More Shots and Ruminations on the Day-to-Day

My arms and I are getting sick of this topic. I went back into the nurse today to get inoculated against hepatitis A & B and typhoid. So I guess I've got that covered.

Tomorrow is my physical and my dental exam.

I just want this thing to get started. Brook is likely leaving sometime this week, I'm two weeks after that, and maybe a month after we've been on the ground we get four more guys. Hopefully by then we're already up and running and supporting our customer. I'm also hopeful that by that point I'm relatively comfortable.

Which reminds me, I really don't know what I'm in for in terms of living conditions. I've heard stories and gotten ideas from folks about just what that's going to be like, but I won't really know until my (brand new water-proof, Belleville, flight-rated desert) boots are on the ground.

Food
The food should actually be pretty good! It's provided by civilian contractors, so not just Army cooks, and they're in it to satisfy their customer and profit mightily off of them. Not to unnecessarily denigrate Army cooks, I'm sure some really good chefs of the WWII generation learned their craft by cooking for thousands of soldiers, but give me a capitalist cafeteria any day. I've heard rumors of steak and lobster Fridays, but they could just be saying that to entice us over.

Shelter
I've heard that I'm going to be in a tent. I'm not sure if that's on the ground, or if there's a cot implied, but I know I'm bringing a sleeping bag and a bed roll just in case. I actually just got worried about the sleeping bag--how often are you supposed to wash it? Similar to sheets on a bed? I don't want to end up wrapping myself in a super-funky sleeping bag after month two. Have to think about that.

Creature Comforts
I figure the bathrooms are going to be porta-potties and shower trailers. I heard a while back that the insurgents figured out the importance of the sh*t truck, which comes every once in a while to service the portalets. Targeting those is a great idea for a variety of reasons:

1. Total morale killer. Imagine having to continue to use a sh*tter longer after it needed to be emptied and cleaned--bad news.
2. The smell. When you blow up a truck full of chemical-laced excrement, it leaves more unhappy people than just the driver.

So, I'm betting on the fact that the base I'm going to has been built up sufficiently that the poop-guy can get in and out without a lot of trouble.

Laundry is handled by locals. You just put all of your stuff in a labeled laundry bag, pay the guy a couple of bucks and you get clean clothes on the other end. I suppose that's the benefit of being an occupying force.