End of Week 14

First, I little message from me...

A little goofy, but I wanted to see if I could successfully upload a message....

This week was crazy as ever. There was some progress made on some movements of units to accommodate planned construction, but all was trumped by the escalating possibility of thousands more troops coming to town. The challenges certainly continue. The bonus is that the weather has tempered and makes it slightly more pleasant to be outside. I did got to get my first coffee from Tim Horton's this week as a last jesture for Sr Chief Shea who departed. Tim Horton's is a Canadian version of Dunkin Donuts. The bummer is that they are out of donuts due to logistical issues with getting the ingredients here. I will have to take time to get a chocolate donut sometime when they get their supplies in honor of my son who loves chocolate donuts.

In my continual search for photo opportunities, here is my latest. I met Deanna Pappas the Bachelorette this week. There was a list of actors and actresses who came to town, most I have never heard of, except the Bachelorette. One morning at breakfast, a group came in and it was obvious that they did not belong here and we decided that it was the actors and actresses. An Lt who works for me recognized Deanna Pappas. I was finished eating and went to work. The rest of the story goes like this: the Lt hears one of the actresses asking about a regular Coke. He goes over and offers to get her one out of the case in the DFAC. They are out. He runs across the street to our office and finds one in a refrigerator. He returns to the group to claims that "he's the best". He sits and has breakfast with them. When they have finished, he runs up to the office where I am and says, I going to get a picture, come on I'll introduce you. So I went down. She was very nice and took pictures with us and then quickly left. The Lt has an appointment with her later in the week to discuss his upcoming wedding. He told her he was engaged and she apparently has a getting married or wedding show. In later conversations, the Lt, who turned out to be big fan of the show actually asked her about the guys involved on the show. She told him that she is still in contact with the guy who did not propose on the Bachelor but she did not have anything good to say about the guy who she chose on the Bachelorette. Pretty good story. To be fair, the other actors and actresses that I did not know were: Greg Germann, DW Moffett, Kelly Carlson, Vanessa Branch. Though my part of the story took less than 20 seconds, it still served as a diversion from the grind of work.

I'm safely looking at the second half of the deployment now. It is nice to think about. We are still working on the final organizational chart for our unit. I am trying to identify the members of my department so that I can begin to get us organized and managed to work better as a team and get some things done in the next 3 months. In this environment, it is not easy because there are so many problems and crises everyday that get dropped in our laps, that it is hard to focus on the priorities at hand. Our mission to find a better way to organize to be efficient is becoming more critical with the rapid expansion that is planned for KAF and our region of Afghanistan. Things change so fast here. The Commodore who was our boss when we arrived told us our second day that: days are weeks, weeks are months and months are years here at KAF - he was right.

Hope this post finds you well....Until next time.......