Volume IV of the My Life in Astan series is out and available for viewing and download. I just realized that I had never posted this one, so I wanted to get it out there. This video is the first one that I created with pics from other team member’s photos of their year also. So, I guess it could be called “Our Life in Astan”. I used pics from Rog-O, Ronbo, and Ranger in this video.
As we all started coming back together our last months in country, I went to everyone and collected up their photos for use. I wanted to get some new perspectives of people and scenery in the video, even though all the scenery looks the same.
The music I put it to was Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding out For a Hero”. An avid blog reader, and the gentlemen that posts all of my videos on You Tube for me, MoscowTom, recommended this song. Because I wanted to use this song, I made this video as much about the ETTs as possible. This is another reason I used other guy’s pictures in it. I wanted to profile and show some soldiers in Afghanistan that were not just on my team. ETT’s lead a hard life, with little to know support from higher HQ, counting on Afghan soldiers to watch our back and fending for ourselves most of the time. Nobody has a harder life in Afghanistan than ETTs, so I wanted this video to be about them.
I have two errors in this video. There are two pictures that repeat one time each. I did not catch it until it was all rendered and created, and I really don’t have the time or energy to go back and fix it. So I apologize now for that, as I don’t like to repeat them. But hey, we all make mistakes.
This weekend has been a very busy one for me. I spent Friday – Sunday staying busy with the house. I have lost count of the number of trips I made to Lowe’s and Home Depot over the last few days. Since both places give 10% off to military over the weekend, this is the time to go. We spent the weekend re-mulching all of our landscape, mowing, weed-eating, cleaning up the backyard, doing maintenance on the hot tub, installing a new mailbox, fixing screens in windows, and many other household chores.
Two of our bigger projects were one that Jordan and I did, which was fixing our waterfall-pond out back. We have a small pond and waterfall as part of the landscaping and it was leaking water whenever we ran it, so I had to take down all the large rocks and disassemble the whole thing. After replacing the lining and making sure there was no way to leak I had to stack it all back up and use my creative side to make it look good again. This project took a while to do so it ate up a lot of time. Christine and I are also looking at extending our back deck and moving the hot tub onto the deck and closer to the back door. So that has taken a lot of planning and we are still trying to decide if it is something we can handle or if we need to outsource it to a landscaping company.
Of course not everything this weekend has been working on the house as it should not be. The weekend started on Friday with Hunter having a big graduation ceremony from Pre-school. He had been looking forward to it for weeks and has been something he talked about a lot. On the morning of graduation he told me he was nervous and did not want to graduate. He told me he was nervous about leaving pre-school and going to Kindergarten at a big school. I assured him that he would do fine and make lots of new friends and that Kindergarten is not much different from Pre-school. Of course I found out he would really miss his friends and that he did not want to leave them. So Friday was Hunter’s day. The family and I have also been spending some quality time together. We have been watching movies, hanging in the hot tub, going to church and going out to eat. So far the re-unification has been going well. I think it helps with Christine and I having a lot of experience with this and our ability to recognize what issues we would have.
I have had a few issues that I recognize are from my year away, but I have been able to deal with them. If you ask Christine, she will tell you that I speak louder than normal and that I am a little high-strung. If that is the worst thing that happens after spending a year jacked up on adrenaline then I would consider it a smooth transition. I will post more later about the actual Memorial day. Today (Memorial Day) is the reason for this weekend, so I will address it separately.
The next morning was the funeral service for Mouse’s mom. Prophet and his future better-half followed us there and we all got there in the nick of time before it started. We linked up with Rog-O who met us there also. Since Mouse’s mom was a retired Major from the Army Reserves, she had full military honors at her funeral service. The Western New York Honor Guard is made up mostly of my old soldiers that I had before I went to Afghanistan. It was good to watch them perform with precision and perfection as they carried out the honors for his mom. I had talked to them over the weekend and made sure they knew who this was and of the connection this funeral had to them (since Mouse was also in my unit before this tour and had served alongside these guys). They did a great job under the circumstances and performed with 100% respect.
The service was nice for a funeral service, even though it was a Catholic one. See I am Baptist, and so is Prophet which does not have as rigid services or planned out. Baptists are a little more free-flowing so this was something different for us. Nevertheless it was a respectful service and went smoothly. After the service, we invited Prophet and future Mrs. Prophet out to lunch before they got on the road. After some more good times of laughs and stories and some good food they got on the road for a very long trip home.
Since Mouse had not out-processed yet he had to get up to Ft. Drum to finish that task, so later that same afternoon he came by to get me and we went to Ft. Drum. I am already out-processed, but since I wanted to get him through as fast as possible I told Mouse I would go with him to keep him company and help push things through. I also did not want him driving the 3.5 hours up and back and be up there all by himself after just attending his mom’s funeral. So we did the drive and got in late. The room at the Inn on base was already reserved and we hit the room and hit the sack. The next morning we were up early and out the door. There was a lot of stuff to get done in order to get back. We were able to get all of his out-processing done and his final paperwork complete. After a few stops on the base, we were on the road again for a long trip back home.
Sorry I have not posted for a few days. I am still trying to get my office setup, work off what is not my normal laptop and get settled in at home. I have already mowed the front and back lawns, watched my beloved Sabres lose their chance to go for the Stanley Cup and spend a lot of time playing with my son Hunter. My man Ron (Prophet) is out here in Buffalo to attend the funeral of Mouse’s mom so he was over for a while tonight. It was good to visit with him and share some stories and laughs about our last year together. He and I will be hanging out in the morning before we go to the wake.
Anyway, I will be posting more soon. I just wanted to throw a quick update out there so everyone knew that I had not abandoned this blog. There is a lot to talk about and still must to be said from my tour. One day I will eventually shut this blog down and then go back to writing entries on my normal Military blog. I will probably start posting there soon to talk about military related events and such that are not Afghanistan specific. So if you are interested in keeping up with my writings about the military in general or anything related to it, be sure and check there.
Well I have been home for a few days and am still getting settled in. I have meant to blog more, but getting on a laptop and typing away just has not been making it to the top of my priority list. It also has not helped that I have already turned my laptop into Best Buy to get fixed. It has had a hard last year and needed some repairs done badly. The screen won’t stay up without resting against something, the CD/DVD-Rom drive won’t read any disks and the battery only lasts about 20 minutes. I have about 6 weeks left on my service plan for that laptop so I wanted to get it in and get fixed or replaced with a new one. Granted there is no shortage of computers in my house, but taking the time to sit down and start typing just has not happened as much as I thought.
Today marks one week I have been home (I flew in Buffalo last Friday night), and the last week has flew by. I have not talked to some of my family and a lot of my friends. I really have just been a homebody, working on things around here and staying busy with the house. I have enjoyed taking Hunter to and picking him up from school, as that has been the most I have been out over the last week. Of course I have already made a few trips to Best Buy and even to the Sprint Store. I traded in all of my family’s old phones for brand new ones, including picking up the latest gadget for myself. In my work, the Treo is the life-line to staying connected and doing what I do. This last week the brand new Treo755 came out and I got it the first morning it hit the store. An insight into how much business I do with Sprint, they called me that morning to let me know it was in. Several of the people in the store, including he manager know me when I walk in and they always take care of me. I did walk around Best Buy the other night looking for something to buy with some new giftcards and could not find anything. That just tells me I am out of practice. Give me a couple of weeks and I will have those spent.
The guys that went with me to Afghanistan loved to joke with me about going to Best Buy. I even brought a Best Buy shopping basket with me to Afghanistan, but I left it there. No room to bring it back. On Wednesday, just about all of us got back together at our Brigade HQ in Syracuse to link up and unpack equipment we had shipped there from MS right before we left to head over. It was good to see the guys again, as we have to get used to not seeing each other every single day. Puss, Prophet and I have all become the best of friends. The three of us have been together the entire year, even moving from one team to another. Seeing them, Ranger, DK, Rog-O and everyone is good for all of us and I think is good for us as we all try to transition back to normal life. Of course while we spent the few hours together, I made sure to take their pictures with my Treo and save in their latest phone numbers so we can be sure and stay in touch. After splitting up our gear, and visiting with a whole bunch of old friends and army co-workers at the Brigade HQ, it was time to head home. Several had left already to go home but there were seven of us still there. So the seven of us (Dennis, Roger, Dale, Nick, Ron, Paul, and myself) decided to have a last lunch together. Since Paul is from Syracuse we let him lead the way and we eventually settled on an Olive Garden. It was not packed and they gave us a big corner table, which was good because we were not the quietest bunch of patrons I am sure. The lunch went well and soon we were all on our way. I rode out with Rog-O from Buffalo, so he and I loaded up in his truck and made our way back.
After getting that gear and 16 of the 18 boxes of gear, personal items, and gifts I shipped back from Afghanistan; the last couple of days were spent unpacking and putting stuff away. The garage was filled with those boxes and I needed to go through them to pull out the gifts, clothes, and gear. Most of the breakable items made it in tact and everyone has been very excited to get all their gifts. Since I am really without a unit right now, but will be part of a provisional unit to help train soldiers in my Brigade I don’t have a place to put all this gear for now. So in the tough boxes it went and in the basement those went.
Those are the types of things that have made up the most of my last week. It has been a good first week except for a few sad losses. An uncle of mine died the other day very un-expectantly from a cancer that had wracked his body that nobody knew about. They were trying to save him and were transporting him from one hospital to another when he passed. I wish he could have held on for a few more hours so family could have been by his side, but God decided otherwise. Also, yesterday Mouse’s mom passed away. I have been talking to him almost every day this week checking on how she was doing, and even though we all knew she would be passing it does not make it any easier. I talked to him yesterday just hours after she left this world and he seems to be doing ok (under the circumstances). Luckily he was able to spend the last couple of months with her and when she passed he was standing by her side. For that I am sure he is very grateful. Many of you have asked me about his mom since I posted about it, so I wanted to give that update.
As promised I have a lot more to blog about, and as things slow down and I steal a few moments away to continue the blog entries about happenings in Afghanistan, about the way home and of course the re-union process here.
I have finally put the finishing touches on my Blackhawk flying video. Most of the footage in this video is from my last helicopter flight in Afghanistan. This flight took place from Gardez to Kabul. I put music from Steve Miller Band to it, called Fly Like an Eagle. When I first started watching the video clip, this song was all I could think of so that is what I used.
This video provides a snapshot into the variety of landscape in Afghanistan. You will see open and barren desert, mountain peaks and lush green farmland. Also, the green farmland I saw on this flight was the most I had ever seen in this country over the last year. That was the one thing most of us talked about, how much green we saw while on the flight.
I promised this video a while ago, but with the trip home I was delayed in getting it finished and posted. I hope you enjoy it.
