Dogs can grow beards all over

Finally found the time and resources to do an actual post here and I actually am not entirely sure what I'm going to write about. I could write about Afghanistan but at this point it seems kind of redundant, there really isn't much new I can say here. I went out on my first mission last night and it was uneventful to say the least. Not that I'm complaining; I'd rather be bored and have everyone come back home in one piece. We went out and set up a traffic control point and searched civilian vehicles that came down our road. I really can't go into too much detail about our mission but if you watch the news I'm sure you can gather who/what we're looking for out here.

The other day I had to exchange my SIM card on my hadji phone out here for some reason or another and the Afghani running the store thought it would be a good idea to either re-sell my old SIM or use it himself to make calls to the numbers that were still in my phone book. A couple nights ago my mom got a call from that number and recognized it as mine but there was an Afghani on the other end of the line instead of me. He ended up calling her several times and after a bit my mom began to worry that I had been captured by the Taliban. Long story short, she ended up getting a hold of me and telling me about the phone calls. Needless to say, I was pissed off to no end. Something you need to know about me: I'm really easy to anger and that day was no exception. My supervisor grabbed me as I was heading out the door with a loaded weapon and explained to me that I needed to take the issue to the 1st sergeant and our intel officer and do things the right way.

The situation is handled now but I'm still angry about it. My family worries enough about me without some random Afghani making calls to them and scaring them half to death.

Other than that day-to-day life is pretty mundane. I've made a game out of pissing off army NCO's because they tend to get their panties in a bunch over really stupid stuff. I got cussed out by one the other day for doing my job. I know sometimes I can rub people the wrong way and come off sarcastic or maybe just "less than sincere" but this was NOT one of those times (until he pissed me off). The guys honestly said to me: "Do you know who the f- I am?" like he was some kind of badass. The guy was an army staff sergeant, the equivalent of a rat turd compared to who I'm used to working with. I honestly did everything I could to make him understand that I was just trying to do my job but he apparently didn't like my attitude when he told me only an S6 (Comm guy) could work on a military computer and I told him I was an S6. Ok so I might have sneered and looked at him like he was retarded but honestly, when you see a dorky looking guy like me carrying around a notebook that says CLASSIFIED on it while working with computers, wouldn't you assume that he's the tech guy? Aparently he thought that I shouldn't be in his area and sent me back to "whoever [I] report to."

So I calmly informed him that I would be sending someone of higher rank over to take care of his problem and to have a nice day. Well... actually I think I might have muttered something to the effect of 'go f- yourself' under my breath instead of 'have a nice day' but it's a little hazy and I'm not sure of all the details.

I guess my supervisor went over there and kindly informed the army staff sergeant that I was S6 and could go anywhere I damn-well pleased and if he got in the way of my work again that he wasn't getting his comms set up and would have to tell his commander why he couldn't do any of his work. See, that's how a supervisor takes care of his airmen. Granted I was also informed that I needed to keep my attitude in check, even when dealing with incompetants and morons but that's ok. I can take a lecture when I deserve one and I did.

Some old posts

This is some stuff I wrote while I didn't have internet connection. It's not too out of date so I'll throw it up here and try to do a fresh one tomorrow.

Par for the course
30 June 2009 @ 16:18 Kabul local

So, first impression of Afghanistan: Dusty. We landed in the middle of a mild sand storm and I’m still trying to fish the grit out of my eyes. From what I could tell there are some mountains not too far off. I know they’re not too far off because I could see their silhouette in the dust storm. Everything here is brown by the way, which is really depressing. God could have made the desert an interesting color like orange or blue or yellow. This isn’t even an attractive shade of brown. It’s like you ate a cheeseburger, threw it up on tan carpet, and then let it sit there for two months and set. Not fun.

We got off the plane and immediately to a briefing that was one of the biggest wastes of time in my life. I’m glad our Army counterparts were still in Manass because if they had come on the same flight as us and had the same briefing we would have never heard the end of it. The air force guy that gave the briefing had a stutter or speech impediment of some kind and took about 15 minutes to get through a one-page brief. After that we off-loaded our bags and caught a bus over to our tents, which took about an hour. Traffic here on Bagram is a little bit like Main Street in Calcutta during a soccer riot. I’m pretty sure we ran over 3 people just trying to get out of the parking lot.

So now we play the waiting game once again. We’re clear across base from anything relevant and our chain of command has no idea what’s going on when. We’re supposed to be told where we need to be when in about an hour and a half but I doubt that that is even going to happen. It’ll probably just be our commander saying “Stand fast, we still have no idea what’s going on. Be patient with the system here and embrace the suck.” I’d be surprised if it wasn’t par for the course.

July 5, 2009
Finally made it to Gardez. Our commander put us on a plane to Salerno, a FOB on the Pakistan border to try and get a flight to Gardez on space available. It took us 5 days to make it here but we did it. Over the course of that time we were rocketed twice which was an experience. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, but they did mess up one of the buildings on the FOB.

Gardez is pretty cool. It’s small and there’s pretty much nothing here but the scenery is gorgeous. Maybe it’s because I have a place to lay my head for the first time in over a week and my own personal room for the first time in 3 months but I think I might actually like it here. I’ll probably change my tone after living here cut off from the civilized world for a couple of months but right now I’m not too disappointed. I’ll have some cool pictures to upload to my facebook soon so you all can see where I’m living and what it looks like.

But I’ve been awake for over 36 hours straight right now and I can feel my eyelids beginning to droop so I’m going to crash for the night, that is until somebody feels like they need to come wake me up for some reason or another.