Black Friday Sale in Iraq

It cracks me up, Will sent am email to me talking about the Black Friday Sale at the PX over there. You can't get much more of a captive audience than the guys living on the Bases, yet they still offer sales and promotions.

On a completely different topic, the deadline for holiday shipping is coming up. I believe they'd like the packages by Dec 4th, but the 11th is the Priority Flat Rate Shipping deadline. Typically packages sent to him have been arriving in about a week. I expect it to be slower around the holidays. It has gotten cooler there, so things melting are not the same risk they were at the beginning.

Time distortion:

I was on the phone last night talking about the normal things from back home. Who is stirring up trouble, the weather, sports etc... The comment was made that next Thursday would be Thanksgiving. I was taken aback. Here it is less than a week away from a major American holiday and it had completely snuck up on me. We have a couple of civilian contractors working in our shop and they said Wal-Mart was already putting up Christmas decorations! This shocked me. Christmas is not even a thought on my mind. It's not that I don't care about these things, its just we are not inundated with the commercialism of American culture out here so the holidays sneak up on us. Actually, we still have a Halloween decoration up in one of our vans, a little witch on a broomstick that someone had sent over here from their family. I think it will be here for Valentines Day; perhaps we'll leave it up for the next guys!

Chow hall food on the recycle.

On a typical night you can always get hamburgers (vegetarian only), hotdogs, onion rings, French fries and grilled cheese (they make really good grilled cheese here). Your typical style American high in fat caloric intake. There is usually a choice of two main dishes. They have about 14 different main dishes they choose to serve here. Mix and match two main dishes with the staple of rice or mashed potatoes, and there are usually two veggie choices.

I am not sure who eats wax beans or why? They look like sickly string beans (green beans to some). Canned corn and cauliflower are staples in the vegetable mix-up. When you run out of enough of one kind to serve the base, you then serve mixed veggies.

Anyone else remember the swan pizzas? I do, and they have them in Iraq. It must be one heck of a delivery fee, but the pizzas are always available for chow. You can also get various types of sandwiches or a meager salad. For a combat zone the chow hall here is actually very well stocked.

what you do while not working?

When not working, I am usually sleeping, eating, showering. I usually take a few minutes each night to read or play some PSP games. A lot of times after work we'll just sit around joking about the day (or complaining as the case maybe a lot)

reply to previous comments and questions

As far as chow we usually take a lunch and a dinner break for an hour. It takes about that long to walk there, get food and eat it. Breakfast I usually choose to sleep through! Cleaning my room? I am only in it to sleep, so cleaning usually involves sweeping the floor about every other day. There is a laundry facility here on base, so two times a week we bring our dirty laundry with us to work and then we put it in a big box and the TCN's (third country nationals) will wash it for us. It comes back in the laundry bag all nicely folded! Definitely not our grandfathers war (if you can even claim we are truly at war anymore)!

-W

Marine Hording

I am sure it comes from our training of having to do without, but what possesses Marines to horde ‎perfectly good items from the chow hall? I really don't know what causes this. I do know that you ‎can get 8 cans of soda in your cargo pockets (not mine per se, but a friend). I also have ‎witnessed 15 cans of "Rip-It" coming out of the chow hall by another Marine. Rip-Its are about ‎the same size as the baby soda cans you can get at Wal-Mart back home. Today I was guilty of ‎this action as well. We needed coffee creamer back at the shop, so I walked out with 12 packets ‎of creamer. 12 packets! That is a weeks worth of dairy creamer for me! Near-beer (or NA beer), ‎is another hot commodity. Non-alcoholic beer seems to go very quickly. Somehow our small ‎section of 7 Marines now has horded close to 18 cans of this stuff. It’s not even that good! I ‎imagine its going to be a tough transition when you go to a place that has "grab your own" sodas ‎with the meal not to just stuff 4 in your pockets and try to walk out when we all get home.‎

didn't plan to do this in Iraq...

Ugg I have phone watch...it's a stupid post that was invented to punish certain people, now we all have to do it. I sleep next to a phone in the office, if it rings I have to go wake up the Major....but if the phone doesn't wake me up, it will automatically forward to his room anyway, completely pointless.

No fridge in the office?

Not a problem for us! The air outlet portion of a standard window ac unit (like the 4 we have powering our shop) will hold 2-3 soda sized cans perfectly. Any more than 3 and the A/C will start to ice over on the front.

weather relief

It is finally cooling off a bit in this place. In the mornings it is a nice 70 degrees and sunny. Although twice in the past week it has clouded over and threatened to rain. I assume they were rain clouds and not just overcast from all the burning in the dump next door. During the day it is getting to the mid 90's to low 100's, which is a big relief from when I arrived and it was 120+. Everymorning I sweep my can (aka my trailer I sleep in), and every evening there is a fine layer of dirt on the floor. Not sure where it all comes from (well outside would be the obvious answer). I want to thank everyone for all the goodies I've received in the past week. It means a lot getting mail and packages.

Sgt Ellis

Promotion

"When people ask what I do out here the easiest way to explain it is I am the UPS/FEDEX/ and USPS delivery guy for the shop. Actually I don't deliver anything, I organize and sort and then let them know their stuff is ready to pick up :)

-W"

Congrats to Will!! He was promoted to Sergeant on October 1st. This has been something he's been chasing for a bit now, and it is nice to fine earn the title and recognition. His address will change slightly now on the first line. Update your MotoMail accounts and mailing addresses to refer to "Sgt" rather than "Cpl". His mailing address will always be current on the blog.