Soon

Soon I will be in a different country. How exciting.



More as soon as I get home.

My Good Bye Song

Now it’s time to say goodbye to all the Iraqis
S T I… I cant wait to get out of here.
N K Y… Why? Because I hate this country.
I-i R A Q.
Stinky Iraq…
Stinky Iraq..
I hope I never come here again…




That’s right folks I am just about out of here. I should be home in less than a month. The date of our return is still unknown, and as always I could not say if I knew it, but it is getting close. Today is my last day of net access in my room, and most of the websites that I like to visit are blocked at work, so this is it until I get home, or maybe Kuwait.
I would like to put out my thanks to everyone that showed such support for me while I was out here. It really helped me to get through my time.

A brief on my distant time line.
Maria Sam and I will be in So Cal from 21 October through the 5th (or so) of November. If anyone will be in the area and want to get together let me know. I know for sure that I will be at Disneyland on Saturday the 30th of October. I know it will be busy with it being the weekend of All Hallows Eve, but of well. If nothing else I know I will be at the Main Street Flag Pole for The flag retreat that day. It is either at 1630 or 1730, but which I am not sure. If you are around see you there.

So until later here is a list of things that I am looking forward to when I get home.
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Things I look forward too.


Seeing Maria – I really miss her.

Meeting Samantha – She will be 8.5 months old by the time I see her. Everyone keeps telling me to not get upset if she does not want to be around me at first because I am new. Sure, that won’t bug me.

Green Stuff – You don’t know how weird it is to not have ANYTHING green around here. We watch tv and grass is shown and you are like “What the hell is that stuff?”.

Being Barefoot – I am not barefoot here unless I am in bed or sitting at my desk in my room. Other than that I have something on my feet.

Shower Stuff - Okay this one has a few things to it…
Being barefoot in the shower - I would rather cut off my feet then go into the shower here without shower shoes on.
Touching the walls and curtain - Most of my time in the shower is spent worrying about not touching anything. I mean think about it, how many nasty people are there using these showers.
Dropping the soap – At home if you drop the soap you pick it back up. Here if you drop the soap you hope that you have enough suds on your body to finish washing with. The soap goes in the trash.
Towels – I cant wait to hang a towel up for real and then when I go to use it again it is fully dry because it was hung up on a towel rack and not on a little hook I made in my room because there is nothing else.

Red Robin – The plan is for this to be my first meal home if we get home early enough in the day. Avocado bacon burger, Garlic Fries, and freckled lemonade. OH BOY!

Walking around naked - I know it is a weird thing, but when the only time you have clothes off is when you shower your body cant breathe. I want my body to breathe. And don’t worry, I will keep the blinds drawn.

American toilet paper – I am so tired of wafer thin one ply sandpaper.

My cell phone – Okay so really I don’t miss my cell phone. I like people not being able to get a hold of me. When there is a problem at work in the middle of the night and I am not there, they have to think long and hard about coming to get me. Because it will take at least an hour for them to come all the way down to my CHU and wake me up and then I have to go all the way back. And then they have to deal with how upset I am because they did not remember to flip that one switch that would solve the problem. What I do miss is the ability to Txt my wife and my friends and my parents any time I want to. I love to txt. And more than that I can say hey look at that. That is cool. I think I will take a picture of it and send it to everyone so that they can see it too. I miss that.

Did I mention Green stuff???

Music – It is not that I don’t have music here. I have over a gig of music. All kinds of music. But what I don’t have is the ability to get away from people and sing to my hearts content. Do you realize how much better you can feel after belting out a verse of “Go The Distance”, It’s a small world, or Toes. Well I just don’t get the chance out here. If I am home there is a good chance that my roommate is asleep. If not then the guys that live to the left and right of me are. At work I am told to shut up and be more business like (um hello we kill people here) and if I just walk around and sing there is a good chance they will put me in a padded room. It is so bad that a girl came up to me the other day to ask me why I was singing “Walking round a winter wonderland” while walking to chow. I did not even know I was singing. I need to sing.

My truck – OMG I could go on for hours about my truck alone. But I will just name a few. Lets start with the ability to go faster then 30kmh. That is the speed limit here on base. I can sing while I drive. Did I mention I want to sing? And I can go somewhere. ANYWHERE in my truck. And sing along the way.

Clothes – I miss clothes. All of my clothes. I don’t want to wear my uniform anymore right now. Enough said.

I want to see my house – My wife moved while I was over here and I have only seen through the pictures that my wife sent my new home.

All of you – That’s right, I miss all of my friends. Well friends I am coming home.












Back to AMERICA???? Not soon enough.
Back To The Sand

The Lights Aren’t On But Everybodys Home

This is a picture of my door. As you can see it is daytime. This was taken at about 1630 a few days ago. It was about 123 degrees out on this day. Now you may not find this picture weird, but think about it. It is that hot and my door is open. Is there a problem here. The answer is of course that the power is out… AGAIN!

This is a prety common ocurance out here. And it always seems to be my area. There are about 7 different power zones in my LA (living area) and for some reason the one that I am connected to seems to have massive problems. Either the Genorator dies, the fuse blows, or the people that are paid what I am sure is a huge amount of money to keep the system running are just plain asleep at the job.

We have at least 3 power outages a week. For the most part they really are not that big of a deal. Most of the time the power is off for only a few minutes. Just long enough for me to start to get a little warm. Most of the time my laptop does not even burn through the whole battery. And I am sure that you know thoes batteries don’t last all that long. The day this picture was taken was not a normal quick power outage. It was one of the bad ones. The bad ones happen once or twice a month, and last for hours. Todays power outage started at about 10am. By the time I came home from work the inside of my room was 138 degrees. So we decided to chill out side. Two hours after I got home the power came back on but it took another 2 hours for the AC to cool the room down enough that we wanted to go inside. Outside there is shade and a breeze. Inside the floor is so hot that it heats the room. By 0600 the next day the temp insid the room was finaly below 80 degrees.

So now today I am sitting at work. Thinking about how nice it will be to get back to my room after work. It has been a long boring Sunday. My roommate walks into the office 12 hours early for his shift and I instantly know why. “Powers out!” Gosh I sure love this place. I guess I will work late tonight.



This 2nd picture is of My Roommate SSG Dick sitting in his chair, My Buddy SGT Gholke squating, and Me. Looking at this pic I think you can just feel how hot we are.







Back To The Sand

262800 Minutes

Where has the time gone. Oh that’s right it has been here the whole time creeping by, driving me nuts. I can feel the second had on the clock move with every tick. Count out every minute of the day. And that is how I got the title to this blog. For you not paying attention there are 525,600 minutes in a year. So you cut that in half and you get…

Okay so you are all getting the point? I have been here 6 months. And what a fun 6 months it has been. Okay so fun might not be the right choice of wording. I am not saying it has all be terribly bad. I have been to worse places, and have spent harder times in my time in the ARMY. But still, 6 months out here has been a long time. But I am happy to say that we have less than 3 months left in this rotation. And even better news is that I have been told that we will get at least a year and a half back in the rear before we move on to Afghanistan. I was expecting at the most 12 months so that is good. But that time will come soon enough, so we shall leave it for later.

Since I have been in country 6 months, that means that Samantha is now 6 months old. I am shocked and amazed every time I see her on skype or in pictures and videos that Maria sends. She is getting so big so fast.
She is already 2 feet tall, or long. The pictures of her are from her first month of life and then now at 6 months. What a change.





















We are at about the point of time in which we need to all get away from each other. We still get the job done, but if you are around the same people every day you really start to hate everything about everyone. The smallest things set people off, and it almost feels like a lot of the people out here are really trying to mess with other people. Add to that the heat of the day and things can go bad quickly.
And speaking of the heat did I mention that it is getting hot out here. Yet we are all starting to really get accustomed to it. It does not feel nearly as bad as it did last month even though it is just as hot. Las night I went for a walk and thought “gee it is nice out here.” And it was 110. I knew that it was hot and I did break a sweat, but it was almost pleasant. And then last night in my room I turned off my fan because I was cold. I look over at my clock and it is 80 in my room. That is crazy. I am the kind of guy that likes it to be in the 50’s when I sleep. And I was cold in the 80’s. WOW!

On my blog about the sandstorm Rae asked “So when the sand storms come like that do you all have to go in? Do you know when sandstorms are coming?”

It all matters on what kind of storm it is. If it is a dust storm, it is hard to tell when they are coming in. The distant horizon is always hazy and dusty. So you really don’t see the dust coming in. But the sand storms like I pictured are much easier to see. The one that I took photos of I saw 8 miles in to a 10 mile loop. I had time to jog the last 2 miles back to my room find my camera, get a drink and then took the pics. But I got them at the last second. Right after I took the shots I closed my door and within about 20 seconds could hear the sand hitting my room. With both storms you try to stay inside as much as you can, but I think you all know that it is not always possible for us. Some days you just have to eat the sand. And I really do mean that. Today was a light dust storm and I walked my mile to and from chow through it. My food was wrapped, but the dust finds a way in. You kind of get used to it. I just hope it is not hurting my teeth too bad. I have only been stuck out once during a real bad sand storm. And we just kind of hunkered down. You put on goggles and a face wrap and hope it passes soon. But it can be really dangerous. The sand can cut your skin up some times.
The joys of the desert.


How is your running going? If you look at my Running to Disneyland you will notice that I am almost to California. Less then 20 miles to the border. I will be there soon.

Well for now that is all.

Back To The Sand

Push Up Challenge

Some of my friends and I have decided to take up the 100 Push Up Challenge. The point is to complete a work out over a few weeks with the goal of being able to complete 100 Push Ups at once. Hence the Name. I started the workout last week and even though I was starting at a level that should have been easy for me to complete I almost did not make it. On the 2nd week I was not able to complete the work out. I am at the point where I have to decide to either do this work out or do my normal gym workout, but not both. So starting this week I will go into a cut mode and instead of trying to bulk at the gym I will go for a lot more cardio, and just the work out on the PU Challenge. No weights for a few weeks. I am not really happy about not being able to work out at the gym, but I really want to do the PU Challenge. On the happy side about this, in a few weeks I will be doing the “Freedom Run” Half Marathon, so I guess cutting the weights a little and working on my run is a good idea.


You should check out the challenge.

http://www.hundredpushups.com/


A few of the people that have been taking on this challenge are having problems with their shoulders and I suggested that some shoulder workouts might help. I was asked what some shoulder exercises were and instead of trying to explain on the forum that we are using I thought that I would be able to explain it better on here with pictures. So thanks to my buddy Chris here we go.

The first 3 exercises can be done from a sitting position or standing and with or without weights. Do the reps in a slow steady rhythm. About one full rep per second (without weights) or slower with weights. If doing without weights I would not suggest doing more than 50 reps at a time. With weights I do sets of 15. But as always work out to your own limits. Start out with light weights if you are going to use weights at all and work your way up. Oh and by the way. Being sore the next day is a good thing. As long as it is soreness that goes away over 2 to 3 days. If it lingers it might be bad. I tend to hurt for 3 days when I work out my upper body. 4-5days when I work out my legs.


#1 Military Press ( Shoulder Press)
Starting with arms in a pushup position but with arms pointing up instead of in front of you. On count 1 raise your arms until they are straight up. On count 2 lower your arms back to the starting position. That is one rep. When you come back down do not let your elbows drop lower than the starting point which should be level with your shoulders.





















#2 Overhead Hand Clap or Lat Raise
Starting with your arms at your side. On count 1 in one motion raise your hands straight out to your side and up above your head until they “clap”. Count 2 reverse until your hands are again at your side. It is the same motion that your arms would do if you were doing jumping jacks but without the jump. If doing this with weights (Lat Raise) only raise your arms to the point that they are out to the side at shoulder level. The full motion with weight added has been known to cause muscle damage.





















Top Photos - Over Head Clap
Bottom Photos - Lat Raise


The old way to do this exercise in the ARMY (the over head clap) was to start with your hands straight out to your sides at shoulder level. Count one was to raise your hands above your head, count 2 was to lower them back to the starting position. The motion of stopping your arms at shoulder level instead of lowering them all the way down to your sides caused problems with the muscle group in the shoulders and has been removed from the PT manual. (Note: this is not the same as with the Military Press. As far as I know with your arms being bent at the elbow with the military press there is less pressure on your shoulder so it does not cause muscle damage.) If you do the full motion it still works out the shoulders without the muscle damage.


#3 Arm Circles
Starting with your arms straight out to the side at shoulder level. Make small circles to the front and rear. The circles should not be more than 6 inches in diameter. (I would not suggest doing this with weights.)

Not putting pics in for the next two due to not having time to get to the gym today. If anyone needs help I can come back and put some pics in, but I think they are easy enough to figure out.

#4 Dumbbell Shoulder shrugs.
Start with your arms at your side. Now shrug. Yep just like you are saying “I don’t know!” You can use a straight up and down motion or a circular motion. As the name would suggest this is done with weights. I find that just shrugging even a bunch of times without weights really takes no effort.


#5 Barbell Shoulder shrugs.
Almost the exact same thing as #4 but instead of your arms being at your sides they will be both in front and behind you since you are holding a barbell. Make sure that you do both front and back shrugs.




I hope these help with your workouts. If they do and you would like more let me know what you would like me to talk about and I will work on more exercise blogs.
A big thanks to my friend Patch for standing in for the pics.

And in case you did not know, I am not a professional physical trainer. I am just a 13 year soldier. But I did stay in Holiday Inn Express.
If any of you are professionals and would like to through in your comments feel free.


Back To The Sand