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Reading majic's journal

Last week ended with me cutting my New Orleans mission a little short. I had to leave about a week early to fly to West Virginia to see my grandmother. She is still alive and the doctors have no idea why, there is nothing that they can do for her other than give her pain medicine and stuff to make her comfortable. Things have been more than a little emotional of late.

I've had the chance to visit with family for the first time in literally 10 years... Or it feels like it. That's terrible. It's horrible that we only see each other when somebody is dying. Some of my relatives have children that are all grown up and I literally don't know who they are and they likewise. My cousin has a little 3 year old that had a birthday and we all went out bowling and had pizza. That was pretty damn sweet. I bowled like 6 games which is the first time I've bowled since I was in Seoul, South Korea. I didn't do too bad, my last game was a 188 and that was bowling the first frame right handed and the second frame left handed... w00t! I've been practicing that pretty often. It seems to impress the people watching. I kinda like it because I get freaked out when I actually do good while playing like that.

So here I am, been traveling around like a mofo... While in West Virginia my wife and I went into Ohio just to say we've been there recently and so I could add that to a growing list of places I've been since July 1st when I started my new job. The list now includes: Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Vermont, Texas, Ohio, West Virginia, Louisiana, Michigan, Illinois and Washington D.C.... Maybe I'll be visiting a state near you?? You never know. I love to travel.

I got word that I'm on track to go to Afghanistan by March 2006 for at least 6 months. This is pretty good news, I'm ready to go, Gotta go do some more good stuff you know.

No chance in hell to do any writing, I can't write when I'm home. I'll try but it's never really worked in the past. Maybe I can trick myself this time.

Looks like I'll be in Virginia for Thanksgiving visiting with my mom, sis, mother in law, father in law, sister in law...

Other than the grandmother on her death bed life is pretty damn peachy my way.

It's hard watching someone you love go through a long extended time of waiting.
Death is hard no matter how you look at it, but it is part of life.
I tend to see it as a door. Nothing more.

You've had a very busy week, and like you it seems the only time I ever get to see relatives is when someone has died or is dying.
It makes me think that after awhile, no matter what is said or promised, that it gets to be that's all we have in common with the people we grew up with.
My cousin made the same comment at both my father's funreal and my brothers.
I grew up spending lots of time with this cousin, and when I saw him at the last funreal we both attended, I hardly reconized who he was.

Afghanistan? In Feburary? That's not that far off. Time will fly, I'm sure of that.
I know you need to do what it is that you need to do, follow the direction of your heart.
But that part of the world is not so safe, at least it wasn't the last time I heard.

But I do understand the need to go and do things that make a difference.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.

All that I ask is two things:

1.) Take loads of pictures. I, for one, would like to see what it is really like there without the 30 second sound bites.

2.) Come back. You and I have become friends of late and I count that as important.

BTW, one of these days we'll have to meet in DC. Let me know when your around. :)

I know I'm dead on the surface But I'm screaming underneath

1.) Take loads of pictures. I, for one, would like to see what it is really like there without the 30 second sound bites.

Don't worry about that. I've got this new camera that I'm starting to play around with more. I'll have to get some of my stuff up on DA soon. The new camera isn't as good as my Canon Digital Rebel but then again it's hard to compete with SLR cameras. I recently got a Konica-Minolta DImage X1 it's a slim line camera you can put in your pocket, it's just a point and click kinda but has an 8 megapixel sensor. It's ok but I really got it for one reason and that is because it's 8 megapixels and it can fit in my pocket easily.