It’s A Start

I’m starting to feel better so I ventured off to work today.  Although I’m still congested I a lot better then two days ago.  I cannot believe where the time has gone, but I only have 2 weeks left for my first 8 week classes.  My theology class I’m doing great in.  I’ve needed to write three papers so far “Those Who Have Never Heard Have They No Hope”, “What Is Man”, & “The Role of Women in the Church A Survey of Current Approaches” and aced them all.  I have one more paper to write this week on….I’m not even sure yet.  But I’m sure it’ll be a good one.

Being sick all weekend really put a wrench in the gears.  We’re suppose to be moving in two weeks and we haven’t even started packing yet.  Next weekend is a no go for me because I’ll be at drill.  So packing will be done during the week I suppose.  We really do not have a lot because during the several moves we have unloaded a lot of stuff that we did not need.

Till Next time folks…

Got another letter from Chip yesterday.

Hello everybody, I know you ask when I am coming home but I am still here having fun.  I will be home soon.   Today I was on the ANA base checking in with the civil affairs officer and checking on First Sgt Dodd’s truck I broke while he is on leave.  They have to replace the drivers door.  We had very high winds here 3 days ago where the cold air coming down from the Hindu Kush mountains met the warm air coming up from the south in Iraq.  I saw roofs go that day.  I felt like I could be the flying Nun in my booney hat.  For those of you old enough to remember Sally Fields in the tv series help out the poor disadvantage younger generation.  Any way I digress.  The ANA base has a recruit training center attached to it and while my interpreter, Sheik, and I were walking to the motorpool we ran into a new recruit squad of 20 brand spanking new soldiers and the drill sgt was trying to teach them how to march Soviet style and it was h hilarious.  I haven’t seen Sheik laugh so hard since I have been here.  But wait it gets better.  On the way back from the motorpool we run into them again and the drill sgt stops them in front of me.  I say to myself what a golden opportunity I have here.  So I tell Sheik to translate what I am going to say to these brand new soldiers and I want him to bellow it out like a drill sgt.  Now being the nice kind guy that I am I start yelling at them for doing a lousy job of learning how to march.  I then I tell them I expect them to be the best ANA soldiers there ever were! I popped them to attention and inspected them.  I know you had to be there but these poor kids were scared of me while Sheik and I are trying hard not to laugh.   I then finished my motivational speech by telling them they have to be the best of the best because I will be watching from the shadows and Allah help them if they don’t become the best.  I played on their superstitious nature with the shadow part.  You should have seen their looks.  I then turned them over to their drill sgt and watched them march off and they were better.  Sheik was rolling on the ground with laughter and he asked if we could do this again.  Maybe we will and maybe we won’t.  Live from Afghanistan Chief Petty Officer Submarine Service Charles E. Wisard, a man of many talents and I am trying to behave.

Real Quick

Nothing real long here I’m really sick.  Went to the doctor this evening and I have Type A Flu….oh joy.  Just wanted to let you know that it is official.  I’m no longer a member of the Army Reserves and I am now a member of the National Guard.  I’ve attached a picture of me after being sworn in, sorry they do not allow cameras during the ceremony.

 By the Colors.

Weekend

Friday night Jen and I went and saw Jumper with some of her co-workers.  By the way, I knew movies were expensive, but my goodness I almost pooped my pants when the lady, who we will call Witch, said 19.50 for not five tickets but two tickets.  I had to ask her how many tickets I just ordered, but Witch confirmed it’s 9.50 per ticket.  I asked Witch if they had Military Discounts and she promptly said “No, it’s AMC’s policy”.  After some discussion of how ridiculous it is that they do not have military discounts I paid the 19.50 and left.  I guess when I turned my back she didn’t know that my lovely wife Jen was watching and she caught Witch laughing.  I talked the manager, but the manager about Witch laughing, but that was pretty useless.  I’m half tempted to put AMC theaters on the “List” they would be joining a highlighted cast of Wal-Mart, Orlando, and Jacksonville…we shall see.  Back to Jumper, it was an alright movie I mean I wouldn’t nominate it for an Academy Award.  Jen said she kept waiting for the climatic part of the movie and before she knew it was over.  She felt like nothing really happened and I can see that.

Sunday night was the premiere of the new Knight Rider TV movie.  I grew up watching Knight Rider and I still watch it if I can catch an episode of it on TV, so I was really looking forward to it.  Jen and I watched about an hour of it before we went to bed.  I probably would have watched the whole thing, but I was a bit disappointed.  The opening song was somewhat like the original and the acting I think could have been better.   Don’t get me wrong there were some good parts in the movie, but nothing that really grabbed my attention.  I’ll watch the rest probably tonight and just hope that NBC does not destroy my childhood show.

All they need next is to remake Airwolf, but if the TV movie destroys that memory I don’t know what I will do.  Maybe they should just leave it how it is.

So most of you know about my decision of reenlisting into the Guard and I’m going to get with the recruiter sometime this week and sit down and talk about the units around here.  Pending on what happens with that, I am more than likely going to reenlist.  Eventually I will need to take physical fitness test so I started running again so I can back into shape and boy oh boy my legs are killing me.  Long distance running has always been my weak point so I really need to work at it.  For the test I need to run 2 miles in 16:36 so I really need to get to work.

Till next time folks….

Mutually Exclusive or Not

Reading the news this morning and saw that Berkley University has come to a decision that they would not send a letter to the US Marines asking telling them they are not welcomed on their campus.  I don’t even know what to say about this.  To even consider doing this is just…I can’t even think of a word to use to describe how dumb this is.

For the life of me I do not understand how you can be for the troops, but not the war.  I believe them to be one in the same.  So if you’re for the troops and not the war and if the troops (I understand not all of them are) are for the war does that mean you are not for the troops that are for the war?  I don’t see how you can be half committed.  I guess no matter what we will always have people on both end of the spectrum’s.  I wonder how many of these people who are in the against the war, but for the troops camp really know how the troops feel about the war.

Now that I have said that, this may or may not be a good time for this but here it goes.  Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking and searching about my military career.  I’ve talked this over with Jen and I’m thinking of reenlisting into the National Guard.  I have not done it yet, but it is something I am considering.  I’m not even sure what it is, maybe I miss it…WOW it’s hard to believe I just said that.  I honestly have so many different things running through my mind about this decision I’m not even sure what makes sense anymore.  I will keep all of you updated on this and what we will do.

Till next time folks…

Following Up

I guess I should have followed up my statement of how I would have done things differently in my previous post. More than likely served my time overseas either in Iraq or Afghanistan and I would have taken advantage overall of the opportunities I had. In regards to the Reserves I don’t know how I could have done things differently. I went into it thinking I would be doing all this great stuff, but that was not the case as explained in my last post. I can only do so much when I’m limited to one unit within traveling distance and openings. April 24th, 2008 my contract will be up and I will be out of the Army totally. Jen and I have talked about me re-enlisting, but if I were to re-enlist it would not be into the Army. More than likely it would either be the Air-Force or the Navy. At the same time I don’t think I could leave Jen back home by herself because more than likely I would be deployed. What I am learning through marriage is that less and less I can no longer only think about myself, but I need to think about my wife as well.

Thanks to Jen she was able to get a picture to me of the problem with the formatting.  I never saw the problem because I avoid Internet Explorer like the plague and I’m assuming the ones who are seeing problems are using Internet Explorer.  I use Firefox and the formatting was always correct for me.  I’ll be sure to check the formatting from now on.

Got another e-mail from Chip today:

Hello everyone, another update from Afghanistan.  My time is getting short so I want to thank all of you for your support and I am asking that no more packages be sent because I might not get them.  We only got 6 mail flights in Jan. due to the extreme winter weather and so far in Feb. we have received 3.  We went out on another HA mission today.  I am at the point in my deployment I get to pick and chose which missions I go on and I get to assign the others.  I did not go out on today’s but I should have.   It was winter emergency relief aid to 10 villages and we were to take it to the soccer stadium and distribute it there.  When the team got to the stadium there was a huge crowd waiting for them and they rushed the 7 and half ton truck full of the supplies.   The Afghan soldiers tried to cordon off the truck, then shouted at the people and then tried to threaten them with their weapons and bayonets.  None of this frightened the people and they got on the truck and started throwing things off to the crowd.  My mission commander I assigned to this mission told me it was a mess.  The ANA soldiers did manage to rescue 2 bundles of blankets and bring them back to me.  Why should I have gone.  Experience.  With close to 100 HA combat missions under my belt I would have told the convoy to keep going and park a half mile down the road and send the Afghan Col. back in a truck to speak to the village elders and set up a 2nd drop zone away from the crowd.  We were lucky no one got hurt today.  The team I sent had some rookies but the team leader was a veteran of HA missions.  This shows we can all make mistakes in judgement from me on down.  This will also a good learning tool to use for future missions.  I have to send these people out as training because I won’t be here in another couple of months to continue to run these missions.  I have started to pass the baton over to the next group.   The last 3 weeks of my time deployed will be flying, turning in gear, and demobing.  In case you are wondering I had to learn the hard way too. I was on a HA mission when a crowd overwhelmed the Afghan soldiers and went for the truck.  We managed to get the truck moved before they got on the truck.  So far 90%  of all the HA missions end in success.

Behave

It All Makes Sense

Every now and then the news will report a positive story out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but most of the time it’s something negative.  My father in-law for some time now has been sending me e-mails of a friend of his who is in Afghanistan with the National Guard.  It’s really good stuff to read about the positive stuff.  You know what, in the year or so I have been receiving the letters I can’t recall one of them being negative…interesting.

Hi everyone, I did a Humanitarian mission to downtown Herat to the Deaf Center today.   I was pretty good.  They are teaching the deaf Dari and English, math, carpentry, seamstress, have an art school and computer classes for the Deaf kids.  I talked to the director and he was deaf.  It went like this.  I talked to my interpreter who talked to the technical director who signed to the director who signed back to the technical director who talked to my interpreter who then spoke to me.  They were excited to see us and the kids wanted to show us there skills in English and math.  They wrote things on the chalk boards in English and then did math problems in English.  They showed us their carpentry shop, seamstress shop, computer lab, and their art school.   It was pretty fabulous.  The disabled ctr, blind ctr, and the deaf ctr have hardly any money coming in and I look at what they are accomplishing and it puts our systems to shame.  Yes I am going to help them with some aid.  I am in the process of getting it together.  Missions like these make it all worthwhile.   In the deaf ctr the women are more women working there and this ctr has 5 stated goals.  I will be writing an article on the deaf ctr this week.   Well that is all for now.

Behave and I will try.

It dawned on me this morning as I was reading this.  Most of you who read my blog are aware of my attitude towards enlisting into the Army Reserve.  It all make perfect sense now, my attitude isn’t anything against the war or the people I served with, it was because when I went to weekend drill I taught myself how to pick desk locks with a paperclip, I sat in on a lot of useless meetings that had absolutely nothing to do with anything, oh and I cannot forget the numerous formations to wait around for who knows what.  I never did anything like the stuff Chip talks about during my drill weekends…heck I didn’t even do any type of training.  The most training I did was in basic and that was almost 8 years ago.  We rarely went to the firing range and when we did I spent more time sitting waiting to fire then actually firing.  I think back on my deployment and It stunk being away from my family, but I think if I had a second chance I would have done it differently.

As I get more e-mails from Chip I will keep posting them for you to read.

The Greatest Play Ever!

This is most incredible play I have ever seen in football.  The first video is from Youtube, not so great quality.

Sorry, the YouTube video was taken down, probably because they didn’t have written consent from the NFL.

The second video is from NFL.com which is better quality,but you have to sit through a small commercial.

http://www.nfl.com/videos?videoId=09000d5d8067d05e

Of course we know the rest of the story.

Giants Win

First things first way to go Giants.  What a game that was.

It was a pretty busy weekend. Saturday I worked a few hours at the office, got new tires, bought a new desk because our old one just could not handle my school stuff and Jen’s stuff, and helped the in-laws buy a new dryer.

Interesting story while I was helping the in-laws pickup the new dryer. So I was waiting around for the owner of the vehicle I scuffed up while parking when I noticed that someone stole my Yankees license plate. I could not believe it. On the bright side they were kind thieves because they did leave me the screws that was holding on the license plate. So at least I don’t need to buy new screws.

Sunday we went over to the in-laws to watch the Super Bowl. By the way Patriots in case you didn’t know you needed to win the Super Bowl for the undefeated season to mean anything. What a game that was. Seriously I was at the edge of my seat for the last 5 minutes of the game. I loved seeing Tom Brady get knocked around and I loved even more we made a touchdown with 59 seconds left on the clock for the win.

There were only a few commercials that really stood out. This one and the Iron Man preview. After seeing that preview for new the Iron Man movies I’m even more excited.

I mentioned sometime ago about thinking of going into business on my own doing AutoCAD consulting and it’s really something that I’m thinking about. Jen said she would quit her job and would come work for me. That would be exciting for a husband and wife company. If this is a venture we would do I guess I would need to figure out where I would get starting client base and I would need to save for business expenses. Oh and learn how to run a business. But anyways I’ll just see what happens. If it’s meant to be, the Lord will make a way for it to happen.

By the way Jen is getting sick so if you could keep her in your prayers that would be great.