Labor Day

Sorry its been a bit since I left a post, but life here just kind of seems to drag on.  The days seem to be getting longer now that our redeployment date is nearing.  The days themselves are slightly cooler, but thats only because the sun can’t sear the desert for as many hours during the day.  Its still mostly a miserable event to be stuck in a humvee all day, especially when the air goes out, but I guess in the end a balmy 100 degrees is a fair bit better than 122 degrees. 

We went out to an area that was once a coalition outpost yesterday.  Before that it was one of Saddam’s many ammunition dumps.  The place was a huge, many miled, wasteland scattered with debris from the bunkers and structures that used to be there.  There were rusted shell casings and vehicle parts every few feet, and I couldn’t help but imagine just how big that place was before we bombed it out of existence. We drove through the old outpost to get out there.  High earthen barriers and rotten HESCO barriers topped with the green shreds of old sandbag emplacements made the entrance seem like something straight out of a 1970s post apocalyptic movie.  I half expected Mad Max to come barreling over the top of one of the craters.  It didn’t help the that the sky had turned that sickening gray/brown you can only get here and the wind was blowing hot and hard from an oncoming dust storm.  It was probably the most desolate place I have seen yet, and that is saying a lot in this country.  The place was creepy and you could feel death there. 

Outside of that little excursion, its been pretty much the same stuff.  Combat patrols all day, raids at night.  Today we were told that we would “just be on one hour recall all the time” when not on patrol because that was “just easier.”  Thats our schedule.  No more free time at all.  Isn’t Labor Day supposed to be a no-work holiday? 

I read this great, little, geeky webcomic called XKCD.  Its “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”  I really get a laugh out of the comics and enjoy the read, so I thought I would post today’s up.  It pretty much explains every night I have here that I am not on patrol.

Finally, tomorrow is a very important day for me, and I hope I have the chance to write about it.  If I don’t, let it be known that one of the most important people to ever enter my life was born yesterday.  Without her, I would be less than nothing.