I have irresistible legs

Some of my best writing comes from when I just sit and start typing. When I think about it, I tend to over think, and then it just comes out as crap. Well guess what....today is your lucky day. I JUST seconds ago finished typing up a new entry...it wasn't great, but it certainly had its moments. Guess what? GONE! Some stupid combination of keystrokes, unknown to me caused my web browser to suddenly jump to a new part of the blogging world and the work I just put in was gone in a blink. Very frustrating and on top of that, I now have to over think it, to try to get back what I just wrote. I apologize in advance if this is a waste of minutes of your precious time. In fact, I will give you double your money back on your subscription fees if after reading this you aren't 100% satisfied.

I went on my first walk around the entire ANA side of the base the other day. I have driven the entire base and at times have obviously walked over parts of it, but I had yet consciously gone out for a walk.

Steve decided for Lent to give up snack food - ambitious yes - but in his mind necessary. He wants to lose some weight before going home, in fact, we all do. In addition to his decreased snack food consumption, he goes on two or three walks everyday around the entire ANA base, somewhere in the area of 3-5 miles. Since it was a nice day, and I was on one of my scheduled off days from the gym, I decided to join him.

I put on my shorts and a sweatshirt, although in hindsight the sweatshirt may have been overkill. We started off, and within the first mile had a myriad of catcalls and whistles in our direction. See, Afghans don't do the shorts thing...they are a long pants people. Seeing our very white, but obviously very buff legs was too much for them to handle and they had to express themselves. It's always nice to know that middle aged, middle eastern men find your legs attractive.

While walking, we came across a huge warehouse with what sounded like the Afghan version of house music blaring. It was New Years day here, so we assumed it was some party for that. Large groups of guys were headed in that direction, and several groups invited us to join them (see the previous paragraph for the reasons why). We politely declined as I shudder to think of the prospects of a dark warehouse filled with 300 Afghan men, no women and the two of us.

Our Marine Colonel who was in charge of Camp Blackhorse had to go home a few months ago. He caught some Afghan crud virus and had to be sent to Germany for treatment, and then supposedly he was coming back. Evidently the risk of re-infection was high enough that they decided to send him back to the states instead. We got our new Colonel last week. Haven't met him yet, so far seems like a decent enough guy.

We were back at work today after the mini vacation for the New Year. Zak was supposed to go to Mazar-E-Sharif up north for some celebration but ended up staying home due to bad road conditions. He sat at home like I did and was just as bored, although I can't really complain as the time goes fast on off days!

56 more fun filled days.

Gary