Yesterday I woke up late—missed my normal Monday meeting…oh well, it was probably better to sleep for that hour than listen to random issues that do not affect me in any way…there was an IED/landmine or something found under one of the bridges we use …the EOD team went out and got it before anything happened…so we know the bad guys are still around doing the same old shit…winter doesn’t seem to be slowing anything down…I didn’t do anything special today…work was simple…we changed out some external parts from one of the old trucks to a new one…a big brush guard bumper assembly, some razor wire that is carried on the back hatch, some radio stuff, etc…nice and easy…still feeling under the weather but better than the past couple days…watched a bunch of tv dvds while trying to play my guitar last night and hit the sack early…today is just another day—except we are now down to approximately 90 days left here in country…like I said before, I won’t really be counting down until the last couple weeks, but I just happened to know this because everyone on the FOB is talking about it…plus, they are setting up a cookout type thing to celebrate the fact that we are “double-digit midgets” …that means less than 100 days left wherever you may be deployed or stationed—like a short, remote tour…people have little calendars with pictures in them—you color in the block for that day and at the end of the 99 days you have colored in the whole picture and it’s time to go home…people did it when I was in Korea, Saudi, UAE, Egypt, Honduras, and even in Japan—even tho that was a 3-4 year tour for most people…they still like counting down the days…I would rather have it just sneak up, without notice, and it just be 2 weeks left…that 2 weeks will be spent packing and organizing and turning over everything to the new guys so it goes by really really fast …anyhoo… today I woke up to a wonderful surprise…as I walked out of my room to hit the latrine, I tripped over a box in front of my door…it’s a package from you mom … it’s full of xmas candy and a stocking filled with more candy, and it is all my favorites…plus a nice, healthy, nutritional bag of beef jerky…I love that too…also, a collage of pics that I took while home on leave and a dvd of the thanksgiving festivities that I missed—I am watching it right now as a type this—you guys are hilarious…how many times can people say hi to me?? And I love RCs tatts…those are awesome…thanks mommy, you are the best…oh yeah, and I made sure to show everyone around here Jaimes singing in the shower…they loved it…ok, so I got all my xmas shopping done except for mommy and Jaimes…I have absolutely no idea what to get either of you…I’ll figure it out sometime in Jan…nothing else really goin on right now …by the by, AK, the amaryllis is growing fast…there are two flower buds and three big leaves, and it is about two feet tall now…I am really surprised that I could even keep it alive this long…I take it out and let it get sun every day and bring it back in at night…time for chow…got me some spaghetti with meat sauce…it was actually pretty good…maybe because I haven’t eaten any real food in the past three days—you know, being sick and stuff…went out to the shop and worked on a couple minor things…nothing too difficult…painted some more of the door decoration–Santa on a snowboard…only a little bit left…hung my stocking with care…watched a couple movies and just chilled for the night …time for bed… love you all… talk to you soon

OOL

B