Becoming one of the 'Old Guys' ...

I have spent a great deal of the last few days ferrying people around who are either coming to Iraq or leaving for home. The guys leaving for home just want to get the heck out of here and there’s not much story there. The interesting part was the guys coming INTO Iraq. My command picked up six new Navy personnel on Saturday. Two of these guys work in my shop. Before I picked them up, I thought to myself, this is most likely their first time in Iraq. With that in mind, I wondered what it they were thinking. I remember when I first arrived, being overwhelmed at most of the sights, but we showed up in the dark. These two would get the full experience of Baghdad in the daytime. As I drove them back to our office, I could almost feel the tension in the car. The questions were the same ones we asked three months ago: “How often do you get mortared / rocketed?” Why do the roads stink so badly?” “Why does Iraq smell like a toilet?” “Can we stop and eat?” I tried my best to give them some insight into life here in Baghdad, as I am now one of the guys who has been here a while (It doesn’t seem like three months since I first arrived). While we were standing around in the office, a loud ‘boom’ was heard from outside. Those two were the only ones who reacted at all (that’s kind of sad, but true). When they asked if that was a mortar, I replied, “Nope, that was the waste truck backing into something in the parking lot, the bombs are louder.” As with everyone over here, they too will soon be desensitized to the sound of incoming / outgoing fire(If you hear it blow up, you didn’t get hit, so why stress about it). You only notice the ones that make the walls shake or the lights flicker. I guess it’s like what the war movies call the ‘thousand yard stare.’

Well, enough of that. Tomorrow morning Karen goes in for the last step in this eternal pregnancy. She has her C-section scheduled for the early morning. The babies are big and breech (sideways) so the docs decided the C-section was the way to go. Karen is nervous (justifiably), but she is the strongest woman I know. That being said, the next time I blog, I should have two new children and will announce their names in a live press conference on ESPN (just kidding, I’ll post them here). Prayers and happy wishes are appreciated.

-Grease out