The Fobbit

(Edited: I bumped a new blog by Mindy today with this one, so keep on reading to the previous post...)

Ok, so I’ve been very lazy when it comes to blogging. I’m truly sorry. What can I say? As the edited-for-TV version of Forrest Gump goes, “it happens.” And come on, give me break…I’m deployed!

So many of you may be wondering where I am right now. Well I’m not gonna tell you. Yet. First I must recap my lovely almost-month in Kuwait. I believe when he left off last time, your hero was trying to find something to do and failing miserably. Well, pretty much that continued for a long, long time. In Kuwait, we- the royal “we,” as in the Army- receive all of our equipment off of the ships that sent them over from Germany. We then take said equipment and either send it straight to our final destination, or we take them to Kuwait, use it for a little while, and then send it north. So that happened pretty much within the first two weeks, and then…yeah. I went to the range to fire my M16 one day, and then another day I went to a range where we kicked in doors and shot people with simulation rounds that are kind of like little plastic paintballs that hurt about twenty times worse. That one was actually fun, but other than those, I really just spent a lot of money at Starbucks, watched a lot of movies I had not seen since I’ve become a dad, and seemingly went to chow every five minutes. But I got to hang out with my fellow staff members who pretty much did the same thing, and we had lots of laughs in spite of it all. The highlights included a sweet orange dust storm, karaoke night, and a special moment between me and a camel.

So a few days ago, I finally got the word that I’d move north. We’d sent a few people up already, so I had a good idea of when we would go. It was a bit weather dependant, since there had been a lot of storms recently, but we eventually flew up to Iraq and then took a Chinook helicopter over to where I will now reside for these many months. I’m at a very remote place known as FOB Hammer…it’s basically a big dusty plot of land in the middle of nowhere. The Iraqi Army (a contradiction in terms?) had been using this place as a range, and the Army decided to build a FOB here a while back. Literally out of nothing. Only the Army would choose such a lovely place to build a home for a few thousand people.

When I say dusty, many of you don’t have a concept of what the dust here is like. We call it “moon dust” for a very good reason. I remember when I first stepped into moon dust during my first deployment, I knew that I would never appreciate the smell of grass as much as I did right then. This place is covered with it. It coats you with a special dust glaze that you feel you may never remove. They’ve tried to put gravel down to lower the effects of the dust, but it still seeps through everything, and covers clothes, boots, weapons, and anything else in its path. It’s especially nasty when it rains, because it turns into a slimy goo-like substance that first tries to make you slip and fall into it, and when that fails, it just sticks to the bottom of your boots and gradually picks up more until you have a second sole made purely of mud.

The one really awesome thing about this deployment as opposed to my last one is an invention called the CHU. Don’t ask me what it stands for; I know the H is for Housing and the U is for Unit, but the C is anybody’s guess (Update: Containerized!). I lived in an old Iraqi army barracks last time, and that wasn’t bad, but it was infested with sand fleas, mice, lizards and camel spiders. The CHU came along several years back, but we weren’t cool enough to get them in Ramadi at the time. Now they are pretty much on every big FOB, and I now count myself among the fans of the CHU. It’s really just a little room with two of everything- beds, wall lockers, night stands- but ours are brand new and the AC is alive and kicking. We live in rows like we’re in the ghetto, and I think that’s just kinda awesome. Others, wittier than I, have dubbed our block of units CHU-ston. Our rows are separated by letters, which we refer to as “districts”- I live in the P District on the South Side of CHU-ston. How fabulous is that? We’re still working on some more nicknames, to include designations for other neighborhoods, so stay tuned and I’ll keep everyone posted as that develops. I’ll get some pictures up soon as well, but my internet access is not as great right now (and they block Blogger!) so bear with me.

Anyway, that’s the news fit for print right now. As we get more settled, I’ll hopefully get a little more regular with posts. I will also soon be posting the “What to Send Chris” blog so all of you can continue to support my lavish lifestyle with lots of excellent care packages. I’m not really keen on publishing my mailing address here, but if you talk to or email me, Mindy, or either of our parents we can give it to you.

Ok, seriously that’s it for now. Word is telling me I just wrote a 1000 word document so Chris = Huge Loser.