Shattered Faith

Here is my post that has been sitting on my computer as a draft for fucking ever:

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It’s one in the morning and I can’t sleep. My schedule has been royally screwed up ever since I came back. I took off today for Thanksgiving and I thought it would help, but alas it wasn’t meant to be. I slept in to around 7, went to the bathroom then passed out again until noon. I got some lunch, watched “Wanted” (mildly amusing) then fell asleep again until about 5:30. I watched “Get Smart” (not terrific but I enjoyed it overall) and I haven’t been able to sleep since. I have work in a few hours.. it’s going to be a shit day. I’m making some tea but I forgot my cup at work so I’m using an empty Frappuccino glass. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to be able to grab it without scalding myself. God damn you tea.

I changed the layout to the site pretty much right before I left home to return. I was writing a blog post but never got around to finishing it, so I’ll just start again. I had an excellent time at home. Unfortunately I was sick for quite a large chunk of it, but not enough to completely incapacitate me. Early on I was at a friends house who had a cat and I figured it was just my allergies.. but it never went away. I’m still coughing up some nasty shit now. Could have been the temperature change – who knows. I got to spend time with my family and friends which was fantastic. I went to the movies twice, the first time seeing “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”. The pacing was a little slow but the ending was quite the mind fuck. Excellent movie overall though, I recommend it. The other movie was “Role Models”. A comedy about Larpers (people who pretend to have epic fantasy battles all decked out in outfits and hitting each other with foam swords and such) with rather foul language. It was pretty good and shared some cast from Apatow comedies but nothing fantastic by any means. Now speaking of fantastic…

I went to the Hyundai dealership with my grandpa and test drove a Genesis. Holy shit. What an awesome car. I only saw a few on the lot and ended up driving a white V6 with a beige interior. Not my color choice at all but it didn’t look bad at all. The first thing I noticed getting in was that the seats were large and extremely comfortable. The leather felt great to me, so I don’t know what the V8’s “Premium” leather would be like. This damn thing had buttons and lights and gadgets all over the damn place. I hit the “start” button (awesome) and the steering wheel lowered itself then pushed itself out towards me (awesome). The screen inside the vehicle functions for the GPS, Music, Car Information and Backup Camera. It’s large and looks good and the whole system seemed to work out rather well. Dual climate control. Heated (AND COOLED!) driver seat. The passenger seat doesn’t have the cooling option. I’m not sure the justification for that, but whatever. I loooved it. Let’s just hope they can offer me some kind of deal when I go to buy it. I *AM* offering to purchase their most expensive vehicle while the economoy is shite, afterall.

My PS3’s disc drive stopped working shortly before leave so I had to send it into Sony to get it fixed ($140 :( ). It’s still at home now so I got an Xbox 360 to keep me company for the rest of my time here. I don’t know how I’m going to make room for all this crap when I get home. I’m thinking about getting an apartment when I get home depending on the amount of the housing allowance that the GI Bill gives me. It should cover rent, but then I wont have an income coming in to cover any other expenses. Unless I, like.. got a job. But I don’t think that’s an option right now.

Christmas is coming and December is winding down. All I need to do is make it through January and February until I get to come home again. So that’s my short term goal. I might have to stand outside for hours watching Iraqi dudes play with ply wood again on Christmas Day. What fun.. I can’t wait.

***

Armando and I just finished watching ‘Song of the South’ that I had floating around on my harddrive. It was Disney’s first live action film, although there is animation in it as well. Good old fashioned racism at its finest. What a gem. Now if they would only legitimately release this god damn movie in the US so I can add it to my collection.

Yesterday was my first day of escort duty. I had to stand around and watch about 20 or so Iraqi guys take down pallets of ply wood, re-stack them neatly and then put them back. I guess they’re just trying to make up jobs for these guys to do now. I wouldn’t care, but it was cold as balls and I had no where to sit. I think I’m scheduled to have it Christmas day as well, but I might just take off that day instead.

I have two drafts of posts sitting on my laptop that I never finished, so that’s why I haven’t updated since I’ve been on R&R and back. I’ll try to finish one of them up soon.

A major victory for America. Assface is officially going home. And Obama winning the election, too.

The other day Assface and some of his cohorts were in the shop talking about Football. A customer came in and felt that she had to wait and was treated rudely. She went to fill out a complaint and Assface was asked to fill out his statement. He wrote something to the effect of “This is bullshit, I’m demobing (*de mobilizing)”. He did it in anger apparently, but KBR took it seriouly and he cant reverse it. So he should be out of here in a couple days. I knew it was a matter of time. Hooray. We have another guy who is switching jobs, so this leaves a few slots open for my friends to come over. I’m sure they’re pretty comfortable with where they are by now though.

My mind is pretty much back home so I’ve just been going through the motions here. We got a new guy last week or so who I’ve been training on the radios. He seems nice enough but asks too many damn questions. No I don’t know what a demodulator and synthesizer do in a radio. If they’re broken switch them out. Damn.

8 days until I fly out.

(I posted this Oct 26th but made it a page instead of a post by accident. Woops)

The rainy season officially started yesteday. Thunder started booming out of nowhere and then it began to pour. It dropped the temperature significantly to the point where I could comfortably wear my hoodie all day. All was well.

Until I get up this morning. It was still raining on my way to the busses and our housing area has completely flooded. By the time I reached the bus I was soaked and cold and tired and miserable. I got to work to find the power was out and I couldn’t turn on the heater. Then I see that Assface has returned from R&R. Wonderful day so far.

The good thing is Brandon ran into Assface earlier and sent me an email. Apparently he got in a fight with some dude back in the states and could be facing felony assault charges and jail time. Hopefully this will go through, but I don’t know if they have any jurisdiction out here. I guess we’ll find out.

On the good side I read that Rock Band will be getting three Siouxsie and the Banshees songs at the end of October. Not that I have the game or equipment here to play it anyway, but that’s fucking amazing beyond all belief. I’m stoked. Now it’s time for me to get off the computer..

I leave here in 15 days to go home for my first R&R. This has me pretty psyched.

I’ve seen a couple people I know over here so far. About a month ago I was sitting our in the smoking area and right in fromy of my walks SFC Suazo. He was the guy who was in charge of me the whole time I was at Ft. Bliss. It was great to see him and we did some brief catching up because he had to leave. He came back a couple weeks later and we got to talk for a bit. He stays on another post so we didn’t get to spend too much time together. He was supposed to retire after this deployment but he told me he got picked up for First Sergeant, which is he accepts will be another 3 years. I told him it was worth it. I saw my old roomate from last time I was here sitting at a bus stop, but I was on a bus and didn’t get to speak to him. Then just the other day one of the guys who was with brigade last deployment walked in. We spoke a bit and I’m going to try to get him a job with KBR as well since we were both the same MOS while in the Army.

Work has been relatvely slow lately and it’s been making the days drag by pretty slowly. Although September and October seemed to go by wickedly fast. Here’s hoping the rest of the months do the same. I have enough money for my new car when I get out and my next check or the one following I’ll be able to pay off all my student loans. Everything after I’ll be saving up, although probably in my high yield savings account for now. My Roth IRA took a nosedive and I lost almost half of what I had in there. I’ve been looking into the new ‘Post 9/11′ GI Bill and I have to say I’m really liking what I see, and I’m pretty pissed I didn’t get this the whole time I was in school. The current GI Bill and the one I’ve been utilizing has been a flat fee every month while I’m enrolled full time, about $1300 a month. The new one will pay for your school as long as its equal or less than the most expensive state school. So it College A cost $7000 and University B cost $6800 it will cover the cost. In addition you get $1000 a year for books/supplies. The last part is they will pay you BAH (basic housing allowance) as an E5 (Sergeant) based on your zip code. Quite the difference. It will go into effect August 1st so I’ll get to utilize it for my last year and a half. I’m looking forward to finishing school with no major debt.

So McCain has been going on forever about how inexperienced Obama is, and now he chooses a VP canidate with less than two years experience as a Governer and a mayor of a small Alaskan town prior to that. Oook. I’m assuming his tactic was to attract bitter Hillary supporters. Now while Ms. Palin does indeed have a vagina (I’ve seen it) I’m not sure that a staunch conservative, pro-life, etc etc woman is going to do the trick. At least if McCain wins the election and dies we’ll have a pregnant princess with no experience to run our country. That’s kind of cool.

All of us night shifters are switching to day shift the day after tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it in the least. We’re going to have 9 people here with very little work to do. I don’t want to sit in a chair staring at these douchebags all day, that’s not my idea of a good time. The work climate has been pretty bad lately, with one of our guys getting HR complaints againsth im (he deserves it thought because he’s an assface). Our manager has been stalking around late at night trying to catch us sleeping or participating in other tomfoolery. CJ and I were in our connex last night around 8:30, and we weren’t actually sleeping. Our manager comes by and pulls on the door, but doesn’t knock. We keep it locked so he didn’t come in but we thought we heard something – I wasn’t sure though. About 30 seconds later we hear it again. I get up and unlock the door and see him standing there. Today we get into work and our foreman told us that our supervisor (so many fucking bosses) said that Mr. Manager came by last night and said “we took awfully long to answer the door and looked like we were sleeping”. Well no shit we took awhile to answer the door YOU DIDN’T FUCKING KNOCK. I think someone needs to work on his room/building entry protocol.

Joey sent me an article today informing me that Estelle Getty died at the age of 84. Poor Sophia. Had I been part of a Golden Girls dead pool I would have lost off the bat since she is the youngest out of the four. I would have put my money on Bea Arthur or Rue Macahalan. Oh well, at least we have three more. I’ll be sad to see them go. At least Betty White is immortal in my eyes and will never die.

I’ve been here for a few weeks and have gotten into a schedule of work/sleep/rinse/repeat. I wake up around 3:30 to shower and get ready for the day, leaving my room for the bus around 4:50 (this is PM since I’m on the night shift). I’m at work until 6:30 in the morning. By the time I eat breakfast and get back to my room it’s usually 7:30, which leaves me very little time if I want to get any sort of decent sleep before work again. I really want to fit the gym in there but I’m not sure where. I was thinking of waking up around 2 and doing it before work, but actually getting out of bed is a bitch for me. After work I’m usually tired (13 hour work days will do that to you). Problems, problems. I think I’ll try the former. I dont really have shit to do until my PS3 and TV get here anyway. I was at the PX last night and found a lone copy of Lucas on DVD. I snatched that shit up quick, went home after work and watched half of it before passing out. It was still glorious. What a great movie.

Haim > Feldman but Feldman’s movies > Haim’s. Make sense?

So this other dude named Mckinley got off R&R the other day. I kept getting told horror stories about how he flips out and has anger management issues. Turns out he just whines and bitches a lot. He already got into two altercations with Assface, but that was because Assface was being an assface. I tend to get along with people so I’m not having any issues with him. He still sucks though.

I get paid on Friday!

Ok. So for those of you who don’t know, but I think the majority of you do, I’m back in Iraq. Not with the military this time. My friend Brandon contacted me a little while ago and said he had been talking with a recruit for KBR who is interested in sending a team of 4 people over to Camp Anaconda to work on communications equipment. One year open contract at $108,000 for the year. Lots of money, chilling with friends, in a place that really isn’t all that bad? Check.

It started off well enough I suppose. I flew down to Houston for a week and a half of processing. Brandon met me at the airport and I checked into a Wyndham Hotel. I had a room to myself complete with a smoking couch and a seperate TV for my smoking couch. I called it my smoking TV. It wasn’t bad at all unless you count the $10 a day they charged for internet access. We sat through hours of meetings, paperwork, medical examinations and other bullshit during the rest of the first week. After that we were on holdover status and just waiting for our flights. Ok.

The first bump in our plans arose when I was put on a flight and Brandon wasn’t. Sure, no problem. He’ll meet up with me. I left on a Wednesday (I think) from Houston and flew to London. We had a couple hours to kill so I went to customs and immigration and got my passport stamed just so I could go outside and smoke. Plus more stamps on your passport are cool. I watched people drive on the wrong side of the road and speak funny while I enjoyed a coke that only cost me about $4 with the exchange rate. I went inside and sat down at a cafe to have a beer whilst British people around me ate traditional English breakfasts. I don’t know how people can talk shit about all the fattening stuff American’s eat. Have they ever seen a traditional English breakfast? An Egg, Sausage, Bacon, Hash Brown, Toast, Baked Beans and half a grilled tomato. Freaks. Baked Beans. You could order just baked beans on toast if you were so inclined. What the fuck.

The next flight was on Emirate airlines to Dubai. The flight was much more comfortable than the one to London. I managed to get the counter guy to give me a bulkhead seat so I could stretch my legs out. We had little personal televisions where you could watch whatever you want. They had a decent selection of movies and TV shows. I only ended up watching a little House and Seinfeld. I stayed a day and a half in Dubai at a place called the Hallmark hotel in the business district. We were tripled up in rooms and I was given a cot about half the size of me. Many people went out during the night to clubs and picked up prostitutes – I opted to stay in. One guy decided it would be a smart move to bring the girl back to the hotel. He got caught and last I heard was being sent home. Apparently there’s one of those guys almost every week. Dubai seemed like an interesting place and I wouldn’t mine checking it out sometime.

The next flight was from Dubai to Baghdad International Airport. We had a Russian staff on the flight and I don’t think they spoke English. Baghdad Intl Airport was a trip. The air wasn’t on so it was hot as balls, and it’s the first airport I’ve seen that you could smoke in. It was old and looked like it was last decorated in the 60’s/70’s. It had those old school flight information boards that flipped down, not any type of digital one. It still had flight information from Baghdad to Chicago, Barcelona and some other cities. I’m not sure the last time that airport was actually used for commercial flights. It was just odd.

I stayed at Camp Liberty in Baghdad for a night before getting a morning flight to Camp Anaconda. I was put in transient housing for two days until me and this douchebag I’m stuck with got claimed by our section. His name is Leblanc but Brandon and I gave him the moniker Assface Leblanc while in Houston. He’s loud, rude and doesn’t shut up. We have nothing in common and I don’t enjoy his presence. Originally he told us he was going to Talil but was redirected to Anaconda. Great.

and finally speaking of redirections. I finally get to access the Internet here and Brandon sent me an email saying that redirected him from Anaconda to Q-West. What the fuck. So now I’m stuck with Assface and wont see Brandon at all. Our plan fell to shit pretty quickly. I’ve been emailing him back and forth trying to figure out a way to get him transfered over here, but I don’t have high hopes at the moment. It sucks but wasn’t the fault of either of us. I’ll just have to make the best of it. If things suck that badly I can always quit and come home, so that’s nice. This is rather long so I’ll elaborate more next time.

I’m here in Iraq. Again.

I don’t have any time, so I’ll post properly once I get setup here.

So the semester has been over for a little while now. I ended up with one A, two A-s and one B for a semester GPA of 3.59. I could have done better, but I suppose I’m content getting Deans List again. The B was in computer programming. Fuck that class.

Alli and I went to see Prince Caspian the other day. I enjoyed the first movie and this one was good as well. Surprisingly violent for a PG movie (albeit sans blood). Some of the characters were a little flat, it had bad writing at parts, and I found the Jesus moments irksome again. I understand it’s not going to be a Lord of the Rings. The director isn’t all that fantastic, and the book was one of the weaker ones in the series. However, for what it is, I liked it. 4/5. I’m a whore for fantasy.

Continuing with movies Andrea and I went to see Baby Mama last night. The previews seemed funny enough but I went in with little to no expectations, which I think worked out in my favor. The cast was good (Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sigourney Weaver, Steve Martin). It had some funny moments but wasn’t mind blowing at all. Certainly not going to be the best comedy of the season. 3/5.

Earlier this week I drove up to Connecticut with my sister to visit my dad. We didn’t do a whole lot but I had an enjoyable time, I kind of liked just lazing about. On Tuesday we took a nice drive up into the Berkshire mountains in Massachusetts. It’s so unbelievably gorgeous up there, I love it. We stopped at my old summer camp and briefly walked around the grounds. We couldn’t go too far for fear of being kicked off, but it was nice to see the old bunks and such. We saw some nice lakes, drove through Stockbridge, and enjoyed milkshakes at a Mcdonalds. The drive to and from wasn’t bad, except for some odd lane switching needed to stay on certain interstates. I hauled ass the majority of the time and luckily didn’t run into any cops. Alli told me she was up in New England as well, but she was doing something for work. Lame.