Groundhog Day

Yes, I have reached that point in the deployment, where every day feels like groundhog day. Get up, go to work, stuff happens. Problems are solved, go to chow. Do it again in the afternoon. Go back to the barracks, watch some Stargate, take a navy shower (whereby you turn the water off every time you apply soap), go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Actually, today has been going pretty well, which means that I’m waiting for the ball to drop. A few of days ago I dropped about half of my platoon, a bunch of lumber and materials, and a couple pieces of HE off at a small patrol base to work for a couple of weeks. Getting them out the door left me exhausted, and of course I didn’t drink enough water the day of (insert obligatory Gen Petraeus joke here), so I spent Wednesday trying to re-hydrate and feeling like crap while doing so.

I did get some good news the next day afternoon. My platoon has been so busy that I was running out of Marines to cover all of the projects we have going right now. For example, yesterday after evening chow (which I ate around 1945) I stopped by a work site to see how they were doing. They only had four Marines working on the project (they were waiting for two more to show up) and didn't have any power tools, so I stayed and helped them out for a while. So the good news is that we’re getting reinforcements from the rest of the company. Now I’ll actually have Marines around to take care of all the little tasks that come up during the day.

Another bright spot to the past few days has been the world cup games going on. They start 1830 our time, which means for a couple nights this week I’ve sat down to chow right around the 60-70 minute mark, with the game running on the flat screens in the chow hall. There have been a lot of TCNs watching the games lately as well; last night I sat next to two gentlemen waiting for the Uruguay game to show at 2330. So it’s a fun atmosphere in the chow hall in the evening. Wednesday’s game was Spain vs. Switzerland and a well-played, exciting game to watch.

I want to thank everyone that has been sending me letters and e-mails. Letters especially put a huge smile on my face, and I try to answer them when I can. I will also try to post more, but when days start at 0600 and go to 2130, it's difficult to find the time.