Sandstorms

August 19 Update: Forgive me for my lack of posting. Due to being busy at work and the aforementioned lack of internet, I haven't posted in a good while. Because we now have the internet in the tent, hopefully such a gaps are a thing of the past.

-DM

Finally, we’ve made it to August, which means getting through that first calendar month on deployment. I’ve been deployed longer then a month, but getting to August I guess is a ceremonial victory. Next time we’ll be in the July’s neighborhood it’ll be time for me to go home. If ever someone tried to turn an entire calendar year into something that could only be called “the micro year”, it was someone on deployment. Each day, each week and each month can be a victory in itself when thinking about eventually coming home.

To kick off August we had our first semi-sandstorm. I say semi because while there were high winds and blinding sand flying around everywhere, it wasn’t the kind of real storm that you hear about that ends up blocking out the sun or something. I guess it would have been more appropriate to call it a dust storm, but it was sand getting airborne mostly, so for our purposes here we’ll stick with sandstorm. I had the fortune of being caught outside when it came through. In walking from lunch back to work, I apparently appeared to have aged 20 years as my hair was turned grey by all the sand. It’s an amazing thing a sandstorm; you close your mouth but you still can feel the sand crunching in between your teeth and you close your eyes but still some finds it’s way in. It’s absolutely intolerable. It’s situations like that where I wonder how the Taliban actually believes we’re here to conquer Muslim lands for ourselves. Have they ever seen the United States? The few places like this in the US are either used for weapons testing, ground speed tests, or as a tourist attraction when people want to go down to Death Valley and see what real heat is. With it’s tropical locales, vast forests, snowy mountain peaks, quiet countryside’s and urban jungles there is no place more beautiful than the United States. Don’t believe me? Spend some time out here.

I am very happy to report I have not had another encounter with the dreaded camel spider since my last reporting. It’s an event too terrifying to temp fate with so I’m going to leave it at that. We’ve taken some real steps to finally solve the internet issue in our humble living spaces. We should be seeing some results in a week or two. I’m really pretty ready to get back to school, plus it’ll obviously be significantly easier to stay in touch with home and post a little more here. You’ll probably notice the dates are growing further in between one another and that’s only because of a significant increase in work, not a lack of interest. Accessible high-speed internet will also allow me to follow the upcoming hockey season, baseball playoffs and football season. It’s the little things in life out here.

Until next time,

-DM