July 2018 Update from Iraq

Writing now with enough updates to fill a blog post.

Evie Jean is 6 months old today.  Eli has a gift for making her laugh.  Thanks to Kari, she actually knows my face and my voice from watching videos every day of me playing with Eli.  I also recorded myself reading a book to the kids and Kari plays it for them every morning.  They just enjoyed a long trip home to Pennsylvania and New Jersey to see parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and lots of friends.  Pops also joined them for the trip back to California for a few days.  We have some great friends who are also our neighbors, and they took care of Riley and the house for us.

On 13 July, I finally graduated with my MBA from Liberty University.  It took 5 years, 2 deployments, 2 kids, and 3 PCS moves to complete.  Kari sent me a picture of my diploma, which arrived in the mail last week.  Super proud of that piece of paper and it will be the only thing except Eli's artwork hanging on my "me" wall at home.

One of the Army Soldiers here agreed to attempt an ultrarunning challenge with me in July.  Our goal was to run the number of miles each day for that calendar date.  So, we ran one mile on 1 July, two miles on 2 July, and so on.  I lasted until the 15th and then simply didn't have the time, even when I split the longer days into morning and evening runs.  It was also 110 degrees every day in July.  We bailed for a few days in the middle of the month to recover but then got back to it around 23 July but switched to running kilometers rather than miles.  He is a better American than me and ran 30 miles on the 30th and 31 on the 31st.  I tried to be hard by running my 31 miles in the afternoon sun to simulate Badwater but I failed miserably and crashed in the air conditioned office after just 18 miles.

Now that school is over, I have a strange amount of "free time" during the hours between 8pm and 8am.  I don't know what to do sometimes so I stare at pictures of Kari and the kids.  This week, I opened three different books that I intend to finish by the end of September.  A few of the guys here built a ping-pong table which serves as sporadic entertainment throughout the week.  We tore up our gym, took everything outside, scrubbed it from wall to wall, and put all the equipment back inside.  We take the trucks on test drives, which are more or less joy rides that double down as fictional baha trips over the sand dunes.  Although somewhat pathetic, I've spent a lot of time listening to Bob Marley while riding a stationary bike because that provides me short spurts of time when I actually feel like I have some freedom.  I downloaded the new Mac Miller album last week and then deleted it because it was terrible.

Until recently, I have never had the desire to run Western States, but in the past week it's grown on me for unknown reasons.  Unfortunately, I won't qualify for the 2019 race because this deployment consumed essentially the entire 2018 calendar year, so if the flame still burns next year then maybe I'll throw my name in the hat for the first time in 2020.

For now, my focus is on supporting this deployment.  My team and I work hard but we also have some time to think and catch our breath.  I'm using the fairly generous work schedule lately to read, exercise, run, cycle, learn more about myself, and interact with our coalition partners from all over the world.  I also just made an 8-team randomized bracket for a Yahtzee tournament tomorrow - shout out to Gold Star Mothers for sending us Yahtzee in a care package.  

Every day is the same, yet every day brings so many new opportunities to learn something.  Although I would rather be home with my family, I'm enjoying what the Corps has given me and making the best of this deployment.  That's all for now.