16 June 2007: 100 days down

And just like that! Poof! 100 days of deployment have passed. I applaud everyone who has remained faithful to my blog for that entire time. There have been exciting, funny, and entertaining moments followed by long stretches of boredom. I arrived back on 9 March and then set a land-speed record by staying in Kuwait for all of four hours before moving on to Iraq. Most people spend days in Kuwait before getting up here. Initially it seemed like my entire deployment would live up to the title of the blog. Within the first month and a half I had reported to you from Camp Striker (Baghdad/BIAP), FOB Speicher (Tikrit), FOB Warrior (Kirkuk), and FOB Marez (Mosul). I was poised to move on to Taji when my team was brought to a screeching halt by the extensions of the deployments. Yet in our short time “FOB-hopping” we provided excellent training to five separate Brigade Combat Teams – training that prepares them for their eventual redeployment. All that traveling also afforded me the chance to give you a lot of humorous insight into the goofy unreported behavioral characteristics of Joe. Since early May I’ve been continually idle at LSA Anaconda. Changes are coming. As I explained in a previous entry, the extensions simply pushed all my team’s missions to the right (on the calendar). That mission load is catching up to us now. The next 100 days are going to prove to be a lot busier than the first 100. I’m happy to say that my travels, observations, and commentary are about to be infused with new life. Make certain you keep reading. Things are about to get real interesting. Although it’s 100 days down there are still 265 to go. As we say in the Army – HOOAH!!

Now you’re probably wondering how I spent my 100th day of deployment. It wasn’t really a celebration. Remember that command briefing I was working on? Welcome to the Army – the whole thing has been cancelled (possibly rescheduled for a future, undisclosed date). It seems the command group from Kuwait isn’t flying up this weekend after all. I don’t know why. Once I found out I told my team (that’s present at LSAA, most of them are in Qatar) to take the rest of the weekend off. I left my office around noon, got in an early workout, and then saw the 1700 showing of “Oceans 13” at the Sustainer. My other two team members met me there. I enjoyed the movie. It’s a bit far-fetched. I liked it though.

The big event for the day involved that piece-of-shit Chinese-made Admiral. After the movie I drove over to the west LSAA PX. The AC fan went out. Now keep in mind that it was around 115 degrees with blowing dust. I tried rolling down the window but it only made things worse. A breeze around here is like feeling the draft off a blast furnace. A simple event like driving became a laborious sweat-fest. Now I’ll have to take the thing back to the “big pimpin’” trailer so the leasing company guys can fix the thing. I guess while I’m there I’ll have them fix every thing else that’s gone wrong. The stupid truck still doesn’t even have 1000km on the odometer.

The 100th night was a very simple affair. I ate a big supper, called home, and was in bed by 2315. I considered staying up later but AFN wasn’t showing anything I wanted to watch. I’m too much of a tight wad to buy a movie at the PX and I refuse to buy the pirate DVDs at the Iraqi bazaar. Sleep is always a good option.