Here is me playing around in a Hum-Vee











Our BBQ on tuesday at Sgt Long's trailer









Me at SOMO on Tuesday searching trucks







Here is some especially interesting grafitti from the porta potty. :-)

Day Off

So. today is my day off and it's been pretty nice so far. I just got the seventh season of Gilmore Girls from Amazon.com so i was up late watching that last night. I slept in until 11 and then met my friend Theresa for lunch. Worked on getting my internet acct's set up, and then stopped here at the internet cafe. I have a cook out with some coworkers at six and then have to go to bed early because I have a PT test in the AM. at 0500. yuck. My last "week" went well. it seems like we have four day weeks since it's three on, one off. i had qrf in the afternoon, and tower at night everyday, which I also have the next two days. It's blowing pretty good right now, but i hope it lets up for our cookoff. It's good to get me out and about and being social so I don't revert to a total hermit. :-) anyway, not too much going on here...same junk, different day. :-)

Sand storms

Sand storms kinda suck. That might be kind of a "duh" thing, but we've had a sand storm blowing in for the last two days and it sucks. Not only to you get sand EVERYWHERE, but it cramps my stayle. :-) yesterday I got stuck sitting all day in a tower with no dvds because i won't take my laptop out in this. the today, which is my day off, i was supposed to go on a camel ride with my friends and then grill out steaks. no dice. Sand storm. On the flip side it blots out the sun so it cools down a bit and that't kinda nice. Anyway..I'm off to brave the elements. love ya!

this is the view from the tower. It's exciting stuff!

Me in frount of one of our guard towers during a dust storm








Me and Virgis, one of the kuwaiti police...the one who had me sit in a puddle.











Me and Mom at the Oyster House in Gulf Shores on pass










Me in the Humvee







us under the truck at camp shelby...it's amazing how much cooler it is!

Me and my friends at the beach on pass










At the qualification range









Me and Bradley











Me and "the girls" on the flight over here

ahhh...air conditioning!

It's now 1930 and I'm sitting the in the nice air conditioned JOC talking to you. But that is not how the day as a whole has gone. I spent the entire afternoon broasting in a tower with a busted air conditioner. I know i haven't posted a pic yet, which i hope to tomorrow, but picture a nice 7x7foot greenhouse on stilts. Now crank up the temp to 115. I drank more than 3 liters of water in 5 hours and peed twice, and not much each time. Let's just say my skin has a distinctly salty flavor at the moment. Then thing is though, you don't get drenched in sweat here, it's so hot, dry and windy that it evaporates immediately. Anyway, tomorrow is my day off and i'm looking forward to it.

OK, here's a funny "me" story. So, we were all sitting around the other night chatting before dinner. There was me, my LT, a few sergents, some kuwaiti police, a translator, and a couple other kuwaitis that i didn't know. We sit on these benches around this big table that's the same height as the benches. well the benches are wide enough to sit indian style, which i frequently do. On this particular evening, Friday I believe, I decided to do just that. so I scooted my butt back to cross my legs and my weight was shifted too far back. I lost my ballence and splayed on my back in the dirt, much to the merriment of all present. :-) I was fine asnd barely fazed, but my sergent just looked at me and said "i thought you were lidding when you said you would be the one to fall out of the tower..." :-) I wasn't.

I had a great day at work on that Friday. I was at south gate, which is with the kuwaiti police. there are two particular jokesters who work there, and both were there that night. We played soccer and monkey in the middle, and just sat around and joked. One of the guys, Virgis, is a real clown and was teasing me with a bottle of water. Well, I ended up pouring it on his lap. He took it in stride but exacted his revenge later. While the Sergent Major (kuwaiti, and the other jokester) distracted me and had me standing, he poured his entire bottle of water on the bench I was sitting on. It took a few seconds after I sat down for the water to sink in and for me to notice. I then proceeded to jump the table in pursuit. :-) I love working with those guys. I told him i would introduce him to a super soaker. He just grinned and tried to repeat it. So now i'm in the market for a super soaker. :-) I think they will also come to learn about the wonderful american water ballon. the nice thing is though, with the temp, you dry in like 20 min.

Anyway, i'm gonna run. When I got in here the sergent in cahrge told me that he was so impressed the other night with how I did in here he wants to change the schedule to have me in here whenever isn't. yeah. :-)

my good day

I just had the coolest night! Ok, I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I have started training to work in the JOC(Joint Operations Command) since I have a security clearance, which it turns out is uncommon. Anyway, I was in there tonight going over some stuff and playing on the internet when stuff went down. J It was awesome.
Our job in there is to be a RTO, or radio operator for convoys heading north and south in Kuwait and southern Iraq. Well a convoy about an hour and a half north of us had an accident at about 2200. One bobtail was hauling another and went off the road and both flipped on their sides. Well, there were two civilian casualties with relatively minor injuries (must have been wearing their seat belts…) and the convoy left two gun trucks there to secure the scene while the others two came south with the rest of the convoy to drop them and the casualties at K Crossing and head back north to join the rest of their group.
Well I happened to be on the radio when it came in so I ended up managing the whole thing, and it was awesome. I had to monitor their grid coordinates and casualty status while finding out the accident info and finding it on the map to figure out which recovery unit’s AO (area of Operation) it was in to know who to call. My partner called in the info to get a recovery unit.) The convoy wanted to just pick up recovery equipment here but the KBR contract won’t allow those vehicles to go north, so the convoy is gonna have to sit on the road exposed for like 6 hours until the other unit can get there even though we’re closer.
Well, then we had to figure out what to do with the casualties since they are TCNs(third country nationals) it gets more complicated. Then the was this other unit who wanted to head north to help them out with security and all that. So we called in the MEDIVAC request and as I write this it is en route. All this was still happening as I had to leave because of shift change. The convoy was gonna drop off the TCNs with us at K Crossing and head back north.
It was my first real experience dealing with that kind of stuff and it was so exhilarating! The thing that really pissed me off though was finding out that since the casualties are TCNs the medics (like ½ of our unit) that we have couldn’t touch them unless it was a danger to life, limb, or eye sight. That pissed me off. So the convoy, which didn’t have any medics on it (I reiterate my frustration at an entire medical company pulling force protection detail when you have convoys rolling without even one medic…) basically had to drop these hurt guys off and we weren’t allowed to do anything to help them while we waited for the ambulance unless their leg was about to fall off or die. One has a back injury, but can we stabilize and assess him? Nope. We sit there and look at him argh! As a medic that makes my head want to explode, and if I was actually confronted with a situation I doubt I would be very good at not helping.
Anyway, I’m on the bus back to camp buehring at the moment and I’ll have to wait to post this until tomorrow for security reasons, but I had a good night. I actually had a good day all around. I was in the tower from about 1130 to 7pm and it was nice again getting the solitude. It was actually a pretty nice day (I’m grading on a curve here…) and I seem to have acclimated to the heat now, so I had all the windows open and just perched on a windowsill with my feet on the balcony railing and chilled. I finished my new Nicolas sparks book that I started yesterday (The Choice…great book!), and listened to music and just enjoyed the breeze…well, steady pounding hot wind. J Today I did something that really made a difference. I love it!

QRF

Hey Everybody. Time for an update. I’m sitting in our QRF break room and bored, so this is a good time. First of all my mission is K Crossing, which is short for Kubari Crossing. It’s the border crossing that most US forces use when crossing into Iraq as well as various other traffic. The K Crossing sector is about a mile and a half long from south gate to north gate. We work closely with the Kuwati Police. They run the show, we’re just the security force, or SECFOR. There are three main missions that we do here. We pull tower guard, QRF, and work at the gates. Today I’m on QRF, so you can hear about that.
First, QRF stands for Quick Reaction Force. Basically, if something happens, we come running. Until that happens though, we chill. We search vehicles when necessary and do whatever else needs done really. Today we’ve had to run out to the gates to search a couple vehicles. We also take turns sitting outside guarding the trucks as well. While we wait for stuff to happen we kill time. Right now we’re watching.
My first day was Saturday and I had a great day. First we had to search 56 fuel trucks when we first got here. Usually that happens on the night shift, but it depends on when the trucks show up. It was crazy hot. It was about 115 degrees out. We knocked it out though in about 2 ½ hours though. The otherworldly heat can be very motivating. Even that which royally sucked, don’t get me wrong, was kinda cool because I actually felt like I was accomplishing something, ya know? After that we came back to the break room and cooled off and ate lunch. At around three the SOG ( Sergeant of the Guard) took me and a couple others to go down to the south gate and hang out there with the Kuwaiti police for a while. Let me tell ya, those guys are cool as heck. They are hysterical! They joke and play constantly. There were two females and three males (American) that were there and the Kuwaitis were equal opportunity jokesters. We drank tea and had snacks with them for a couple hours. They dressed one of our guys up in local garb and tried to jokingly marry me off to one of the guards. He also had me and the other female talk to his wife on his cell phone. She is a teacher and speaks great English. The police speak some English, but not a lot. The guy in charge is the sergeant major and he speaks the best and is hysterical.
We were down there for a while then came back up to the break room to hang out and for shift change. We generally switch posts half way through the shift, but so far I’ve been on QRF the whole day I’ve worked both days. So we ate dinner and watched Superbad. I did my best to ignore it. Not exactly cinema at it’s finest. Anyway, at about eight the SOG grabbed me again to go down and have dinner with the Kuwaitis and a few other Americans. There were a couple MP’s and our leuitenant down there as well. We had tea and coffee and relaxed and talked until dinner. We had an interpreter there this time. Arabic coffee is different that the American variety. They don’t roast their beans, but grind them green and add something called cadmium to it. It is a clear liquid with a slight green tint to it. I wouldn’t say it’s good, but it’s not too bad and tastes nothing like what you would call coffee, which I hate! Arabic coffee I can drink. Now chai, the Arabic word for tea, I like. There are a few varieties that I’ve been served so far and I’ve liked them all. They serve tea and coffee in little cups the size of a shot glass or shooter. The Kuwaitis have a manservant who works for them down there who serves everything. The crazies even caught a sidewinder in a juice bottle on Saturday night. The food at dinner was good. The have the dishes in the canter family style and you eat with pita bread by just grabbing what you want with the bread or you can scoop it onto a plate if you like. The food was pretty good. A lot of chicken and veggies. There was also hummus and a variety of soft cheeses. It was a good time all around.
Anyway, this is getting long for today, but suffice it to say, it was a good day. Right now we’re at our mid shift switch and dinner time. We’ve got wings, onion rings, steak, rice, mojo potatoes, and salad to choose from. They bring out chow from the base. It’s really not bad, but I’m also not really choosy. It’s not an MRE, so I’m pretty cool. Anyway, I’m gonna sign off for now!

My First Day

Well, I just rolled in from my first day at work. I am bone tired, smelly as heck, and my eyes burn like i've been swimming in a pool all day, but I had a fantastic day! I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. I have the day off. (just the way it fell in the rotation) For now it's 1am and I have a hot date in half an hour and just enough time to shower. much love! and thanks Darrin for the yahoo weather. it was 115 today.

hugs!