Counting days, feeling good

It's always a good part of the deployment when you can switch from counting down months or weeks to counting days.  Since "troop movements" are considered classified I can't share my exact count with you, but it wouldn't matter.  No plan survives first contact with Stratcom.  But my best guess is I’ll be back in CA by the first weekend of August - or so. 

So that has me feeling pretty good.  Also, in the last few months I seem to have overcome some kind of major writing hurdle or opened some floodgate I wasn't aware of, because I've been very prolific.  I've probably written (and rewritten and rewritten) over a dozen scenes for my book in the last month alone - and some of them are actually not terrible.  Also there's my CDS column and - not frequently enough, I know - this blog.

So on at least one of the promises I made myself, I'm making good progress.

The other, faithful (i.e. bored) readers will recall, was to set new standards for my fitness.  Well, I suffered a bit of a setback.  In mid-April I started having sharp pains in my neck.  I had to take a full month off from any resistance training before they (mostly) went away, and then after two days back in the gym they came back, a lot worse than before and running all down my right arm now.  Diagnosis (my own, with help from Dr. Dad): pinched nerve, probably C5 or C6 for those keeping score.  So basically I can't go to the gym.  This is incredibly frustrating.

I've tried to make up for it by hazing the crap out of myself with cardio, since that doesn't hurt and actually seems to help a little.  I'm up to running 50+ minutes every morning, working toward an hour.  For real runners it's not all that much, I know, but cut me some slack - I'm doing it in 90-100 degree temps.  Also I hate running.  But anyway, it's working.  We don't have a scale or anything here, but my cammie pants (“trousers” in the officially-sanctioned Marine Corps lexicon) tell me I've trimmed the ol’ waist line some.

So there you go.  More than you ever wanted to know about my personal fitness, but since I set out those goals publicly before I left, I figured I'd post a progress report.

Right now, I'm getting ready to go for my morning run once again.  It's 0507, a bit earlier than I usually wake up but when you're up, you're up.  Earlier is certainly better for a run: I noticed on my calendar (thank you, AH) that today is the first official day of summer.  Ha ha.  Ha.  Ha.  

The best part of being up at this hour, though, is "watching" the Yanks game while I hydrate (I know, I hate that word too but it’s terribly efficient).  The Internet is too slow here for video or even the radio broadcast (I would, I think, give up an entire paycheck to hear John Sterling call a live game right now) but I can more or less follow the play-by-play with MLB GameDay, where the Yanks have just tied up the score in pursuit of their 11th straight win.  Go Bombers!

In war news, things have been very busy of late, and going well for the good guys, all in all.  Needless to say, I’m talking about military stuff – the political side of things is its own story that each person can judge for him/her/itself.  Unfortunately even when things are going well – big picture – the price is high, and the moments of silence in the JOC become more frequent as the fighting season continues to heat up.  

If there is one thing that frustrates me the most about international affairs it is that the sacrifices we Americans make for other peoples – and I’m not just talking about the troops but the money too – seem to get taken for granted, like of course the U.S. will send troops and taxpayer dollars to every crisis or natural disaster on the planet.  The world would basically implode into boiling shit, not to be too blunt about it, if the U.S. overnight withdrew all its foreign aid, humanitarian assistance, security guarantees (explicit or implied), forward-deployed forces, contributions to the U.N. and the IMF and the WHO and various other NGOs and IGOs and non-profits and charities and good-will causes and so on, yet it seems everyone always has some complaint or demand or criticism that goes beyond what any other country – big or small, rich or poor, Western or non – is asked or expected to do.  Sometimes I just get fed up with that.  I’m not saying we don’t reap benefits from what we do and give, but we do and give far out of proportion to others and to what we get in return.  So I hope the Afghans, among others, remember for generations what the Americans – and the Brits and others but undeniably the Americans most of all – have sacrificed for them.  We shoved the human garbage known as the Taliban regime out the door in well under a year, but we stuck around for over a decade to do our best to leave something better in its place.  I hope they remember that.

Well that was unexpected.  Guess I had something to get off my chest.  Anyway the Internet has gone away – we’re not in Op Minimize but it does that quite often for mysterious and unknown reasons – so I’ll have to post this when it comes back.  Meanwhile, I’m all hydrated up, so it’s time for a run. 

See ya soon!

 "Yankees win.  Theeeeeeeeee Yankees...win!"