Achievement Unlocked: Player Housing!

Yesterday was a good day.

First and foremost, all of the flags were full staff. I can't begin to explain how rare of an occurrence that is lately. I think it's happened two or three days out of the 39 days I've been on post. The greater amount of troops in country coupled with the height of the fighting season (read: summer) makes casualties extremely likely each and every day. When a flag is lowered to half staff, it usually stays there for at least two days, usually three. That means that for three whole days, we didn't have a coalition casualty in Afghanistan. That is definitely a reason to celebrate.

There is an Afghan flag at the Eggers flag plaza, but for some reason it is not lowered for Afghan Army or Police casualties. If it was, completely full-staff days probably wouldn't exist. The Afghans get hit hard by the insurgents. The more they attack the Army and police, the more they can discourage people from joining their ranks. I asked around a bit about why the Afghan flag wasn't lowered for their casualties when I first got here and no one was really sure why that was the case. The general thought was that each country takes care of its own flag and we don't have any Afghan security force members permanently stationed on Eggers (a problem in its own right, in my opinion) to handle that responsibility. It could also be that that's just not a tradition the Afghans follow. I hope that it's not just apathy keeping this from being done. They're out there fighting and dying just as much as we are. They deserve the salute of a half-staff flag as much as the Coalition guys do.

Second, it actually rained here. I mean really rained. Up to now, I'd only seen rain on three days, almost as rare as a full-staff flag plaza. On the occasions it did rain, either the rain only lasted for 10-20 minutes, or it was such a light sprinkle that it didn't even get all of the ground wet. But a couple nights ago, we saw our first good rain shower, the clouds stuck around and kept us cool, and it's raining again this evening. I really can't believe I'm saying this, but it's such a welcome change from the clear, sunny, blue skies we normally see here. No, I'm not crazy. Allow me to explain.

For those of you not from the midwest United States, we get, ahem, unpredictable, weather quite often. The saying in Missouri goes "If you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes and it will change." A few years ago we had 70 degree weather and a tornado on November 30th and snow on December 1st. A main source of entertainment during the summer time is watching the weather forecasters on the local news stations interrupt regular programming on TV to analyze the incoming storm and severe weather warnings. Its quite common for local rivers to flood nearby fields after several days of torrential rain. Weather isn't just an adjective to describe the day, its an event. So having day after day after day of the same weather is so incredibly boring, I can't even begin to describe. Not to mention that someone took the filter off the sun over here. It is bright. There's about three times a week I wish I had paid the extra money for the lenses that change from clear to shaded when I got my glasses. The overcast skies the past couple of days has been such a relief and welcome break from the eye-searing ball of fire we normally have. I will be disappointed to see the weather clear.

And third, I DON'T HAVE TO LIVE IN A TENT ANYMORE!! /glee! That's right ladies and gentleman, I, the lowly civilian, have been given permanent housing. After my ranting blog post the other night, I went the next morning to complain about the fact that I was kept awake until after 2 AM because of pendulous connex crates dangling over my sleeping area, to ask when someone was going to come clean the tent, and what was the status on getting me out of there. I ended up getting in touch via e-mail with Sergeant First Class that told me the housing list should be moving again within 48 hours, he'd get someone to clean the tent, and there wouldn't be any more nighttime construction. He was very quick to respond and gave me quite a bit of information, so I was content to give him slightly more than 48 hours to see if he could make good on his promises.

So slightly more than 48 hours later, when I still wasn't in a room and my tent still hadn't been cleaned, I went back down to the billeting office to see what the problem was this time. Apparently they had transferred their waiting list and housing records from one system to another, and in the process some information had been lost. My information was one of those. Thankfully they were smart enough not to delete the information from the old system so they could verify that I had been #1 on the wait list. And because they HAD slotted a bunch of civilians into rooms the day before (within the 48 hours promised, I might add) they were able to give me a key to the only room that had gone unclaimed from that round of room assignments. They said whenever the guy showed up to get his key, they'd tell him what happened and he'd go to the top of the list so he'd get the next available room. I'm sure he won't be very happy about it, but I waited 5+ weeks, darn it, and this room is mine!

My new quarters, complete with a decent mattress, two egg crates, carpet, a wall locker, and eight cases of MREs just in case I get hungry, I guess. Jackpot.

Compared to the tent, my new quarters are awesome. I'm actually in a real building, one that was here before we moved into the neighborhood. I have a single roommate instead of seven. I have carpeted floor instead of dirty plywood. The mattress isn't a hammock made out of metal wires. The air conditioner is on my side of the room (score!) There's a bathroom literally one step outside my door, though no shower. I still have to walk a little ways for that, but not far. I actually moved a little further away from camp than wear I was before, but it only added about 30 seconds onto a 10 minute walk, so no big deal. The only real complaint I have with this room is that the wireless internet doesn't reach this far out, so I have to use the broken, wiggly hard wire connection that doesn't stay in the port on my computer. If I look at the thing funny it disconnects me from the internet. Hopefully I can get the internet guys to give me a new one. Then this place will be perfect!

*****

Every morning we get sent a summary of the major news stories involving Afghanistan so we can read about what the media is saying about our work over here. Obviously the amount of things written about Afghanistan can't be condensed into a single word document everyday, so there's lots of stuff we don't see, but we do see the things that are most pertinent to this command. I've decided to start posting links to the stories I think are worthwhile reading for your consumption. It'll give all of you an easy way to read up on the areas of the war that touch my work on a daily basis without having to scour the internet.

First up: illiteracy, the problems it causes, and the solutions being implemented to make the situation better. The article talks about the Education Division in CJ-7 at NTM-A. CJ-7 is the directorate I work in. I'm in the headquarters analyst cell, not in the education section, but they are people I see somewhat frequently.

That's it for tonight. Talk to you all again soon. Out here.