We just had our second casualty today. The first was Staff Sgt. Dustin Peters who was killed in Mosul when a IED stuck his convoy. We just received the first from our truck company, and it happened back in the states. I can’t remember his name, but on his first day back, he committed suicide. I feel bad for not remembering, but it bothers me when life has to be taken for such frivolous reasons. So yea, may he rest in peace.

So yea, I found my gas mask and stuff… in my old tent… where I left it… Stupid sun is cooking my brain. Bleh.
Anyways, we got attacked when I was supposed to go to guard duty, so I ended up sitting in my tent reading for an hour while they did their thing. (The reason it took so long was they found where the mortars were coming from and there was still one that had yet to go off… Well, the helicopter ran out of ammo and had to come back to base and get some more before destroying it.. Silly warrant officers) So, my shift was a hour shorter than normal. That was good since the kids weren’t there to pass the time. Those three hours seemed longer than any other shift I had this week.
After guard duty, I decided I needed to remedy myself of my lack of electricity situation. So, to I went to one of our old tents, and removed one of the plugs and brought it to my tent. Using the power to the air conditioner unit that’s just down the way from me, I connected my outlet to their wire… (This required turning off the breaker, opening the outlet and actually connecting the wires together…) After getting all the jeers about how I was going to blow up the tent, kill everyone and win the way for the insurgents, I finished and had a working 220v outlet. My fan now actually blows air like it should! Rawk! Anyways, suddenly, I’m the electrician for the tents… I had to go fix one other guys outlet and rewire some guys AC unit so it would stay turned on. Oh well. I’m also volunteering to teach computer programming in my spare time, if they don’t mind the fact that I might be gone half the time. *shrugs*
Oh yea, my job… I start doing convoys next week. I’m hoping my digital camera hasn’t completely died on me (the lcd display on it doesn’t work anymore, but it does work as a webcam still…) so hopefully I’ll be getting some really cool pictures of Iraq. We’ll see. (Otherwise I’ll have to use my 35mm camera, and that means you won’t get to see them for a long while.)
Anyways, I’m going to take off. Take care all!
StriderA Out.

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ August 20, 2004 4:19 am