Another corner turned

It's been about a week without anything terribly blog worthy happening, but since we crossed into September I thought I would jot some things down.

First of all, mentally, the changing of the months is good in several ways. The obvious, being that it's one month closer to the end is always good, but with this month,we break into fall as well. Instead of temps reaching the upper 90's +, we are seeing low 90's and upper 80's more than the intense heat. To be honest, weather wise its been a pleasant week. Oh, it rained again today. I don't know when it was that I blogged the last time about rain, but it occurred again today. Hard rain, small hail, rained for quite some time. Not nearly as exciting since it was the second major rain, but I still managed to stand outside and watch it for a few minutes.

The 2 star Admiral in charge of all this who ha crap in the US visited today. It's more a less a big deal, but honestly, we all weren't all that thrilled with it. He isn't going to send us home early, and just side steps the questions we ask about this deployment in specific, so we didn't learn much. I asked a couple pointed questions, but was given the equivalent of a pat on the head with a - just run along little boy - attitude. Ah well, felt good to ask anyway.

The camp continues to grow. We started with about 180 I think when I first got here. At this point we are near 300, and the word I get is that we will reach 500 before too long. It is seriously taxing our infrastructure as food lines have increased 10 fold, the Internet has slowed considerably and there are just piles of people around all the time, makes me wonder if any of them work. Supposedly we are tearing walls down in every direction to build new buildings, and we are losing our gym as it stands to increase the size of the dining facility. They better replace it with something nice and get more machines as its getting impossible to work out with out waiting in line for equipment.

On a completely different note, my brother Matt's wife Maggie had a good idea to contact build-a-bear to ask them about sending bears for the school. They have agreed and are going to be sending some bears. Who knows how many, but ideally enough to give them out to at least 1 or 2 full classrooms. Those kids love the little toys, so if you have a burning desire, feel free to send some, and as always, school supplies are welcome (re-iterate as it changed 5 times, no crayons!) :)

That's about it, I have babbled sufficiently. I leave this week for Qatar, I will definitely have new stuff to post after that trip, and likely during if I get the chance.

Gary