November's Adventures

Here it is December already. At times it seems like it's flying by, but at other times it drags so slowly. I've been trying to keep active by doing different things. Below is a picture of my Tae Kwon Do class. I take it on Thursday and Saturday evenings. It's been fun so far, a little like drinking through a fire hose at times, but I'm hoping to catch up with Luke by the time I get home. He and I are thinking about taking classes together.

Just a silly pix of my son. He's a little camera shy though,

you might be able to tell.

I'm sure glad I'm not using film anymore. I shot a lot of this picture trying to capture a great sunset here at VBC. This one has some pretty good color to it but still lacks the real beauty of sunsets back home. The hill on the right is commo hill. The dirt is supposedly from all the lakes on base that were created by Saddam.





As I'm sure for all of you, Thanksgiving was a big event. It was a nice day for us as well. Although we couldn't close the clinic to celebrate, we made the best of it. We changed our sick call to the morning and just had the afternoon for urgent care.
We hung out at the aid station and talked and watched movies while we ate our meal. The meal was pretty good too. As always, we ate too much and just wanted to nap afterwards.
Below are some pictures of the day, starting with the chow hall.
We all took our food to go, a 45 minute wait in line.
It was worth it though.

Styrofoam Stryker with frosting paint.

Some of the decorations and a look at the chow hall.

The MSG (Master Sargent) and 2 butter frosting swans.

If you look really close you can see finger prints in the swans

where soldiers wanted to see what they were made of.

Psalm 100 in cake frosting.

All the decorations made it feel a little like being on a cruise.

Enjoying our food back at the clinic.

Notice the fine plates and silver.

Will and MSG getting some work done, before enjoying the meal.

There are always reports to complete.

Will can, at least, watch the movie from his conputer.

Getting the projector set up to watch "Year One".

It was worth what I payed to watch it, which was nothing.

Yes, another try at a sunset, like the clouds.

A wonderful ending to a nice,

but far from home, Thanksgiving.

I hope that yours was great

and that you spent time with family and friends

and really enjoyed them!

Next edition: My trip to Quatar

Thanks for checking in, Mike

My misadventures of the last month

Sorry it's been so long since I've written.

Life here hasn't been too exciting, every day kind of blends into the next. Which is good in some instances; no one is getting blown up. Believe me, I'm grateful for that.

It does create some boredom and sometimes causes changes in a person that can't be explained. As you can see below, soldiers will do strange things occasionally to pass time.

War Changes People!

As you can see I have recently joined the Flat Top Mafia. Here I am pictured standing next to the "God Father", let's call him John. His hair, by the way, is always outstanding. No one knows his secret. He is no longer a Captain, but is now a Major. Congrats to him! I think I am the oldest Captain in the army now. My boards are coming up soon, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

It's important to have a good set of friends here. A group of guys that you can relate to, tell your problems to or just blow off some steam about something beyond belief that has happened to you. It's a big army and it's moving in a hundred different ways all at once. Having that small group that you trust and belong to is more important than you would believe.

Below are some random pictures of a few things that have been going on here since my last post. I'll try and explain them as we go along.

Unfortunately, I cannot claim this photo. I was asleep during this. If you notice in the brown t-shirt is Will, the medical section's fleet-footed Lt. He participated in the "Scramble in the Sand" last weekend, where he was in second until this point. What you can't see are his feet, or shoes. That is because he has lost one in the mud. He tried to run on for a while but his foot began to hurt, so he came back to look for it in the mess. I guess he wasn't alone. Our medics helped out and found multiple pairs of shoes buried in the mud. By the way, these were his new shoes he won for coming in 3rd in his last race. He did find them and, as of yesterday, they were still drying out.

Below are a couple of pictures of the only type of flowers I have seen here. Since the weather has been cooling off they've been blooming. These were along side of Z lake. I took them Sunday while doing some Geocaching.

It almost looks like a quiet country lane. It's nice and pretty with the lake in the background to these bushes.

The early morning moon the other day. Not sure if it captured it well, but the color was a nice thing to see. We have actually had some clouds. Had rain a couple of times too. One good storm turned everything to a muddy mess for a couple of days. Got a boot scraper installed outside of my CHU for that reason. The weather has been much more tolerable, yesterday at lunch time it was only 79degrees. It felt wonderful!

Below is a couple of sunset pictures from outside my CHU overlooking Commo Hill. A lot of sand in the air that day. It made for some nice colors. Kind of like the ozone days in Texas.

The following pictures from from my trip to the IZ (international zone) or the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad. The first one is just looking out the front window of the the up armor. This stretch of highway reminded me of a Texas highway for some reason. Something down in San Antonio. Sometimes I think there are more American cars on the road here than back in the states.

This is my ride of choice. A up armor HUMVEE. I bet I could get out of any traffic jam in the states with this thing. I rides pretty nice too. On base these are sometimes more comfortable to drive than the NTV's we have (non tactical vehicles). The NTV's don't take the bumps as nicely. Something about the up armor having an extra few thousand pounds of armor makes them ride more smoothly.

Didn't see too much at the IZ, I was there to give immunizations to some of our guys stationed there. The building in the next picture is still used but won't be much after we leave. On one side you can see the wall bulging out. The dome on top shows the damage from one of our guided missiles. There are some other hits on it too, but for now it's home to someone.

I am not sure what this is suppose to be. They call it the "flying man". We couldn't get out on the highway and read the inscription. You know traffic, and it's in Arabic.
I think these are the instuctions for guards. This was found at the top of an old guard tower. I also found a Geocache there. A good view of the southern part of the base.

Well it is a short tour this month. I will try to be more attentive to the blog and write more often. Sorry it's been so long. Sometimes you just get in a rut.

Thank you again for looking in on my little world. Please take care of yourselves. Chris and the kids just got over the flu, hit them hard but they are recovering nicely.

Keep them in your prayers!

Thanks, Mike