Made it safely to Iraq

I'm on the ground and just got done with my first breakfast in country, I've only been gone a little over a year and the entire place has got a facelift. The MWR building is finally open, there's local guards everywhere and we now have a Burger King, Subway and Pizza Hut. It's going to take a strong will to stick to my diet! We have comfort trailors with real toilets! What is this world coming

Picture from the Solar Eclipse

And pictures from our trip out can be found here. Middle of the night and I tried as hard as I could to stay up all day but fell asleep right after the eclipse and woke at midnight, just in time for MIDRATS (meal that they serve around midnight). It’s a mix of breakfast and dinner foods, I had French toast, a slab of some kind of fish, wax beans and sweet tea then walked over to the phone center

Want to see a snapshot of my life 10 years ago?

Go over to Pete's post about finding me online, he tells it better then me. Oh, I plead the fifth.

Kuwaiting for a bit

For the fifth time, I’m Kuwaiting till we make our move up north, not sure where I’m going to post this yet, for I am still sitting on the bus. Flew over here in an old 767, I’m used to flying Southwest and these were smaller seats then that. I had the distinct luck to find myself sitting between two large Marines and at each stop, I had to unpeel my self from the seat and stumble about without

out of the blue

It’s been a strange week, I’ve been hearing from important people in my life whom I haven’t heard from in years. Pete from the prior post and my best friend from high school, Justin. Figures this would happen right before my next Iraqi adventure, it’s been great catching up. Justin was my brother from another mother and a decade ago, we lost touch. Many bit and stories that make me the person

Caught up with an old friend

It’s a small world, an old corpsman buddy of mine, HM2 Peter Gutierrez, found his way here from an old news story about me and now has a blog of his own. I've been wondering what had happened to him all of these years. If you’re interested in what’s happening in Camp Lemonier, Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, he tells a great tale. We went out on our first deployment together as young HN’s in

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Started out with a good plan this morning, leave work at 11 to go up to Long Beach and pick up a moped that my mom had shipped back from Thailand. Sure, no problem mom. After a couple of calls yesterday to the shipping company, I found that I needed to clear customs first in Long Beach, then take the clearance paperwork to the shipping company in Compton and pick up the 400 pound package from

One of my last weekends here

My roommate James has just returned from his 6 month deployment to Japan and I’m in my final days before my newest Iraqi adventure. It has been a good weekend, my new computer came in on Friday, an HP Pavilion dv5000z (MCE) with a 2.0GHZ Turion processor. My first take, very sleek, I’ve been typing unplugged an hour and a half and it still has half of its power. Lighter then my Toshiba, screen

Tom Fox had a blog

You can find it here, thanks pop.

Busy Pre-Deployment Life

Sorry I haven’t been updating much lately, busy trying to squeeze as much life out of my last weeks here, both at home and at work. Speaking of which, busy busy busy, many shots to give, much blood to suck out of veins and bodies to examine. We’re getting all the blocks checked in our pre-deployment lectures and work ups. Rifle ranges, smelly gas chambers, power of attorneys and wills.

ABC News Story and the Zogby poll

Well written story on what happens to some of us when we get back from the war zone.Soldiers Describe 'Emotional Roller Coaster' Upon Return From WarI'm leaving shortly to go back to Iraq for the third time but I didn't see one road side bomb, have to look at a weapon pointed in my eye or have to injure another human being. Did treat a lot of injured folk though and had rounds bounce off my