A year in Afghanistan: A Canoe would come in handy!

Well it has been raining for the past 2 days now, and when it rains in Kandahar it floods. The roads flood, my office floods, and pretty much everything else floods. Luckily my "house" doesn't flood. What is amazing to me is that we have been in Afghanistan forever and we have not bothered to pave the roads at Kandahar Airfield. This is crazy! Because they aren't paved, when they flood they wash out. Then comes the huge pot holes. I'm talking pot holes the size that your car gets stuck in.

Yesterday I had to be at the office at 0630 for a resiliency meeting. This is basically a meeting with myself, the Doc, the chaplain, the psych, and the DCO (deputy commanding officer) where we sit around and think up ways to help Soldiers be more resilient. It is supposed to be preventative, so we can keep as many people out of trouble and "in the fight", so to speak, as possible. Getting to work at 0630 was quite a challenge as it had been raining through the night and almost every road was washed out or flooded. At one point, I came to a road that if you didn't know it was a road, you would have thought you were at a river bank. The tricky part is getting across. A lot of times I feel like I am in a real life game of Frogger and I am the frog. Yesterday, the frog almost fell off the lily pads multiple times.

The flooding in my office was at all time high yesterday as well. Normally, the water is at a level that doesn't come up passed the rubber on my boots. But yesterday, it was up and over the rubber. So we all sat around with cold wet feet for the day. Me and my paralegal are getting really handy with a shop-vac!

Today, was a really good day as I got 2 packages (I love mail!). One was from Michael and it made my whole week. Although it really made me miss him even more. But one of the things in the package was some of my picture frames with pictures of us in them. So now I can look at him whenever I want! Little things like that help, but make me miss him even more at the same time. My other package was from Teavana, so that was exciting as well, as I got a cool new tumbler that I can make tea in as well as some really good tea.

I have a board of inquiry coming up for a warrant officer who was identified by HRC (human resources command) to show cause for why he shouldn't be eliminated from service. Basically he got a DUI 2 years ago and got a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand and an Article 15 (nonjudicial punishment). Both of those were filed in his OMPF (official military personnel file) and HRC decided that because of that he should be eliminated. So now I have to do a board and convince them that he should be given the boot. The Soldier doesn't really even belong to my unit, but falls under us for purposes of jurisdiction. It should be a pretty easy board, as it's really just a paper case for me. As I will not be trying to track down the witnesses to his DUI from 2 years ago while he was in Korea. Plus he was already found guilty of it beyond a reasonable doubt and the standard at a board of inquiry is a preponderance of the evidence, so I really just need to come up with an argument as to why this misconduct should prevent him from further serving. Shouldn't be too difficult, although I do have to wonder why his command at the time didn't initiate elimination and instead just gave him a referred (bad) OER (officer evaluation report) which only added another reason why HRC initiated elimination against him. Oh well, it will all be settled soon.

Here are some pictures....