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...

Flu Season and the Pooh Pond Song!

We are all hearing about the flu epidemic taking place in the US now.  Well, it looks like we have it here but not in epidemic proportions.  Three of our folks are sick and are staying in their rooms.  It certainly worries many of us and the hand sanitizer, masks and disinfectant wipes are all around.  I am personally thinking about germ transmission every time I touch a door handle, telephone, etc.  Nobody needs to be sick with the flu.  It is especially miserable having to be sick here in Afghanistan away from family and a comfortable environment.  I feel for the guys and we are doing all we can to help them get through it and prevent the spread of the disease.   Terry is getting over a nasty case right now.  The poor thing even had her flu vaccine shot back in November but still came down with it.  I felt bad for her because even though she needed to stay in bed, she still had to take Mikey, the wonder dog, out three times each day.  Thankfully, the worst is over and she is beginning to feel better. 

This week, I had the pleasure to visit with Peter Miller, Chris’ best friend during his time in high school.  Peter and Chris were almost inseparable in Giessen Germany back in the late 1990s.  Peter has been cashing in on the war effort by working over the past ten years in Iraq and Afghanistan for one of the defense contractors.  He currently runs a helicopter shipping operation here at KAF.  While he is located on the other side of the airfield, I usually get over to that side of the airstrip once or twice a week so we’ll be able to see each other and chat occasionally.  My fond memories of Peter in Germany include his ability to hang around wearing just a T shirt, even in the dead of winter!  He and his brother John were often hanging out with Craig and Chris at our home in Butzbach.  They are both fine young men. Here is a picture of Peter and me taken during my visit with him.  Terry says Peter looks a lot like his father who is retired and living in Colorado now.

It is really warm today.  The temperature is in the low 70s.  Humidity is high and we are covered in a dust-fog.  The dust-fog is an unusual experience.  It is like walking in a normal fog but you can feel the dust crunching between your teeth.  I do all I can to try and breath through my nose when I am outside. We are expecting a cold front to move through tonight with thunderstorms and after the rain stops, we’ll experience a good drop in temperature with evening temps in the 20s and daytime highs in the 40s and 50s.

Well it was only a matter of time.  Someone has written a country and western song about the Pooh Pond and placed it on YouTube.  Marissa discovered the song on the internet and sent me the link.  I almost fell out of my chair when I saw it!  Here is the link to the song.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoqc5ZE8L6E  Enjoy!
Until next week…

Happy New Year!

This is a short post because the day got away from me.  Even though it is my day "off," I ended up working all day and it is getting late.  We have a farewell dinner for one of our employees tonight that I have to attend.  The dinner is at our TGI Fridays restaurant on the base's "boardwalk."  I'll do a post on the boardwalk soon but to describe it concisely, it is a large strip-mall like area surrounding a sports field.  The boardwalk has a number of restaurants and other shops that feature souvenirs, electronics, takeout food, coffee, etc.  Even though the inside of TGI Fridays looks like the restaurants in the U.S., the food has a long way to go before it is anything like what you can buy in the U.S. It is also overpriced for what you get. They are often out of a number of the selections on their menu and if it wasn't for this event, I would not eat there normally. 

I am back running regularly now.  I've been hitting the treadmill most every day and knocking out push-ups and crunches.  I don't have any races planned this year (yet?) so I'll run about 20 miles this week and try to maintain that momentum throughout the winter.

Through the internet and social media, I discovered that one of Chris' good high school friends is actually here at KAF working for a defense contractor.  Chris and Peter were classmates and friends at the high school in Giessen, Germany back in the late 1990s.  One thing I remember about Peter is that he didn't seem phased by cold weather.  Even in the middle of winter, he would show up at the house without wearing a coat, only a t-shirt.  I've called and talked to Peter and hope to get over on the other side of the base to visit with him some time soon.

Well, its time to go gnaw on some food!  Until next week...

A Kandahar Christmas

We celebrated Christmas here with a small pizza party on Christmas Eve.  During the party, we watched A Christmas Story, the movie about a young boy who dreams about getting a BB gun for Christmas.  We also had a white elephant gift exchange.  I ended up stealing a nice wood serving tray with an assortment of dried fruit from the person sitting next to me.  That person ended up getting the gift that I wrapped, two cans of macadamia nuts fresh from Hawaii.  I ended up sharing all of the dried fruit with everyone at the party and the serving try disappeared so someone got some use out if it.

On Christmas morning, we all got together for coffee and donuts and watched Elf with Will Ferrell.  This is the first Christmas in an awful long time where I was not celebrating with family.  I have to admit, it was kind of lonely here, knowing that everyone else was home with family members having a good time.  Nevertheless, I kept a stiff upper lip and soldiered through the holiday knowing that my being here allowed many of my colleagues to be home with their kids.  And, after all, it is the children who help bring the magic to this holiday.

It is getting pretty cold around here.  Not New England cold but cold for here.  It is in the high 20s overnight and creeps into the 40s, maybe 50 degrees during the mid-afternoon.  We’ve had a lot of fog and dust that has reduced visibility as well.

I’ve started back up with my running again.  I got busted by the base MPs for running with earphones in, listening to music while running around the airfield.  For safety reasons, folks are not allowed to run on the roads here with headphones on.  Anyway, one of our MPs “pulled me over” while I was rounding the east end of the airstrip and made me take off my earphones.  I don’t mind running without them, I just prefer to listen to music or podcasts while running.  I guess I’ll go without from now on or keep to the treadmill if I want to listen to something specific.  So, this week, I ran around the airfield once (7.8 miles) and went out for two - 30 minute runs as well.

With so many folks home on R&R this week, it has been pretty quiet on the work front.  The only real excitement came today, Friday, my “down day.”  As with most Fridays, something pops up that causes me to be at work, besides, what else is there for me to do?  This morning, someone used the men’s room in my office building.  Apparently, the water line to the sink was frozen.  Well, this person left the faucets in the sink wide open when he departed.  A couple of hours later, our cleaning staff noticed that the large conference room on the ground floor of our building was covered with water!  Sure enough, the frozen pipes eventually thawed out and with the faucets wide open, water flooded the entire first floor of the building which includes a conference room, bathrooms, and a server/electronics room.  Three of us spent a couple of hours, armed with squeegees and mops, cleaning up the water and recovering wet equipment.  I think we escaped this devastating end-of-year flood without much damage.

We are all looking forward to New Year’s Eve around here.  They tell me that in the city of Kandahar, they celebrate like they do in the Big Apple except they drop a pomegranate instead of an apple.  Pomegranates are the big money crop here (after poppies).  Someone else also said that the Taliban were planning a shadow celebration, they’ll be dropping a human head.  Just kidding!

I guess it’s time to go change out of these wet shoes and socks!  Until next week…

Is Running a Marathon Really Rest and Relaxation?

Despite spending a total of 34 hours in the belly of an airliner, which transformed my ass into the shape of an airline seat, my three-week R&R was fantastic!  I spent the first four days with my beautiful bride (and Mikey the Rottweiler) at our place in New Hampshire.  Besides getting a lot of much-needed rest, Terry and I enjoyed Manchester’s Christmas Parade and saw a great production of the play “A Christmas Carol” at the city’s Palace Theater.

On Sunday, Dec 2^nd, we flew to Washington to visit Corey and Katrina in Northern Virginia.  While there we also got to spend time with our good friends, the Chickos and on Tuesday, we drove to Baltimore to visit my sister Robin and her family.  We all got to see our niece Tess and her school basketball team win an exciting game.

Then it was off to Hawaii!  Terry and I stayed at the Hale Koa, an Armed Forces Resort located right on Waikiki Beach while our son and his family (Chris, Marissa and little Charlotte) stayed with Marissa’s parents at their home on the eastern shore of Oahu. Besides getting to spend some quality time with family, the principal purpose of the trip to Hawaii was to run the Honolulu Marathon with Chris, Marissa and Eric, who is a coworker of Chris and a close friend.  Here is pretty little Sha-Sha in here new dress!

So, on Sunday, Dec. 9^th, the four of us, along with about 25,000 of our closest friends got together at 0500 on the streets of Honolulu for a restful and relaxing 26.2 mile run!  It was still dark at the beginning of the race which made the fireworks display awesome!  Here is a bad photo of us just before the start.

What makes the Honolulu Marathon so much fun is that they don’t have a registration limit and you can actually walk the entire distance before they close the course.  So, no one was in a hurry but we were all determined to finish!  We made the obligatory stop at the statue of King Kamehameha on Waikiki Beach to have this photo taken.

At one potty break at about mile 16, a woman, who was in the long porta-john line,  passed out and Chris went to render aid while Eric ran for the nearest ambulance where paramedics decided that they would finish their sandwiches before coming over to help the woman.  That is where Chris and I posed for this shot.

About six and a half hours after we started, all four of us crossed the finish line together.  It was an awesome experience and the first marathon for Chris, Marissa and Eric.  I am really proud of their accomplishment.

After a few more celebratory Mai Tais and some great meals in local restaurants, it was time for Terry and me to return to Manchester.

I spent a few more relaxing days at home with Terry then it was time to get back on that plane.  It was very difficult to leave Terry and home in order to come back here to KAF.  Nevertheless, I made it back safely and was met by a small mountain of work including over 1100 emails!

Until next week, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

Countdown to R&R!

Okay, so I didn't post anything on Friday!  I could hear every complaining from here.  I guess I'll try to make up for it by posting now.  I only have about 40 hours before I am wheels-up and on my way home for a three-week break.  The trip home will be long, about 35 hours in all.  I have a 3-hour flight from here to Dubai, a 9-hour lay-over in Dubai, then a 14-hour flight to Washington DC.  I have a six-hour layover in Washington where I hope to link-up with Corey and go eat some breakfast.  Then finally, I have the 90 minute flight from Washington to Manchester.

Our Thankgiving celebration here at KAF was unspectacular.  About 20 of us piled into 3 diferent vehicles and drove to a DFAC on the other side of the airfield.  After waiting in a 30 minute line, in the rain, we made it into the DFAC to enjoy our turkey dinner with all of the fixings. Here is a poorly-cropped shot of me with a mouthful of food near an authentic-looking turkey decoration hanging from the ceiling.

I tried to Skpye with Corey on Thanksgiving Day.  He was celebrating Thanksgiving at Mom & Dad's house in GA.  Unfortunately, I didn't get the timing right.  I wanted to amaze them with our ability to communicate with video and sound over Corey's cell phone from thousands of miles away.  Well, Corey had a weak cellular signal from their house but we finally made it work for a few minutes on the day after Thanksgiving.  That was all worthwhile!  Chris actually tried using his cell phone to Skype with me first.  He called me from his police car one Sunday morning and it worked pretty well, both audio and video!  Modern technology is amazing.  In some respects we are living with technology that most folks back in the 60s and 70s thought of as science fiction.

I am talking with Terry almost every day through Skype.  We've discovered that the best time for both of us is 7:00 am here in Afghanistan while it is 9:30 pm the night before on the east coast of the U.S.  I just have to schedule the calls so that they aren't interupted by any alarms going off!  And, it would be nice if the fighter jets delayed their take-offs until after I am done.  The noise tends to interfere with our chat!

Finally, here is a picture of my colleague Kevin and the young fellow we call John, who is from Sri Lanka.  The company John works for has the cleaning and maintenance contract for the buildings on our compound.  John wanted me to take this picture so he could send it to his family back home and show them who he worked for.  He is a great guy and, contrary to the photo, is always smiling and humming a song.

Okay, get ready for a three-week lapse in posts to this blog.  When I return, I may be able to post some more pictures of my time with family!