Same Old, Same Old

Not a whole lot new going on, it is just the same old same old. I have been getting my areas up to speed more and more every day. A lot of the areas I got were from A.S. who has no idea what he is doing, so it takes a lot to get the situated.

My garden seems to be working well, the self watering things is pretty effective. It soaks up about 2 bottles of water total during the day, and 2 at night. I have some things growing; I hope they flower at some point. I will take pictures for my next blog, they are not very impressive yet.

Two days ago I had to escort a representative from the majors cell and the Air Force Environmental Manager who is now going to call the shots on what is correct and isn’t. The guy working for the Air Force is too high up on his horse and is giving us a hard time about little stuff, but isn’t paying attention to important things. He honestly has never had a job like this and has no idea what he is doing. He is trying to make a “master checklist” for all of Joint Base Balad so that we can all be on the same sheet of music. However that will be hard to implement considering the military has hidden lakes of oil and other petroleum in the ground that they use. Being KBR we can do anything about it, I hope this Air Force guy does something about it. The Army and Air Force do not have to follow the rule we do, and I wish we had some say just for the environments sake.

The gentleman from the Air Force “B” is a dork too. I may be as geeky as the next guy but this dude is over the top. He is also kind of a weirdo. He picks up rocks from the ground and collects them to polish and send home. Being a geology student I can say these rocks are not special and, in my opinion, are ugly as hell. I made the mistake of telling him “O, I am a geology student, I study rocks and minerals.” For the rest of the day he kept picking up rocks and saying, “What’s this rock….. and this one……is this quartz?” It was a bit annoying, but I guess I walked myself into it.

While taking these guys to an area where my Iraqi friends work, my Iraqi friends didn’t seem to realize at first that it was a bad idea to come up to me. “Andrew, Andrew.! How are you my friend, what do you need tod……..” I had to stop him with a “Get the fuck outta here” look. He caught on real quick after looking over my shoulder and took off. I told the Army and Air Force guy that they are helping me with my Arabic. Thank God a new a couple of words because there next question was, “What can you say?” The first thing I thought was “how do I say AWW SHIT.” If worse came to worse I could have just made some stuff up.

On a not so, get my ass in trouble, note; I awoke a week ago to discover clouds. Nice big, fluffy, sun blocking clouds. It is nice to have shade every once and a while. I caught myself starting at them at times like I had never seen clouds before. It has been 3 months since I have seen anything like them. Another cool thing is I had business cards made to give out in my areas and when I meet new points of contact. They are free at Vistaprint.com and turned out awesome. I use a business card holder Pearl gave me at my going away party. It is sweet to whip it out and say, “Here’s my card.” I’ll have to get some made when I go to find a job after school. Makes you seem pretty important.

Anyway, I can’t wait to get home, almost no time at all. I’ll be there the 26th of September, and leave on the 10th of October. I hope to eat at some nice restaurants, go to the beach and visit Pittsburgh, it will all be AWESOME.


Pictures:
The security guard holding the only picture he has of his family, he takes it with him everywhere. His name is Khem, and he is really cool, was excited to get his picture taken, I gave him a copy of it to send home. The extremes KBR goes though with safety, goggles, safety glasses, rubber gloves and a drip pan. Some odd trucks and the clouds I was talking about.