At home for a pass…my last few days off for awhile.  Going to be nice to hang out with my wife.

Make sure to visit my main site for the deployment:

http://afghanyear.blogspot.com/

Just to let everyone know that I’m using a new blog during my deployment. You can find it here http://afghanyear.blogspot.com/. Sorry about splitting out the two, but it makes more sense. Occasionally post on here, but that will be the primary place for everything. I’d love if all of you subscribe and follow me in this journey.

Jason

I’ve spent the past two and a half weeks down at Ft. Knox.  It’s been long and hot.  After the first few days I’ve given up on keeping track of how long we’ve been here and what day of the week it is.  I still have a week left. 

Everything has been non-stop.  I’m talking days beginning at 0530 (5:30am) and ending after 2300 (11:00pm).  Some nights were until 0200 (2:00am). 

The heat has been ever present and unyielding.  When you figure in the humidity it’s nearly unbearable and just saps all the energy out of you.

I’m not quite acclimated to the heat, but I’m getting used to the never ending days. 

It’s getting late, and I’m going to get some sleep because tomorrow and the next day are going to be 24 hour operations in the field. 

Good evening everyone! Hopefully everyone is doing great! I had a break in training this past week and it was nice and relaxing. I really didn’t do much of anything and was mainly a homebody…especially since my car is dead. The absolute best part of the week at home was that Amanda worked overnights on last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That meant that she only had to work on Wednesday during the week. The result was that we had a nice and lazy at home vacation.

This week is going to be another week of training. This time we are at Purdue University doing agriculture training. I have much higher expectations for this than I did for my language and cultural training class at Indiana University. This should be much more black and white so that means that my non-language learning brain should just suck this stuff up.

I’ve been on military leave since June 1st, and so it has been extremely strange spending nearly the entire month not working at the 9-5 grind.

In other news, I’ve been reading a ton lately. I’ve always enjoyed reading and I’d go in 2-3 book spurts. I’d go to the library and check out a few books and read them…then I would forget to renew them. I once renewed a library book for 2 years because I never could remember to return it. The other thing that I’d do would be buy a couple books and then read them in a week or two. I’d then be out of books to read and go without reading for a few months. The difference since December has been e-books.

I was given a Kindle for Christmas and in April I bought an iPad. Thanks to the Kindle apps on my iphone and the iPad, along with the trusty Kindle, I’ve burned through nearly two dozen books. It’s amazing how easy it is to read if the books are always readily accessible to you. Not to mention so easy to purchase.

For example, I’m reading this 14 book series and just finished the 4th book in the series. Normally, if this was a “real” book, I’d have to go to the store or the library to get the 5th book, but not with e-books. I went to Amazon and within 30 seconds, the 5th book in the series is open and on my lap. If you enjoy reading, nothing compares to this.

Ok, that’s it for now…I have some other things to talk about, but that’s for a later date.

Well, I wrapped up my weeklong language and cultural training class at IU. It was a real smoker and I’ve basically learned very little Pashto, but the cultural training should be invaluable. If anything it did a great job to address some of the common misconceptions that I had about Afghanistan.

After I wrapped up my classes on Friday, I hauled ass back home. Amanda and I went out for dinner and then she basically had to leave for work. She is working overnights Fri-Sat-Sun, but it’s all good because she basically has this next week off of work.

I’m off next week too. I’m on military leave from work, and have no training this next week. So it will be nice to hang out together a bunch.

On Saturday morning I drove the 2 1/2 hours north to meet some friends for a bachelor get together. We golfed, had a little cookout and then hit the casino until 2:30 or 3. This morning, I visited my parents and my grandparents. It was nice spending some time with them.

On a side note, my car which has one payment left, is shot. The engine started knocking when I was up there. I babied the thing home so that I wouldn’t get stranded in the middle of a bunch of corn fields. Thankfully, I made it all the way back. The bad news is that the two or three options that could be wrong all involve some significant cost. I’m talking $2-4,000. My car is 6 years old and I was planning on getting a new one when I get back.

I only “needed” the car to last me 5 or 6 more weeks. I’m not about to spend a ton of money on a car that is going to sit for a year. I frankly don’t feel like even dealing with the stress of mechanics and repair bills. I think that I’m going to just get by without a car until I leave.

I’ll probably have Amanda take it to the mechanic a month or two after I’m gone and see what the repair cost will be. If it’s major then we’ll see what we can get for it. Basically, if the repair is more than $2500 there is no sense in repairing it, since the repair will basically only take the car up to the blue book trade in value. She’ll have a power of attorney for me, so she’ll be able to sign the title over or do whatever.

What a kick in the nuts… but there is nothing that I can really do right now, so I’m taking the easy way out and just not dealing with it now. I know that I should take it to the mechanic but not dealing with it just sounds so much better.

Have you ever tried to learn a foreign language? I have…and I have failed miserably. I spent years taking Spanish in school. I never enjoyed it and the only reason I have a bunch of college credit in Spanish was that it was required to graduate. I’m now trying to learn another language…

In preparation for my little trip to Afghanistan this year, I’m getting a crash course in Pashto. Pashto is the language in the area that I’ll be working. We are spending 10-12 hours a day trying to learn it and let me just say that it’s tough. I guess that my brain just isn’t wired for language…

It’s really frustrating…because I actually have an excellent memory. I can retain an inordinate amount of information, but when it comes to foreign languages, I just stink.

On a non-language note, I just received a promotion. I’m now a Captain in the Army, which is cool. For those of you not abreast of military rank, it’s the third ring on the Officer ladder. Typically a Captain is responsible for a Company of Soldiers, usually between 80-120 strong. It’s basically mid-level management but with a lot more responsibility.

I’ve been in the military for over 10 years now, and have served as an enlisted Soldier, Noncommissioned Officer, and as a commissioned officer. I’ve been a Private, Private First Class, Specialist, Sergeant, 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lieutenant, and now a Captain.

I’ll have to post the picture of my promotion when I get a copy of it.

That’s it for now…time to read and relax.

So, I have really been a crappy blogger lately. Well, not really lately but rather for the last year or so. I think that I should probably start soon be use things are about to get nuts. I really think that I’ll be starting a special blog, but will probably post to both the new one and Xanga simultaneously.

Like I said, things are going to be getting nuts soon. I’ll be heading to Afghanistan this summer. I’m sure that this of you that have been around for awhile know that I’m also in the military. I’m a Captain in the Army National Guard.

I’m actually on vacation right now. We’ll be on vacation the rest of this week. Then I have one more week of work and I’ll be starting my military leave. Our train up is going to be pretty extensive, and a little more involved than most of the mobilizations.

Of course my wonderful wife is sad about me going, but she is being a great sport about everything. I think that we both feel lucky that this will be my first deployment in 10 1/2 years.

Just so everyone knows, most, if not all of my posts will be protected. That means that if you are not on my protected list, send me a message.

Finally, one last thing, if you don’t have Twitter, get it now. I post a lot on there. It’s much more fluid and real than a dedicated blog post. My Twitter name is @mrmysterious .

Watch this today  http://en.sevenload.com/videos/QcwDoCK-911-Phone-Calls

My beliefs quiz…anyone know a good synagogue? 

As any of you left know, I’ve basically disappeared off the grid for a bit.  You might have seen me read your sites but I haven’t been around posting.  The thought of taking 5-15 minutes to post just seems so overwhelming when I can whip out my phone and kick out a 140 character tweet in about 15 seconds.  Granted, I’m not writing anything earth shattering on twitter, but a little group of regulars is starting to form and it’s fun.  I don’t think that many of my “old” xagans are even around any more, it seems like many of them grew out of blogging over the course of the last year or two.  It probably had something to do with most of them being in college when we started following each other.  It’s kind of sad.

Anyways, things have been pretty good recently.  There is no possible way that I can update everyone on the last few months that I’ve been gone.  That would basically be impossible.  If you want an idea you can check out my twitter www.twitter.com/mrmysterious .  That will probably get you up to speed really quick. 

My time recently has been mainly work, school, spending time with Amanda, working out, and a little TV, and maybe 30 minutes a day of video games.  It seems like time is really flying by recently and I wish that there was some way to make things slow down…I’m just so afraid of missing something.  Have you ever heard the song “Don’t Blink” by Kenny Chesney or the song “100 Years” by Five for Fighting.  They both are so true…

BRB, need to get another cup of coffee.

Ok, back again.  Did I mention that it is gorgeous outside this morning?  I think that sitting on my porch is quite possible one of my favorite activities recently.  Coffee in the morning, dinner in the evening, and then a cold beer at night.  The porch was definitely the focal part of our party last Saturday. 

Speaking of parties…as much as I love to just relax in our nice and quiet house I love being surrounded by friends.  If I miss anything about living in the South Bend area it’s the whole friends thing.  Growing up nearly everyday I was surrounded by friends and it was great.  Down here in the big city it seems like you have friends until they have kids and then they just kind of disappear.  Hopefully when the kid(s) get older they start to come around again if not it stinks.  We are surrounded by something like 1.2 million people in the Indy metropolitian area…in the “town” we live in the suburbs we have something like 70,000 people.  Yet, for the most part it feels like it’s just Amanda and me here by ourselves.  I often wonder if it would be much different if we lived someplace far away.  In fact, two nights ago I dreamt that we moved to Atalanta.  I don’t know why…but we did.  Kind of weird too because I never really like Georgia the year or so that I have spent down there. 

I think one of the main problems that I have is where I work.  When you are in school, you spend most of your time with your classmates and everyone there is your peers.  At work I realy don’t have any peers.  Everyone is so much older than I am.  It’s really kind of frustrating too…since I’ve been the youngest for five years now.  Granted there are younger people that work on the floor, but I’m just talking about the 20 or so salaried people there. 

Ok, I’m starting to depress myself when things are actually good.  I’m going to finish this up, go turn the sprinklers on and just listen to some music.