The poster formerly known as Blowmee the Clown.

Tob - I'll save all the pictures and upload them to aforementioned directory.

[ Edit - it's done. http://msdelta.net/~dave/tobiasly houses 34 pictures; if you have any more to host later, PM me with a URL and I'll snag 'em and put 'em up. ]

Well that does it. I want me some PVS-14 goggle(s). I love the nightlife.

What are the first things you want to do when you get home?

I don't think my wife would appreciate you referring to her as a "thing". :)

Other than that, hell.. there are so many things that it would be difficult to make a list. A McDonald's Filet-O-Fish would be nice, but I prolly won't rush out to buy one as soon as I get back.

Just sleeping in a real bed, with my wife and dog, and not having to worry about being woken up in the middle of the night to deal with something, will be pretty nice. Everything else is gravy.

Play your cards right, and I bet you can get a warm Mac Fillet-O-Fish served to you in bed (with/by wife and dog).
Although the dog might be annoying then, and you'll just be awake so you'll have that morning taste, so maybe fried fish wouldnt be the best,... and it could setup some wierd associations for the wife, for you... Oh well, maybe rethink this clustering idea. In any case, you've earned some serious gravy, man. Soon I hope!

Thanks for doing the work there dave! Of course, I can't tell a difference over my slow connection here, but I'm sure it's much better on the outside.

Get back safe and soon man.

I read this was to free up the satellite channels for weapons and such.
And from a nobody Joe citizen, thanks for a job well done!:beer:

Well, that, and to keep people from writing home and saying "Hi Mom! My battalion of 635 people and 25 humvees will be moving up 150 miles into Iraq next Monday..." I'm assuming the army email sites are monitored at a much higher level than is possible with, say, Hotmail or Yahoo.

Oh yeah, beer! I do miss beer.

Thinking back to the Camp Doha (Kuwait) days, I believe the scaredest I had been in my life, for about 0.5 seconds, was about the third scud alarm. Whenever they detected an incoming missile, alarms all over base would go off, then we would put on all our chem/bio protective gear and watch Fox News to find out what was going on (in the one photo, you can see the reporter on TV in his gas mask as well, as he reported from Kuwait City on the alarm).

So, although it was somewhat routine (we had several drills in the weeks prior), there was always a little pucker factor involved. The missiles, of course, usually missed whatever they were targeting by miles, and were shot down or landed in the sea. But this time, we heard a really loud rocket sound as the alarm was going off. That sound turned out to be one of the nearby Patriots launching to intercept it, but for that split second I was sure it was an incoming missile headed right for us.

In hindsight, I guess you could call it kind of exciting. OK, maybe not.

Man, that's unfair! Glad you liked the pictures though.

My brother sent me a link to a CNN article that informed me just how close I came to getting whacked. On March 27, an Al-Samoud missile was launched at the headquarters of the Coalition Forces Land Component Command -- the building right next to ours. An analysis of the trajectory determined it would have landed "on or near" its target, had it not been intercepted by a Patriot missile.

I remember that morning, because we were packing to head up into Iraq. The alarm went off, and we all put on our gear, as had become almost routine at the time. Then, we heard two "whoosh"es as the Patriots launched, followed maybe a second later by the explosion. I remember thinking at the time, "man, that couldn't have been more than a few hundred meters away", but never got the chance to ask about it afterwards.

My husband tried to bring a young dog from Egypt to the US a few years ago - it really wasn't that bad an expense.
Unfortunately, the pooch got hit by a car before he could complete his round of shots.
(..or so we were told..)