Sand Storms

Hey,

Wow, time sure is flying by!! Hard to believe that its been over a month since i left VA....guess when you are busy with little time for distraction thats what happens right? Since I've been working 12-13 hour days, 7 days a week, there really isnt much time left for me.....where does it go? well after work i am left with 11-12 hours of 'personel time' which is used loosely here. I get off work, change, get to the gym by around 10am....work out til about 1130am, shower and in bed by 1230pm. Sleep the daylight hours away. get up at 6-7pm for dinner chow (which is my bfast....a little weird eating dinner food when im groggy....), get back to my area to read a little, get ready for work and head in to work at 830pm....thats where the time seems to go!! So personel time.....yea kinda non-existent right now....i did get to a movie last week, saw The Mummy 3 in a small 'theater' which was just a stage with a projector screen playing the movie on the wall....but for the time, it felt like i wasnt deployed.

the last few nights have been extrememly busy because of wicked sand storms are brewed during the night keeping my convoys from moving. Why would that make me busy? Wouldn't that make my life easier if they dont have to move? Well, heres the problem, just because the convoys on the road dont move in iraq doesnt mean that convoys waiting to move in kuwait are stopped.....so basically in the infinite wisdom of the Brigade Command above me, they continue to send missions down to me for more convoys to get on the road....what this means for me on top of already coordinating for places these convoys can stay/sleep/fix their vehicles, i have to contact various units at Check Points to get convoys through. All of this causes a back log of convoys, lots of phone calls from Brigade and units wondering why/when their convoys are going to move etc.

so now that these sandstorms have passed, i've got over 600 trucks on the road hauling over 400 special (i cant tell you what im moving) vehicles, 150 containers and a bunch of misc stuff all in and around iraq. and thing is, my battalion has only tasked out 80% of our assests so its only going to get more hectic.

i was able to step outside during these sandstorms and wow was it dusty!!! obviously i've never experienced one until now and from the sound of it, they are pretty frequent (one of my monitors here is used strictly for me to keep on eye on the status of routes/roads and the visibility.....if visibility gets below a certain point, we can not keep convoys on the road because our Medical Evacuation helicopters cant fly to support them....) but the frequency of these sandstorms will only increase during the months of march-july.....yippie. Anyway, when i walked out of my tent here i could barely see 50 feet and should have been wearing some kind of goggles or something because i got BLASTED!! some women might pay tons and tons of money to get the exfoliation i got for free that night!!!

Things are going well though, i gave my Senior NCOIC the night off last night and made it through without a scratch...sort of. it was rough night with my junior enlisted not getting their jobs done on time or correctly but we're (my NCOIC and I) on getting things squared away.....oh by the way, i caved, i got a Kuwaiti cell phone and two vehicles we have for my office, a mistubishi SUV and a mazda6....sad thing is these both have 17k+ miles on them from driving in crappy weather (sand sand and more sand) on top of being able to only drive at 20kpm on post....20kph is 12mph.....so its not really a good engine....but whatever, it gets me around when i do need it.

ok, im going to get going now....hope everyone is doing well on that end.

caved, got a kuwaiti cell phone and i now drive a mazda6