Well, my dreams of being a rock star are dead—we broke a couple guitar strings and one of the guitar pedals got fried from our jacked up electrical system here on the FOB…there is no way to get any of the new stuff in the area, it will take too long to get it thru the mail and the other guys have to start mailing their stuff home soon…so, there will be no concert thing…oh well, it was fun while it lasted …everything else is same ol stuff around here…oh yeah, the other day when we went out to the ceremony to announce the proclamation of the place being a “peaceful district” or whatever it was, they got blasted by RPGs and the bad guys came in and robbed a few houses…I guess they didn’t want to mess around while all the US forces were around—they know they’d get their asses kicked—so they waited till we left and went in shooting things up and denying the government it’s “peaceful” existence…that’s the way things go around here…I don’t think the gov. officials directly, intentionally lie to their people, but they like to stretch the truth quite a bit…and maybe even to themselves a little…every time we seem to be making some progress in the area of security and democracy, something like that happens to show us we are still in a war zone and there are still active cells of Taliban or Taliban sympathizers all over the place and they are still fighting for their beliefs…anyhoo…just another day on the FOB…the infantry guys all loaded up a bunch of footlockers and duffle bags to load in a shipping container to send back to their home unit…we are getting close to the end of the tour…people are getting rid of things and packing things and planning travel arrangements and asking which of the Air Force people need to go back thru Ft. Bragg—that would be me…we are all very ready and very excited to get the hell outta here …also, the bosses are talking about making sure we have continuity books together so we can pass on all the info to the new guys—things like how to order parts, phone numbers, contacts at other bases, things to help them along with their job after we leave…we will give them the basic “tour” and tell them how things run around here for a few days while we transfer them in and us out, but something they can refer back to after we leave—when they arrive they will be bombarded with too much info to take in and retain for the 3-4 days we spend with them…so, I gotta start working on that…the evaluations are pretty much done—just a couple finishing touches, signing and sending off to home units…I am really getting that antsy feeling of getting ready to split…thinking about my travel plans, what I’m gonna do when I get home, what I need to finish up here…still don’t have exact dates or exact travel plans, but I am working around that the best Ican…I should be back in NC around 23-25 March and I plan on being there for a few days to hang out in Wilm…well, I guess that’s about all for now…love you and miss you all… talk to you soon
OOL
B