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Dale missed all his favorite New Years Eve traditions this year.  He was unable to participate in the creation of collapsing gingerbread houses and didn’t stand outside on the porch at midnight banging pots and pans and throwing confetti.  He claims that being unable to participate in these traditions wasn’t too upsetting to him, but I missed him none the less.  I had no one to argue with about gingerbread house structure and no one to convince that banging pots and pans really is a lot of fun.  Every year for Christmas, I buy Dale a puzzle.  It is one of those gifts that I really buy for myself.  Sometime after Christmas, we usually start working on it.  We had a puzzle from last year that we had never done, so I brought it up from the basement.  When making a puzzle, I sort the pieces and Dale puts most of the pieces in place.  This year, for the first time in years, I actually did the edge.  The puzzle is a photomosaic of a hot air balloon.  Abby has been a good trouper working on the balloon’s green stripe.  However, I find myself looking at all my sorted pieces thinking:  “It’s just not as much fun when he isn’t here to complete it or, for that matter, to complete us.”

Mugs sent this picture in a recent care package. It’s such a great photo, so I wanted to share it with everyone.

Thanksgiving Day this year was a much different experience than Thanksgiving 2006. Last year we celebrated the holiday in Jerrabomberra, New South Wales, Australia, with our great friends from church. I think we had about 30 people over that day. Everyone pitched in bringing unimaginable amounts of food, drinks, and desserts. It was a blast! Fortunately, there was no blast here for Thanksgiving today.

I won’t bore you with the details of my day, but I will skip right to the highlight - lunch. The DFAC pulled out all stops for the Thanksgiving meal. We were able to get some photos of the feast, so I’ll just post a few here. I hope you enjoy these creations as much as we did!

I had the opportunity this week to take a ride in a Black Hawk. I love helicopters and will jump at every opportunity to fly in one. For some reason, I don’t get motion sickness in a helicopter like I do in a boat. My stomach still gets quesy when I think about the underwater demolitions range mission when we were stationed in Hawaii. That was not a pleasant experience for me. It was quite a humorous spectacle for all of the Army dive soldiers that got to see me lose it on the open water! But let’s not think about that anymore because I’m already starting to get a little seasick just sitting here.

One of our ongoing projects is the building of a water distribution network with wells and pumps for the Sinjar district in western Ninewa province. This project is worth about $17.2 million and includes approximately 116 kilometers of water pipes, 95 wells, and 60 water storage tanks. The geographic extent of the project makes it quite difficult to fully appreciate from the ground. So I have been trying to arrange a fly-over since I’ve been here. When I say that I have been trying to arrange this, I really mean that MSG Curt Kaseman, the Mosul NCOIC, has been trying to arrange this. This was our fourth attempt at the mission. The previous three missions had to be cancelled for various reasons. Although I think I’m important, the flight operations folks don’t regard me as a VIP, so I’ve been bumped a few times!

But on our fourth attempt, we finally got the dedicated flight time. Two Black Hawk (UH-60A) helicopters were tasked with flying 14 personnel from my office over the Sinjar district to get an overview of the project extent. The helicopters picked us up from FOB Marez, and we began our flight out to the Sinjar district. Sinjar is about 120 kilometers west of Mosul.

On our way out to Sinjar, we made a pitstop at FOB Sykes. The Black Hawks for this mission are based out of FOB Sykes. On the original itinerary, we were scheduled to refuel at FOB Sykes after the mission before heading back to Mosul. So I assumed that we were just going to refuel before instead of after.

Here’s a photo taken during our stop at FOB Sykes. Margaret, the USACE Resident Engineer in charge of the Mosul Project Engineers, is standing next to Vic, a security detachment member, while Sarah, the office admin specialist, looks on.

CPT Christian, the pilot, informed us that we were stopping so that she could get the final clearance before heading out. As luck would have it, when she came back, she told us the mission was scrubbed due to deteriorating weather conditions coming in from the west. So we loaded up again and flew back to FOB Marez. I’ll try again next month.

This past Sunday we had a day off to observe Columbus Day. In the US, Columbus Day is commemorated on the second Monday in October, but not in all states. I’m not going to get into the issues surrounding this holiday here. Maybe Michael and Howard can have a huge discussion about it in the comments!

Anyway, the CG for GRD has mandated certain holidays that USACE personnel in Iraq must observe. This is really a force protection issue. Since we work 7 days a week here, it’s too easy to never really step away and wind down at all. I’m constantly flat out like a lizard drinking, as Brad taught me to say. So about once a month, we have a day off. At least for one day, we sleep late, watch videos, and just relax.

Sarah and Glenn decided it would be a great idea to play Bingo on our day off. I actually believed them. Mugs will tell you that I’m exhibiting classic symptoms of becoming a Lieutenant Colonel. I now believe that people do enjoy mandatory fun. Fortunately, I didn’t make it mandatory! Unfortunately, we only had 1 more player join us, Jeremy. Two others stopped by for a few games, Alex and Demeril. But they didn’t last long.

In the action packed photo below, I’m presenting Glenn his prize for winning a game of Bingo, a duck-shaped bar of soap!