LOOOONG day

We did not get released from work until close to 1900 (7pm)!! And then I rushed straight home to clean my dishes as my team leader was walking through my room. He barely walked in, looked around, then left ROFL. No issues with that here. I had my quarterly counseling today, and while it wasn't very bad, it still wasn't as good as I had hoped. I am frustrated at times because I am trying so very hard to be better, but I will merely try harder. Very tired today, so I am going to post the first of what will be many blogs on my year in Iraq. Bear in mind I have edited these for both my privacy and the privacy of those I wrote about, I have also made notations in some to clarify certain points. The above are some pictures from that first week.


9 January 2004
16:10
Not even 24 hours in country and already I am miserable. But there have been bright points, like my good friend showing up at the APOD:) Then I was one of the group to take the drivers course and drive the NTV's up to Udari, so I got to hang in Doha for awhile. Talked to some of the old 221st guys I used to hang with all of the time.
The flight over here wasn't too bad, save for my embarrassing bawling in front of just about all the higher ups who had come to see us off.
Driving up here to Udari was kinda boring for the most part, I kept wanting to fall asleep, and then we went off road:) At that point we are FLYING! Myself and my TC were having a blast. Then they decided to hit mud and my Pajero decided to spin out of my and we covered the car in mud. After we had stopped me and my TC busted out laughing our asses off. Of course I got chewed by the NCOIC of the trip, spoilsport that he is.

10 January 2004
22:15
About time for bed for me, though doubt I will sleep anytime soon as I was out cold for about 2 hours this afternoon.
Life here isn't too bad. So far it is wet, muddy (REALLY muddy) but not so bad. I could not believe my eyes this morning as I was leaving for formation and ran into an old friend from AIT!!! We used to hang out in AIT alot. He is here, part of the unit that we are attached to so we will be seeing alot of each other. Awhile back we had reconnected online by pure chance and not more than 3 weeks later we are walking around together. We both got a kick out of that one.


15 January 2004
15:40
Day 6. It's been a weird week. Sunday we went down to the Spod (Shipping Port) to stay the night and then on Monday morning we drove the humvees back up to Udari. That morning we only had 8 vehicles so it was a smooth convoy up. The very next day we were back on buses back down there to pick up the rest of the vehicles. I got lucky enough to be the 1Sg's driver down there in the NTV, but I don't think he is going to make that mistake again anytime soon ROFL. I wasn't misbehaving Very badly. The convoy up that day was impressive, 34 vehicles that were our units alone and then we had another unit attached to us. The convoy stretched for literally miles. We stopped at the beginning of Snake trail, where it was reasonably dry but still muddy enough for me to be happy. I was jumping around and another NCO had a good laugh at me behaving like a happy little kindergartner:)
I have been giving a hell of a lot of thought to re-enlisting. For all that I hate this sitting in the desert, I love the Army, I have made my life pretty good. I have all that I need, and then some.