Unfortunate Circumstance = Unnecessary Loss

Yesterday was a sad day here...a Soldier 5 rows down from where I live pointed a weapon at his chest and squeezed the trigger. Medics rushed to his aide attempting to stablize him but 2 hours later he was pronounced dead. Afterwards, his friends came forward to shed a little light on the ultimate question: Why? The answer was simple yet seemingly inconsequential to you who have never served. Recently it has become cliche; he was dealing with a rocky relationship back home. Such an unnecessary death from an unfortunate circumstance. Do family and friends who have continued their lives without us back in the States fail to realize how much of an impact their relationship with a Soldier has on their mental stability? If you know someone who is dating or married to someone overseas, tell them to wait for the Soldier to return home from their tour to deliver demoralizing news. A life was lost. Someone could have prevented it.

One Step Closer to Home

Thursday last week was a big day in winding down this deployment, I passed one of the final hurdles I set to break up this past year into bite size chunks of time. Still left are; shipping my final tuff box back to Virginia (July 1st), and boarding the plane to leave the desert. SO CLOSE!! What mark did I surpass last week? I bought my plane ticket to Minneapolis...August 14th. It hit me as I clicked "Purchase", I'm this close to being home again. So close in fact that I have already been brain storming all that I want to do when the wheels hit the tarmac in Minneapolis (in no particular order);

1. Get my dog Ginger who has been in MT for over 2 years

2. Head to the Boundary Waters with Nick (and Nick's girlfriend?), Kyle, Danicka, AJ, Shelley, and Jody to spend time relaxing on the opposite end of the vegetation spectrum

3. Witness the birth of my nephew and spend April's birthday with her for the first time in 4 years

4. Guide a kayak/canoe/camping trip down the Chippeawa River for Round Hill

5. Tear down a 100+ year old barn to harvest cut rock and hand hewned beams to use later on in building a second picnic shelter at Round Hill

6. Play "Hackers" Golf at the Durand course with Jody followed by fine dinning at The Panther...fingers crossed that The Panther is still open by the time we get there....99 strokes takes a while.....

7. Go to the Dueling Piano Bar and Britts Pub in Minneapolis with the gang

8. Pool party, poker & fireworks at Robbies...

9. Go to the MN State Fair with Jody

10. Go to a Twins game

11. Get the Family Tattoo finally done

12. Fix my old truck up. Gotta get that beast running again!

13. Be with family and friends


.....Just to name a few

Silk Pajamas

I just saw a man walking out of the Dining Facility wearing blue silk pajamas.....what the hell? Really?? What is this, the kinder, gentler Army? Seriously.

Yesterday I made it into work but a few hours later found myself adding a little nutrients to the desert....it consisted of scrambled eggs, honeydew melon, milk and a splash of gatorade...slightly resembled what I ate for breakfast, minus the appetizing appearance....weird. Think maybe I'll plant something there tomorrow, see if anything grows. Spent the rest of the day in bed and woke up very refreshed. Still got a little sickness in me but not nearly as bad as yesterday. I think the insurgents felt the need to 'off' me and food poisoning was their first attempt. I've got my eye out for them now.

My replacement arrived earlier this week so once again I will be without a job, mostly for the last month and a half of this deployment which means I'll be heading out on the road as often as possible to avoid being on Arifjan....just have to train him up on what I do and then hit the road! I'm heading out on a convoy here soon, I'll be back next week and then hop on another one....hopfully plan it to be a revolving door for me....fingers crossed.