today, Mrs. Tollin. That was pretty cool. A lot of goodies inside including another pump of hand sanitizer. I think I'm going to work on a leg holster for the sanitizer so that I can always pump away when needed. Good stuff...then I got another package from Linda Smith, random person who I don't know. I get the feeling that she is related to one of our soldiers because she forwarded along an e-mail from our battalion commander. I'll do a little investigating tonight to figure it out. Anyway, a lot of people are asking me about things we need around here, and I feel bad because I know people are trying to help. To be honest, though, we have a lot of stuff now. What makes me feel great is just hearing about back home...just juicy gossip and whatnot. As much as I hate it, life goes on back home and my students are going to graduate and go off to college while I'm here. I did some AIM stalking and found out that another one of my students from last year is at Tech. That made me feel sooo good. Then I'm sure people will get married while I'm gone. When I was at basic training, I must've missed three different weddings, including Matt Hemm's. *smile* That's funny. I can't remember the last time I've said that name...let alone the last time I talked to him. I remember going over to his house with my brother to play Kung Fu on the NES. That was a world ago. But yeah, I know things will go on back home and hearing about them, although bittersweet, allows me to feel like I'm at least part of it all. So yeah, for all of you e-mailing and writing me...thanks. Again, I probably won't end up writing everyone back much - but I'll try to get at least a letter or two to everyone before I get home. I'm kinda using this page as a way to talk to everyone at the same time, without too much redundancy.
I'll finish up today by sharing that I did go through a class 5 clean yesterday in preparation for this special day. I am very tempted to end my shower boycott as well; while, at the same time, the challenge of going a year without showering is very tempting. What do you think? Someone was telling me about how the Europeans developed perfumes and spices out of a necessity for masking the smell of unbathed bodies and the flavor of what was most likely spoiled meat. While at the same time, the savage native Americans didn't have these things because they took baths whenever possible and killed mainly for food and cooked their meat promptly after acquisition. He didn't cite his sources, but it was an interesting conversation. That's it for my thoughts today. Savor them.
10 September 2004 2320z - I was pretty proud of what I accomplished last night while I was on night shift. I guess everyone was just tired or something, but the responsibility of writing the battalion commander's situation report fell on my shoulders. That's not bad for a first lieutenant, huh? It was pretty cool putting the report together for brigade...it's basically a daily summary of our activities, with insight and analysis from the battalion commander and his many years of experience...or in this case, his high speed support platoon leader. The cool part was that there is a section where the battalion commander gets to put his command emphasis on certain issues. Well, since I was writing the report, I just decided to throw in a few issues of my own that I knew I was going to have a problem with. So you know, I was kinda helping him help me. It's like a big circle, and everyone wins...hehe. Either way, it's good practice for when I become a colonel myself...or when I become a major and have to do a colonel's work for him...or when I become a captain and have to do a major's work because he's too tired to do a colonel's work. Make sense? Good.
In other news, we were expecting a couple of birds incoming last night. So after my shift, I got to lie down for a few hours before getting all of my guys together to hang out on the LZ (landing zone). So there we were, freezing in our HMMWV, 5-Ton truck, and/or gators, waiting for the bird to arrive as the sun was coming up over the mountains. We sat there for about two hours before getting word that it had never even taken off because of mechanical problems. So after waiting two hours in the cold, we raced our vehicles back to the tent to jump back into those warm, cozy, sleeping bags. Unfortunately, as my soldiers slept in a few extra hours, I had to get up to go to my morning meeting. Of course, I was met with all of the sad faces because they'd found out that the mail didn't arrive. It's like Santa not showing up...bad for morale. But hopefully, things will iron out this morning when we'll give it another go. It's kinda like Groundhog Day.
Anyway, tonight's shift was a little deeper into the night, so it was extra quiet. I ended up throwing a bootleg copy of King Arthur into the computer and hooked it up to the LCD projector they use here for briefings. Lighting could have been better, and same with the sound...but all in all, it was a pretty good movie. It definitely made the shift go by faster. Anyway, I need to get my guys up and moving so that we'll be ready for the bird. I'll tell you about all the cool mail I received later.
10 September 2004 0720z - So before we left home, I had a chance to play Dance Dance Revolution, or DDR. Apparently, asain people and little girls like to play it; so when Ben and I couldn't get Thuy to go out with us one night, we ambushed him at his house and found him playing with Jackie. I jumped in for a few games...didn't think it was that spectacular (not like scrabble or boggle) but it was entertaining.
Well, little did I know that when I went overseas, I would find that DDR has been in Afghanistan for years. The only thing is that DDR stands for the Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintigration Program. Now, you wouldn't think that it would be nearly as exciting as stepping on arrows to the beat of music, but it comes pretty close. DDR basically consists of paying people to give up their weapons and then destroying them to make Afghanistan a safer place. Pretty cool, huh? What's even cooler is that because of the large disparity in cost of living, we don't really pay them that much for machine guns and missiles and whatnot. I mean, with a few thousand dollars, you could pick up some mortar systems, missiles, RPGs, and probably a few dozen AK-47s. Tempting, I know...but I'm sure no one would try to take advantage of this program for their own personal gain.
In a totally unrelated topic...not to change subjects and all...but Yenny, if I send some stuff back home, do you think you can try to sell it on eBay for me?...Just kidding. I don't know...I'm starting to feel like Jane, updating all the time because I'm really not that busy these days. We spent so much time offloading supplies initially that we actually have a pretty good stockpile, and things have died down quite a bit. Things'll probably pick up one the elections get closer, but for now, I'll just keep writing in the hopes that someone will keep reading.
09 September 2004 0356z - There are warning labels and then there are Army warning labels. I was walking to chow this morning when I walked by a piece of Army machinery, and I just had to go around looking for some warning labels to illustrate this point. Now, I'm going to show you warning labels from four different pieces of equipment. The first two are civilian-type pieces being used by the Army, and the other two are 100% Army. Very interesting stuff.
Here are warning labels from a Heating/Air Conditioning unit and a refrigerator unit. Note the useful and sensible instructions that come along with the warnings:
The next warning label is from the John Deere M-Gator, military style. Note the picture and the token mention of death and/or serious injury. After all, if it doesn't involve death or serious injury, what would you need a label for, right?
And then there's the piece of equipment that started it all. There were so many warning labels plastered on this thing that I had to take three pictures. And I still didn't get all of them. I know that there were some warning labels in the cab of the vehicle too, but I don't think they were as entertaining. But with a machine called a Wrecker, would you expect anything less?
Lastly, since I had the camera out this morning anyway and since I actually woke up early enough to catch it, I figured that I'd throw in a picture of the area outside of our base. It was taken just as the sun was starting to wake up.
That should be enough to hold you over until tomorrow. I would also like to mention that Ben updated his page...very funny stuff. (Note: subliminal positive reinforcement)
09 September 2004 0116z - So a bird came in today...yes that means mail, but I'll get to that later. I need to set up the story here. We get visitors here all the time. There was the Secretary of the Army that one time, and then we get a couple of generals visiting every month. We'll get reporters too...some army and some civilian. Anyway, on this flight, there just happened to be a reporter, army type, female. What?! Female? Yes. Now, she isn't the most beautiful woman in the world, but she's pretty cute, which...if you consider a few hundred or so infantrymen on a secluded operating base with no women around....you get the picture. She's also a 1st Lieutenant, which I'll discuss more later. At this point, I will remind you of General Order #1 for theater as directed by the Combined Joint Task Force 76. There is absolutely no sex allowed except if you are married to the other person. That's pretty concrete. The Army also has very specific policies on fraternization, specifically dealing with officers and enlisted. Basically, within the same unit, you're not supposed to have any crossover. Plus, when you have a large disparity in rank, there's always the perception of impropriety. So when a cute 1st Lieutenant shows up, there are a lot of things going my way. First, all of the enlisted guys are out of the picture, which leaves only a handful of officers left to compete with. Then if you cut out all of the married and ugly guys, you don't have much left. Plus, I'm always out with my guys riding around on the LZ with our gators when the birds show up...so I'm definitely Mr.Cool.
So yeah, the cute LT shows up and gives me a nice little smile as we help with unpacking the birds. We catch each others eyes for a few seconds as she passes by. One of my soldiers made a comment to me about it later, trying to pick on me, but it didn't matter. Anyway, fast forward to about an hour later after we finish unpacking everything. I end up running across the same LT at the D-fac and take a seat next to her. Very bold, I know. But we start a conversation and end up hitting it off. She wasn't going to stay at our base for long, so we actually moved kinda quick, so try to keep up with me here. There's a corner of the compound that not very many people visit, so it was a good place to get some alone time, if you know what I mean. We kinda do the high school thing and start making out (why I'm sharing this, I don't know). It was a pretty risky thing to do, but I'll remind you again of how few women pass through here. You have to take advantage of your opportunities.
And it is at this point in the story where I wake up from my dream. OH! Did I get you? You really didn't think that things were that good here, did you? I pulled a page out of Jane's book with this one. The first paragraph+ was actually true, but the rest came from a dream I had last night. When I woke up, I thought to myself how real it seemed at the time of the dream, but how unrealistic it would actually be. I'm sure every joe thinks about finding women out here, but there just aren't any around...not here at least. Anyway, nothing significant to report this morning. I'll tell you more when something happens.
08 September 2004 1224z - I ended up getting an e-mail today from a high school student/boy scout from the Annandale area. He asked me what a normal day was like in Afghanistan...a very good question, but one that isn't necessarily that easy to answer. I guess most of my regular days as a support platoon leader are similar to being a warehouse manager. We just receive a lot of supplies and offload trucks and helicopters and whatnot. When I say "we," by the way, I mean all of my soldiers...not really me. I mean, I jump in and roll up my sleeves every now and then, but I don't get nearly as sweaty. Highlights are definitely mail deliveries because everyone is always so happy and there is just soo much stuff. You really do feel like Santa.
On the other side of things, I have my TOC shifts. I was actually very content with my description of my shifts as the Battle Captain. It's just like sitting in the Captain's chair on the bridge of the Enterprise...except you're not going anywhere. The main purpose of the Battle Captain is to monitor the troops forward on the battlefield...half manager, half cheerleader, I guess. Nothing really exciting has happened on my shifts, but it's a good feeling to know that I could send out the reinforcements in case anything happened downrange. What would really happen is that I would wake up the people who are really in charge in case anything happened at night and they'd send out the reinforcements. Hey, that's how it works when you're a lieutenant...even if you're a super high-speed lieutenant. It makes you think about what used to go on in the bridge when Picard and Riker are in the holodeck and everyone else is sleeping. I think in one of the earlier episodes, you saw LaForge as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in charge of the bridge during the night shift. That's like me...when everyone else is sleeping. Got it? Yes, I know I'm a nerd for bringing up Star Trek, but it's okay. You already knew I was a nerd.
Besides that, I had a really good workout this morning. I biked for about 50 minutes before playing around with the kettlebells again. The gym was pretty packed, so I picked up the 35 pounders and went outside to go play by myself. I remembered a few more of the exercises that Ben taught me and then I snuck back in to the weight room when the other soldiers filtered out. I probably spent about two hours total in the gym before heading back to the tent. Of course all of my guys were still asleep. It bothers me a little bit that they sleep in so late, but they tend to go to the gym at night when I'm stuck in meetings. And they stay up a lot later than I do, considering I'm like an old man these days going to bed at about 9:30 PM local time. I honestly don't have a regular sleep schedule, but I probably get a good seven hours a day these days. Amazingly, today, I didn't even take a nap. I can't remember the last time I went the whole day without taking a break. Yes, I know I'm a wuss these days, but one of my goals is to catch up on all of my sleep debt before returning to the States. I think I can do it.