A few of you have likely noticed my lack of posts over the past week. Sorry. No excuses. But as I said to my dear friend, the Buffalo Betty, it's hard to just whip up masterpieces. Unfortunately, not all missions come with a message. Every day, I try to pull something out of this experience called life (in a combat zone). That doesn't always happen. Some days are just exercises in frustration. That being said, I'm not going to use this blog as a platform to air out my frustrations. The bottom line, however, is that, some days, absolutely nothing happens. (And yes, I'm aware of the absurd amount of commas used in that previous sentence. It works.) Today was one of those days. Our battery uses an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to do reconnaissance work around some of the...er...less friendly areas around our FOB. This provides us with a great deal of intelligence in areas that we don't want personnel on the ground. However, if this little bird goes down, somebody has to be on call to go get the blasted thing. Today, our platoon served as the quick reaction force (QRF) for the recovery. All this means is that our trucks are ready to roll out, and we're on standby in our rooms (about as close to a day off as it gets). Since we've been here, we have not had a Raven go down "outside the wire." Today was no different. But had it gone down, believe me, we were ready.

Alright, peeps...that's what goes on most days. If that will satiate your appetite for what goes on in my life on the day to day, I will write every day about my life in general, interspersed with thoughts, ideas, etc... Also, I fixed this so that anyone and everyone can now leave their comments, suggestions, questions, etc... Please do. I will do my best to respond as quickly and as fully I am able.

As a sidenote: It is selfish of me, the writer, to withold from you, the reader, what is going on in my life. For those of you whom I do not regularly speak to, this may be the only connection you have to me. If that is the case, I apologize. I will do better.


In an effort to shake this whole thing up a bit, I'm going to start a weekly...thing. Think of every Sunday as a press conference. You ask questions, I will answer them no later than the following Wednesday. Obviously, if it deals with anything related to Operational Security (OpSec) I won't answer it. Don't let that stop you from asking, though. I will at least tell you why I won't answer it. Also, don't be shy about telling people back home about this old thing. I love being able to keep people back home in the loop about what's going on in this little corner of the world. Unfortunately, what is reported on news networks is often bad, and I'd like to at least let people know what is going on here from the perspective of a soldier on the ground.

That is all.

-j