Skittles

I've been thinking about a day a spent in the desert. It's absolutely ridiculous, and even funny, but it's another stupid thing that keeps my mind unfocused, so here it comes.

It was one of my first days working with Civil Affairs, in the city of Kandahar, Afghanistan. We drove out to a government building in Kandahar, so a few civil affairs and other officers could meet with a local 'governor'. I believe they were going to pay him to organize some sanitation and trash pickup services in the city. At any rate, what they were doing doesn't matter, I was standing out in a field with our trucks, waiting for them to hurry up and get back so we could go.

I was still green, and it was pretty exciting. I remember talking a little to one of the older experienced Civil Affairs guys, he was a First Sergeant if my memory is correct. I made a comment about how cool this was. The look on his face told a much different story. He straightened me out just with that look. It was a, pay the fuck attention to what we're doing, look, this isn't a walk in the park.

There was a lady though, he finally came up to us. She was waving an Afghan dollar around. She was hanging around a lot, and wouldn't go away. I had no freaking clue what she wanted, wearing that drape over her head, I couldn't read her face or anything. I had a pack of skittles in my pocket. Good MRE treat. I finally got fed up with her, grabbed the dollar, and gave her a pack of skittles. We had a local guard, translator with us, who at that moment got her to go with a few forceful words, and physical movements.

I have no idea why this one memory comes back. The after thought that this lady was poor, and desperate enough to approach an American (which could get her in a ton of trouble) disturbs me. And the hilarious thing about it, is I took her lunch money and gave her some skittles.

Octobre

I haven't posted much on this blog lately, so here goes...

Jeanann's work is finding ways to save money without firing people. Good news is she should still have a job there if she chooses to stay. Bad news is her schedule is most likely going to change again. She likes working in labs rather than at the vet ICU she thinks, and it pays a little better. With any luck she can get back into that here at UF, then at least if they're screwing around with the schedules she's happier.

Bradyn's getting big. We took him to sea world for his 2nd birthday. I put a few pics up on my facebook page. I've been trying to get him excited about the guitar and singing... it's pretty fun, and funny. When we sing with him, he tries to change pitch in his voice and copy along. With any luck he'll sound better than I ever did, and be excited about playing some sort of instrument. If he loses interest I won't mind too much, but I do hope he's interested in something and spends time getting good at it. I'm crossing my fingers it's not balet or something...

Brylee's getting big! She can sort of sit up now, spin around, and scoot a little. She's eating baby food now. I've been getting better at feeding her more food than just milk bottles. She's already showing some personality. She's going to be different than Bradyn for sure.

School is going for me. I'm pretty sure I have all A's, but UF just adopted an A- system, where 90-94% only awards a 3.3. I need to get at least a 3.3 to have a shot at a masters program I'm looking at. It will increase the work load that I'll have to take, steadily each semester, and add 1 year of school. I'm not sure I'll even be able to afford to stay in school an extra year, but I'm going to try to keep the grades up just in case we find a way. I've also dropped my law minor to pick up these other advanced classes to prepare for the masters program. I'm studying Economics for anyone who may not know. I like it so far, it's like a business degree. Most of what I'm studying has to do with running a business, and some focuses on making sense of the economy, why what where, and some other theory I feel is a little outdated or incomplete. Maybe the advanced classes will clear up my questions, but I still have a little bit of a hard time calling it science since most of it depends on human behavior. Behavior isn't 100% predicatable and screws up all of the calculations I think. We'll see...

Here's a video of Bradyn singing. Brylee gets in on it a little also. I know the video sucks, but I had to be sneaky since Bradyn gets shy.