28 June 2007, Two days in a row! I woke up this morning at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep, so at 5am I figured I would check the computer. It does run a little faster at this time in the morning, and I was able to post a comment.
Yesterday was an exciting day, as Wade from Life Song blog and his wife, TC, were in OKC after dropping off a shipment in Tulsa. They are putting in the mileage across the country. Wade and TC are the first bloggers I have been able to meet. They live in North Carolina when not on the road. They are the first in a long line of bloggers I hope to meet.


For my little 5 acres, we managed to avoid rain all day yesterday. I meet Mrs. Dub in the city after dropping Miss Dub off at church and we had dinner with her parents. I have a great set of in-laws.
I don't have to return to the police department till July 10th, but I think we are all ready for me to start back up. I have to catch up on all the training I have missed in the last 15 months as well as go to the gun range.

Miss Dub is excited about the baby goat coming soon, and I'll see if she's interested in a naming contest. Well, I'll end this for now. Be safe and have a great day.

27 June 2007, Wednesday morning. I was excited Monday night when we retired for the evening. The place had finally dried out and I was looking forward to working outside Tuesday. Well, we woke up Tuesday morning to having about 2 inches of rain over night and it continued to rain all day. Our neighbors on the block to our east have to cross a low spot which crosses over a break in the pond. The water was rushing over it and several people just parked their cars until the water receded.
Sunday morning I had 2100 feet of 3" pipe delivered to the house. I'm hope to get started on the pipe and cable fence soon. We are still shopping around for a barn and tractor. I've decided on the barn, but we are waiting until I get back to work full-time and see how our expenses look before buying anything.
In other news our female goat, Bella, is expecting to deliver a kid any day now. yeah.
Being home with the family has been wonderful. Things are almost normal again, with the exception of I haven't returned to work yet. That will start on July 10th. Today was my last day of paid leave by the military.
If you get the chance, go by and cheer up Mrs. Dub, she would rather be home than at work.
Be safe and have a great day.

21 June 2007, Well, I haven't been updating like I should be. Most of you understand, and I appreciate that. So far the one thing I am not ready for is grocery shopping. I enter the store and am like a kid in a candy shop. Can I have that? What about this? Way to many choices for me at the moment. Everything else is going really well. Miss Dub is at camp this week so Mrs. Dub and I have been having a couple of date nights. hehe.
Being back home has been wonderful. The weather is certainly unusual for this time of year in Oklahoma and it's amazing how parts of the country are in floods and other parts are in droughts. We need to spread this out.
My dial up connection at home is certainly an issue for me. I have tried to read several of my regular blogs but can't get the comment section to work for me. I'm looking at some options that will hopefully pan out soon.
Well, be safe and have a great day.

15 June 2007, Happy Dance Friday! And a great day for dancing it is. I've been home now since Sunday. I'll go over the highlights for the last week.
Sunday, of course, we arrived here back in Oklahoma City, but 45 minutes earlier than we were expected so most of the families hadn't arrived yet. This did give us time to find our bags and get them situated before the great reunions began. As I had now been up for the last 24 hours, we went to breakfast and then I crashed in bed for 3-4 hours.
Monday. I took it easy until we headed out to Cattlemen's for dinner. I had around 20 friends and families there and it was good to see everyone.
Tuesday. We took Miss Dub to her piano lessons and then headed to Durant in Southern Oklahoma. We were given a two day pass before we had to be back at the armory to finish turning in equipment and final paperwork. We stayed at our cousin's house, had dinner and then stopped off at the Choctaw Nation Casino. After an hour there, I walked out breaking even, though at one point I was ahead by $60. I also missed Wade and TC who were driving through OKC at some point that day.
Wednesday. I spent most of it at drill and then loaded up the family and came home.
Thursday. Just drove around OKC, looking at tractors and having lunch. I haven't started on any projects yet, but the plans are in motion.
Friday. I am the only one out of bed so far, but it's time to feed the horses. As soon as I locate my camera, I'll post some pictures from this week.
Be safe and have a great day.

10 June 2007, I'm home! And in the usual Army standard, 45 minutes early. You would think that would be a good thing, except for the 65 soldiers arriving, maybe 6 families had shown up by the time we got there, so as the families finally started making it there, they realized they were late, but all is good.
We had a great reunion at the airport and then went for breakfast. We have been up for the last 24 hours, the Army planned stuff for us for each hour of the night before so we couldn't go to sleep. After breakfast we came home were I took a nap of about 3-4 hours. Miss Dub and I are planning on seeing a play tonight at the Civic Center called "Wicked" Originally, I wasn't going to be home and the two tickets we have were for Mrs and Miss. We haven't been able to secure a third ticket so Mrs. Dub is going to let us go.
I have a headache from hades from lack of sleep, but all is wonderful. I'll post more and start putting up pictures as soon as I get myself a little more organized back home.
Thank you all for your prayers and good wishes. Be safe and have a great day.

08 June 2007, ALMOST THERE!!
Well, I made it to Ft. Carson, Colorado on the 5th. As I last mentioned it took 55 hours to make it out of Afghanistan to Kuwait where we spent two days. Then flew out of Kuwait to Frankfurt-Hahn Germany where we stayed long enough to fuel up. Couldn't find Sanni anywhere. Next, we flew to Iceland, refueled, blew over Greenland, stopped in Indiana. Here we were met by Veterans and had our first chance of calling our families upon arriving in the beautiful United States. We finished up when we arrived in Colorado.
For the last three days we have been out-processing, briefings, medical, anything and everything. We are staying in the new barracks which resemble a prison compound to include a fence all the way around it. They have us out far enough that we have to take buses to come into the main base. (Sounds more like we might have something and are in quarantine)
I finally finished up all of our out-processing a couple of hours ago and found a cyber cafe.
The final flight will occur on Sunday and I should arrive at the Will Rogers Airport around noon. Yipee!
At one point yesterday, we almost turned on a Active Duty soldier as he was giving a briefing and told us we would be returning to our "weekend warrior" mode. The whole auditorium erupted as this guy hadn't seen a tour in a combat zone yet and many like myself have already had over 800 days of it since 911. This is still the mentality of some of the active components and from what I've seen we could go head to head with just about any active unit out there and shine well above what they could do. We bring so much more to the table(battlefield) with our civilian lives since we are more diversified in our backgrounds than just being trained in one job.
Anyway, it's wonderful being back and in less than 48 hours I will be home. I want to thank everyone of you for your prayers, blessings and friendships. You do mean a lot to me and my family.
Be safe and have a great day.

02 June 2007, if it can go wrong, it is.
Examples:
I buy a coke, have it in my sack, I swing my rifle to take it off and puncture my coke.
I've traveled 45 kilometers in 55 hours, and am still stuck in Afghanistan.
I have been without my baggage for three days now, it's in Kuwait.

I've adjusted the countdown, hopefully I won't have to do that too many more times, but with the government as my travel agent, who knows. Other than that, I'm doing really good, and will keep you in the loop as much as possible.
Be safe and have a great weekend.

01 June 2007, I'm in transit now, heading back to the U.S. I'm not able to give any more details than that, but will keep you informed as best I can. The only other thing I really need to do is change my countdown counter, as my seat for my school could not be confirmed and I'm not in the mood to mess with it any more. There's another school in August and I'll try to get a seat in that one.
Everything else is going well for the moment, minus any involvement by the U.S. Military. We are headed in the right direction and really, that's all that matters anyway. I could use Sanni or Sarge Charlie right now, as everything on this computer is in German.
Be safe and have a great day.