I wrote this entry Sunday night while watching football, and was unable to post it Monday due to internet outages...consider it Part 1 of an overdue update. More to follow in the very near future!
Sunday night, Week 4 of the NFL season. Each of the past 3 weeks I’ve organized a pizza and NFL viewing party for all the people I work with. The turnout has steadily decreased as only those who truly enjoy the NFL (or pizza) continue to pitch in. Tonight, we only had 6 people in, and before I left to get the pizzas I set up the TV we usually watch the games on. It’s a 60+” TV with great split screen picture in picture that allows for viewing two games at a time. Unfortunately when we finished hooking it up it became clear that the cable to our building was down. Bummer. We decided to go get the pizzas and hope that the TV would work be the time we returned. No such luck. So I ended up coming back to my CHU with a pizza and some wings and settling in to watch the Cowboys-Lions, Steelers-Texans, and Bengals-Bills matchups. That last matchup was voted by AFN viewers as “America’s Game of the Week”, which makes me think that the majority of people who get AFN and would be voting on the GoTW must be from Buffalo or Cincinnatti, or letting their toddlers surf myAFN.net. Regardless it turns out that the AFN in my CHU is working, but for some reason there is no sound to the Cowboys-Lions game, the one I really wanted to see. Next time you think about your service men and women overseas, remember the trials we’re suffering through.
I decided at halftime of the three games to write a blog entry, since it’s been a week and I didn’t deliver on my promise to blog in mid-week. I have a lot of catching up to do, since it’s been a very busy time here lately and I’ve been asked a few questions from home about the stories in the news.
The first thing topic I want to touch on is the weather. A few people have asked how the weather has been as we move into fall. The temperatures started to drop in early September, rarely going up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. As the month went along, they slowly slipped, until we’ve reached the point where it hasn’t reached 100 yet in October. I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of triple digit readings, but the light is definitely at the end of the tunnel. The best times are early morning around sunrise and just after sunset. The temps cool, and the skies are mostly deep blue with tons of colors around the sun. Of course, there has to be a downside or two to the dropping temperatures, and those come in the form of dust storms and bugs. We had an epic dust storm this week that rolled in during lunch and stuck around until after I was in bed. The photos below were taken by our Public Affairs folks. The first few pictures show the gathering storm as it moves in on us (that's me in front of another guy walking across the helo pad), and the last one is of our boss, Maj Gen Handy, walking back from a meeting. You can tell that he’s not having fun.
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| Sandstorm, called a "Haboob" moves in over our compound |
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| Sandstorm rolling in over the living area |
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| Haboob moving over vehicle storage yard |
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| Walking across the helo pad just in time to beat the storm |
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| Walk faster Gen Handy! |
The building he’s walking toward is where I work. The other thing that bothers me about the weather cooling down is the return of biting insects. I don’t think they’re mosquitoes, because I’ve never actually caught one biting me, but I’ve had some ugly welts that itch like crazy come out of nowhere, and I can only assume that the lower temps have encouraged the bugs to come back.
Quick side note. They just showed a blimp view of the Texans-Steelers game, which is being played in Houston…in a dome. Do you think there is a hierarchy among blimp pilots? I’m guessing it goes something like this: Single A minor league pilot (stationary blimp used for advertising), Double A minor league pilot (overhead coverage of sporting events in closed domes), Triple A minor league pilot (overhead coverage of college football games), Major League pilot (overhead coverage of pro football games), All-Star pilot (overhead coverage of college bowl games and pro playoff games), and finally, the crème de la crème, The Show, providing overhead coverage of the Super Bowl. I’m pretty sure that’s how the blimp game works.
I'll leave this post on that note. Hopefully I'll get another post up in the next couple days...until then!
