The Weather is Here. I Wish You Were Beautiful! - 23 March 2009 - 1945

So last night walking back from the Boardwalk with my coffee I had the thought “I should write about the weather when I get back.” It was pretty dreary and it fit my mood. I got back to the tent and decided I need to write my wife a letter instead. Well this morning I woke up and went outside to find that maybe it was a good thing I waited a night to write about the weather. The last 2 nights it has rained a bit and today, well today was a cornucopia of magical weather. Early this morning I walked down to the computer lab to drop off my email and hit the coffee shop. At that point it was just kinda grey and overcast. The benefit to having an overcast day is obviously a break to the relentless sun and heat. A couple of us have been lying out on top of our rocket shelters during midday to take advantage of the rays. Anyway, by the time I got back to the tent around 1000, the wind had picked up and the sky had grown dark. Off to the west I could see a wide column of rain in the distance headed for us. By about noon the rain had come; and did it come. All and all it rained quite intensely until about 1700 with a decent amount of hail, but none bigger than pea I’d say. Most everyone here says that the rain is a good thing for more than just the shade it brings with it. Over here there is dust in the air almost all the time. When the wind picks up is stirs up even more of the silt. A particulate that fine and light stays airborne for a long time. When it rains people say the benefit is that it knocks down the dust, which is partially true. When it rains it’s not like the drops obliterate the dust particles; they collect them. When the drops finally start hitting the ground it’s like it’s raining mud. It coats everything; vehicles parked on the roadsides tents, and people caught out in it. I’m not sure how much rain we actually got but I would venture to guess a couple of inches. I’m not sure if Afghanistan is in a rainy season right now or if the last few days have just been a bit out of the norm. I have heard that one of my troops who is down in Bastian was inside a tent within the last day when the wind blew it over on top of him. I only have bits of the story but it sounds like when they got to him he had taken a pretty good blow to the head and was unconscious. I hear he is doing alright though. I’m not sure if it was from our little storm today or not but there were some pretty decent gusts that accompanied it too. Well like I had said, last night I was feeling a bit dreary. As I mentioned, in an attempt to reconnect with my wife, I have been writing her, A LOT. In the past few days I’ve typed about 35 pages worth to her. None of that counts the couple pages I’ve typed on here. It’s been really good to share so much and vent, but the ramification has been that it has made me pretty homesick. Once you start writing about all the things you love about someone, you realize just how much you really miss them. So all you wives who I tried to convince to go crazy, tread lightly. It’s still been great though. We are learning a lot about each other. I’m still in KAF BTW. Sounds like maybe Thursday now; I don’t know, I quit guessing. I heard that the guys down in Bastian had a pretty go BBQ the other night. I was jealous for all of… no seconds. I would trade 100 BBQ’s for each day I could stay here and not go down there. It’s not that I think it’s going to be horrible, it’s just that I’ve built up a level of comfort and seclusion that I’m going to miss when we step out into the wilderness and catch up with the rest of the 43 troops who will be there. It’s been nice to be a little group of 6 here kind of out of sight out of mind, free to do pretty much whatever we want as long as we didn’t have anything else going on, which isn’t often. But it will be good to get busy doing… something, although I’m not quite sure what that will be. I would be nice to lose track of time a bit instead of sitting around counting the minutes until I go home. (right now I have about 405,857minutes left… give or take)