Happy Holidays

A belated Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate that holiday, and a general happy holiday season to everyone. Ed had hoped to send a Christmas post from Iraq, but as occasionally happens, he procrastinated. And then, the army happened.

As you may recall, when he returned from leave just two short weeks ago, Ed discovered that he had been re-assigned. He was told that he would be working full-time in division headquarters on the night shift, 9pm to 9am. Basically he was there to field calls in case something newsworthy (i.e. bad) happened in the middle of the night. It would be, “long periods of boredom, punctuated by periods of intense panic.” Just when he'd finally gotten used to staying up all night and sleeping during the day, his job changed again. This time he was assigned to the 4 pm – 2 am shift. He also re-acquired embed program (organizing logistics for embedded reporters) and got tagged to participate in planning meetings (I don’t know exactly what that entails, but it can’t be good - ks). His first planning meeting was today; he spent 18 hours prepping for it, got three hours of sleep, refrained from laughing when the major who was running the meeting said that he expected to be done within an hour and a half, and even managed to stay awake for the six hours that the meeting actually lasted before it was adjourned, to be finished the following day. He expects the 18-hour days to once again become the norm, so any future care packages should probably include coffee.

He did have a nice Christmas Day, the day before the craziness began. The other soldiers in his unit organized a gift exchange, he received a Zingerman's gingerbread coffee cake which he actually shared with others in the spirit of the holiday, dinner was prime rib, not too overdone, and best of all, he got the day off. And as he said, if he is in the middle of a war and all he has to complain about is that the prime rib was a little overdone, then things obviously aren't that bad.