12 May 2007

So it begins 5/12/07

So it begins 5/12/07

Yesterday I put in my first 15 hour day of work. Tons o'Fun! It wouldn't have been bad if I was busy the entire time but as usual, it turned out to be a lot of waiting for other people to get their stuff done with a mad dash at the end of the day to compile it all. Believe me, I'd much rather be busy than bored, but it's frustrating to see weaknesses in organizational skills of the people I work with. Seriously, how long have you been a professional and still don't know how to operate your computer?

We did have a little excitement today in the "office". Besides the standard power outages and fending off the large shipment of girl scout cookies from entering our mouths, we had a mortar attack. Now, talking about this has me going down a road that I don't frequent. Sure I usually write about trivial things like clean workout rooms and Baskin Robbins ice cream, but the truth of the matter is that we have IED attacks, suicide bombings, small arms fire and mortar attacks every day. Those are just the facts of being in a war zone. I don't always write about the mortars that land near here because frankly our insurgent friends are pretty bad shots and they tend to hit a lot of nothing. Besides, I'm not one to highlight the bad events because it is unnecessary to make folks back home worry, and we all have enough to worry about as it is. This was just the first time that the rounds got close enough to knock things off tables and have us scramble for our body armor and helmets. For most of the folks in the shop, they simply put their gear on and went back to their computer terminals and continued doing what they were doing, almost like a scene out of M*A*S*H. A few newbies freaked a little, but nobody was hurt. The whole incident was over in about 3 minutes and we were soon back to work like normal. As far as excitement goes, I would have rather had a water balloon fight or an impromptu smashing of a piñata instead of the shelling of our base, but the bad guys don't always bring fun things to the party (which is why we don't invite them for sleep-overs).

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Interesting fact of the day: Today is Mother's Day, or at least it's almost Mother's Day back in the states. Don't forget to call the lady who raised you to be the person you are today and tell her that you appreciate all the important life lessons she taught you, like donning clean underwear before you leave the house and washing behind your ears. Myself, I have quite possibly the greatest mom in the world, and if you doubt me, I'll defend her honor by challenging you to an Indian Leg Wrestling contest (you'll have to come to Iraq though as my boss won't let me leave just yet). Seriously though, tell your mom that you love her today. You'll both appreciate it.

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