Friday, June 30, 2006

Back to the States

Wow, has it been an exciting visit to the states for my family. Over the last few weeks, Margi has been back in the states visiting family, but has been traveling all over Kentucky and Tennessee running the kids all around. Brittany is staying with friends at Fort Knox and getting to hang out and have some fun, while CJ attended a swim camp at the University of Tennessee for one week, then upon his return he had to be rushed to the emergency room to have his appendix removed. We were very lucky that Margi was able to get him to the emergency room as quick as she did, they said he only had a few hours before the appendix would have ruptured; a scary moment for us all. He is out of the hospital and is recovering just fine!


CJ shows the incision from surgery.

I am now under 20 days before I depart Iraq and go on Rest and Relaxation. I will travel back to Heidelberg, Germany and will do a little traveling while there. The time here continues to move and I have finally reached 50% on my countdown time tracker.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Morale Night

Last night we had our Morale Night. The night began with non-alcoholic beer, hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. For the evening events we had volleyball, bocce ball, karaoke, scrabble, and other card games.

I did two things last night that I have never done before and one that I do not plan on doing again. What is it you ask? One was playing bocce ball – which is a version of horse shoes but played with balls. The other thing I did was sing karaoke! No, I never thought I would be doing that and especially in front of a group of friends and coworkers. The song of choice was Brick House. I did a terrible job singing, but the crowd carried the song. It was really hot when I was standing up on “stage”. Actually, it was in the courtroom. I have attached a few pictures for reference.


Here I am working the crowd...?

We had a great turn out for the gathering and lots of people signed up to sing. We had one person who decided to put on a show – Steve Hernandez. When he started the song, it was just another song, but then he started to dance and before you know it, he ripped open his jacket, spun it above his head and tossed it to the crowd. We were all laughing and cheering him on; it was great. We see that a few here are not shy about shaking their groove thing.


Steve Hernandez removes articles of clothing while singing. Why? - we still do not know.


Keirsten Hage gettin' her groove on.


Ben Grimes showing us what he is made of.

Also, for some reason, we felt compelled to put on a “gun show” for the camera. Please see picture for more explanation.


"The Gun Show"

As usual, we all had a great time and look forward to the next one.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

What's Going On

Another couple of days have gone by and not a lot has changed. I am counting down the days until I am able to take the Rest and Recuperation (R&R) leave from here; I can’t wait.

The Family - Right now, my family is headed from Germany back to the US to visit family and for my 9 year old son to attend a swim camp at the University of Tennessee. They will be there for about a 3 weeks and I am assuming they will be very busy during their visit.

Work - As you have seen in the news, the Haditha Dam investigation is heating up and receiving increased press. Our office in working full time in preparation for what is to come.

Me - As for me, I have been able to get out and take some photos. However, the time available to photograph is pretty limited because of the intense brightness of the sunlight. I normally wait until around 6:30pm to catch the softer light. I am getting the feeling that my creativity is not where it should be. The scenery around here is very very similar. It is plain and uninspiring architecture and all the tan colors of the building and ground do not help. I would really appreciate some greenery.

I was fortunate to have LuckyPix conduct an email interview with me for posting to their blog. I think Christoph did a great job with the questions and made me think about a lot in my journey with photography, but mostly about my family and how they have supported me over the years.
I have posted a few photos below of recent outings.







Friday, June 2, 2006

Let's Run

Today was a great day for a run – but I am not sure if it was great for one that was 7.2 miles. We started off our day by meeting up at 0530 for the trip over to the starting point. The weather was nice and breezy, with just a little bit of heat. At the starting line, while we were waiting to begin the race, we were able to watch the sunrise over the city of Baghdad. The run was not as bad as I thought. The water points had ice cold water and there were many more than the last run. Everything was going well until the very end. There was one small detail that we had not fully calculated into this run; Signal Hill. The last mile of the race was down a nice stretch of road with the water to our left and the wind blowing off of the water keeping us cool. The problem was that the finish line and the last two tenths of a mile were all up Signal Hill. Well, it was a tough finish, but we all had a fun time and everyone did great!