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.