By popular demand...

My leave was a wonderful time but all too short. It was refreshing, and gave me new energy to face the new challenges in what’s left of this deployment. Despite being delayed at every step in the journey, my return to Iraq went well and much fast than I expected. Everything went wrong, but it didn’t’ bother me. I would have liked to at least get off the plane in Budapest.

Now that I am back with my unit, I face several new challenges. The most challenging of them are boredom, safety and office life. I’ve been moved to night shift temporarily which is nice, but quiet. I’m just not used to working with people whose idea of a bad morning is coming in to work with no hot coffee waiting for them. A month ago the coffeemaker broke and it was an event to remember.

It’s still cold here. It hasn’t snowed in a while and I don’t expect it to, but it will likely rain more, and we will have more wind storms. The rich soil and poor drainage conspire to make a sticky muck that has the consistency of pea soup with glue mixed in.

I received a random care package recently. This one was unusual because it contained a rap CD, some energy drinks, energy bars and vitamin drink powder. Getting those kinds of things made go “hmm”. So I looked, and sure enough, it came from CA. At least they sent me some Girl Scout cookies too.