Happy New Year

Hope you enjoyed my last post (rant), or at least weren’t scared away by it.  Needed to get that out of my system. 

It is 2011 and this calls for celebration.  Alas, celebration has been banned by the MST (Morale Suppression Team) so instead I’m posting this blog…post.  Post-posting this post I will post a post-post post, just so I can say I’ve done it. 

My donut says I have only some 10 weeks left in this paradise (which as you can see is putting strains on my sanity), depending on which end date I use for calculation. 

 

Now that New Year’s is behind us, the milestones will (hopefully) start to come quickly:

• Post office day, when we send home (home!) large boxes of assorted accumulated arbitrary crap at bulk rates
• WTB – warrior transition brief – when we are reminded not to go nuts on returning home and are briefed on such subjects as “transitional intimacy” (first base, second base…)
• The day my replacement gets here
• The day after that day, when I drop my pack so violently it registers on the Richter scale Correction: I would never drop my pack
• And of course the day I leave Afghanistan, the day I leave theater, the day I land in Miramar, the day I enjoy my first long, scalding hot, damn-the-water-bill, uninterrupted shower since R&R.
• The day I overdose on all of House, Season 7 in one glorious, gluttonous binge.

I owe you pictures of my promotion to 1stLt, a feat only achieved by Marine 2ndLts who have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt their ability to spell their own names (minimum 75% accuracy required).  Figuring I’d never get the chance again, I had myself sworn in and pinned on by the MAW CG (commanding general), since I’m a member of his staff.   

 I, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath...uh, what sir?

 Reading the warrant

 BGen O and Lt M pinning me on

Lastly, I saw this video (link fixed) this morning, put out by our public affairs office.  Nice little wrap-up of the year in Helmand.  I remember all these milestones and was present at several of the shots - you can see me in one, saluting the colors. 

  

1stLt - no more excuses