A 4th of July with no BBQ!

Happy 4th of July! Hard to believe it is already that time again. As it currently stands, we get to eat MRE’s for our holiday dinner. This is because we are running low on real food for the cook to make. Unfortunately, we have plenty of MRE’s, so we can’t claim that our resupply is an emergency. Well, it has been a few days since I updated my blog, and that is for a few reasons. One is that the internet has been more crowded than normal, so I didn’t have enough time to type an entry. Another is that I have been using my internet time to research on line degree possibilities. I am planning on trying to get my Associate of Arts degree from DLI before the end of this deployment. But the main reason is that I haven’t had much to type. Things are still going well. The new unit that is taking over the Zerok COP finally arrived. They have been in country for several months, so they have experience and know what they are doing, which is good. It’ll be sad to see the Scout platoon leave, just because they have been good to work with. It was a good week for us, overall. One thing I find hard to believe is that June is over. Over 4 months of this deployment are already gone. Makes you wonder where the time goes. One nice thing about July is that I will be heading home for leave at the end of it! I can’t wait. It’ll be nice to have a Rafael’s burrito and Big Jose, maybe a round or two of golf, and of course camping and Lagoon. But most of all it’ll be nice to spend time with the family and get some time off. I haven’t had a day off since around May 15th or so. It’s not strenuous work (except for that week on top of the mountain), but working 7 days a week for a couple months isn’t all that much fun. We’re still waiting for our refit time back in Tillman. “They” are having a hard time getting us air transportation to move us from here to there. Also, they are trying to move things around so that at least some of my team will be here to provide support. Right now it is looking like our refit might not happen, because we aren’t willing to leave just one person at a COP to conduct operations while the other goes back for a refit. Leaving one guy would set a bad precedence for future operations, and we don’t want them to try and force a 1 man “team” to conduct operations on a mountain top, or anything like that. So we’ll just have to see what happens. Maybe they’ll find a way to make it happen, but I don’t think so. Either way, I’ll be going on leave in a few weeks, so I don’t really “need” a refit. Presnell is heading back to Bagram for good around the 15th, so he doesn’t either. You have to love the Army. On the sports front, it was nice to see that preseason polls have BYU in the top 15. This could be an awesome season, too bad I’ll have to miss it. I won’t even get to watch the games, as I haven’t seen a TV in almost 2 months. Crazy. Well, I’ll leave you on that thought.