Blogger's Blues

For some reason I haven't really felt like blogging, maybe hitting month number 9 of a 12 month deployment has kind of brought a melancholy or writer's (blogger's?) slump. There were a couple of positive things: We have our redeployment timeline: Our replacement team shows up mid-August, we go back to Kuwait at the end of August and back in Kansas sometime in September. Our replacement team has also contacted us, which means they are starting to suffer through the training in Kansas, and they are sending one of their team members here this week.

And a couple of negative things:

The past couple of weeks were mostly quiet until a couple of days ago: There were a few rockets launched at COP Cashe and there was an IED yesterday. Only one vehicle was damaged in the IED attack (mine resistant vehicles do their job) and thankfully there were no casualties involved in either attack. The rocket launching was kind of strange - - basically they lean a rocket up on a rail, point it in the general direction of the target and let it fly. Kind of like trying to hit a bulls-eye target with a bottle rocket launched from a coke bottle. Not a whole lot of accuracy. None of the rockets came close to hitting anything, but it is a tactic we haven't seen in our area for over a year.

Prior to this week the National Police made some pretty high level arrests that seemed to take the wind out of the insurgents cells, but then these two events mark an upswing in attacks in our area. We will see how the next few weeks go.

Couple of other notes:

The National Police received the first of their Up Armored HMMWVs last month. BG E had a short ceremony where each of the HMMWVs were dabbed with sheep's blood for luck (unless you happen to be the sheep that gave up the blood). They have been cruising around in bright blue and white HMMWVs now for about a week. This makes me pretty happy - - BG E is in a safer vehicle and doesn't stand out nearly as much as he did when he was cruising around in his armored Toyota Land Cruiser.

Survivor, the best non-football show EVER, is wrapping up it's 18th season (they run two series a year, so really they are in their 9th year, but who is counting?). Tragically, the finale will be in a couple of weeks and that will leave me with absolutely nothing on TV to look forward to. Sigh. If anyone is watching, my money is on JT, most folks like him. Stephan is a good guy, but doesn't have the crowd behind him.

There will be a definite TV draught until pre-season football starts to warm up again along with Fantasy Football . . . . I can't remember where I stand vs. Wade, but he beat me last season which means I need to clean his clock again this year. Going to be tough to do, though. I am deployed and only have limited exposure to football (starting excuses early is always a good strategy). I am going to try to recruit a few team members this year, we'll see how that goes.