The Twins Travel

I got to see a little bit of the Afghanistan countryside last week. I flew via CH-47 Chinook (the helicopter w/two rotors) to one of the smaller bases for a short visit. I have to say Afghanistan looks a lot better from the air. The area I'm in is a very mountainous region and they seem to rise up in the middle of nowhere and then disappear again. There are patches of green fields everywhere and seem to be totally random and could be surrounded by acres of dirt. My friend Ilana got to travel up North last week and got to see where the giant Buddha status used to be before the Taliban blew them up. It was completely uneventful trip and I am safely ensconced back behind the wire.

A male friend of mine and I were discussing my blog, in particular the part of what girls wear to the gym and the conversation progressed to THOSE girls. There are different categories of THOSE girls, so I'll go through some of them with you. The full make-up girl. Yes, I've covered this briefly before, but I think it's worth saying again. I'm a firm believer that just because you're IN Crap-ghanistan, doesn't mean you have to LOOK like Crap-ghanistan. But there is a limit. Blue eye shadow is never acceptable; neither is cat-tail eye liner or lining your lips in brown lip liner (1993 is over, move on). The desert queen. We all know her. The girl who is a 7 on her best day in dim lighting in the real world but becomes a 9 or 10 on a deployment for the simple fact that the male to female ratio is about 10 to 1. Now she has options. The attention goes to her head and she starts to get an attitude. You just hope someone pops her bubble before you pop her head off. T

What is it about guys and facial hair when they are deployed? For some reason, the civilian guys (contractors or non-military types) come out here and go all ZZ-Top. I'm all for a little bit of scruff or a well maintained, trimmed beard. Some guys can pull it off really well - there's one guy here we refer to as "Blackbeard". My friend asked (rhetorically of course) if I thought he would "shiver her timbers". But the guys I'm referring to just let it grow wild. I almost asked one guy if he would turn my bottled water into wine (he had long unruly hair as well). There's one guy that does trim his beard, but if a very peculiar way. He trims the bottom of it at an angle, so that when you see him from the side, his beard forms a 45 degree angle from his chin. Add that it's red and he looks like an over grown leprechaun. It does keep his beard from bending when he tilts his head down ('cause beard crease is SUCH a faux pas) but I keep wondering

The F-bomb is one of the most widely used and versatile cuss words. It can be used as an adverb, verb, noun, adjective...in just about any manner you can think of. But when it is every other word out of your mouth it loses its impact and just makes you look like an uneducated jackass. So please, use the F-bomb judiciously.

There are certain things that should fall into the category of common sense and should not have to be said. Apparently not. I spend a lot of time in the gym (there's really very little else to do here except work, sleep and sit in your hooch) and have noticed that people have some really odd habits and work out practices. 1. Use a towel. Yes, you are suppose to get sweaty (it's even sexy on some people), but you are NOT suppose to leave puddles of nasty, stinky sweat on workout benches. Put a towel down to soak it up or wipe off the equipment when you're done. EW! 2. Wear underwear. Gentlemen, this is not REI. There should be no tent pitching. There should also be no airing out of the boys. I don't want to see it and I'm sure the other 50 or so MALES in the gym don't want to see it either. If you're going to go commando, wear longer shorts. 3. I don't know what you're doing, but it's not stretching anything. You know the baby birthing shows on TL

So, you know those communal latrines I blogged about before? Let me elaborate. There are no doors on the stalls, only shower curtains. Some people have learned to sit with their toes poking out from under the curtain so others will know it's occupied when they come in. Some have not, so every now and then you open a curtain to a very surprised person who quickly grabs the curtain (usually towards themselves for some odd reason) and closes it. Every now and then you walk into the latrine and there are rows of toes along the stalls; it's actually quite amusing. But that's not the OMG part. The toilets are European in design so they have inspection plates. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, your business doesn't drop into water, it ends up on a flat surface so you can inspect it. If you've ever been to a doctor for any kind of gastrointestinal issue, you will know doctors are fascinated with poo and you can learn all sorts of things just from the

The Top Ten 1. Showering in bare feet 2. Not having to walk to the shower or latrine 3. Being able to get up in the middle of the night and go pee w/out ever waking up (see #2) 4. Baths 5. Basing your choice of meals on what you're in the mood for and NOT what's under the heat lamp 6. Toilets/showers w/doors 7. Not wearing the same thing every day 8. Sundays on the couch 10. Being alone. Even when you think you're alone, you're not. There is always someone w/in 6 feet of you...even when asleep or on the toilet

At the request of my friend Jones (her name is Kathryn, but she's just Jones) I am adding the following: "Could I recommend that a future blog be on people who have 60 minute DAILY shower/facial/beauty regimen that they insist on performing even while deployed and everyone has to share the same facilities. Maybe you don't have to deal with that. Maybe you are one of those people. But I did have to deal with those shenanigans and by the end of my tour I just wanted to rip open the shower curtain and yell "REALLY?" as they were making all kinds of strange/disgusting/alien sounds that NOBODY want to hear in the shower. However you can't yell at people while they are IN the shower because then you are labeled the crazy person who violates people's privacy in the shower/latrine. And quite frankly, that trumps any weirdo sounds or beauty practices by people who can stretch a 10 minute shower into a 60 minute ordeal (for everyone!)...damn." Now, let m

I walk into the shower trailer one day and as I am undressing, see a pair of red, lace thong underpants on a pile of clothes belonging to someone already in the shower. Now, there is only one reason a women wears that kind of underwear and that is for a man. So of course my next thought is " someone's getting some". Now I know some of you are thinking that's very unfair of me and she could just be wearing them because they make her feel sexy & good about herself. However, I don't care how comfortable a thong is, when it's a 100 degrees outside and you're sweating every ounce of water you're drinking and have developed a serious case of swamp ass, EVERYTHING chafes . Now you have to add lace into the equation & you've probably just ruined a very nice pair of panties you paid way too much money for anyway. Also, consider if she had the misfortune of being injured during a rocket/mortar attack. When you are taken to the CASH/hospital, they cu

The senses are a wondrous thing, equally delighting and assaulting a person a various times. Sight Delight: a beautiful sunset Assault: fat hairy man in a speedo Taste Delight: rich, decadent chocolate Assault: chow hall food (I think bland should be added to the list of flavors) Sound Delight: a child's laugh Assault: a child's scream Touch Delight: smooth silk Assault: wood splinter from the rough hewn desk top you work at And then there is smell... Delight: fresh laundry, your favorite perfume Assault: the latrine trailer, the unwashed masses of third country nationals Being deployed is almost a continuous assault on the olfactory nerve. Take, for instance, the latrines. While I am glad they are actual toilets and not port-a-johns (which have their own unique smell), they are basically one big port-a-john on a septic tank that has to be sucked out every day. The degree of smell varies from one trailer to the next and you learn to associate the smell with where you are. M

Fobbit : a person who spends their entire deployment on one Forward Operating Base (FOB) and never leaves the confines of the heavily guarded perimeter. I thought I would give you all a glimpse into my daily routine. So, here it is: 0048: Get woken up by B-hut mate coming in from her shift. Very similar to the sound of a herd of elephants attempting the Sugar Plum Fairy dance from the Nutcracker 0530/45: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze at least three times before rolling out of bed and heading to the shower trailer. -- Literally a conex shipping container that has been stacked on top of another conex shipping container. The lower container is the latrine - more on that later. 0630/40: Start walking to work. Salute multitude of officers along the way because there is only one main road that EVERYONE walks along. No short cuts here. Obviously the camp commander never walks anywhere, because if he did this stretch of walk-way would be a no salute area. Grab chow on the way

I finally made it after spending almost four days in Germany sitting around the terminal. Eventually, I think it came down to timing - it was the last day of the month and the aircrew wanted to get their two months of tax free. (cynical? Who me?) I can't get into to many details of life here or what I do, but I can give the basics. I live in a B-hut (I have not idea why it's called that). It is basically a plywood tent that has been divided into "rooms". My 'room' is about 6'x7'. I have a bed, a wall-locker, a lamp...really what more do you need? I work about a 20 minute walk from where I live, so I'm getting my exercise every day. Plus, I've been really good about working out everyday after I get off work. What I REALLY want to do is go right to bed, but I know I won't get up in the morning to work out so I force myself. The food is deployed chow hall food. It's not really that different from the food I ate in Iraq. We aren'

This is turning into a damn Greek tragedy. Someone may actually end up dead by the end of this trip. More than likely it's going to be one of the non-C17-flying aircrew that is w/our little group. I don't care what you do when you're flying Capt Know-it-all, you're not flying this plane, so keep your mouth shut. Jackass. One of them actually started grilling one of the loadmasters about why the crew wasn't adjusting their crew day to get us downrange, which led to the crew commander talking to our troop commander, which led to more bitching on the part of said jackass aircrew. I may lose it on someone and blame it on PMS. Oh yeah, we're still at Ramstein. We actually made it out to the plane and SAT there for for close to three hours while they tried to fix the auxillary power that kept failing. They finally get that fixed, but the crew has gone past that point of being able to make the flight within their duty day (thus the grilling by the aircrew w/us). Ther

Turns out w/the broke plane and crew rest issues (meaning they had already left to go drink beer), we are still at Ramstein (it's almost noon on the 30th). There was a plan to bus us over to one of the Kaserns to sleep in some old Army barracks, but there wasn't a driver available until an hour later and trans wouldn't give us a bus even though we had someone that had a license to drive it; so the decision was made to just stay in the terminal and take up all available floor space (which they continuously announce not to do). The new Ramstein Inn/Mega-BX (which is only partially open) is right across from the terminal. So a couple of us go across the street to see if there are any rooms available. There is one. And it happens to be a female room. Did I mention I am the only female in the entire group of 53? I tried to feel bad about my good fortune, but considering that I had been suffering nausea inducing, OMG-someone-please-remove-my-uterus cramps, I'd say we're e

We have been stuck at Ramstein for the past five & a half hours. We stopped here to get gas and change crews. We actually took off for a while but turned around when there was some kind of warning that needed to be looked at. We've been here since then. They don't want to release us to go to billeting because they don't have a take-off time yet. WHY can't they schedule the take-off time around when we get 6 - 8 hours of sleep you wonder? Good question. When you have an answer to that, let me know.

So, leaving Charlotte on my way to Fayetteville , we hit some weather. Instead of trying to go around it, the pilot decided to SCREAM through it (we were 25 minutes early; it's a 50 minute flight). Needless to say, this made for a rather bumpy ride. Prone to motion sickness anyway, I wasn't feeling all that great, so I was taking deep breaths, I put the air on me, took small sips of my soda, and tried not to think about what a bad mistake the brisket had been at the airport in Charlotte. I had it all under control until the flight attendant came on the speaker with "please fasten your seat belts for our descent into Fayetteville . It's going to be a bumpy ride, so for those of you with delicate stomachs , there are air sick bags in the seat pockets in front of you." That was all the permission my stomach needed. I felt really bad for the guys sitting on either side of me as I filled that little lunch sack size bag up 2/3s of the way. I should have handed it to t

So, I decided that in addition to Facebook, I would also follow my sister Kaiya's example and create a blog for all thoses people who don't have Facebook (good for them). Of course, Kaiya is probably saying something along the lines of "SEE?? If everyone would just listen to me in the first place, their lives would be perfect".