Salute to Civilians!

This week seemed to fly by rather quickly.  No complaining here though.  The faster time slips by, the sooner I get to the end of this tour.  Don’t get me wrong, this is a professionally rewarding assignment.  I work with some great folks here, both civilian and military.  I simply miss my wife and family and all the creature comforts (beer!) we have back in the “civilized” world.  So, as of today, there are 58 days until my next R & R and only 120 days until I depart Afghanistan.

Terry and I have been assigned our housing in Wellington New Zealand.  We’ll be living in a 4-bedroom, 2-bath single story house in a suburb just north of downtown Wellington.  The house has a nice, small fenced back yard for Mikey and should have plenty of room for a small home office, home gym, guest room(s), etc.  Here is a picture of the front of the house.

This morning I awoke early to participate in the “Salute to Civilians” 5K run.  This 3.1 mile race started at 06:00 for walkers and 06:10 for the runners.  I started off running with a couple of my security colleagues but after a few minutes decided to pick up the pace a little.  Speed is all relative.  I ran the distance in just over 29 minutes which is pretty slow, I think.  I used to be able to run these in under 25 minutes.  I guess since I just hit my 55^th birthday this week, I have an excuse.  We all slow down a little as we get older, right?  Well. There are three more 5K races scheduled this month on base so I’ll try to run a faster time with each race I run.  I have not really been doing much with regard to my physical fitness.  I consider myself lucky if I can get one or two runs in a week any more.  With daytime temps approaching the 90s now, the only time to run comfortably is daybreak.  Sometimes, I just don’t want to get up that early, especially knowing how much work I am going to have to do during the day.

Chris and Marissa were kind enough to give me an on-line Amazon gift certificate for my birthday.  THANKS GUYS!  I’ve never shopped at Amazon.com.  I am puzzled as to what I should get.  I am trying to live a pretty austere life here and not collect a bunch of “stuff.”  I am certainly open to suggestions.  Maybe I’ll look at what running shoes they offer or maybe some music.  Maybe by next Friday I will have decided what to get through Amazon.