October 22nd, 2010 - The Passing of Time

Things have been extremely busy lately and blogging has taken a back seat, but things have started to calm down a little bit now.  The last few evenings I’ve been able to have some resemblance of an evening and even had a little time to unwind.  Even two hours in the evening helps me recover from the day.

Time is thankfully moving fairly fast now and that’s good.  Today marks the 2 month mark for my active duty time, so that means that I’m over 15% done with the 400 days my orders for the deployment was cut for.  It also means that I’ve been out of the US for well over a month now, and have now been in Afghanistan right about a month.  

Since I’ve been on my FOB (Forward Operating Base) I’ve started to get into some little routines.  Little things help to mark the passage of time.  For example, every Friday for dinner we have surf and turf.  They usually will have steak and shrimp plus either lobster or crab legs.   

For the last two weeks we’ve had lobster tails.  The tails have been absolutely delicious and would fit right in at any nice restaurant.  That means for the last two weeks I’ve ate shrimp and two lobster tails. 

Also every Friday is haircut day.  I’ve kept the Friday haircuts up for over two months now and it’s definitely a part of my routine.  Granted at the one week mark my hair is still inside regulations, but by getting it cut every week my hair will not be out of regulations if I have to miss a haircut day.  My hair has been getting cut much shorter than I would back home, but at least if it’s cut short the gray hairs are hidden a little bit.

The weather here has started to cool down a little bit.  The days are still in the 80’s but the nights are getting cooler.  Where I am the weather will stay fairly mild during the winter but it’s still going to be a winter.  The winter will probably not cause any real issues here but at least we get seasons.

Not much of an update, but I have to get up early.