A Smoked Trout and Jelly Bean Breakfast!

Since it is Friday, I slept in and emerged from my hooch too late to get breakfast at the DFAC. So, I enjoyed a wonderful breakfast consisting of black coffee, canned smoked trout and jelly beans!  The coffee I made.  The jelly beans, Belly Flops to be exact, came from the automatic candy dispenser my loving sister sent as a Christmas present.  The smoked trout came in a can given to me by Phil, one of my colleagues and friends here.  My sweet wife Terry sent me TWENTY POUNDS of Belly Flops which are Jelly Belly rejects from the factory in California.  Sometimes there are multiple jelly beans which stuck together during production, misshapen jelly beans, or discolored ones.  They all taste great just didn’t pass quality control as they emerged from the jelly bean-making machine.  So, I applaud Terry’s penny-wise ways in purchasing these Belly Flops at prices well below the market price for regular Jelly Bellies.

On the home front, we are all anxiously awaiting the news of when Corey and Katrina will tie the knot.  They have had a rough time finding an adequate venue for the reception.  Knowing the Fisher family, I am sure they are searching for a place within crawling distance to our hotel rooms.

I’ll have to cut this post short, I got distracted by work again, attended an ad-hoc meeting that lasted until after 9 pm, so I’ll sign off by saying that I ate a good-balance lunch and dinner today (so Terry doesn’t hassle me about my poor diet when I speak to her next).  Lunch was veal parmesan, tortellini, and broccoli. Dinner was curry chicken over rice with corn and lemon crumble for dessert.

Only 32 days to go before R&R and 189 days until this tour is over.  I wonder how many more pounds of jelly beans that will require?

Last but certainly not least: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

It's About Time!

I know!  It has been almost a month since my last post and I do apologize.  Life here has become kind of like that movie Groundhog Day.  I pretty much have the same routine every day now, so the days seem to be just ticking away until my next R&R and that day when I get to return home to be with Terry again.  As of today, I only have 39 days until my R&R and 195 days until the end of my tour here.  But who's counting.

I really cannot go into to too much detail about the work I am doing, just rest assured, I am putting in some long hours.  I am always up before 6. Usually about every other day, I get on Skype and visit with Terry at about 0630.  That is 9:00 pm in New Hampshire, a good time to visit.  Most folks here Skype in the evening which can slow down the internet connection so doing it early in the morning has its benefits.  I grab breakfast in the DFAC around 7 and I'm in the office by 7:45.  I have been working through the day and by 4:30-5:00 pm I am ready for a break so that's when I try to find the time to get a run or a workout in.  After a shower and dinner, I am usually back in the office until I start going cross-eyed and head back to the hooch to go to bed.  Most nights, I am snoring by 10 pm.

The kickoff for the Superbowl was at 0400, that's AM here!  We had about a dozen folks crazy enough to get up early and come over to our little lounge area to watch the game together.  I made sure we had a large supply of coffee, donuts, muffins and other healthy stuff available.  I was pleased the Ravens won and that it was such a good game to watch.  Halftime was forgettable, so was that power outage.

Since today was Friday (my weekend!), I only worked about six hours.  We have a construction crew working every day in our residence building repairing all of the bad drainage and replacing the floors in the bathrooms, especially the ones on the second floor.  They have a habit of providing an unwelcome shower to the folks using the facilities in the bathrooms below.  That had to be fixed.  Well, those workers have to be escorted while they are on our compound so a colleague and I took turns keeping an eye on the workers today while the rest of the folks here could enjoy their down day. All the work they are doing is going to take a couple of weeks.  Since they cut the plumbing off on one side of the building's second floor yesterday, the washing machines in the second floor laundry don't have water.  That pissed some folks off since Friday is also laundry day for most! I keep reminding folks that it could be worse!

So, while I am not cross-eyed yet, I am getting a little tired so I'll save some of my rambling for next week.  Until then...