When it rains... it pours.

Well, the title is pretty self-explanatory. After 6 months of ridiculous heat and zero rain, I guess the rainy season came along, at least for a while. And when it decided to show up, it showed up in style! It rained like crazy all night, and this is what we woke up to:

Aside from that, everything's been pretty much the same lately. We're almost at the 6th month mark which is pretty nice.

And Happy Halloween to all.

Antonio

Thank you thank you.

Mail came in today. This little dude writing this post got 8 packages today! Talk about a morale booster! First of all: Sara, te pasaste! Ni sabia que Dan Brown habia salido con un nuevo libro! Great great present! Thanks. And the stress pillows are awesome! Thanks! Vivi, las tazas estan arrechisimas! Ahora tengo que tomar el triple de cafe, lo cual no creo que sea muy saludable. Sera que le sirvo menos cafe a las tazas! Gracias! And, as you'll be able to see from the pics, I got a pretty good assortment of venezuelan goodies! Thanks much to all. Titi, the new shipment of rumcakes arrived as well! I'll take one to Domino night tomorrow!

The new Dan Brown book looks pretty good. A new adventure awaits Robert Langdon so I gotta keep the post short! Can't wait to see how many crazy ideas he comes up with in this book and how many more people he's going to upset with it!

This definitely just made my day, probably my week and my month! I also got a trip coming up to Tallil so I'll be seeing Rafa next week (I should probably email him and let him know... right?)

Here are the pics!

By the way.

If you wanna get a good close up at the spider, click on the picture and you'll see the full size picture! Enjoy.

Not much to say

Like I said before, pictures can be worth a thousand words, so today that I got some time, I'll try to load some pictures and see what comes out of that!

Well, one thing. Yesterday I was sitting by my computer and this cute little spider (for some the spider might not be little and probably not cute either) comes out of the side wall, and continues to move until it was right by my computer. Then it proceeded to just SIT there. It gave me some time to call some people over and take some pictures before I did the right thing and put it to sleep (nice way to say smashed it!). Here are some pictures. We named the late spider Jimmy the Camel Spider in case anybody wishes to say their condolences.

The other pictures are from my new crib. You may notice my old computer, which I use strictly for work, since that's pretty much the only thing it's good for (there are some programs that dont have a version for MAC that I need to use in the Army, so the old computer is not completely worthless. It's got a "cheap" version of Windows that doesn't even let me set up a desktop background!) You may also notice the third screen, which is a monitor my company owns and nobody was using it, so I snatched it and use it to look cool and smart in my new home!

I got some in the other computer. I'll try to post them later. Till next one.

Better luck at dominoes and Virginia Tech wins again!

So... this Friday was Domino night again. Only one table playing, with a team waiting. The rules are a bit different from ours, but still the same principle. We're playing with "premios" for the first four hands. 100, 75, 50, and 25 points, plus you count every point left, not just the losing team. Obviously we don't play to 100 (duh!), but to 500, and capicua is worth 100 points. If you end with the double-O it's called "chuchazo" and it's another 100 points! Anyways, I did win 3 games Friday, which was WAAAAY better than last week. I took a few pictures, which will probably end in our facebook page (if you haven't checked it yet... you should, it's actually pretty decent. My commander already mentioned the fact that half the fans in the page have the last name Pazos... good job!)

Work's going. Going. The routine is actually not too bad. I only drink coffee right now. Now that I dont have a crazy mission schedule, I stopped with the energy drinks and I started working out again as well. My commander runs 3-4 times a week, and I "volunteered" to be his running partner (like many things in the Army, the word "volunteer" usually means "volun-told"). Long story short, I'm running 3-4 times a week now.

And... in a weekend full of upsets, Virginia Tech crushed Miami! After last weekend's last minute win, it was extremely pleasant to see Virginia Tech come out and absolutely demolish Miami (You could say I'm not particularly fond of the Hurricanes). Also, Venezuela won its first game in a final stage of a Soccer championship (sub-20 level, but still... it's a good start) against a pretty good Nigerian Team. Real Madrid also won and is leading the Spanish league. All I need now is for the Colts and Falcons to win and I can call it a weekend!

No Barbeque Sunday this week. Oh well, there's always next Sunday.

Oh... one last thing. We just got a Green Beans Coffee trailer delivered to our base. Green Beans is kind of like a Starbucks, but less fancy, and only in areas where the US is deployed. Most of their profits go towards helping Armed Forces, so it's pretty cool. The trailer is literally like 100ft from my tent and should be opening pretty soon! wooooooo wooooooo!

Bueno, that's all I got today! Un abrazo a todos!

Antonio

Moving

I officially took over my new job about a week ago. The way things work out here, your job comes with a new living area, mainly because the tents are segregated by Platoons. Well, the new LT that replaced me would take over my living area, and I would take over the XO's living area. The only problem with that was that the XO couldn't move out, because the guy he was replacing was still at Garry Owen. Long story short, I've been living in 1st Platoon's tent for the past week, waiting for this dude to leave Garry Owen so that all 3 of us could move into new living areas. That happened TODAY! Space wise, it's about the same, but I got a kick-ass corner desk and a new computer monitor (I'll post some pictures later this week). It's also quite nice since only 4 people live in this tent.

Aside from that, everything's pretty much the same. It's calmed down a bit, as I sink fully into my new job and responsibilities, which is nice. I can't complain really, I like it. It's very different, since I dont really work directly with Soldiers anymore, but there's more moving pieces, so the challenging part of the job, I do like.

Well, I'll wait for Titi to post again, since we're doing the tag-team approach to blogging these days (read her comment on my last post).

Cheryl: Thanks for the care packages! The soups have made my days! And I'll save the one with the cold weather stuff for later this year when the temperatures actually drop. If I pull that stuff out right now, people might laugh at me!

Antonio "Andronio One" Pazos

Training the Iraqi

Here's a link to a news article my Commander found about some training my Company's being doing with the Iraqi Army:

http://www.theredbulls.org/article333

Pretty good, simple article. Enjoy.