DAY 6 / DEC 4

DAY 6 DEC 4
I woke up at 0800, missed breakfast, which isn’t very good anyway, and went with a Soldier to get an early morning strawberry slushie from the Oriental place in the little strip mall area. About 2 pints of strawberry slushie cost $4.50 – remember what I said earlier about Soliders spending money?
We were supposed to leave for Iraq today, but got delayed for another couple days. It looks like we’re going to fly from here on a plane into Baghdad and take a Blackhawk from there to Washorse. I’ll fill in the blanks later, I just don’t want to increase my odds of getting an RPG shot at me because some Haji read my blog and decided to set me up for a bad ending.
After getting back from the mall (not a mall, just a square bit of desert with little shops and food places around), I was reminded about my 0900 XO meeting, which I was late for. It was no big deal as the XO didn’t have much to put out, but I won’t be late next time.
Now, we just promoted one of our Soldiers (Bolchalk) to SPC from PFC – and it has been a long time coming. He’s been up and down the enlisted ranks for awhile now and its good to see him back on track. I took pictures, so his wife should be happy to see them.
After lunch, I went to BN to take care of some business and also to ask around at BDE where my buddy’s unit was barracked at. They told me and as it turns out its about as far away from where I am as I can get. But, I went over there anyway only to discover that he wasn’t there. I left a message and thought I’d try him again later.
I once again had work to do – twice in the same day – I hope this doesn’t get to be a habit. So, I wrote up a memo to get fuel for the generators and put it on a flash drive to take to BN. Once there, I printed it out and delivered the other info that they needed. Because I was in the general vicinity, I took another walk over to my buddy’s tent to see if he was there, and lo and behold, he was. We chit-chatted about this and that, the up-armored humvees, the radar stuff and so on, and then went to dinner. During our conversation, it came up that he hadn’t called home yet, and that he didn’t want to wait in line. I mentioned to him about coming by the BDE HQ around midnight maybe I could hook him up with a DSN phone. We’ll see if he makes it. The call center has been down for over a week and the three hour lines at the MWR phone are crazy – so I think I’ll see him again tonight.
At dinner, we had some chicken fajitas and other semi-mexican stuff that was tolerable as long as you doused it with hot sauce and salsa.
We had thought he was going to be at a different FOB than I was, but as it turns out, his unit is also going to be on Warhorse. And, once again, most of my unit will also be there – all except for about 6 personnel who will be at Anaconda.
There has been a change to my daily schedule that is now something like this:
0800 – Wake up
0900 – XO meeting at BDE TOC
1200 – Lunch
1300 – Take care of BN stuff
1700 – Dinner
2400 – Use phone at BDE TOC

This schedule is working well for now and I don’t have a three hour wait for the phone.