Happy Veterans Day

First off Happy Veterans Day to all those veterans out there who have at one time or another served in the Armed Forces of the United States of America to ensure that this country remains free and is the beacon of hope to millions on this earth! A quick shout out to some veterans that I know be it family, friends or co-workers: My dad, Uncle Ken, Uncle John, my cousin Mark, Ray, Rich, Don AKA "Sarge", Flora, Sluggo, and of course all of us 104th and IRR Soldiers who deployed to Iraq as members of Task Force Desert Wolf. Today was a normal workday for us, the DFAC had made a couple of large cakes with Veterans Day Messages on the cakes. I don't know which tasted better the cake or the three scoops of ice cream that I had on top of the cake!!

As to rumor control, based on the picture from my last blog, that is not a shadow above my lip created by my big nose but a quasi-mustache that I am working on. I won't tell you what my better half said, but already a warning order has been issued by her regarding having a mustache and my 15 day R&R which is coming sometime later this year. I'll see what the next couple of weeks adds to the mustache and then will decide what to do with it!

Thank God it is the end of the week and tomorrow I have my off day, as between last Sunday and today we had 4 visits of General Officers and I think that I got to brief a total of 12 stars this week, so I am closing in on the 50 star mark! I enjoy the visits because I get a chance to talk up the Depot and what we are doing and what the end state will be, but with the email traffic regarding visits which seem have the schedules changing by the hour, the rehearsals on some of the visits because there are various hand offs required during the visit, and just the time that is lost and the work that piles up makes these visits a hassle at times. We are working on a parallel project that ties into the Depot and has some high visibility and the timeline from my project impact this other project. Everyone wants updates, projected completion dates, occupancy dates, etc. Good news is that this coming week I will finally be able to sign for the first refurbished facility the Small Arms Facility. It still needs to have the large power equipment installed and other equipment and ancillary items moved into that facility.

The construction and refurb continues and all day long trucks are coming and going and that makes for a nice sight as you can see the daily progress and the transformation of the old depot into something larger and more user friendly. The project that I had my eyes on and which finally started today is the Site Refurbishment, which will enable us to get the old buildings torn down and the north depot cleaned up so that it looks like a depot should.

I am on day 4 of holding down the fort by myself and all is well to date. The Aussies have been taking care of the interpreters which frees me up to attend the various meetings with the RSU regarding the Generator Farm, Fuel and the DFAC that is located on the Depot footprint. I have finally been able to convince our BG that it did not make sense for me to have ownership of the Generator Farm since no longer was I the only customer and besides the RSU is basically the unit which runs/controls the activities on the Iraqi side. I had mentioned this to the RSU Advisor LTC M whose from the Air Force and he agreed so when BG S arrived for his visit earlier this week we ran it by him and he said, agreed what's next?

We are trying to get some funding to operate and maintain the generator facility for an additional six months. But before we can get it approved we have to provide a transition plan for the Iraqi Army to take over and maintain this facility after the six months. That sounds easier than it really is, you can plan all you want but unless you get buy in and more importantly the financial support of the MOD all your plans will go for naught. The atmosphere back in the IZ is one that basically is stating that the wallet/checkbook of the US taxpayers has been closed and is no longer available, which I am totally in favor of. Now that the security aspect of Iraq has improved now it is time for Iraq to grab the bull by the horns and take charge of their country, so that we can focus on transition and advisory roles with the Iraqi military. The paradigm shift in the financial backing by the US still hasn't sunk in yet for the Iraqi's and many of us still believe that the Iraqi's are hedging their bets on the US military bailing them out of precarious scenarios with our taxpayer money instead of the them picking up the tab. I guess that only time will tell.

My boss is up here this weekend on a fact finding mission regarding the logistics supply chain services here in Iraq from the various touch points from the port of entry to the various distribution points. It gave us a chance to discuss the depot and the parallel project and the issues that I currently am working on trying to get resolution. He is a senior Colonel and has a maintenance background which is a plus when we discuss the depot. He has lots of good ideas and more importantly is a good listener and the dialogue between us gets results!

Before I sign off a couple of shout outs: For my running group which last Sunday ran the Silicon Valley Marathon in San Jose and as usual the females kicked some serious butt! Mimi "Every marathon I run qualifies me for Boston" R finished 8th in the Women's Race, Judy "Every marathon is a PR" S finished 10th and won her age group, and Berta "I may bring up the rear on our Saturday Runs but come race day I will kick your ass" R finished 12th. The guys didn't do too bad either, Jun "I have nothing to prove since I already finished in the top 10" C finished in 97th, and Patrick 'if there isn't 7000 ft vertical climb somethings wrong with this course" N finished 127th. I have three more weeks until my "shadow" California International Marathon which I am running here at Taji with a couple of guys, meanwhile a group will be running in the IZ the same day. It's been a good week for running and next week will be my last long run before the race, I will have to squeeze in a 15-16 miler and see what I feel like the next day.

The weather has been cooling off and this week and next week the highs will be in the upper 70's and the lows in the mid to low 50's. Right now at 2330 hours it's 68 degrees and will get down to 60 degrees. Now that it is cooler I no longer have to run the AC at work which means I finally began using my hearing aids again, because with the AC I had a hard time with the sound of the trim vane and the air whooshing by. Now that I am wearing them I can really tell my hearing loss and now can hear everything.

That's it for now, hope you all have a nice week this coming week!

The Colonel