Hillah, Iraq.

Yesterday was a slow day. Nothing worth writing about happened. Actually, that is not quite true. As you know, drink boxes (pausing patiently while everybody rolls their eyes at the mere mention of drink boxes)….as I was saying, drink boxes are popular here. However, just so you don’t get the idea that this isn’t a war zone or anything, the apple juice drink boxes have run out. Considering that there is only one kind of ice cream available, the war is taking its toll on us all. I don’t care about most of the other drink boxes, but the apple juice really does taste great, mostly because it has no sugar added, so it is not cloyingly sweet. Dang if apple juice drink box doesn’t rock. Being out of them is hard on us all.

I suppose that technically there is more than one type of ice cream if you consider the ice cream cups, ice cream cones, and ice cream sandwiches, but those are all prepackaged, and not numbered among the scoopable ice cream assets.

I will make up for mentioning drink boxes yet again by offering a Wacky Military Story Lagniappe. The Special Forces guys are pretty casual about most things, particularly gunfire, but they are pretty intense about operational security. It irritates them that we are supposed to sign our last names to the chow hall list, and they remind the Marines constantly to not sign their real names as such information would tell the bad guys who is stationed in the camp if the booger eaters were to get the list. I am generally tolerant of others’ paranoia (because you never know when you will develop your own neurosis, and I want to have tolerance karma already built up), so the two other guys that I eat lunch with always sign the three of us in as Moe, Larry, and Curly.

[pause]

I see now that this story is not nearly as funny as I thought, but, hey, there is a war on and sometimes you have to do what you gotta do.

I have loaned my XBox to an injured Marine. You have to watch Marines on slow days. The unsupervised lance corporals started a rock fight, which turned into wrestling match, which turned into a call for the medic. He wasn’t seriously hurt, and should be back on full duty in the next day or two.

Interestingly, this Marine’s roommate hurt himself last night, too. In an unrelated accident, you deviants. This other Marine played football for Florida, still plays for a semi pro team in Tampa, and is also some sort of Ultimate Fighting Champion. He is a big lad, weighing in at 220 and growing because he is filling his time with two a day workouts in the gym. For reasons I can’t figure out, the huge Marine sleeps in the top rack of the bunkbed. Last night, he accidentally fell out of his rack. He landed with such a tremendous thud that his roommate thought we were under a mortar attack.Our mission for tonight was scrubbed because we were going into another unit’s area of operations (AO) to clean up what they weren’t cleaning up, and they got upset about Special Forces coming into their sandbox. Our permission to cross boundary lines was rescinded, so we were left with nothing much to do operationally. I had to scramble to cancel the air power I had scheduled, but I may sit by the radio tonight in case they show up anyway. I figure that if they bothered to show up, the least I can do is clear them for a few low passes.The pool project has shifted into high gear. The SF guys ‘procured’ two giant sheets of heavy duty plastic, and have started stacking the Hesco boxes. We have a line on a pump, and we have a design for a filter. We have also lined up water delivery.

As you can see, the pool is going to be pretty big. We have calculated that it will be approximately 45000 gallons. You read that right, 45 kilogallons. We were going to make it bigger, but as you can see in photo 2, there is a mortar pit in the way, and we didn’t feel that moving the weaponry to make a bigger pool would send the right message.

I am not sure if I mentioned that we found a blender in the supply closet, but considering that we will have a pool and an unlimited supply of fruit juice and ice….too bad there is no rum here. Yep…not one bit of alcohol. Not a drop. I will assure you now that any frozen drinks you see in future photos are absolutely booze free. Yes sir. I promise. Feel free to check. Go ahead. Check ’em.

We have tentatively set the 4th of July as the pool opening date, but I think it should be ready before then. Still, if we learned nothing else from Star Trek’s Scotty, you always pad your time estimates.