4 Months Deployed and Counting

Hello June! Another month down! I love flippin' the calendar!

We celebrated Coach's birthday tonight at Echo's restaurant. The DFAC made the cake and the 34th ID country band was there to make the evening extra special. It isn't easy coordinating a surprise birthday party (yes, Hubby, I'm thinking about the coordination you did for my 40th last year). It's challenging when one just can't run to Target or Wahlgreens or any other convenience store to pick items up. No candles for the cake and no gift that is unique. The PX here sucks for lack of a better word. They have a huge shelf full of laundry soap but we have no machines to do our laundry...unbelievable. I would love to meet their store manager.
I do hand wash my underwear and bras since I don't want the laundry guys touching my stuff. Even Brian isn't allowed to wash my clothes at home. The over abundance of laundry soap just isn't necessary. I don't see my fellow male Soldiers worrying about who washes their underwear.

Since Coach likes when I do my Sarah Palin rap, I figured I might as well make one for him. It took me a couple days between doing things on my job but I got one down worth presenting to someone who has made this deployment more bearable. I'll post the rap on my site the next time. Just about every week, we go over to the oasis to have dinner and watch a movie. Last week we made him watch Mama Mia, a good chick flick. This week it's his turn to pick so I'm sure there will be blood and guts. It really helps to have something special to look forward to since it makes the time go by faster.

I finally added up my running miles for April and May. Total is 154.9 so I'm about 50 miles down from where I should be. It's a bit discouraging and I knew this was going to be my most difficult goal. I'm finally running between 4.5 and 5.3 miles 5 times a week. Yesterday, I was running along and there running on the ground in front of me was a baby sandpiper. Its body was the size of a cotton ball and it had these long tiny legs. It was so damn cute and I almost missed it since it was the same color as everything else in this place. It was trying to get over the curb but it wasn't tall enough. I was worried it was going to get squished by some HMMWV so I caught it in my hands and placed it on the dirt.

I got to thinking about the time when we lived in the county; I must have been around 7 or 8 and I found my first robin's nest. I took one of the birds, kept it in a box with cotton and fed it ground-up worms. It lived for a day maybe two but then it died. Good thing the folks didn't find out about that when I was younger. :) I'm sure I would have gotten the spoon!

I've been patiently waiting to get personal Internet in my trailer. NOT! We have Internet at work but all sorts of sites are blocked to include any blog sites, Skype and anything else that might take up bandwidth or considered fun. Ever since we arrived, this has been an on-going issue to get some resolution. The frustration level is high. I'm tired of having crappy service provided at the "Internet Cafe" which is not reasonable. One of our Soldiers purchased and brought two commercial Internet dishes to provide some of us service. Duggernet isn't going to make any money but the politics surrounding this is incredible suffice it to say. One of the solutions offered to us was a tiered wireless service. Now this is the good part...to have enough bandwidth to Skype with your family, you would need to pay over $300 a month. CRAZY! Duggernet will only be $70 per month with even better bandwidth. The sad thing is, some Joe will end up paying over $300 a month.

Got to love this place.