59. It Could Be Worse

Witten: Sunday, June 15th, 2003

Woke up at 11am. Was tired after staying up so late last night. I woke up and played, “Medal of Honor.” It is a fun but tough game. Relxaed while playing for an hour. Sam came over and we talked about Chris’s evaluation last night. He was glad that the training was successful.

We also talked about going home and getting this over with. We are both frustrated in the lack of information (none) coming about our return.

Battalion BBQ tonight! Very excited about having some real food!

Today, the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) takes over in Iraq. It is a combined force of all US Military along with many Allies. The word is that we (the CJTF) will conduct a series of attacks on many key places in the region to send a strong message to the enemy personnel who still insist on fighting.

Received some great gifts from Stef for Father’s day! She sent me (and I received them 2 days ago) some pictures and she made a slide show of the kids that were put to music. She also sent me an awesome hammock but I do not see being able to use it here because of the unbearable heat but we shall see.

Sometimes the mail works in awesome ways. Today (Father’s Day) I received a card from Mom and a package from Eric. Mom’s card was for Father’s Day and Eric’s card was for Easter! I thought it was pretty funny to get something that was intended for Easter…nearly 2 months later! It all seems so far away now. I think Easter was our last day in Objective Rams—in the desert “suck” near An Najaf. Anyhow, the package from Eric had a card, a magazine, a book, and some candy! Eventually the mail will catch back up and stop being delivered 2 months later. I wonder how long it is taking our mail to get there?

I found that I had a phone call scheduled for 4:30pm! This was a great morale boost to hear and at 4:20 I went to Battalion and waited by the phone for 30 minutes. No call. Great. The un-morale phone strikes again. I did get word later on that she would try to call tomorrow.

We had the BBQ. The food was ok and limited. Actually, it sucked. Someone said, well you could have had an MRE…my comment was that this was piss poor and not worth the $10 we paid and that it was pretty poor also that we had to pay in the first place. Thanks for taking care of us...

People always concentrate on, “It could be worse” instead of thinking that things could be better. They can always be worse and we spend a lot of time living worse and worse…so why don’t our leaders think of ways it could be better? Why don’t we try to find things to make our lives better. Isn’t it worse already? Isn’t it worse because we are away from family and friends? Isn’t it worse because we don’t know when we are going home? I have spent many years looking on the bright side and I still do, but unfortunately people get caught up in the thinking that what we have is good enough and there is no reason to try to make it better. We should never settle for anything less than the best. Period.

Back to the BBQ: We were allowed to have a hot dog and our choice of a hamburger or a piece of a rib. We were also given 2 cokes, some chips, a piece of corn on the cob and a half a piece of cheese. Wow! What a great deal…all that for $10!? It could have been worse (haha). Some of us hung around and waited until everyone was fed. After that, they opened the line up for seconds. I got some ribs, corn and a hot dog.

The Company is starting to think about sending people on leave for 2 weeks. Although I hear it would be possible to make this leave free of charge, I am told that we will be charged for it…I put my leave request in for September 1st through 15th. I certainly hope that we are not here when it comes time to take leave but if we are, those are the dates I chose. If they are going to implement a leave plan, it will begin on July 15th. I hope we find out a redeployment date before then.

Watched a Chris Rock comedy special and a Chris Rock movie, “Down to Earth.” Went to bed around 11pm.