Afghan update...Good news!

Well, it is 0615 on Saturday morning here in Afghanistan. It's a little cool out this morning but I'm sure the sun will take care of that quickly. The temperature has been really nice here, it hasn't been too hot, it almost reminds you of a nice spring day back in Arkansas. The haze has been pretty bad the last couple of days due to dust in the air but other than that, oh, and the disgusting smell, it's not been to bad.
I'm sure you may have seen it in the news but yesterday was a sad day here. An Osprey crashed not far from this base and killed 4. Our unit was actually overhead when this happened and tried to help with the rescue effort as much as possible. The Osprey is a hybrid aircraft that can hover like a helo but can tilt the motors forward to fly like an airplane. There was some investigations into the Osprey several years ago because they kept having mechanical problems leading to crashes. Fortunately, the other passengers on board were not killed and the rescue teams were able to get them evacuated from the scene.
So on to the good news... I am feeling 100% better after my bout with food poisoning! You may not be excited about that, but I promise you, I am! We also got good news that they are already working on our exit strategy from here. We are supposed to go back the way we came, however, if you have been watching the news you may have seen the political unrest in Kyrgyzstan, which is one of the places we stop. My friend Jeb was there for 4 months, I can't imagine staying there for that long. I was there for 48 hours and that was long enough for me. Anyway, now we are having to figure out if we can still go home that way or take an alternate route. Either way, I'm just glad they are already working on getting us out of here. And... the best news of all is that today when I opened up my e-mail, I had a message telling me that I was going to be an "Uncle" on my side of the family. Melissa and Brooks are expecting! That is really cool, I'm very excited for them. It will be a change having a baby around again.
Today would normally be my day off but one of the guys always gets stuck working on Saturdays which is the day the Bazaar is held. So, in order for him to go buy his family some souveniers from here, I am going to work a few hours for him. It will let him take care of that and it will give me something to do for a few hours. Days off here are not exactly fun...there is not a lot to do so you spend most of your time wandering aimlessly, doing laundry, going to the gym, or sleeping the time away. So, given those choices, I would just as soon go to work. To give you an example, last night, I went with a couple of our pilots "Fif" and "Finch" and we walked through every countries BX just looking around. I think it took us an hour or so, after that, there was nothing else to do so we just sat around outside in the stench for a while just to kill some more time. I finally gave up and went to bed around 2130.
Well that's all the exciting news I have for today, as Porky pig says "That's all folks"