Merry Christmas

Well I was hoping to spend Christmas some where else than Iraq but it just didnt happen. Hope everyone has a great holiday and eats plenty of good food. Theres no plans for myself here really. Its really boring. We are gonna go try to catch the Bears game tonight it starts a 1am here. See you all soon.

Conex Packed

We had our customs inspection this morning. It went pretty quick. I packed half of things up to go home but probably wont see them for a year. Now i just have what I need to get by with until we get out of here. Our replacements made it here a few days ago. That made it feel even a little closer to coming home.

Happy Holidays From the Ballard Cats

Look how thrilled Kirby and Otis are to be wearing their reindeer antlers. 

4 Weeks Left In Iraq

I just realized its been almost a month since I updated. Nothing new has really happened though. Just another month down. We are 4 weeks out now from leaving this place. our replacements are scheduled to arrive in under 2 weeks. That will feel nice once they arrive. We will be packing up a lot of our things in 2 weeks. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. The food was a bit better than I expected it to be. CBS was here asking us what the 10 best things about being in Iraq for Thanksgiving. They asked me right before i got my food but couldn't think of anything good or funny to say. There really isnt anything good about spending the Holidays here except for the weather.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

I really do love mullets. 

I Can’t Believe I Even Had To Write This

I just wanted to put this out real quick. To 99% of the people who read my blog this doesn’t concern you. This is to the other 1% who probably don’t read it but still leave comments. If you’re going to leave a comment have a point, and don’t leave comments trying to get me to buy life insurance. Your wasting my time and yours and every one else’s who reads the comments. This blog is for me to talk about whats going on in Iraq and what I have to deal with here. I don’t even write as much as I want to because I don’t have time. Stop wasting more of my time to delete your stupid comments. To that 99% I was saying this doesn’t concern thank you for not wasting my time leaving stupid comments. I appreciate your support.

Constitution Vote

Yesterday was the day for voting on the constitution. Things are calm so far. There have been talks of civil war to break out because of the constitution. I haven’t heard any other news regarding the situation yet. Other than that things are still going good here. Hopefully our replacements will be here in a month. Once they arrive we will start training them to do our jobs. It feels real good to know we are coming home soon. I’ll be happy enough when I actually get to see that US soil again.

OL'ROY Dog Snacks

I got McDaniel to eat a dog treat today.

New Mission?

Not that things aren’t busy enough for us, we just picked up another mission. Right now we have our primary mission to do which we are running missions everyday. On top of that we have FOB duties with right now is just chow hall duty and we supply two teams for QRF. Once we start this new mission we will have to borrow a few teams from other platoons here. And the days the other platoons are running the new mission we will have to give up some of our guys to help them. We are already lucky to see a day off, this just makes those days off even more out of reach. So hopefully the mission will get cancelled from us having to do it. And technically if you ask anyone in the military they will probably say there are no days off in the military. If you look at the pay we get and figure the dollar amount per hour, for the hours we work, we don’t make jack.

On a different note, my light bulb in my lamp just exploded on me the other day. Glass landed all over my things. And if I was sitting in my chair glass would have landed on me along with the glowing orange piece that fell out. Things are going just fine other than taking on the new mission. The three month mark is here I think. Can’t wait to get out of here.

Temporary Job

I started my QRF(quick reaction force) shifts a few days ago. QRF is if our platoons get attacked when they are out doing our missions, they call us and we go out to protect them and eliminate the threat. Our shifts go for a week and last 12 hours. We are on 3pm to 3am. The QRF has yet to be used since we have been here. Other than QRF we have still been very busy running missions. We have been a few new places in the past few weeks we haven’t been before. Leaves are almost all finished, just a few more of our guys need to go still. We are right around the 3 month mark, and I really cant wait to get out of here. The bonuses have gone up a little more for resigning. 3 year is now $10,000 and 6 year is at $20,000. Before we leave here it will probably be $15,000 for 3 and $30,000 for 6. Its awfully tempting but I’m still going to have to pass. The crap that I have seen and what I have gone through here is just not worth it to me.

Busy Month

I’ve been pretty bust the past month and haven’t had a lot of time to update. There hasn’t really been a lot of new news to report on. Just the same old mission stuff. Just wanted to say Im doing ok and looking forward to getting out of here in less than 4 months. Everyone else here is doing good also. I will try to have more updates soon.

Just Another Day In Iraq

I have been trying to come up with something good to write about the past few days. I came up with a few things just now. The newest thing to happen is another dumb rule that will hopefully get straightened out quickly. I think it’s up there with the dumbest rules I have heard so far. Basically they want to take weapons away from soldiers that didn’t qualify (by qualify I mean fire the weapon at the range and hit the required amount of targets) with them before we left to come over here. They have carried them for the past 6 months and fired them at the range in Kuwait and Iraq. We have a few guys who were gone the day we went to the 9mm pistol range, because they were at a combat lifesavers course, training on saving lives practicing sticking people with needles while they also get stuck with needles. So they want to take their pistols from them. They will still have their M16 or their M249 but when we are here on our fob (forward operating base) do they want to carry the big weapon around with them or a pistol. The chance of us actually using the 9mm is pretty slim, but you never know when we might need it to save our own life or some one else’s. Anyway on a different note I was in the gym a few days ago when out of no where this little kitten came charging through the gym. Normally it wouldn’t have been that funny but for some reason it was, he was just a little guy. But from me laughing so hard when other people jumped at first because they thought it was a rat, I almost dropped the weights on myself. Well that’s all I got for now really. Everyone here is doing really good, trying to stay cool as much as we can. Just one last thought, why take away a soldiers 9mm away because he didnt qualify with it but knows how to use the weapon, but let the guy who shot an Iraqi in the foot with his M16 keep it? There was a safety on a M16 last time I checked. Hmmm, sounds kind of stupid to me!