the latest

Sorry to all for the length of time between my last posts but a lot has happened.  I went home for R and R leave on the 21^st of November, well I guess I should say I left Iraq on the 21^st but didn't actually make it home until 73 hours later.  Most of the delay had to do with aircraft problems both in Kuwait and then again in Germany.  I guess the group of soldiers one day ahead of us in Kuwait had aircraft problems and were delayed which led to them getting our airplane and us having to wait for theirs to be fixed.  Once in Leipzig Germany we again had technical problems and had to spend about 16 hours hanging out in the little terminal.  We did get some good German food that but that was about the extent of the excitement.  Once in the air, we stopped again in Atlanta to clear U.S. Customs again and drop off all who were lucky enough to live east of the Mississippi.  We flew from Atlanta to DFW and then I had about 30 minutes to catch the next plane to SLC where I met up with Liz, Jacob, my mom, and Eric.  After not seeing Jacob for nearly 8 months, he looked very different to me.  As I held him for the first time, I was excited that he was not afraid or uneasy with me and his attention went immediately to my Airborne and Air Assault badges, which he tried to pull off.  We had Thanksgiving with my family in Ephraim, which was nice and made a trip to Las Vegas more or less out of tradition, which kind of sucks that I have a traditional thing to do on R and R from Iraq.  Living with Jacob took some getting used to for me but the time for us to bond was very nice to have if only for 15 days.  I was surprised to see that given a houseful of toys, his favorite things to play with are the hanging blinds and the dog's water bowl, which we clean much more often now.  I got to be home for the first real snow storm but it was not big enough for me to do my favorite winter activity, snow blowing.   I did start it up to make sure it works well for Liz.  Just as I was getting used to the 10 or 11 hour time change it seemed like it was time to come back.  Saying goodbye always sucks but I got through it and on the plane headed back for Iraq on the 10^th of December.  Stepping off the plane in DFW an elderly man came up to shake my hand and I  noticed that he was wearing the Congressional Medal of Honor around his neck.  He introduced himself and briefly told me his story of being a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and told me the name of his character in the movie "We were Soldiers".   Meeting him kind of made my problems seem small. This man is the second Medal of Honor recipient I have personally shook hands with, not too bad considering that there are only 99 alive today.   Traveling back to Iraq only took 40 hours as opposed to the 73 to get home.  Leipzig was freezing cold and so was Kuwait if you can believe it.  I have now been back for a few days and am in the worst part of the deployment.  At least this time, I only have about 90 days to go.  I'm still wide awake at 0200 in the morning and then feel like I need to sleep by 1600.  Oh well, it should only take about a week or so.  Christmas season is in full swing out here and it seems to just depress me.  I hate the stupid little messages on the American Forces TV Network from this or that celebrity.