Linkup

I linked up with Ron a few hours ago. We promptly spent two hours playing networked Halo2 at the morale building.
We're all locked on for the Army Navy game Saturday night.
Oh, and GO ARMY, BEAT NAVY

Please Direct Me to the Restaurant

I was sitting in the Air Force Base’s billeting tent trying to work my way over to where Ron lives and got hungry. My ride wasn’t going to be there for another two hours, so I asked the front desk sergeant where the chow hall was (they have people in the air force that their entire job is lodging. Their job title is probably something like “Lodging and Shuffleboard Director”). Anyway, I asked the sergeant where the chow hall was and she said “Sir, this is an Air Force base. We don’t have a chow hall.”
“No chow hall? Where do people eat around here then?”
“It’s called a DFAC {Dining Facility}, sir”
“Oh,” I said, “in that case, can you please direct me to the five star restaurant with the best French chef on base?”
Pansies.
So I walked over to the restaurant/chow hall/DFAC and had a pretty nice meal. That is, until some Air Force sergeant sitting at the table next to me started harassing some airman. “Hey airman.” The airman ignored him. “Hey you, airman.” The airmen heard him, but was pretending that he didn’t know who the sergeant was referring to. “Hey you, Airman. Hey You! You with the mimosa!”
That last part didn’t really happen, but hopefully Rick got a kick out of the inside joke.
I’ll blog some more once I meet up with Ron.

One for the Troops

RobDrinking
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

I just traveled to an Air Force base near Ron for a day-long business meeting. We arrived very late at night and only got a few hours’ sleep before the meeting, so folks were dragging ass all day. After the meeting was over at 1700, some of the other officers and I found our way over to the officer/enlisted club (they’re the same place on an Air Force base) to wind down and talk shop. At this particular base, troops are allowed an “alcohol ration” of three drinks per day, so I had a couple Coronas (no lime, but who’s complaining?) and was feeling pretty mellow and sleepy. The other guys wanted to pack it in at (gasp) 1900 to go get some sleep, but I said, “When you get back to your troops, they know about the 3-drink ration here. They’re going to ask you how many you had and what you drank. If you tell them that you only had two beers before shuffling off to sleep and that you wasted the last drink on your ration, they’re going to be very disappointed in you. They can’t be here, so we have to drink this last one for the troops!”
My companions agreed and we ordered the third round before going back to the room to rack out by 1930. I just wish that I hadn’t wasted my most motivational speech in the last six months on “let’s have another beer, guys!”

15 Minutes

You can check out Sarema's and Bear's 15 minutes of fame by checking out Aerial Extreme's stock video page. Just scroll down about half way until you see "Skydiving Dog." Mark Lichtle, who owns Aerial Extreme, filmed Sarema a few years ago on a couple jumps with her yorkie, Bear. Mark was also gracious enough to shoot video and stills of our wedding skydive in 2002. If you look at the picture for the last link, Mark is in the yellow jumpsuit.
Oh, and Mark also took the best picture anyone has ever taken of me skydiving. I'm the guy in the black and yellow wingsuit flying with Ed Palowski and Randy Pacheco down the Monterey coastline.

Change O' Plans

Soon, I'm going to a meeting near where Ron is staying. Since I'm already going to be in his neck of the woods for business, I'm going to stick around after business is over for my approved pass. If everything goes well, we should be watching the Army Navy game together next weekend.
Blogging will probably be light for a while starting soon.
Sorry about being so vague. OPSEC makes it hard to talk about people going places and doing things, especially future plans.

Lost Picture

Quickfire Range at Carson
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

John found this in his old pictures from Ft Carson. Boy, I sure am glad that we did all this hooah training that I don't need now. :-)
In retrospect, it would've been better to just get over here and get on with the mission and get home sooner.

Lake 115th

Lake 115th
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

This picture was taken after the monsoonal rains I blogged about a couple weeks ago. Of course, this area out front of our barracks is normally devoid of water.
There is still some standing water in the low areas of post.

Waiting in Line

Waiting in Line
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Today we waited in line for 45 minutes for Thanksgiving dinner. Here's a picture of the Swamp residents waiting for turkey with all the trimmings. (L to R) me, Dave, John, and Jim.
The food was good with lots of choices... I had turkey, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie with baskin-robbins ice cream. It was good, but I really miss my mother-in-law's homemade gravy and made-from-scratch whipped cream. I can't wait for next Thanksgiving at Morgan Hill.
The important part of today was that I got to share the meal with my friends and fellow soldiers. I'm glad to have them here and they're the closest thing I have to family in this desert.

Serving those who Serve

Serving those who Serve
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Here's some of the senior officers of the company running the serving line at Thanksgiving dinner today. I'm the second from the left with the hat rocked back on my head. :-)
Jim is second from the right.
It was great serving meals to our troops. I tried to tell as many of them "thanks" as I could. Without these guys and girls, I couldn't do my job; and we wouldn't be able to support the warfighters in Iraq.
We even had a couple elected officals from the States join us for the meal. I'm humbled that they decided to forgo Thaksgiving with their own families in order to spend it with us in the desert.

Thanksgiving

This day kind of snuck up on us here and I didn't really even think about it until just a few hours ago.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I can still remember being at the dinner table last Thanksgiving and Christmas back in the states. I said a quiet prayer for the men and women fighting in a foreign land who couldn't be with their famlies during the holidays. It's mildly ironic to me to be on the other end of that 10,000 miles now; praying for my wife and son's protection while I'm gone.
It's tradition for officers on active duty to work the serving line at Thanksgiving (and Christmas) meals, so i'll be doing that tomorrow in the early afternoon. I did the server-thing back in the 82d and it's a cool tradition; I get to talk to a lot of troops that way.
Despite being over here, I have a lot to be thankful for this year. It's my first Thanksgiving as a father and I'm beyond thankful, I'm grateful that Hunter was born happy and healthy. Really, that's the most important thing in the world to me.
I'm thankful for my beautiful wife who's pulling double duty as dad and mom back home. Her strength is an inspiration to me over here.
I'm thankful for all the friends and family who support me and my family. It's nice that so many people check this blog to see how i'm doing and to offer words of encouragement. Sometimes I need those words more than other times and I always appreciate them.
Finally, I'm thankful that my mission doesn't call for my troops to go in harm's way. I try to be the best leader for them that I can be, but sometimes leadership isn't enough to protect soldiers from killers trying to do them harm. I'm thankful that we're here with hot showers, plentiful chow, and no mortars flying at us.
For me, though, tomorrow will only be a small deviation from Groundhog day. After serving dinner to the troops, I'll be back here at the office working on that long term project I'm been doing for months now.
I sincerely hope that everyone back home has a good time hanging out with family tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving!

Xbox 360 in stores now!

Today is the release date for the next generation Microsoft console: Xbox 360.
I've haven't looked forward to something like this in gaming since Halo2 came out last year. Rick and I put on our pocket protectors and waited in line until they released the game at midnight. Then we went home and played it until 2am (on a school nite!). It was a huge nerd-fest that night and I'm bummed that I missed this year's nerd-fest over Xbox 360.
You can bet your sweet bippy that I'm going to order one of these new 360s and have it shipped over here ASAP.
another Xbox happening... last night Jim tried to plug in a 110V vacuum cleaner into the transformer that our TV and Xbox are hooked to. Ziiiiip! The $50 transformer fried because it turns out that the vacuum cleaner had a short (because someone had already plugged it into 220V). For awhile, we weren't sure what, exactly, had caused the transformer to fry and thought it might have been (oh God!!) the Xbox. Luckily, we were spared by the electricity demons and our precious Xbox was safe. We bought a new transformer and all was good in the swamp again.

Comments

Not too many people posting comments these days. I wonder if that means no one is checking this blog (I don't have a hit counter . . . maybe I should?)
Feel free to leave comments, even if they don't necessarily apply to post that they are attached to. I read them all and try to respond with a comment of my own or an email directly back to the commenter.

update: looks like some people do read this blog out there. I'm glad to hear it. I'll keep blogging as close to daily as I can. Thanks for your support.

Kuwaiti Fun Fact

...Despite living in a desert with few fresh water wells, on average Kuwaitis use twice as much water as Americans.

From the July 2005 issue of Together Magazine, published by the AWARE organization:

Water wastage is high on [Kuwait's] list of envrionmental issues, with the average use of water in each home at more than 100 gallons a day, compared to 50 gallons a day in the United States . . . Recently, a mechanical puppet show has been comissioned by the Kuwait Science Center to educate the county's youth on water conservation. [It's called] the "Splish Splash Puppet Show."

ThinkGeek

ThinkGeek.com always has some great stuff for the technology lifestyle. I decided to put together a list and get some techno-love sent over here to the desert. I opened it up to the entire Geek squad so we could save on shipping. Here's what we bought:
USB Christmas Tree for my desk during the holidays
'Geek' Badge Holder because i have to wear a badge into "secure areas"
Do not meddle in the affairs of hackers... sticker for a haxor I know
Ethernet Crossover Adapter (for the boss)
Ethernet Loopback Jack (also for the boss)
'No, I will not fix your computer' sticker
'No, I will not fix your computer' T-Shirt
'No, I will not fix your computer' Travel Mug
(see a pattern?)
Two Nostromo SpeedPad N52s for the PC gamers on the Geek Squad.
DiscHub because I have 10 loose CDs on my desk at any given time
Version 2.0 tshirt for Hunter. I'll give it to him when I see him in six months.
... and finally, various t-shirts for SGT Torres

Coolness

They're too spendy for me, but how cool are these wireless bluetooth headphones for your iPod?

Red 5 going in

My sister, Kim, sent me a new (well, new to me anyhow) XboX video game, Star Wars Battefront. She bought it from Amazon.com and got it shipped directly here to the middle east. That's a great thing, because there was some doubt about whether or not Amazon shipped xbox games here. Thank goodness they do.

Thanks, Kim! The Force is with me now.

Monsoon

It's been raining on and off for the past few days, but the clouds have stuck around the entire time. It's cool and cloudy, kinda reminding me of home or the bay area. The rain has been heavier here than home, though. In the mornings or evenings, it can downpour for 10-30 minutes at a time. During one such downpour on Sunday night, there was a ginormous tunderclap . . . the loudest I have ever heard - by far. It was so loud and given it's direction, I momentarily thought that some of the ammunition storage bunkers on post had exploded!
The sand here is not very pourous and seems to retain the water after it rains. So, we are dealing with small lakes and rivers where there were only ruts and gullies a week ago. At least I didn't drag my gortex jacket 10,000 miles for no reason.

Later, Gator

Gator Navy
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Here's His Honor, Jim, toodling around in his work vehicle, a John Deere Gator. These are six-wheeled vehicles that are basically a cross between a quad-runner and a pickup truck. They are designed for light farmwork or industrial applications.
There are a limited number of SUVs to go around the command, so Jim (and several other officers) ended up with a Gator instead. There are hundreds of these little gators running around here. You can't take them off the post, of course, but that doesn't stop Jim from slapping on his "VIP" hardhat, putting in earplugs, and zipping all over post in his Gator. Dave and I want to submit Jim's gator to MTV's Pimp My Ride show so that he can have a stylin' vehicle befitting his stature in the community.

More Pictures

I usually upload more pictures to my account on Flickr than I blog about. So, if you like, you can visit my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/robwooldridge and see un-blogged-about things like Hunter's first bike ride, my working conditions on post, and examples of bad Kuwaiti drivers. Enjoy!

No Joke

It rained here yesterday. I thought for a second that somebody might have slipped acid into my sweet tea, but it was really raining. Water came out of the sky. This was the first weather change we've seen in three months other than the gradual cooling trend. It's nice to see the coat of dust washed off everything.

Happy Veteran's Day

Almost 90 years ago, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the Armistice was signed to end the Great War. This day later became a holiday here in the US.
My closest friends are all veterans or are in law enforcement (sometimes both). Memorial Day is for remembering those who gave their lives in the service of their country and for their fellow man. Veterans Day is for thanking those who give up years of their youth in defense of their country, including those people we remember on Memorial Day. They served (and some still serve) not for themselves, but for the rest of us. To keep us free.
Thanks to everyone who has served and given something of themselves to keep this the greatest country on Earth.
Thanks, Dad (Navy).
Thanks, Granddaddy, RIP (Navy).
Thanks, Osbaldo, RIP (Army).
Thanks, Rick (Air Force).
Thanks, Terry (Navy).
Thanks, Hoove (DEA).
Thanks, Ron (Navy).
Thanks, Mike (DEA).
Thanks, Nick (Army, RCPD).
Thanks, Eric, Ben, Goot, Tony, and the rest of the Cal Poly ROTC grads thrust into this war as young lieutenants.
Thanks, Mr. Jeffery and Mr. LaBelle (Navy).
Thanks, Dave, Jim, John, and the entire Geek Squad (Army - here with me on the far side of the world)
Thanks, Greg, Art, and Kip and the folks back at the PFO waiting for their turn. (Army)

And we can't forget the families and friends of veterans, without whom we would not be able to carry on like this. Thanks for making do without us and giving us encouragement to accomplish our mission.
Thanks, Mom.
Thanks, Sarema.
Thanks, Hunter.
Thanks, Kim.
Thanks, Kymi.
Thanks, Allison.
Thanks, Scott.
Thanks, Zack.

Please make sure that you thank a vet today. Don't forget about their family, either. Families often-times have it harder than the vet while the vet is gone.
Happy Veterans Day everybody . . . and thanks.

Gettin' Chilly

Jacket Weather
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Since I always gripe about the heat, I thought I would let everyone know that things are looking up. The temperature has been steadily dropping over the last couple of weeks. It's been increasingly chilly in the morning and this morning it was in the low 60's (very chilly when you've been living around 90/100 all the time). I even broke out the black fleece jacket that I was issued when we arrived in country.
The daytime highs are in the mid 80s, so the fleece ends up on the back of my chair pretty early in the day.
So, overall, the temperature is pretty pleasant. Now I guess I'll just have to gripe about the lack of wireless internet in the barracks. :-)

Sergeant Mac(Daddy)

Sergeant Mac(Daddy)
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Here's SFC McElroy (AKA "Sergeant MacDaddy") earning his Kuwaiti Combat Driver's Badge on the mean streets of Kuwait City. Kuwaitis are the most aggresive drivers I have ever seen and there are traffic wrecks all over the place here. About an hour after this picture was taken, SFC McElroy saved our lives when an idiot made a left-hand turn across traffic from the right-hand lane and cut us off. SFC McElroy deftly swerved and stopped, preventing a collision.

Camels and Wakeboarding

Camel Surfing
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

We saw this Snickers candy ad plastered on the side of a Kuwait City bus during our last trip off base. Hey, there's not a lot of lakes in the desert, so you gotta make do with what you have... We have camels and lots of sand.

Care Package

I received a nice care package today from Supplies for Soldiers, a Paso Robles-based soldier support group. The package contained lots of candy, an instant coffee pack, a frisbee, a t-shirt, cup-o-noodles, etc.
It's not the contents of the package that are important to us over here, it's the knowledge that everyday folks back home are still interested in the soldiers over here and care about them. It's pretty cool to get a bunch of helpful stuff from someone you don't even know; all in the name of supporting the soldier.
I'd come over here to fight for my country with or without care packages, but it's nice to know that at least some folks back home devote considerable time and effort to making soldiers' lives a little brighter over here.
Thanks to everyone at Supplies for Soldiers. you rock. Hooah!

Counting Sheep

sheep
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Here was a strange sight. We were driving along the highway the other day and a truck zipped by us at about 140kph (80mph). The strange part was the three sheep tied up in back of the truck. I guess this was the Kuwaiti version of Just In Time manufacturing. "We need three sheep and we need them in the next 20 minutes!"
Sheep tied up in a speeding pickup truck is not something you see everyday back in the states; well at least not where I live in the states.

Groundhog Day

As you can see from the counter on the right side, we've been here for just over two months and have finally broken 300 days to go.
One of my favorite phrases around here is "everyday is Groundhog Day." If you remember the movie, Bill Murray just keeps living through the same day the same way over and over again. Here it's pretty much the same thing every day and the days tend to run together. Our section has a rotation going so that we space out our days off over the course of the week, instead of having saturday or sunday understaffed. So, one day is pretty much the same as the next.

It's been a long time

It's been a long time
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

While performing my mission off-post last week, I accidentally ran into an old friend from my Officer Basic Course back in Fall 1993. I hadn't seen Mike in 12 years, so it was an amazing coincidence to run into him over here. My fondest memory of Mike is him executing a drive-by drop-off of a bag full of snickers bars for a bunch of starving lieutenants in pre-ranger training. Mike's a good guy and I wish him luck in his efforts here in the middle east.
I've said it before... "It's a small army."

First Halloween

Hunter Monkey
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Here's Hunter wearing the monkey costume that Sarema bought him for his first Halloween. Isn't this the cutest thing you've ever seen?