back in the uso

the uso tour came through "town" this past week. robin williams, lewis black, kid rock, lance armstrong and miss u.s.a. all came out to support the troops. it was really interesting to see what they're like in real life rather than through a television or movie screen.

i got a photo taken with robin williams and lance armstrong during kid rock's performance. they were both exhausted from their flight but pretty cool nonetheless.

i was most excited to meet robin williams. i was hoping to videotape him sending a "nanu nanu" out to my mom since she was such a mork and mindy fan. but i chickened out last minute.

oh and paul... lance says hi.

bridge over the river tigris

and he's back!

a lot has actually happened during my blogging hiatus. i've gone out of the wire on a few missions, i got my hair cut twice and i'm pregnant. don't worry it's andrea's.

while i'm sure you're all on pins and needles about how good my haircuts were... can you say pure sex appeal?... i feel this blog should be on my latest mission, documenting the construction of an assault float bridge over the tigris.

basically the insurgents felt compelled to mess with transportation in the qayyarah region and blew up a section of the bridge. it forced the locals to have to use row boats to ferry across the river to go to work or shop ect. so i went up there with the 74th engineer company. at first i was a bit nervous since i don't get out much and you never know how a unit will respond to having a camera guy tag along. they were really cool though. they picked me up just after 6am and we were off. here's what the bridge looked like when we got there.


that's a temporary bridge across the gap put in by some other engineers right after the bombing so military vehicles could still cross the river.

anyway... they got right to work taking boats out and building a new bridge. they slide these pieces off the beds of heavy moving equipment trucks and once they hit the water, they unfold into sections of the bridge. it was pretty cool to watch and videotape.

at one point i got onto one of their boats and realized what my biggest fear is in iraq. it's not being shot or blown up... while either of those would really suck i probably wouldn't see them coming or feel them happen. no, my biggest fear is drowning in the tigris river. you see when you get on a boat in the military... you have to wear a life preserver. while this might sound like a good idea... imagine wearing 85 pounds of armor, weapons, ammo for said weapons, and your camera gear. now imagine putting a life jacket on over all of that. these life jackets might keep you afloat normally... but with the added weight i'm sure it would only slow my sinking to the bottom of the river. i asked one of the guys whether they'd battle tested the things and he said "not officially, but we did have a guy go in on the last job." to which i said "and did he float?" "no, we had to send in divers. but he's okay." "do you have divers today." i ask as i'm stepping from the boat over water and onto a floating section of the bridge. "no." he said so reassuringly. so now i'm thinking about how much fun it would be to fall into the river and try to not only get out of my normal gear but unclasp the life preserver first.
i could just see the letter sent home...

dear hartman family,
we regret to inform you that your son has drowned in the middle of a desert. no one saw this coming as it was a desert and mostly filled with sand. don't worry, for ssg hartman died a hero, saving the iraqi people and allowing a free and safe iraq for the citizens to form a democracy and have a super-walmart in every village and a mcdonalds and starbucks on every corner. if only you'd invested in more swimming lessons when he was a child.

luckily though, i survived my outing and the bridge was a success. here's a shot just before it was completed.

i also stretched my reporting skills back into some form of shape. if you want to see my package... that's news package of course... check it out. anyway... fun times.

ketchup!

sorry for not writing for some time... but perhaps this is just how often i'll be able to post on the blog.
since my last posting some big things have changed. we have a new division in charge. they're the 1st armored division out of germany. the actual transfer of authority ceremony was interesting/frustrating. first off... one thing i've noticed about nearly every public affairs unit i've ever worked with (not excluding myself even) seems to work at a reactive level rather than a proactive one. we were doing so much last minute work it was ridiculous. we even ended up cutting and gluing posters for the event. the most frustrating part was watching some of my troops get yelled at to take trash out by one first sergeant only to have another one standing by the door yelling at soldiers for taking the trash out. it was like being at boot camp again. the icing to the whole event was how non-newsy it all was. it barely made the news even after all our hype. all the media cared about was what we had planned if turkey crossed the border to attack the kurds.
the possitive piece to it all though is that our new division staff is really cool. regardless of rank they are all very approachable and actually listen to you. in our field it's important to not always flex your ego through rank and listen to your subordinate. some of the best ideas i've ever heard were from privates. our new general is as best i can tell awesome. major general hertling is really nice and very saavy with the media.
in other "news," i've really enjoyed the care packages i've received so far. i have lots of movies to entertain myself with... beef jerky, nuts, carmen's donated chips, pictures of home, music cds and homemade cookies. it all makes my stay in this sandy prison much more bearable.
in yet even other news... i just had my first bout with the crud. everyone gets it atleast once while in country... one nasty cold or flu. mine started out as just your average cold but quickly decided to hit me full on. from gooey phlem dribbling out of every pore to fever and chills that gave me some pretty cool hallucinations. cool but still safe since i didn't grab my weapon and charge outside after some tuscan raiders and their banthas.
i didn't eat much and i'm thinking based on this photo of me taken last night that i might want to start packing on the pounds through copious amounts of ice cream. the one bonus to the whole ordeal was that i got a day and a half off from work... something that's rare around here since we only get sunday mornings off to go to church.
so other than that and this really sexy picture of me i really don't have anything left to write about.
thank you to those of you watching out over my wife and actively hanging out with her. it's not easy being away from home but time is flying by so far and i'm sure it will just pick up even more.
peace

15 seconds later

man, this blogging thing can be kind of hard when every day is monday and there's little to report. but then i just have to realize that what i find boring may be of some interest to you all back home.

i completed a second newscast and this one will actually get aired. the first one was supposed to air in september but since all of the stories i had to work with were from june and the division public affairs office is not known for a quick turn around... it got scrapped after i had put in several weeks of work due to the fact that it wasn't timely. this second one i didn't want to do because i figured it would get poop pooed on too and all my work would be for "experience." but alas, it was approved after one revision and will be aired on the pentagon channel. or if you are not one of the 5-million people who supposedly get and watch the pentagon channel and want to see it you can check it out on a low resolution version at the links below.

http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=video/video_show.php&id=30101

http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=video/video_show.php&id=30102

you now know why i was a producer at kval and not an anchor or reporter.





sidenote: i have officially been married to my best friend for 7 months. unfortunately only 2 of those were with her... but that just means the honeymoon phase lasts longer. andrea, you are the best thing i never saw coming and i never could've dreamed of a more wonderful, kind-hearted and beautiful wife. i am so blessed to have you in my life and i love you with all of my heart.

the sand here is dirt cheap

so it's been 10 days since my last post and you're probably wondering... why is tom brokaw eyeballing me like he wants to punch me in the teeth or that he ate too much indian food for dinner.

well, they say no news is good news... so really i have some great news. nothing has been going on over here. but since i mostly write this for myself and andrea, i'm going to go ahead & post something with tom brokaw's mug on it and a random topic.

dust: the sand over here is insanely fine. it saturates every ounce of your body and infiltrates every crack and space of your living and working area. i've gotten used to most of it. it actually surprises me sometimes how okay i am with having a thin layer of dust on everything from my desk... my uniform... and even the cup i'm drinking out of.
everytime i take a step powder puffs out from my boot. my hands constantly feel like i just wrote an essay on the chalkboard. and let's not leave out the ongoing battle i'm having with sand boogers. it would be interesting to do an autopsy on an iraqi (dead of course) and see just how much sand is in their lungs from breathing in this stuff their whole life.
i used to try dusting every once in a while, but in just a day or so it would look like i was walking into an office that hadn't been used since the first time we were here under bush sr.
what really amazes me is how people have lived here for so long and yet the swiffer sweeper things only came out in the last 20 years or so. if the government would spend the money their spending on this war to develop a large swiffer sweeper to run along the whole country... i think our work here would be done. i think the sand and dust is what really drives this insurgency. they're mad and they're jealous of the american homes with little to no dust in them.
or it could just be a clash of cultures that don't understand each other and hopefully one day... when the "dust" has settled... we'll all just get along.

well with that said... i've caught another mouse and must go deal with that problem.
peace for now.

boom!!!

i emailed this photo out to most of you but figured it was decent enough to put in a blog. i don't get out much as i'm the ncoic (non-commissioned officer in charge) at my base and i am supposed to be focused on putting a newscast together and helping out with the satellite interviews with the general and all the other miscellaneous tasks i have going on(like designing a news studio). so since i'm usually desk bound... getting out for a missile launch is pretty cool.

the launch was real so i can't talk about it other than that it was awesome to watch and with all the badly aimed dummy rockets and mortars the enemy sends our way with no effect... seeing our ability to "return fire" is pretty amazing. anyway... now that i realize just how easy it is to pull photos out of my video with my mac... i'll be trying to put more of these up. i hope you enjoy.

picture on dvids (digital video and information distribution system)

http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=images/images_gallery.php&action=viewimage&fid=58125

or check out the video at:

http://www.dvidshub.net/vjump.php?vid=29064

creepy crawlers

so we have a slight mouse/lizard problem. nothing we can't handle with a little sticky paper, some easy cheese and a bit of patience. below is a poor critter we caught the first night of trapping. number 5 of 6.i don't mind killing things, especially pests that could be carrying diseases... but killing something completely immobilized seems a bit borderline serial killer (at least that's where they usually start out).

during the past few weeks we found mice digging in our care packages and the wall lockers that hold our mres. so to solve the problem we got these sticky traps... which if you want to kill something in our building you go to the life support office... irony!
anyway... within no time we had a mouse and while i tried to figure out how to dispose of it (usually a plan you come up with prior to setting a trap... and most people suggested we take it outside and "stomp" it then remove the body... can you say yuck?) another smart rodent found itself stuck to the same trap. rutherford and i thought we should document the incident so we videotaped ourselves "releasing" the mice back into the wild. it was pretty funny. we threw sand on the trap to nullify the stickiness and then shook it until the mice fell off. before they were fully free though the larger of the two started to attack the small one. it was pretty hilarious especially on tape because i started yelling at it to knock it off and stop eating his buddy.

when we returned from our sand safari we caught another one, which we released in a similar manner. and then we found yet another one right away on another trap. not the smartest creatures.

in total we caught 6 but we've heard at least one more. but it has thus far been able to resist the temptation of easy cheese. i can also say that to this date, i can return from iraq having killed zero mice. i may have trained to defend our country from foreign and domestic enemies... but i still won't kill indiscriminately.

to my 2 readers

happy labor day!

it's not really any different than any other day for me... but it's nice to know people somewhere in the world have the day off.

so... i did get to cover a visit by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff general peter pace today. here's some info if you would like it... http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/biographydetail.aspx?biographyid=85

basically, as my commander put it, i was two handshakes away from the president. general pace was really cool and didn't come in to talk at us but with us. he took questions from soldiers and answered them the best he could. from the looks of him, it's hard to tell he's been in the military for 40 years. the stress of war and politics seem to have had the opposite effect they usually do on officers of his calliber. all in all it was cool and i got a 4-star coin out of the deal. (those of you with military experience know what that's about)

otherwise... just another laborOUS day in paradise.

have a great day off!

also:andrea has fixed the picasa picture link so you should be able to view pictures now.

ummm yeah

the food around here is pretty great... as i've stated before. we have more baskin robbins than we know what to do with... a pizza bar, salad bar, burgers, fires, onion rings, sandwich corner, pasta bar, whatever they're serving at the main line that night (sundays are steak, crab and shrimp nights), and a full wok.

which brings me to why there's a photo of an orungatan on here.

i recently had stirfry at the dfac. it was pretty good going down... but its exit strategy was similar to a retarded orungatan with rabies trying to remove chinese fingercuffs while in a tub of pudding.

don't let his cuddly fun looking face fool you. he is a cruel cruel psychopath.

otherwise the chow's been pretty good and after my insane runathon i've decided to try and put the 10 pounds -- lost training and running the Hood to Coast -- back on. lieutenant bomar has me on a fun/painful weight workout and i'm actually consuming protein shake stuff. i still plan to keep up my cardio since i really like running, but i also hope to go from two dimensional to three dimensional. it may be hard for me with my metabolism... but i believe in 9+ months i should be able to have some effect. if not, i'll use bicep implants and shoulder pads to fill out.

wish me luck!

running "away from home"

so this is my second post today... but perhaps a bit more up to date. as some of you know, i signed up to do the hood to coast relay last fall. but, due to my deployment it didn't look like that was very feasible. that's when through discussion with the team captain we decided to try and have me do it anyway, but on a treadmill over here. after some organization and the green light from my command... i set up the run of my life... so far.

the hood to coast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_to_Coast) begins at mount hood and ends in seaside... hence the hood to coast title. i was on the team "truth sneakers" a christian based team. i've yet to meet any of my teammates except for paul who is the one that got me interested in doing the event. as i developed my plan... i thought it would be really cool to have my brother scott run my legs of the relay at the same time i'm running them in iraq. he's been trying to get me to do a marathon or at least a half marathon for some time now.

now that all the pieces were in place all i had to do was go running. sounds simple right? negativo! i've run 6 miles before... but i've never run six miles 3 times in less than 18 hours. and training for this was difficult since i'm still required to work 7 days a week for a minimum of 12 hours a day. so i didn't want to overdo it before the actual event. and let's not leave out the fact that until a week prior to the race, i'd never really ran on a treadmill. i like feeling the outdoors and experiencing the full run outside. on the treadmill my biggest hurdle for the race wasn't the muscle fatigue or the overworking my heart or lungs... it was the insane boredom of running on the conveyor belt. it faces a window... but to keep the place cool they put tin foil on all the windows... so no view. the army has a saying "going nowhere fast" and that's what it was. also... i get motion sick when i get/fall off the contraption. my body still wants to move forward even though my legs aren't moving. i basically look like a uo senior trying to make it home after a "fun" friday night.

to time the event with the folks in oregon... i had to call them from the land line (as cell phones are few and far between here) at the front desk of the rec center and when the runner before me/scott was about 10-20 seconds away i'd run into the exercise room and start running. my goal for times on the run was to not have any of them be more than 45 minutes total. and in the words of our president... mission accomplished!


leg -- distance -- time
1 5.67 miles 40 minutes 27 seconds
2 6.06 miles 44 minutes 56 seconds
3 5.77 miles 44 minutes 26 seconds


my assessment of the run: i'm crazy and shouldn't be allowed to go through with crazy plans like this. but, it was an awesome experience and i'm really glad i was able to do it with my brother. i'm a big bundle of exhausted skin and bones today. but surprisingly i'm not too sore. it probably helps hauling my 50-60 lbs of armor and gear everywhere to help build up the endurance i needed to do this.

several oregon tv stations and the oregonian covered the story. hopefully they got some tight shots of my nike shoes and nike will send me some new/free ones. below are some of the links to the stories.


http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/sports/118810957256780.xml&coll=7

http://www.kval.com/news/local/9368251.html

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2007/08/30/c1.cr.welch.0830.p1.php?section=cityregion

"after" i arrived

i just wanted let you all know that i arrived safely in iraq.
i've been here for about two weeks now and am settling in just fine. i sent out an email to a few people about getting here but thought i should post a blog on it... so here's a quick synopsis of the last month or so:

"after" i'd finished my last bit of training, andrea flew out for a few days and we toured new york. it was a perfect send off and a much needed reuniting. there was a fun experience getting some handbags, but i'll save that story for another day.

"after" new jersey, my unit headed to kuwait and after many hours of flight and only 1/2 an hour of sleep we arrived at the hottest place on earth. i'm pretty sure even the devil summers somewhere nicer. kuwait is a million and one degrees and it's about 15 degrees cooler here, so 999,986 degrees. it really puts things into perspective when you stop and wonder why we fought over such an unbearable place (there's sarcasm in there somewhere).

"after" several days of no sleep and lots of foosball, we flew via military aircraft to iraq. there really isn't anything like flying in a plane while strapped in like a piece of luggage.

"after" experiencing ft.dix new jersey and kuwait... so far i love iraq. our office is in a building that has a free coffee shop plus a gym. the food continues to get better with each location i get to, as well as the mwr (morale welfare & recreation)facilities. i have internet, phone access and there's also a chapel just down the hallway. so far i've been bound to my desk here at cob (contingency operating base) speicher. they have me putting a newscast together and redesigning a news set. it's not the front lines nor is it all that dangerous... but it is highly stressful at times (i.e. micing up the commanding general northern iraq to do live interviews with cnn, c-span, abc etc.).

"after" reading this you're probably wondering why i titled this post the way i did.
oh well, until next time... in the words of corporal hicks... stay frosty!

all about food

i thought it might be interesting to let everyone back home know how things are going by sharing what we have to eat here.

**disclaimer** regardless of my commentary below... i am getting the right amount and type of nutrients i need... just not in the form i'd every voluntarily eat.

there are basically three sources of food here... dfac (dining facility), mres (meals ready to eat), and off the economy.

1-dfac food: this food is the "hot" chow we can get in the cafeteria. it's a lot like dorm food in that it doesn't seem so bad the first week... until you realize week two is just like week one. in fact day two is just like day one. we already joke about our deployment being like groundhog's day the movie... but with no "pizza" days to look forward to... it really does seem like everyday is the same day.
-our menu for breakfast is always powdered eggs (or omelet if you have a half hour to wait for it), ham slice, bacon, sausage (all of which are rubbery and suspicious), grits (yuck), or a trip to the fruit and cereal bar. the cereal isn't bad but the melons usually are pure rine. i generally eat a bowl of granola and a half a grapefruit for my breakfast.
-lunch & dinner consists of your choice of protein-baked fish (type unknown), some form of chicken and some form of beef... rice or mashed potatoes followed by steamed veggies... then a fairly decent salad bar. this may not sound so bad... but after one week of this... you'll be looking for alternative sources of food.

2-mres: these are pre-made/cooked meals that are fully self contained including thousands of calories. they have a chemically powered heating pouch so you can warm up your meal if you so desire (i usually just eat them cold). when we were in the fob, the food was so bad i actually opted to eat mres instead if i had the choice. they aren't too bad but again here... the selection is limited so it's easy to burn out. look online for different types and how many calories are in them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRE

3-economy eats: if we have the time or transportation there are several options for eating off the local economy. first there's the pizza place, sandwich shop and bagel boutique at the px (post exchange) - plus a burger king just outside. connected to the px is a commissary (grocery store) for those who are ambitious (i go there for fresh fruit when i'm craving it) -there's also plenty of pizza, chinese and other restaurants just off post who deliver... but... that's a sure way to see your pay evaporate and have your wife calling you as to why there's no money in the bank. the other side effects are love handles and an extra set of chins.

what it all boils down to is this... the food sucks, but is sustaining my existence long enough to write this blog. you can see if you think i've lost weight or not by going to my picture page linked at the top of my main blog page or by clicking here. http://picasaweb.google.com/home

shoot move communicate

so here's my next entry 14 days later. i find the longer i put this off the less i want to do it because it gets harder and harder to summarize what's going on. but here i go...

the last two weeks have had their share of ups and downs. we're still doing a lot of training and my body has completely switched to a 5 hours a night pattern. if i for whatever reason have the opportunity to sleep longer, my body wakes up anyway. that's not to say i would be opposed to a siesta style of day. some of our classes are long and lack any resemblance of excitement.
since my last post... we've gone through quite a few lanes of training. the height of last week was learning how to identify i.e.ds (improvised explosive devices) and going through an urban/sandy obstacle course with simulated artillery and 50cal rounds going off. we were huffing and puffing and all kinds of sweaty, but it was awesome nonetheless. my executive officer was on my four man assault team but they made me the team leader. it was a total blast running up behind barriers and firing off blank rounds while your teammates blitzed up to the next point of cover. being the tallest, i had the honor of holding the barb wire up for everyone to crawl under. the exercise probably only went for 10 minutes, but by the end i was one sweaty nasty thing fully taking on the look of a real soldier with dirt in my teeth and everywhere else i thought should be safe from the grime. it probably didn't help that i shoot lefty and the rounds were dirty so every time i fired a puff of dust would blast my face. luckily we wear eye protection though.

after a three days of this high speed training we had quite the surprise waiting for us. we were supposed to have last sunday off to recover from the hard days but when we got in saturday night we found out our unit had been picked to guard the fob (forward operating base). okay, that's cool, we can pull our weight. the fun news was still to come. we had to guard the base for 24 hours by ourselves. the minimum number of soldiers it takes to guard this thing is 8... and we had 11. so for 24 hours we rotating 3 people in and out of the guard duty to get sleep here and there. when my turns came up... all three... i couldn't sleep. so by the time the monday night rolled around i'd slept about 3.5 hours in 48 hours. i don't think awesome quite covers how great this opportunity was. but we embraced the suck and drove on. when we finally finished at 5 am... we were told part of the duty was to clean all the showers in the base (there's 5) and the mwr tent and the computer lab. this was about the point where most of the soldiers were acting drunk due to the lack of sleep. that actually helped because they were too goofy to get upset. long story short... it was an interesting 2-3 days. the best part of it though was being able to call andrea so much. i worried that when i get overseas it will get harder to stay in touch. but we'll see.

as for what i'm up to now... we've moved into our mos (military occupation specialty) specific training. i was a bit nervous about it since it requires me to be a reporter again. but so far it's pretty fun. i'm still not a fan of our computers/editing software (they'd make better boat anchors than they do functioning laptops), but that's why i brought my mac. we're writing stories, shooting video and then editing it all together. the best part is our instructors aren't set on teaching us the "army" way of doing things. this is especially good news since i find most army publications/broadcasts to be incredibly boring. i've also gotten the chance to help create press releases and briefings for high brass officers since i'm now a staff sergeant. fun stuff.

i'm still wearing the supply sergeant hat but the more i sign out the less i have to worry about.
also, i believe i know when my 4 day pass is going to be so i'm really looking forward to hitting the streets of new york with andrea. hopefully we'll get on letterman, have a picnic in central park (minus the side of mugging), and just have a great time remembering what it's like to be *with* your spouse.

hearing from all of you (all 6-7) really does make my day. and those of you looking in on my beautiful bride, thank you... especially my family, who are just completely awesome. i pray everyday thanking God for all of you and for how you bless my life.

well that's it for now... until next time, nomeste


p.s. oh yeah, i'm hoping to run the hood to coast *in* iraq. kind of like that astronaut who ran the boston marathon on a treadmill in space. but i'll do it for reals. any support/prayers you can give me to get ready is appreciated.

aim breath squeeze

i'm sorry i'm not getting more of these posts put in... our internet is shotty and my time to write these is limited. so since my last post we've since moved to the fob (forward operating base). it's about 100 degrees hotter out here. we generally work about 18 hour days and drink just as many gallons of water to stay cool. with all 50 lbs or so of gear it gets really warm really fast. i was beginning to think i was beefing up my shoulder muscles but now i'm wondering if they're not just swollen from carrying so much weight.
our training so far has been pretty good. alot of it so far has been power-point presentations a.k.a. power-nap presentations. we're learning about the iraqi culture, islam and how to speak basic arabic. we also have done some cool medical exercises and hopefully we'll all get combat life-saver trained, which unfortunately for me means giving and receiving an i-v. we also took three nights of combatives training. cool stuff on how to choke someone out or get out of certain holds. look out paul! the only thing they didn't go into that i wish they had was take-downs. all our training started on the ground. i found being tall comes in handy even if the other guy is stronger. one guy had me in a pretty good head lock but i just twisted my head sideways and stood up inverting him upside down. he was infantry so that made it even funnier. we've been to several ranges to qualify on our weapons. last thursday we took our rifles to the range and fired at popups... getting down to a proper firing position with an extra 4 inches of plating between you and the ground isn't all that easy. after we qualified on the popups... we had to shoot at close range targets with our gas masks on. if it wasn't hot before... it sure was then. then we waited until dusk to do a night fire. i somehow got put on ammo detail and had to go last. so while the soldiers who went first and still had some light got 30 out of 30... the rest of us had to guess on most of our shots. you could hear the target go up but i had to wait until the chest section glowed red. i couldn't even see the front sight post. i just centered my rifle and fired away. the target would go up for 8 seconds and the chest would glow for a split second after four of those seconds. i felt like i was shooting e.t. i somehow ray charlesed (that's a verb now) 14 targets... passing is 7. not bad for completely guessing on where the stinking thing was. another day we also got to fire while moving. that had me pretty nervous. all it takes is some idiot tripping or pointing their weapon in the wrong direction and bam... someone gets a purple heart before leaving the country. luckily everyone shot smart. and today... four of us got to fire the m2 50 cal gun. it's the one that you see mounted on top of humvees. pretty cool weapon. everyone but me qualified because i had the worst luck. i was in the last firing order, again due to ammo detail... and the weapons were starting to really heat up and get gummy. so the first gun i tried would only fire twice before jamming... then i'd have to pull the bolt back and try again. after 50 rounds and a really sore arm, they moved me to another gun that promptly went dead. finally on my 3rd gun i started to get some rounds down range but ran out of bullets before i could even come close to qualifying. luckily we didn't have to qualify.
so that's some of what i've been up to... otherwise i've been trying to get more than 4 hours of sleep. for the first week and a half i was squad leader... broadcast section leader... and supply sergeant. our unit is pretty small so few people have to take on multiple positions. the supply sergeant role is the one that really takes its toll. i'm driving all over post and walking across the fob constantly to fill last minute supply issues. i'm hoping things will slow down once we get to iraq.
for those worried about my sanity... i'm doing pretty well. there are some pretty funny people in my unit that help keep morale up. i'm trying to stay in touch with the family & friends. i try to call andrea daily, which helps keep me happy and motivated to keep plugging away. if it weren't for her and my daily prayers i'd probably feel more down. one of the best things i've found already from this deployment away from home is that no matter where i go... God is there for me. that may sound dumb or obvious... but i've never had to rely on it so much. i've taken Him for granted more than i realize. my prayer time has gone up quite a bit... and i even attended a church service at the fob. only 8 people showed and it was fairly interesting. it felt more like a conversion service than a reaffirmation service. but it was good nonetheless.
anyway... this is pretty long already so i'll go ahead and sign off. hopefully i'll have some funny stuff to share soon instead of a laundry list of my daily events.

peace out!

kevin

here i go...

disclaimer: i wrote this on the 25th but our internet sucks and i had to republish it tonight. i'm staying busy and have a hard time getting sleep so hitting the bed is taking priority over trying to find an internet connection. enjoy the short blog below.


so i've made it to good ole ft. dix. after nearly a week of briefings and last checks on our deployment packets, not to mention plenty of overkill on power-point presentations (zzz), we held our mobilization ceremony. the whole buildup toward deployment had me feeling pretty down, and i'm sure i was in denial until the last minute. the idea that i won't be home nor will i see my family and friends for a year still hasn't fully sunk in. it's crazy. but the ceremony helped alleviate most of my dread and worries. going to iraq still isn't at the top of my vacation "to see" list, but hearing the army band and seeing everyone send us off helped seal the deal in my mind. i must roll with the punches and make the best of what i have to do. the hardest part was trying to keep it together while i said goodbye to my family & friends. the real emotional hit was delayed until the next morning when i had to kiss my wife/best friend one last time before boarding the plane. emotions were high and i'm sure the mere two hours of sleep didn't help.

pics

so i hope to take lots of pictures while overseas... especially since that will be my job. in addition to writing these blogs and updating you about what's going on, i hope to show you.
to see pictures check this sight:
http://picasaweb.google.com/riskitall
not all of them are mine so far, i'm still just testing out this picture sharing thing from google.

and for video i'll probably use youtube.com and just copy the link and post it in my blog.

enjoy,
kevin

Why?

So I can keep in touch with family and friends about how I'm doing in Iraq & what's going on in my head. I consider myself fairly big on communication and love staying in contact with those close to me. If nothing else... this will be a great place (Myspace free) to post my random thoughts and unusual humor to help me relay what's going on in my head. This will hopefully be useful while I'm in Iraq and will most likely see/experience things foreign if not life-changing. Writing about such things will, I hope, help keep me sane in getting it out. Too many Veterans (mostly men) keep their thoughts/emotions inside and years down the line still have PTSD. My goal is to return from overseas to my wife and life as close to the care-free person I left as.