Hello everybody! This is the post from the office, the intent being to update all of you on happenings here. I promised Kim I'd post pictures, which I will do either later tonight or tomorrow. There'll be something for almost everyone in that post - I plan on soliciting professional graphic design advice (Barton, stay tuned!).

The past week has been pretty decent. Temperatures are low for this time of year, so it's stuck under 105. Not complaining, just observing. I have had to take pains to make it a "drama free" week. Invariably, anytime a large group of people is stuck in one place with a limited amount of things to do, drama ensues. Mostly, it's been drama from outside the unit, which means I get to go to the office, shut my door and the problem is solved. See...I know how to do things like unplug the phone, or simply turn email off. Handy skills to have in today's world. Suffice to say, most drama is just that. It's all for show, there's nothing substantial about it at all, really. So, I listen, pretend to look interested and then walk away. I have established Badging as a Drama Free Zone. Which reminds me, I need to get the Sharpie out and write that on the wall. NB: My walls are white. I forget things. SO, in order to combat this particular issue, I have taken it upon myself to write myself reminders for important things. For example, next to the door, on the wall at eye level, I have written, "Remember your CAC." Otherwise, I forget it in the computer, walk half a mile to chow and remember I left the stupid thing in the office. People come into the office, see my signs and giggle. I must admit, it is an attempt at humor, to some degree. The intent is also to break away from the military monotony of this existence. I mean, let's face it. Very few people in the Army actually write things on their office walls. That's outside the norm.

In his blog two years ago, Paul had made mention, more than once, of the friction between Active and Reserve Component soldiers. Thankfully, I have not had much of that at all. Mostly, I think, because I control a commodity everyone needs, which means I can stay above that nonsense. Plus, I tend to ignore it. After all, if folks really piss us off, we have "technical difficulties" with the badging equipment, or maybe the application is "lost" down at enrollment, or any number of other pitfalls. Yes, it's childish, but it works: message sent, message received, attitude goes away. Yesterday, I was explaining the rules to an infantry lieutenant. He was a nice kid. Operative words here are "nice" and "kid". I was already in a bad mood, as my staff (an E4, E5 and E7) had explained all of the details once to him, and he wouldn't listen to them. That irks me. Fine, so I talk to him. He kept dropping terms like "active duty" and "combat arms". Finally, I had my fill of it. I told him, "LT, I have more active duty combat arms time as a Major than you have in the Army, so let's get past that." It's true too. He kept arguing too, which is what I didn't understand. I finally turned it into a one way discussion: here are the rules, they're MNF-I policy, that's how it will be. I felt bad for jumping his ass about it, but polite discussion failed. On the positive side, I never lost my temper, never shouted, never raised my voice. So, it was good all in all. And he said "hello" to me today and was happy about it, so problem solved.

Such has been the highlights of my week. Lifting and running have progressed well, as my knees aren't in pain during squats any longer and I'm just at an average 10 minute pace on the treadmill. Slowly but surely, I'm speeding that pace up.

When I saw it, thought several of you would appreciate this one.

And what would a post of mine be without media references to the war? Have some public story on AQI, which I found interesting.

Finally, ILE update. I am very close to being done with the coursework for phase two. That will leave two essays to write, which should be fairly straightforward, then it's on to the third and final phase!

Enjoy!

BDA

Alright, last night was Al Del Mar and Dane Cook and some other guy. They were outstanding. Not just Dane Cook, although he was absolutely fantastic!! They were all good. Last set of comedians we had were lame. Not partially, but all the way. These guys packed the house and then some! Dane Cook was just...wow! It was a great show.

So yeah, the show rocked.

The group I sat with is a loose collection of folks who all live in the cans around mine. We hang out and chat in the evenings, maybe go work out (randomly), sometimes play cards, drink near beer, etc. It passes the time and we enjoy it. I don't do it nightly, but often enough to not be a stranger. All of us work with my unit somehow. We got to talking tonight about how much the 3ACR folks hate the National Guard. It all kind of started when one of our NCOs walked a female soldier back to her can (a friend of hers is attached to our unit and so she comes over to hang with us, as we're infinitely more fun than the cav). Anyhow, her 1SG noticed she got walked back by someone from outside his pack and came unglued. No "thank you for walking my female soldier back and keeping her safe". Anyhow, we got to talking about the bias. In my meditations, it struck me as a manifestation of the need to prove something. Like we or they have to strut and talk badly about the other just to show we have our "street cred". This is kind of anathema to the kind of person I think I am. Most people I deal with on a daily basis here, regardless of unit or component, tend to heed what I tell them. First, I have the advantage of being a Major, and that cannot be ignored. Second, I know I'm smarter than the average bear, and provided I stay in my lane, I sound like I know what I'm talking about. Third, I refuse to kiss ass. Lastly, I'm not here to prove anything. Really, I'm not. The Old Man put it best: be professional, be polite, be prepared to kill. I show up, I'm professional, I'm polite, I stick to the rules and ensure that folks don't walk into the Badging Cell and start doing their own thing. The other advantage I have is I can usually refuse to badge people if folks get too ungodly stupid (it's the ace in the hole). Usually, folks walk out of our offices with a solution and thanking us after walking in with a problem. To me, that speaks volumes. And the Regimental Commander's interpreter went through the exact same badging process that everyone else did. It's rather a great equalizer.

More to the point, I didn't go into this deployment with any sort of great or grand need to come back with a combat action badge. As the Army has grown very tight on the qualification requirements for this award, this requires me INTENTIONALLY placing myself in harm's way, which smacks vaguely of Catch 22. Honestly, I have no intention of leaving the wire without some operational need to do so. My job is not to go out, leave my post, and tool around just so I can brag about...something. My job here is to run the Screening and Badging Cell. And to enable and empower staff coordination. It's a small world, but it's MY small world. We keep dangerous people off the FOB, which seems like a pretty big deal to me. It's not sexy, it's not super dangerous, I don't get to smell the wolf or shoot people up. And I sign my name more on any given day than I ever did getting into the Army. It is, quite literally, the poster child for an almost invisible job. But if nobody did it, things would be pretty messed up. Strangely enough, I kind of like it.

Coming full circle, I have absolutely nothing to prove. Nothing at all. I'm not ashamed of what I do, nor do I think it's unimportant. I have no need to be acknowledged by someone I don't even know as some sort of hero person single handedly conquering the Islamic hordes.

A glass of wine would be nice, though.

It's all about humility, which is, in it's essence, truth. You know what the truth is? The truth is that nobody on this FOB is any better than the other. Nobody has a corner on the market for being God's Gift To The Army. Most folks are here to do their job, do it well and go home in one piece.

For what it's worth.

Enjoy!

Post then bed...but wait, first I need to...

Looking at my track record, I was so proud to figure out how to beat the NIPR firewalls and post from the office, but still average a post a week. I should be ashamed of myself. And I am. I feel pretty bad about it. You're not buying that, are you?

Didn't think so.

So, I spent an hour on the phone with Kim as she's driving north to visit my parents. That is one tough lady. She won't claim that, but she is. She has this cold and is still making the 8 hour trek northwards. She also has the bone marrow transplant, the voluntary career change and a couple college degrees under her belt. AND she puts up with me. That's tough. That's double tough.

A quick update and then I must get some sleep. Tomorrow is a run day, and I honestly want to run. The experiment I'm kind of doing here is to find out if I can adequately prepare for (at least) the APFT's 2 mile run just on a treadmill. Last APFT I ran was last month, here, with nothing but treadmill runs and hit 16:33. Now, for a 39 year old, that's not bad. Cool thing would be to break 16 minutes, which I think is attainable. I know it's boring. But hey, they're "good enough" for world class marathoners, so they might be good enough for me. Add to that, I don't want to spend hours running outside. Outside around here is not nice - it's hot, dusty, dry and seriously lacks non-gravel covered surfaces. I would say people shoot at us, but when I run, the habibs tend not to fire rockets - too early in the morning (going back to a basic tenet of mine: the "insurgents" are human, all humans have patterns, it follows then that the insurgents operate in patterns).

Today I spent in meetings, which means I walked a lot. Don't mind walking, as it keeps me from sitting on my butt all day. It also means I deal with all the aforementioned annoyances. It is what it is. The meetings were productive. I should be able to add something to my continuation binder as a result and make life that much easier for my successor. It's all about coming to a consensus and documenting it.

I was asked what I'd do if I were king for a day. One thing is replace the Regimental CSM with someone who isn't bipolar. Honestly, it feels as if we spend too much time cleaning up after he kicks this or that vendor/random local national off the FOB. I can say nothing nice about the man, so I won't say anything. The other thing I'd do is give us joes here a means to have an adult beverage once in a while. Ration card it, something. A glass of wine every so often would be nice, and would give this place that much more of a civilized air.

I'm just about halfway done with phase two of three for ILE, which is CGSC with a twist (read COIN and COE and Joint Forces stuff). Plan is to blast through phase two this month. That'll set me up well to be done with this whole ILE nonsense by the end of August. As someone who is a professional educator, I like their distance learning approach, but their assessments are amateurish at best. It is painfully obvious to me these assessments were designed by people who have NO background in education, let alone tests and measurements. I mean they're awful. CLOZE exercises and simple fact regurgitation to assess understanding of some truly complex theories. I'm just really disappointed. Not too badly disappointed, of course, as this makes it easier for me to get ILE done with. Since I need to graduate from ILE to be elligible for LTC, it's all good. Disappointing, but good.

Not much new going on here. Dane Cook is supposed to perform here tomorrow, so I'm definitely going to that (shoes? F*** shoes!). That'll be cool. Oh, it's June, which means May is over. Which means we're halfway done with the deployment overall. and I'm that much closer to leave.

Again, not much new happening. Thank you again for the prayers! Keep 'em coming. And call Kim. :)

Enjoy!

After watching Sin City last night (intense film...VERY intense), I checked emails and shot a longish one off to Paul. In it, I mentioned this deployment helping me to gain some perspective.

Part of that perspective is really how important family is. Immediate family is something I think we tend to take for granted, I know I have been. Kim & I both would get home and spend a lot of time unwinding. Really, that's not all bad, but spending too much time doing that is, I think. We both have discussed our need to unwind and our need to spend time together. I think the statement we've shared is, "why do we spend so much time unwinding alone". The other perspective is day to day issues. One of our officers put it best, when talking about one of the organizations on post. They go to the ops synch meeting and weekly run down a list of stuff they've done in the city, which rivals (if not exceeds) what the rest of us are doing. The officer made the remark, "these dudes know they don't have to prove anything to anybody." That struck a chord with me. Why do I need to prove anything to others? Regardless of what I do over here, provided I'm improving it, leaving it better than when I found it, doing the right thing, I have absolutely nothing to prove to anyone else.

St Benedict talks about humility in his Rule. Humility, one author states, is the acknowledging truth. The truth is, none of us here are better or worse than the others. Truth is a powerful thing. Humility is accepting truth, living it. Oddly enough, regardless of what vibe I pick up from the Army culture or the culture of the Officer Corps, I am happier, more effective and get farther with people with humility than with the facade we're taught to show as Officers. Funny how that works.

Perspective. A lot of things aren't worth being angry about. I complain about the SpecFor folks, but really, they don't rate it. People being ignorant don't rate me being angry. It's all about perspective.

Enjoy!

Lost It Today

First and foremost, apologies to all for not updating sooner. It's not for lack of anything to post, just being basically lazy. A little bird told me I ought to post, indeed that a post was...ehm...awaited. So, here it is. It's bound to be long. I'll labor valiantly to not whine too much.

So about the title. I've been doing well controlling my temper, taking life one day at a time, generally having a "mind like water" and all that sort of thing. I've actually been happy. But small things have been building up recently and I lost it today. Not a ranting and shouting lost it, but I did get pretty angry. Wasn't really over something small, but I think in the long run it could be considered small. As with all things, I took the situation (which I shall not enumerate here) as a minor blow to my pride and reacted poorly. Kind of childishly. At least, that's how I reacted in my own mind. I think the email I sent was not too harsh, but still I could have done some fact finding before losing my cool. A little part of it is a general tiredness. I'm a tad tired of the Special Forces folks. They're special...see? So when they come to my office, they really need a "special" deal. I'm about ready to call the arrangements "SpecFor 1," "SpecFor 2," and "SpecFor 3", just to show folks it's really not all that special. Thing of it is, I see these guys coming a mile away. Who else looks like a freaking NFL linebacker and packs a Glock? Who else argues that they need to have ammo in their (largely unused in the DFAC) pistols while they're in the DFAC? Who else (besides privates who just plain forget) just won't wear unit patches while in their uniform (but rank and nametapes are just fine)? See what I mean? To a certain extent, it's not really "special", but "standard". They all meet it. Sometimes I just want to say, "Yes, you're special. Now get back on your short bus and go home." Honestly, that's unfair, as most of these guys are good people and great Americans. Some of the stuff they do just makes no sense to me, which just makes them part of the Army, I suppose. One of the contractors who works closely with me spend over thirty years in the special forces community. He's not here right now, which means I don't have access to his wisdom and wit, which I could really have used today.

So, if you're following the news (which I do not), then you'll know the Iraqis have a major offensive going on in Mosul right now. I know this, as I basically read about it in the orders and summaries I read daily. They have made the statement that AQI is on the ropes and failing. Or they might just have gone to ground to ride it out. Either way, we don't get shelled as much (and when we do, it's always about a mile and a half east of here), which is fine with me. Also remember a lot of the news from Iraq is about Baghdad. That's a long way south of here. It's practically a different country. Many folks 'round these parts claim it is. The point is, it's still a war, the terrorists are still out there and the ISF is actually doing better than I thought it would.

I still don't want them on my FOB.

This last month, folks have really come through big time!! Belle sent some cigars and snacks and DVDs, thank you again! Kim sent a TON of DVDs and books and a card that ended up in a ziploc baggie. I know I married her for a reason! Kim is just awesome. I'm still amazed that she is doing the whole new career thing. Really, that just blows me away every time I think about it. Thank you all again for the prayers and support. Please pray for my temper and attitude. I don't like walking about with a chip on my shoulder.

While I oughtn't provide political commentary, I can't help it. Side note: the BEST part of not having a TV here is not having to stomach the political race BS going on back home right now. Making big deals of little things seems to be the play of the month, even I'm doing it. So, thank you goes out to Chris Muir at Day By Day for this one. Dad will like it. Dems won't. You've been warned.

More links for you all. How about an independent check on the war here in Iraq? You know, kind of like an Iraqi Mythbusters (NB: this lends itself to all sorts of great spinoffs). Here it is. All good stuff and worth a look.

Last link, but not without commentary. As someone who has had the honor and privilege to commission Officers into the US Army, this one hit home for me. I always knew USI supported us above and beyond the call of duty, and here's one more thing I can point at as proof.

OK, last item. So I was doing squats last week and my right knee started to hurt really, really badly. So I figured it was the knee and tried it again. Nope, still hurt. Hmm. Started some research and figured out it might be my technique. So, based on some information, I changed technique and dropped some weight - it being easier to concentrate on technique with 45 pounds on the bar instead of 120. It was all good. I'll keep working it slowly to make sure.

That's all for now. I could write a diatribe about the girly men MPs who take freakishly long showers, but I should not have to do so. Simply saying, "MP" is enough. Heheheheee.

Today is Memorial Day, so, in the spirit of Henry the Fifth, I should point to my scars and say, "these wounds I had on St Crispian's." Lest we forget.

Enjoy!

Take a stand, please!!

Originally, after having dealt with a slightly awkward situation, this post was going to be a rant about the Army. I know, say it isn’t so. So here it is, Bottom Line Up Front: We lack leaders who are willing to stand up and be adults about things. In my mind, adults take responsibility for things, they “own” things. So here’s what happened. This guy brings some people in to be badged. In the process of doing so, mentions that other individuals in the group really want to be badged a “higher” color than they get. So I did the whole, “hey, understand you have a tough situation having to deal with these guys” thing. Honestly though, it boils down to one thing: being an adult. At some point, somebody, probably me, will need to look these individuals square in the eye and say something like, “Gents, I understand you want this particular color of badge. That’s not policy in this theater of operations. You can rant and posture and throw tantrums, but doing so won’t change your badge color. Simply put, that’s how the situation is. Nobody here can change that for you.” To be honest, I was really nice and understanding about it. I wouldn’t like having to deal with the whining about badge color either. So there it is. I seek to help shape leaders to stand up and be adults. To take responsibility for their actions. It’s an “old school” approach to leadership, I realize that, but we can no longer afford to have leaders who won’t do so.

Tomorrow I hit the weight stacks again!! Strangely enough, I’ve missed it as I’ve tried to allow the rib to heal (I tripped over a jersey barrier at night the first week I got here, then lifted through like two weeks of constant pain, wondering what the deal was). So back at it, now that the PT test is over.

I checked out the comments, followed one of the links and was inspired to get literary. So, here’s some Shakespeare, in a vain attempt at bringing the literary value of the blog up some:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Oddly enough, I got this from a Steve Martin movie years ago...the whole thing was a ton of vignettes from Shakespeare.

We would not die in that man's company That fears his fellowship to die with us.

Enjoy!

Happy Mother's Day

Hello everybody!

First and foremost: Mom, happy Mother's Day! I am well (gained 3 pounds since December) and am (reasonably) healthy. I'll call tonight, hopefully late enough that I don't wake you folks up. Or I call tomorrow morning.

About three weeks ago, thanks to the incessant dust around here, I decided to have the head shaved, the grape scraped, the melon polished. You understand. After some research, I even dumped some money into an electric shaver, just for my melon. First, since Paul has no hair, I knew I'd look alright without any. Second, I grow tired (and have some cultural aversions here) of paying for a haircut with a very awkward head/neck massage. Don't get me wrong, love massages, really, really, really am uncomfortable with MEN massaging me. Needless to say, I'm spoiled, what can I say? So, at $5 a pop (including tip), I figure the shaver will, literally, pay for itself well before the end of this deployment. I took a self portrait last night so here it is, for your enjoyment. I even smiled.

Today we get our combat patch (Shoulder Sleeve Insignia - Former Wartime Service in the parlance of the military). I promised Kim I'd try to have someone capture a couple of pics for me. We'll see how that goes.

Sarah, 1SG B is a great guy! Jake just needs to find his rhythm (?), that's all. He'll build, he'll get there. Blue was great to work with in ROTC, can't imagine Jake having many better folks to be around than Blue and his team.

I promise I will attempt to get more pics taken and posted. The challenge with that is to discern what I'm allowed to click and not, etc.

Enjoy!