It's been a long 9 days since my last post, and even now I'm typing this at 0350 in the morning here in Baghdad. Things have been pretty hectic here with long trips out into the wild, a fair amount of IDF and IED attacks, plenty of small arms fire to go around and more sandstorms that I can count. My room has taken on a shade of brown that will only go away when I finally get the time to actually dust something. Approximately 6-months into my tour, I'm starting to hit that wall that runners are familiar with. Where your energy feels completely zapped, but you know if you can just push on for a few more minutes, the pain will seem to go away and you can press on for the rest of the run. That's pretty much where I'm at here in Baghdad - press on for a few more weeks and I'll shake off the groundhog day exhaustion and continue to press through the next 6 months. Shouldn't be a problem though as I suspect things are going to heat up around here pretty soon. Seems some dumb ass sniper decided to paint a target on a Quran and use it as target practice. The locals discovered this insult, the dude has since been sent home with all sort of disciplinary actions pending, the Major General in charge of forces in Baghdad has apologized, and you can bet your last dollar the incoming alarm will be going off more frequently over the next several weeks. We're still battling the effects of Abu-G out here and now this...
Haven't seen or spoken to Ami' in some time now due mostly to me being away from my computer for long stretches of days, and with Napi's Skype/webcam setup essentially going to crap over the last few weeks. I did get a video of Ami' chattering away in front of the computer, but unfortunately I haven't been able to view it on a computer with working volume. Getting into emails lately from my personal computer has been hit or miss, and watching any sort of media has been next to impossible. I'm not complaining though - can't beat being able to update a Blog while sitting in the middle of a war zone.
