Friday the 13th in Afghanistan

Well nothing bad happened here on Friday the 13th. No Freddy's, no Jason's and especially no Michael Myers so yesterday was a good day. Today was an average day for me. Not a lot going on in the office but we're preparing for a trip next week. Can't discuss anything until after the trip is underway so I'll update about that next week.

I'll be flying in again so no concern about convoying yet everyone thinks I'm overly worried about convoys. I wonder why? Could it be the seven soldiers that died a couple weeks ago when an IED ripped through their MRAP and killed them? I don't know, that might have something to do with it. The death toll for October was the highest ever. The Taliban are getting desperate and they're not going to give up easily.

I just need to stop worrying so much though and just deal with it. The soldiers have to deal with it and I'm here to support them so I just need to suck it up like they do. They know what they are risking by being here. I signed up for the safer service compared to what they endure. I don't think I could handle their deployment schedule. One year or more deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and one home then back out again for a year or more. I'll take my haze gray over that any day.

On another note I put a proven strategy to the test and it worked. I have always just been too nice of a person and it never seems to yield any results. Well I had been trying since I left San Diego to get subsidy for my daughter's child care and I called and emailed several times checking on my application to see if anything was needed or missing and I was told they had everything. Well weeks go by and I hear nothing from them and the daycare hadn't heard anything either and by now I was frustrated and tired of calling and asking nicely for the status. So I went to the Chief of Subsidy and wrote her an email about what I had been put through and that I would have expected better professionalism and this and that. Two days later I've got my subsidy even though some things were missing from my file. I definitely write better than I talk so I used that to my advantage and it worked. Now I get to save $200 a month on child care. I still prefer to be nice but sometimes certain people only respond to aggressive people.

I think I have all the things back home taken care of now so that's a relief. I have only six months left here but it might as well be a year at this point. I know it will go by quickly and I'll be back in San Diego before I know it, slaving away at my job at Third Fleet. I like the job though and I like being busy. It makes me appreciate my time off and I feel like I've accomplished something.

I'm going to go ahead and work on an idea I have for a story so I'll end this boring blog here.