Just a few notes and observations to get you all off my back for not writing...

 

-Temperature got up to 99 today.  Good.  Bake me at about 115 for the next 5 months and I'll be delicious come August.

 

-Josh and I pretty much took ourselves off the flight schedule for the last week or so to watch basketball.  I wasn't expecting much from GU, and they somehow managed to fall short of my expectations.  Actually the game wasn't shown over here, I only caught the last few minutes.  Got to see that stud Curry.  And his mom crying.  Made me throw up in my mouth a little bit, it was so touching.

 

-I ordered a Thailand guide book online, so I think that about seals it for R&R.  Still looking like early June.

 

-I saw a few ants doing a site recon for their summer parade in the corner of my room.  Any day now I expect a line of them searching for a winter's worth of crumbs.

August

We've been put on notice.  The unit that's replacing us is coming sometime in August.  Not sure the exact date, or even the approximate date, just August, sometime.  Upon the announcement tonight at a big gather-round, (Aviation doesn't really do formations very well) the Commander stood up and told us about said August date.  The reaction was a little subdued while the Commander expected applause and balloons to start falling from the ceiling.  Someone broke the silence with, "2008, right?"  It got a pretty good laugh.

What this means is that at some point this new unit will show up (August, I'm thinking).  We'll pass off the all the wisdom we've learned over the last 14 months and eventually they'll take over our missions.  Then, we'll go about getting our helicopters home, either by plane or boat.  Then, we'll come home.  Parades and mass hysteria will ensue.  I imagine it like the tarped off locker room of a team that just won the World Series.  But that's just me.  Anyway, with this minor piece of news (August, remember?), I've narrowed down the possible window of us leaving to about August 15th to September 15th.  We'll see how close I come.

As for my R&R in June, there's now a possibility it won't happen.  Or it might get moved up to May or earlier.  The thought of not getting R&R and having to wait until possibly September before getting a break kind of scares me.  I may go insane.  Like a guy who spent a few too many days in solitary confinement.  My ability to rationalize the real world may completely disappear.  Or perhaps just the opposite will happen.  I'll reach a state of higher Zen-like understanding.  The filter through which I've always viewed society will be removed and meaning of life revealed.  I'll see Blue.  It'll be glorious.  It's a flip of the coin, it could go either way.  To me, I just hope I get R&R at some point and never find out.

Flying Pigs!

Midtour

There's a peace over here that you just can't get back home.  Sitting out on picnic benches, smoking a cigar tonight with Josh (a habit I've picked up lately, mostly out of boredom) I realized this.  At home, even in the most relaxing moments, I'm always thinking about what needs to be done.  What's going on tomorrow, what's happening at work, what's going on next weekend, what bills need to be paid, does the car need gas, are we out of cheese....  Not here.  You wake up, go to work, workout, eat, come home, go sleep.  If something didn't get done today, it'll be there tomorrow.  There's always tomorrow.  Besides plain laziness, that's one reason I've neglected this blog so catastrophically.  I didn't write anything today.  There's always tomorrow.  Oops.

We're just pass the halfway point for this deployment.  Seven and a half months down.  Another seven and a half to go.  Easy time.  Things are so routine, so constant at this point, weeks are days, months are weeks.  To say time flies is an understatement.  And I have a feeling the next half will be even quicker.

Yeah, life isn't too bad.  Considering.  I think the hardest point so far was Christmas time.  Being away from family and friends got to me more than I was expecting.  Caught me off guard.  The support from everyone back home was amazing, but it sort of fueled the loneliness.  I couldn't except the fact that the holidays were going on without me.  It ate at me nearly everyday from about mid November through about the end of football season. 

But it's passed and I've been nursing this fantastic mood for almost two months now.  Sort of like I've finally excepted the lot I've been dealt.  I'm thriving on my routines now.  I'll switch from flying Days to Nights and back every few weeks.  The flying has been easy and fun.  The new job I have, as Operations Officer, has me (gulp) excited to go to work each day.  I enjoy attacking and breaking down each mission we have, figuring out the best way to get it done, and passing it off to the crews to execute.  The crews are so accustom to the pace and work cycle, so able to plan, brief and fly without much effort, so able to balance the routines without becoming complacent, and adapt to curveball here and there.  Our aircraft maintainers have simply been amazing.  The other day 7 of our 8 aircraft flew, all in one day, and the 8th could have if needed.  Anyone familiar with aviation maintenance, especially helicopters, would tell you that is pretty impressive.

So where does it go from here.  Well, I'm eyeing my June R&R like that one good cookie after dinner.  You know it's there.  You know at some point you're just going get up and eat it, you just trying to wait until the last possible moment.  It'll come, it's just a matter of when.  Haley and I haven't really decided wholeheartedly on an exact destination, but we know it's going to be neat.  I vowed early on that I wasn't coming back to the US.  I was going to take the 18 days and go somewhere fantastic.  Somewhere I'd always look back on remember.  Right now Thailand leads by a nose over Europe, with Australia/New Zealand sort of the Huckabeeing along, refusing to drop out despite its slim chances.  If you ask me, half the fun is trying to decide where to go.  Now that I've written this, watch me come home like a little weeny instead of going some place exotic.

Well, my mom told me if I wasn't going write on the blog anymore I should just say so.  Naw, I'm not ready to throw the towel in just yet.  Don't hold your breathe waiting for posts, but it's my travesty of a web log, do with what I please.  There's plenty of other crap to look at on the internet besides this, so I don't feel too bad about stringing y'all along.

Happy Leap Day everyone.  Of all the years to add an extra day to the calender...

Hawks

Seahawks.  Ugh.  Oh well, the sooner this season got over, the sooner next season can start and the sooner I might be enjoying a Seahawk game with the proper amount of lubrication to absorb the piddle that passes as our offense.  I turned to Josh as they showed stats from today's game and pointed out Mo Morris' 3 rushes for -1 yard means he averaged minus point three repeating decimals.  Gross.

18 - Low Crawl

The other day I came to work and a soldier in our Company was low crawling through the sand around our buildings.  His Platoon Sergeant stood over him giving encouraging words while sipping from his morning coffee.  I asked Tom (Tom = Tom Pierce = 1LT Pierce = Good friend of Caroline's) what was up and he told me the dude was 45 minutes late to work that day. 

That evening we had a formation to give out awards for some soldiers who traveled to another post to fix a helicopter that was broke.  (It was actually a helicopter I was flying, but that's a story for another day that I'll probably never get around to telling)  And who was up in front of our entire formation getting an award but the same guy crawling through the sand earlier that day

Tom summed it up best at lunch today when he said only in the Army can an adult be dragging himself across the ground as punishment in the morning and having medals pinned to his chest that night.

17 - Package from Whoville

I had pretty much given up on the holidays.  Thanksgiving came and I spent that whole day going out of my way to be grumpy.  It seemed, though, the grumpier I was to people, the more it entertained them.  Like poking a bug with a stick, at work people would amble up to me to talk.  I'd greet them with a "Go away," but instead they'd smile and stay to torment.  I dig the holidays (minus shopping for presents) so much, that my defense mechanism for spending it over here was tune it all out.  "Christmas is canceled," was my creed.  But then those crazy kids from my neighborhood growing up had to go and ruin it all.

In the mail today comes a package that would warm the heart of any grinch.  Thoughtfulness, consideration, and general Christmas cheer are just mean ways to come at a guy trying to martyr himself for the Noel.  Kill your enemies with kindness goes a famous saying.  Yeah, well, my holiday humbug is KIA.  Barb, Art, Judy, Jan, Linda, Jon, Reed, Patti, Jim and Diana, thank you for your kindness.  Most of the goods went to the heathens in my Company, who quickly pillaged the package for sustenance.  I picked out a few of my favorites (air freshener - my room smells like a locker room these days / smoked salmon - most of these guys wouldn't know smoked salmon from a can of tuna, best to go to a Pacific Northwest connisoure / and exotic almonds to name a few).  The postcard of the Mukilteo lighthouse is going up on my wall as well, right next to the reminder to call my mom that works about as well as all the other reminders she's sent me (I'm an absolute first-ballot selection in the Sons-Who-Don't-Call-Their-Mothers-Enough Hall of Fame).

Today's package, along with the annoyingly festive Christmas lights people put up around the office, irritatingly delicious homemade cookies and fudge showing up on tables that should be used to brief missions, and confusingly splendid mood everyone skips around in has broken my spirit.  The Whos have won.  As much as I didn't want to, I'm going to be forced to chalk this Christmas up as: sort of OK.

But no Christmas music.