Other random things...

So, sorry, we don't have a lot of pictures from our recent travails. We haven't done anything too crazy, though. I went home on leave from October 4th to October 16th. Right before that, Tally and I took a trip up to the central coast and unexpectedly found this cool little winery called "Talley Vineyards", as "Talley" is the surname of the family that owns it. So, of course, we had to stop there.

No, that's not a dead animal in front of her feet. That's some big cat that came waddling over while I was trying to take the picture.

Also, on our way back home, we passed by another winery area north of Santa Barbara. Tally always watches that ridiculous "Bachelor" show, and, for you other fans out there, you'll remember there was some tool named Andrew Firestone on the show several years ago. I believe his family is heirs to the Firestone Tire business, but they also own a couple of wineries. During the show, some time was spent there, and it was very scenic. So, we stopped there so Tally could say she had been there. It was an "amazing" "journey". (Anyone else who thinks the Bachelor is ridiculous will know what I'm talking about there.)

Then, the weekend after I returned, we headed over to Phoenix for a night, then up to Sedona. This was fun, as we had been to both places before and were looking forward to it. We stayed at bed-and-breakfasts both nights, which were wonderful. They were small, the breakfasts were wonderful, and the owners were very tolerant towards the ridiculous weiner dogs.

Iraq...

OK, sorry for not putting anything on here for so long. I figure that, since I'm going gain an hour of tonight, this is a perfect time to get around to this.

I don't have too many good pictures of Iraq, but I'll put a couple of them up here.

We had quite a few instances of sandstorms, of course. However, from what people told me about previous deployments, ours didn't seem as bad as some in the past (of course, people love to exaggerate their old experiences). So, most weren't too bad, although a couple (including the one in the picture) caused you to get sand everywhere (in your room, in your ears, in your teeth--you get the idea).

Here's me wearing all of my crap (except my kevlar [helmet]) and attempting to look tough after coming back from some sort of trip off base.

When we did go off base, we rode in these things, called MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected; you can read about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP_(armored_vehicle))

I have some other random pictures, but nothing too great. We were at this base called Camp Baharia, which was just southeast of Fallujah, and there are now no American forces left there (all Iraqis). It apparently used to be some kind of "resort" back in the day where the Hussein boys used to hang out. Sadly, it seems, from many stories I've heard, that they commonly committed many atrocities there consistent with what they were famous for. This is a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG61C8swnGI) showing what it looked like before the war. The little buildings were still there (we used them), but there was no grass, the tent were not there, and some of the buildings (such as the "disco" [not making this up]) were bombed in the invasion.