Celestial Bodies

Well apparently I will never be an author. I think it would take me my entire life to write a novel. Since I am officially half-way there, I thought it would be a good time for an update.

Occasionally here there are moments that I feel further away from home than I ever have been (which geographically, I am, but that’s not the point). I was walking the other day during my shift and the moon above was brighter than I think I have ever seen it. Like every other night, I said “hi moon” to it like my kids have done since they could speak. When the sun and moon are near the horizon though, they appear very ominous. I witnessed a “moonrise” some time back, which I don’t think I have ever done before, in which a deep orange moon that looked larger than a planet slowly rose above the desert. It was awe-inspiring. And the sun, when it goes below about an hour before sunset, gets a huge halo that virtually blocks any view of the sun and sets the entire sky on fire. I think it might be the dust in the air, I’m not sure. But I have seen sunsets all over the world and nothing looks quite like this.

Over the past month or so a lot has happened to me here. I hurt my leg, which kind of nixed any running that I was doing. This, in turn, took a toll on lifting weights and finally working out altogether stopped. Combined with a constant sleepiness and a new addiction to watching TV Series on DVD, this doesn’t bode well for the 190 pound stud that I wanted to be when I got home. The leg appears to be healthy now so hopefully I can garner up enough motivation top get back in there in the next few days. My job changed dramatically, too—first the night shift reports cake-walk that I had was discovered and I was threatened with a move to day-shift which would take me away from the relatively close friends I’ve developed over the past 2 months. So I buckled down and turned it into a “real job” in which I actually was involved in the day-to-day operations in the war. Though it was significantly more work, I was really digging it because I was doing a more important thing than just cutting and pasting numbers for a few hours a day. Unfortunately, what normally happens to me when I do this happened—I was moved anyway since I was doing a good job. So now I am where I was trying to avoid going—day shift. Its definitely a promotion; I’m 2^nd in command of the entire CAOC floor, working for the Director of Combat Operations. I get to brief the generals every day (which can be a bit unsettling), and instead of making slideshows now I edit and brief them. The job should only last for roughly a month, when the “real” deputy DCO comes back from his R&R in the States.

On the family side quite a bit has been happening as well. I got to hear Odie’s heartbeat over the telephone. The doctor thought that Emily was going to be having twins (which I was really excited about) but that proved to be false. We did, however, find out that we are having a boy—two days before my sister Katie found out that she was having a boy as well. I feel bad for Sarah, who out of 5 siblings and cousins only has one girl to play with, but she got over the initial disappointment relatively quickly. My parents have finally completed their move to St. Louis and seem to be doing well, with my Dad firmly set in his new job. The kids have started playing soccer again and Sarah has become a full-fledged brownie with the girl scouts. All in all, with the exception that Emily seriously needs a vacation, things seem to be going well on the home front.

As for me, I am ready to get out of here. I still have absolutely no room to complain, as the set-up here is very nice in comparison to anywhere else I could be deployed to. Time was going by very rapidly until around 1 November, when I first realized that we were almost half-way there. For some reason since then things have come to a sudden halt and I feel like time is dragging slowly by. I just miss my kids very much, that’s all.

I know I’ve said this before but I’ll try to make more regular updates. I’m not sure if anyone is even reading this but the point is for Odie to have an idea of what I was doing while he was in his Mom’s belly. Emotionally I’ve seen a lot here as to what we’re doing uprange and it makes me sad that there’s a war going on. I could get into some big political discussions about it but I’ll save that for another time.

military, family