Scary How Much a Two-Year-Old Knows

So far, my time off from Baghdad has been great. I've been able to relax here at home with my wife, take care of some issues (dog @ the vet, car's oil change, etc). I've been able to visit North Shore, seeing friends and former students (who attack in packs not by themselves). I've taken in a lot of caffeine (Deidrich's and Starbucks) and watched quite a few new movies (Slumdog, The Burrowers, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Let the Right One In, Doubt). The big thunderstorms and flooding that's been going on have kept me inside too. I've also been able to enjoy my little girl and see how much she's learned and grown.



She's learned a lot of words and is pretty good at putting them together into phrases and small sentences. She'll say, "Good morning, everyone wake up!" when we go to her room in the morning. She knows almost the whole alphabet (we play with the letters in the tub) and lots of animals. She's also pretty intuitive...when I dropped her off at her daycare this morning (a lady we know watches her), she had a big fit. At first, when we pulled up into the driveway, she was saying, "Yay!" After we walked in, however, the clinging began.

She wouldn't let go of my leg saying, "No, OK" her version of 'no'. If I tried to explain to her that I had to go or tried to pry her from me to go she'd start jumping and crying. I bent down to talk to her and she wrapped herself around me, squeezing with her arms and legs in a little monkey vise grip.

We tried giving her a snack in the kitchen...with me in the living room waiting for her to go into the kitchen so I could leave. Loren stood right in between the kitchen and the living room, looking both ways...at the snack, then me to make sure I wasn't moving. I turned; she went nuts. I was finally able to leave and I could hear her outside screaming my name. She knows. She knows I'm leaving again and it's affecting her already. She's just two...

Tippin' our hats to you Starbucks!

The other day I received a package from home. It was full of what I had requested: coffee, chocolate syrup, tumbler mugs, and more coffee. There's a Starbucks close to my house that I hit up for my fix. I used to go to Deidrich's a lot (still do, but there's only one) but Starbucks is closer and their mocha frappucinos are good.
A few of the people in that Starbucks know me and now know my wife and daughter. They know I'm here in Baghdad and donated some coffee and a couple tumblers. Now we have a small stockpile of joe for our office. And, let me tell you, this office goes through coffee very quickly.
There isn't a Starbucks here in Baghdad but our office 'break room' has become the place to visit in the morning. As we walk from section to section, we can hear the coffeemaker and espresso machine going and the smell reminds me of walking into my favorite coffeeshop in the morning.
That's me and my commander in the photo. Everyone else was either at chow (eating dinner) or on the phone calling home (since we're 8 hrs ahead of Texas). Silverlake Village Starbucks deserves a big thank you from me and my unit for the coffee and mug donation. Thanks! It may seem like a little thing, but here, good coffee is a big thing. More espresso will be greatly appreciated when and if our friends at Starbucks (and my wife's loving care with shipping) decide to send more. Thanks Starbucks!

What Day Is It???

Ok. I had to stop and blog. I've done 10 pages of newspaper layout today and I'm tired. Time to ramble and relax my mind.
The other day we had a dust storm...it was bad. On a nice day we can see the al Faw Palace from our building's porch. Looking at the picture, you'd think nothing is off in the distance....but it's there. It's been really nice weather these past few days. Clear skies, cool mornings and mild temperatures in the daytime. When summer hits it'll feel like a white-hot hammer out there beating on you.
We're all working pretty hard on our print and broadcast projects. I don't get to go here and there writing about what soldiers are doing. That may come later. SGT Risner and SFC Quebec work in division headquarters. You can say a lot when you look at SGT Risner behind SFC Quebec....it shows Quebec's uncanny ability to sleep whenever, wherever, and SGT Risner's way of releasing the day's tension from work. Rock on.
MAJ Daneker and 1SG Martinez went on a cleaning rampage in the break room today. They tend to tag team on things like that. It's pretty well-organized now as compared to our print room where we work. Our room is organized chaos. As they were chucking stuff out, they found some bags that were full of little stuffed animals. They dumped them all out on the floor in the commander's office and we proceeded to frolick in the fuzziness. It was fun for five minutes. The animals were bagged up once again and will be distributed to the little kids of Iraqi via our friends in Civil Affairs.
I've started getting mail too. That's a freakin' awesome thing to look forward to when you're deployed. I've already gotten an espresso machine (gotta get my fix!), and I'm going to get some coffee from Deidrich's and Starbucks. Man I miss Deidrich's. The Green Mountain Coffee place is really good here. Iced. White. Chocolate. Mocha. Mmmmmm.
Started my workout schedule yesterday. I was glad I got to the gym when I did because at 8pm, there was a bench press competition for guys and gals. What a mess that created. I've been stuffing myself at the chow hall too. They give you all the food you want and more...and it's good. We'll see how much I gain this time.
My wife told me that my daughter is learning a lot of new words and using phrases. I miss them. I have a cell phone here and I'm able to call them once in a while. She'll be turning two soon.....
Ok. It's almost 10pm and I've gotta get back to my hootch, take a shower, and hit the bed. Tomorrow, when I wake up, I'll start this all over again.

From a Party to a Jet Plane

After over four months of pre-mobilization training, we are set to board the jet that will carry us to a faraway land. My phone is on 'suspension', my extra stuff has been mailed home, and all the last-minute items have been purchased.
Yesterday the field house here (the gym) held a Super Bowl party for mobilizing and demobilizing Soldiers. We went and had a pretty good time. As you can see by the photos, there were some very good sponsors. We had everything from the Olive Garden to On the Border and Starbucks to Hooters. So I heaped Italian food on my plate, grabbed some wings from the Hooters table, and snatched some donuts from Dunkin Donuts for dessert. After downing all that, the game came on and I settled in with some iced coffee from Starbucks. Lieutenant Douglas and I are the die-hard Starbucks members of the unit. We freaked when we found out they were here.
After the game (the end was great!), we prepared for a day of packing. Most of us have two duffle bags, a large rucksack, and a personal bag/computer bag/footlocker. That first bag, or the 'A' bag, weighs around 80 lbs. since our body armor, helmet, and most of our gear resides in that bag. The second bag weighs a little less and the rucksack is the bag we will live out of for the next couple of weeks. I have a footlocker also...it holds personal items that we like to have during deployments. Since we're only a 20-person unit, we're not authorized a nice container like a conex, an ISU-90 or a couple of quad-cons to transport our stuff in.
We have the pleasure of moving all our baggage and our unit equipment ourselves from place to place, piece by piece when we go from our staging area in Kuwait to Baghdad. Great workouts are in our future!
So, for now, this is my last blog until I get situated in Kuwait. Tomorrow we load up, clean up and head over to the terminal for our flight. Right now, a lot of us are in the day room, hunched over a laptop or watching Total Recall for the 3rd or 4th time. This time tomorrow, we'll all be sprawled over baggage and chairs, iPods and MP3 players raging, munching on snacks, and waiting to board. We'll see Fort Dix down below as powerful turbine engines take us higher and we'll doze off...thoughts of families and friends lingering...I'm sure I speak for everyone in my unit when I say that we take them with us.