July is almost over!

Well, July is just about over.  It's a nice feeling knowing that a full month will be behind us.   I don't really have much to say this week, work is still good, life is good, and I have a trip planned into town, so I will post pictures of that soon.    This week I took a few pictures,  One was of the sun.  It was about 2 hours after sunrise and it was so dusty in the air that you could stare at the sun and the sun looked more like the moon because of all the dust/sand in the air.   It was a pretty cool site, and weird to be staring at the sun without my eyes hurting.  

The next picture is just a picture of the base, I was driving in a truck and snapped the picture.  This is what 90% of the place looks like.  

The last picture is me after 12 hours of work, in my room, ready for bed.  

I hope all is well back home.  

Battle of the Bands!

Hey friends and family,

Another few days down, they were good ones.  Last week on Friday I had my day off (Swapped with somebody else, since my day off is usually Saturday), Friday night they had a battle of the bands on the base.  Fenton and I were going to play together but they only had one acoustic guitar available so we both ended up playing separate.  It was a lot of fun, neither of us won.  It came down to two people, some marine who beat boxed (which isn't really a band?) and then some guy who played a cover of "Simple Man" (he was really good).  The guy who did the cover song won and that is about it, no prizes or anything.  I had somebody take footage of the video, so, here that is.

Hopefully they have a few more talent show type stuff on base, it's fun to participate.

 Work is steadily staying the same, I am getting some good reading in, watching a few new tv shows (It's always sunny in Philadelphia is my new favorite show), nothing else really exciting or new.   Next week I will be taking off base drivers training so that I can drive off base if I ever want to take a trip into town, I guess the drivers here are really terrible and you need to learn to drive terrible like them so that I don't get in a huge accident and wreck a government vehicle, so, hopefully that does not happen, I am looking forward to going into town soon though.                                                    

I stole these pictures from another person in my unit who is deployed with us, she took them for her blog.  They are of the buildings we live in.  They each have about 30 rooms in them.  Every room has it's own Air Conditioner and it makes life really awesome.  Last week the power went out in the middle of the day (which is when I sleep) and it didn't take long for my room to heat up, 45 minutes later the power came on and I could not have been happier, I got back to sleep pretty quickly after that and life was good.   I've learned to like a few of the meals here a lot, Mondays are "Mexican Mondays" and they have some delicious enchiladas and burritos that I really enjoy, the chicken parmesan is really good and Salisbury steak in gravy was really good.  Last week we had to do flag duty, we were responsible for putting up the flags for USA, England and Australia, each different shop gets it one week at a time and rotates, we should get flag duty two more times before we leave.  It's pretty interesting how differently we all fold the flags, Australia does  an accordion fold and the British roll their flag, we have to fold/roll all the flags to each countries specifications.  

Any who, Life is good, I have no complaints.  Just enjoying the heat/base day by day and week by week until I come home.  We have a guitar on our site that I play throughout the night and I wrote a new song last week, Hopefully I can get it recorded soon, I know of at least one person who wants to hear it back home.    

My grandma and grandpa had their 50th wedding anniversary over the weekend and my mom had a laminated picture of me (Courtesy of the family support team on base) and had me in a picture with every single one of my family members, it was pretty funny to get on facebook and have 40+ notifications that I was tagged in a bunch of photos.  Here is a picture of my sister Haley trying to look like me,  Anyways, Happy Anniversary Grandma and Grandpa!! I hope it was a fun party.  

Anyways everybody, Keep on enjoying life in the states, I hope to hear from you guys as much as I can, it's nice getting emails, letters, post cards etc... from anybody and everybody.  Love you all!

Another few days down...

This is a stop sign here, sorry it's not very good quality - I had the night off and cameras don't take very good pictures of things that reflect and their was not enough light to take a picture without the flash, so this is it.
   It's pretty cool seeing different things in arabic, also it is confusing.  I can't read the ingredients on any of the sodas I drink.  But, that's okay, I don't need to know what is in my mountain dew, I only need to know that it's delicious.
    Having the night off was pretty nice, I got to sleep in an extra two hours, then my room mate came back from his shift and needed to sleep so I grabbed my laptop, iPad and camera and left for the next 9 hours.

I walked over to the side of the base that is nicer (because people who are staying here for a year or more stay over there), I ate dinner over there and the chow hall was nicer and had few more options on food (pizza buffet being one of them).  After that I went over to the Community Mall (Pictured to the right) and walked around to see what I could find, just little shops and nothing major cool, I went and sat down in a hang out place and watched tv for about 20 minutes and then I got bored so I left and walked back to my side of the base, I went to try and find a inside hang out place that had wi-fi, but the only place that had internet and air conditioning cost $3 an hour, so I decided to just hang out outside in the major hang out zone where people are allowed to  
drink, smoke huka and relax.  I did this for a while until my buddy google texted me and he came and hung out with me for about an hour and gave me some downloaded tv shows, which I watched after he left.  I then read, played online, made a few skype phone calls and then it was time to head back to my room, which I did and got on my running gear and went running at 4:30 am, I was super hot and tired after 30 minutes, that leads me up to now.
    But, this place is still going good, the days are long but I think the time will go by pretty quickly for me.  I've already got lots of awesome plans for when I get home.  Fenton and I have gotten into a groove of walking to work everyday and changing into our uniforms there and running back after work, it's about 1.8 miles, and that has been good for me so far.  We are also playing in a Battle of the Bands next Saturday night, should be good a time, I'll see if I can get him to record it on my camera while I play.

    The other day I was driving back to work from dropping a few people off at the dorms and I saw two desert foxes running across the street, they were homely looking creatures, skinny as crap and pretty ugly, I wanted to catch it, but the commanders here said that we shouldn't do that because they would prefer us to not have rabies.  I found a picture of something that looks sorta similar.  I've also seen a few wild cats running around the base, they are also very skinny and look pretty haggard as if to say their isn't much to eat in a desert...   Their hasn't been many bugs, I have seen a ton of grass hoppers though, they are all around at night time when I am working, I also see lizards running around at night.  We've also caught a few mice with mouse traps.  I attempted to build a mousetrap that will keep them alive though because I want one as a pet, maybe I'll send one home to someone to keep as a pet as well ;)  (also, it's good to note that the environment that fox is in is pretty much what I see where there isn't a building, just sand and rocks)

 But, life is good, I am happy, I am staying positive and just enjoying my time here.  I am thinking I will be going off base here in the new couple of weeks on one of my days off, my friend Ned has the same day off as me, so we might try and see what we can put together.  We need to find a driver though, because you have to have special driver training to drive here (because apparently these guys are crazy insane drivers), I might take the driver training, who knows, we will see.   Also, no awesome fourth of july plans for me, I will be working/sleeping through all the stuff they are doing here, which I think is some games and that is about it.     Anyways,  That is all I have for you guys this week, I hope everybody is doing great.  Love you all.