It’s been a little over a month since I returned home from Baghdad. In that time, I’ve been doing my best to relax a bit… hence the lack of keeping up with this blog.
The big news was that I finally went on that cruise I was planning. I kept a daily diary of the cruise adventures on my travel agency’s website. The entries are here.
Posted in Post-Deployment | Tagged vacation | 1 Comment »
Happy New Year from Blogging Iraq!
More to come over the next few weeks…
Posted in Misc | 1 Comment »
As advertised, I’ve finally made the full transition into Evil Edward Norton by shaving my lumberjack-like beard into a svelte goatee.
It took about a week’s growth of an itchy beard to get to this point, and I only used a razor to get this long growth into a goatee. It was quite painful to shave… physically, not emotionally.
So, the reason I call this the “Evil Edward Norton” is simple. You can tell if Edward Norton is playing a good guy or a bad guy based on whether or not he wears a goatee.
Think about it. In what roles does he wear the goatee versus the clean shave?
In “The Incredible Hulk,” he was good-guy Bruce Banner. No goatee.
In “The Italian Job,” he played a dishonorable thief named Steve. Yep… a goatee.
He played an FBI agent in “Red Dragon” standing face-to-face with Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lector. No goatee.
Although a supporting player in “Rounders,” he sported no goatee in the poker flick with Matt Damon.
In “American History X,” he played a former Neo-Nazi skinhead. You guessed it… a goatee.
So, now that I’ve grown my goatee out, I expect that people will treat me with a bit of suspicion. After all, everyone who attends the Edward Norton School of Facial Hair Choices knows that people with goatees cannot be trusted.
I’ll be keeping this during my month-long vacation, but I’ll have to shave it off if I wear my uniform on my cruise. It’s really sad, though. I think a goatee in an Air Force service dress uniform would look terrific.
Posted in Post-Deployment | Tagged Edward Norton, goatees | 2 Comments »
There were a few unanswered questions in my blogging adventures, and I think I’ll take a moment to address those here.
Posted in Post-Deployment | Tagged questions | 3 Comments »
I collected a lot of the photos I took from my deployment to Iraq and created this photo video montage.
I chose The Who as the background music for the video. While I was deployed, I listened to music constantly, and The Who provided me lots of energy to get through the days!
Posted in Post-Deployment | Tagged The Who, video, YouTube | 3 Comments »
My dad and my wife met me at the Montgomery airport Thursday morning. My wife surprised me by bringing my dad down from Ohio.
So, I’ve been home for two full days now, and it’s been great to finally be here.
I went into work briefly Thursday to turn in my weapon and pick up my inprocessing checklist. I began tackling that on Friday.
Posted in Post-Deployment | Tagged decompression | 3 Comments »
Late last night, I arrived in Baltimore. Before the end of the day, which was 32 hours long for me, I had been in five countries across eight time zones.
That journey allowed me the opportunity to see some truly amazing things.
Posted in Deployed Life | Tagged Alps, flying, mountains, sunsets | 11 Comments »
While I’m waiting for my flight to take me out of some foreign country, into a bunch of other foreign countries, then into the United States, I thought I would try to entertain myself a little by watching some videos.
The internet told me to get bent.
Posted in Deployed Life | Tagged celebrities, double dip, fries, LeBron James, video | 2 Comments »
Well, folks… that’s all she wrote. I’ve departed Baghdad, Iraq for the grassy knolls of the United States. However, it will still be some time before I step off a plane onto U.S. soil.
I had a friend of mine put together this Photoshop job replacing the image of President George W. Bush with mine.
In my last briefing to the commanding general of Task Force 134, we displayed it on the screen. It was quite a hit.
Posted in Deployed Life | Tagged Camp Bucca, detainees, Iraq, Mission Accomplished | 11 Comments »
When you work in a country where you don’t speak the language, sometimes you need a little help communicating. That’s where it’s helpful if you have one of these Iraq Visual Language Survival Guides.
Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to have a great teammate who not only knows the language but also knows the culture very well. He’s been able to help me so much that I’ve never really had to crack open this survival guide.
Posted in Deployed Life | Tagged Arabic, language | 3 Comments »
