Please place your seat back forward.....

Its been said that you can never move forward if you are looking backwards. This usually comes from ignorant people who are simply trying to accomplish their own goals, with no regard to long term effects, side effects, or the general laws of physics and probability. You know the people with the "well, I can do it better" attitude.

Personally I'm more inclined to the saying "you don't know where you are going if you don't know where you have been." Avoiding making the same mistake twice is something I have tried desperately to do. Unfortunately, my concept of the past goes back quite a bit further than just my 25 years and usually the appropriate memories don't surface until after I'm dealing with the fallout. Hindsight is 20/20 my ass.

One thing I have had out here in mass quantities is time to sit and think. Which unfortunately allows me time to sit and turn every decision I've ever made over in my head and place it in the "what was I thinking" category. One of my major character flaws is I hate stuff that falls into the "but what if" sections. What if I had not done this when I did, where would I be? What if I had gone this way instead? If I hadn't joined the Army where would I be? What if I did join the Army but didn't get married when I did? If, if, if, if, if. I've always tried to live my life without the what if's but now I'm 25 years old and I have enough of them to build a tree house, and probably the tree as well.

So how do you cope with these things? I've always found a combination of booze, cigarettes, and lots of sex usually works well. Unfortunately, there are two draw backs to this approach. 1) Your body tends to hate you after a couple of days if you keep up with all three. 2) Two of my three options are not available to me out here. Sorry porn and frequent masturbation don't count as sex, no matter how many teenagers wish they did. Is there another effective way of dealing with this problem? (that what ifs not the lack of sex, please try to stay with the conversation, freaking perverts...)

The only other way I've found is to be open and honest with the people in your life. Its the things left unsaid that will tear you apart from your loved ones. The best course is always to get it off your chest and deal with it together. It doesn't matter if its a friend, a lover, a significant other, parent, whatever. After you talk it out, will things probably change? Most likely, will it always be for the better, in my experience usually. Thats one of the reasons that I'm always happy when someone comes to me, even if it is something that I may not agree with/want to hear/ or will generally make life more difficult. In then end, it almost always works out for the better.

Wow. Ok so that was a really long philosophical rant. Hadn't really planned on that one. And since I really don't have a way out of this......

BOOBIES!!!
*points and runs away*

Getting closer

So yeah, I have just over a month before I get out of this god forsaken place. I recently had a conversation in which a comment about being in hell was made. I felt compelled to remind them that we are not in hell. In hell there are 7 levels, which means every so often you do something different than the day before.

Well thats not 100% true. I start on a guard point in the next couple of days and then I'll do that everyday until I leave. Skippy. Ah well, I shouldn't complain too much, at least I'll be away from Ceaser and his innane ramblings. "you know there is too much dust on this base, we need to do something about all the dust. I'm getting tired of everything looking dirty." Earth to fucktard, memo for you, WE ARE IN IRAQ!!!! The entire country is on big dust ball covered in powdered camel shit, nothing is going to stay clean for more than two minutes.

I swear its people like this that are the reason the war costs are so damn high. We moved building a while back, and when we got there one of the main concerns is, get this, there was no flag pole. FLAG POLE!?!?! So we have to contract KBR to get a flag pole put in, god knows what this costs the army. KBR workers make an average of $100,000 a year over here, EACH!!! So between paperwork, labor, and materials I'm betting that was $50,000 to get that flag pole put in. Then as they are installing this 25ft metal phallus, THEY CUT THE FIBER OPTIC LINE INTO THE BUILDING!!! The fiber ring isn't even completely installed on post yet and they ended up cutting the line to put in a flag pole.

So what is the importance of the flag pole you ask? Is it some kind of force protection measure. Some sort of signal flag to warn troops to move to safety? Nope its so he can display his commanders flag so people know he's at work. *headdesk*

I give up.

long over due

Wow, ok so I did another one of my disappearing acts again. Didn't mean to but things have just been nutty around here. Well no more so than usual but I guess its easy to get caught up in the routine. I basically have the same day over and over again so it gets hard to come up with stuff to write about. Was trying to keep an actual journal about my deployment but it ended up being: "Went to work today, sat at a desk for 12 hours and listened to the brass bitch" over and over again so I stopped that. Ah, so what has been going on around here?

I've now officially past my three year mark in the army. Only five and a half left, oh god what was I thinking, LOL. Its ok though, I have some options when I get back from here. When I re-enlisted part of my contract was that they would send me back to AIT to train as a 25 B. Basically that will put me doing IT work, some server work, mostly setting up and maintaining user stations. Not exactly glamourous work but it will get me my A+ and a handful of other certifications. If I go this route I'm trying to get stationed at Ft. Bragg, I think its time to move on from Ft. Campbell.

There is another option that I will probably take over that one if it presents itself. Couple years ago I put in an application to work down in DC doing commo work. Problem is the paper trail to approved to work there is ridiculous. Well long story short, I recently received info that I'm in the final stage of the review process. This usually takes a couple of months, and if it comes back approved, I'll be inline for a spot. If all goes smoothly, I could be placed in DC before the end of next year. Problem, if this comes through, I can't go back to AIT and retrain. You have to be working in your job for two years before you eligible.The big question is, which is more important to me in the long run. Granted DC is an amazing opportunity, but the IT think is something I can see myself doing once I get out of the military. Honestly I think in the long run DC will be the better option all the way around. I'm sure working there would open up all kinds of doors for me. Hell, maybe I'll get out and go work for one of the alphabet agencies when I'm done. Also the biggest perk for DC would be no more year long deployments. Granted I'll be traveling constantly, it will be all over the place, not just sitting on a base in (insert random middle eastern country name here).

Ah, well. Only other thing that’s been going on is I finally got promoted. Yup, its official, I'm now a sergeant. I'm glad to finally have that out of the way. I've seen guys with between 4-6 years in the military that still haven't made Sergeant. I really, really didn't want to be one of them LOL.

The wife is doing well, losing her mind with over school work right now. She has a little less than a year to finish up and most of that will be clinical trials. I know she can’t wait to be done. I don’t blame here, I don’t think I could ever have kept up with the schedule she keeps, even if that was all I was doing. I feel bad because I could help her on her Gen-Ed classes, but now that she is into the strictly biology and chemistry type stuff I am completely lost.

Ah well I suppose that’s enough for now. I’ll rant more later on, promise.