"I'll have ... that ..."

To be fair, I didn't know what it was either, but the gal in front of me in the chow line was willing to brave eating ... whatever it was ... so I figured I would as well. I mean, hey, enough barbecue sauce and you can make anything taste good. And thanks to my mother-in-law, I actually have a bottle. Now if only someone could send a bottle of merlot. Three dollars for half a plastic cup of box o' wine is killin' me ...

Our team has had some much-needed downtime this week so we could say hello to the new folks, adieu to those headed home. We were even able to get off base and go downtown. I did some shopping, some haggling for coworkers over what they were buying and spent some recreational time with colleagues. Stacia Zachary and I go back a long time. We went to basic training together, technical training, conferences, more training and she's been another sister for me. Like I need any more ...

But we said our good-byes as she heads home to her family and in her stead is another friend, Joseph "Kap" Kapinos who keeps a blog at combatcorrespondent.blogspot.com/. Kap and I go back a few years too. It's a small career field and getting smaller by the day as more and more people get fed up with the constant deployments and time away from family. While that's what we three discussed mostly, it was intended to be more a trip to increase morale, not beat it into submission. So we had ice cream ...

I also scream, because our mission now is "elsewhere in Southwest Asia" at a base in a country that doesn't want us to talk about the base being in their country, which presents a great challenge for me as it's kinda my job to talk about the people and the mission at that base in that country. But I have it on good authority that the food is good. Which is great, because I didn't pack my bottle of barbecue sauce ...

On a more positive note, Jennifer and I are hashing out disagreements a little bit better now that we're on the downward slope of our time away from each other. At this points it's just hitting little milestones - holidays, birthdays, holidays that are also birthdays that fall on Thanksgiving ...

In the meantime I've started writing to Zachary's class and got a nice note back from his teacher. I remember during Desert Storm writing to deployed servicemembers in school. Now I get to be on the other end of it. An old friend from college also wrote a nice piece in the Northcoast Journal about Jennifer and me (www.northcoastjournal.com/issues/2009/09/24/yo-afghanistan/). I'm finding writing to be a really good way of staying connected to the world back home. I think E.T. had it all wrong. All he needed was a good Web cam connected to his Speak 'n' Spell ...