Welcome Home Party

Tonight we had our official welcome home party at the PA Farm Show, the same place we had our going away party 15 months before.  This time we wore civilian clothes even though we were getting paid.  this weekend was the first weekend back to drilling since we got back from Iraq.  Tomorrow we will report in the morning in ACUs and really be back to Army weekends.
Tonight was a lot of fun seeing people I had not seen since January.  Here's some of the photos:

1LT Joel Candelario asked his fiance to marry him during dinner--it was a surprise that Andrea Magee almost gave away ten minutes before Joel popped the question, but it was a big surprise.

The other over-50 soldiers from Echo Company.  SGT Bruce Reiner is on the right with his wife.  SFCs Glen Valencia, and Larry Christman.

Several sergeants in Delta Company made flowered shirts the uniform of the night.

Nigel and Jacari found a new friend with a game console.

Joseph Weese and Tood Tarbox of Echo Company.

Kauffman and Thompson--serious about dinner.

Video in Two Weeks

Today I made a video explaining the difference between MREs and C-rations.  I happened to have one box of 30-year-old C-rations in a closet.  As it turns out it was a beans and franks meal with canned fruitcake for dessert. 
YUM!
I did not open any cans.  The video is for an article on the chemistry of field for Chemical and Engineering News magazine.  I will post the link when it is published on line.  It should be May 3.

Back to Playing Army

On Saturday I will be back to weekend drills for the first time since 2008.  On Saturday we have a welcome home party at the Farm Show Arena.  On Sunday it's business as usual with an 0800 formation.  For me I have to catch up on some required online training.  I could do it at home, except I loaned my PC to another sergeant in Iraq and he still has it.  Macs don't run Explorer so I can't do Army on-line training on my computer.

It is finally official (I think) that I am in Headquarters Company.  I will be bringing my Army camera to the Farm Show Saturday night and taking pictures of soldiers who back to whatever all of us consider to be normal life.

I'll post the some of the shots on Sunday or as soon as I can.

Celebrities in the House--Saving Abel

On the first night of the milblogging conference, the evening ended with free concert by the group Saving Abel.

The groups performed free of charge for the conference and just returned from a series of concerts in Iraq.  Photos are here.

According to this story and an item I just saw on USAToday.com the band just performed on a warship in the Pacific.  This story is from Artist Direct:

Saving Abel re-teamed with the USO and boarded the USS Carl Vinson as part of a USO concert at sea that rocked the waves on April 11. The band performed for sailors returning from a three-month deployment at sea. It appears that Saving Abel have strong stomachs, since they played atop six-foot waves and 13 miles-per-hour winds entertaining more than 2,000 sailors. Footage from the USO show will be broadcast online in late Spring/early Summer.

The performance lasted 90-minutes and the band cops to being avid military supporters. And really, does anyone but far-out-in-left-field-liberals-whack-jobswho-don't-trust-humans admit that they don't support our forces? I'm not a conservative by any means, but really? Does anyone lay claim to being anti-the troops? Nevertheless, the band traveled to Kuwait and Iraq in late February, and participated in an eight-day USO tour. The band visited four bases and touched the lives of more than 4,800 troops. Footage from the group's concert at Camp Arifjan was later streamed online with help from Ustream. The show was viewed by more than 9,600 fans.

The band will release its sophomore album Miss America on June 8, 2010. The platter is named after their first USO tour, the album title was inspired by the service and sacrifice of America’s troops and their families. So these guys truly are avid supporters of the men and women fighting for our freedom, so not only do we salute said freedom fighters, we salute Saving Abel for their efforts.

Celebrity in the House--Baldilocks

At a military blogging conference you meet people that defy stereotypes.  After all, they are people who write who also volunteered to go to war.  The top of my list in the defy-the-stereotype category is Baldilocks.

Check her story out:

Obama vs. Baldilocks

A blogger's African dad came here on the same airlift as Obama's dad. All similarities end there

By Max Taves Thursday, Aug 21 2008

Los Angeles blogger Juliette Ochieng has a lot in common with the man who might be the next president, Barack Obama. A lot.
Both were born to Kenyan fathers of the same tribe (the Luo) from the same province (Nyanza), and both of their fathers came as boys to America aboard the same airplane. Growing up, neither Ochieng nor Obama knew their fathers, who both abandoned their American mothers and left their American-born children behind. Both of their fathers returned to Africa in the early 1960s and became friends, bonding at Kenyan bars over their favorite drink — Scotch. Both Ochieng’s and Obama’s mothers contracted ovarian cancer. (Hers survived it; his did not). Both Ochieng and Obama were born in the U.S. in August 1961 — only weeks apart.
But for someone with parallel beginnings, Juliette Akinyi Ochieng is quite different: Evangelical Christian. Working class. Military veteran. Pro-life. Conservative Republican.
Ochieng went to Los Angeles City College, not Harvard. Although she was born in Chicago — Obama’s political birthplace — she lives in South-Central Los Angeles, where she grew up. And since 2003, she has written a blog, luoamerican.com/baldilocks, better known as Baldilocks, a reference to her fashionably close-shaven head. Her soft speech belies her harsh yet thoughtful commentaries on black politics and national security from a conservative perspective.
Last month, she penned an essay for her site and for Republican-oriented pajamasmedia.com, bemoaning blacks’ loyalty to the Democrats. Last week, as Russian tanks rolled through Georgia, Ochieng, who worked for years as an Air Force Intelligence cryptologist-linguist specializing in Russian and German, mused about that conflict.
“She was very shaped by her experiences in the military,” says fellow blogger Patrick Frey, the deputy district attorney who founded Patterico.com. “She has very strong opinions, and she’s a very religious person. She’s very warm and hospitable.”

Read the whole story here.

She is sweet and funny in person.  Her views warm the hearts of Conservatives everywhere.

Thunder Run on My Blog

For those who have not checked out Thunder Run--follow the links below to the daily news from Iraq, Afghanistan and military bloggers.

In today's http://www.thunderrun.us/2010/04/from-front-04122010.html ">From the Front: (Click on link to read stories highlighted below) This post is courtesy of http://www.thunderrun.us/"> The Thunder Run

http://www.thunderrun.us/">The Thunder Run's From the Front is a daily series that highlights news and personal dispatched from the front and the home front.

Celebrity (Author) in the House--Dr. Charles W. Hoge

On Saturday while I was waiting for one of the sessions to start I met Dr. Charles Hoge.  He wrote the book Once a Warrior--Always a Warrior.  I reviewed the book on March 14 and found it more useful than I would have thought for me.  I would have thought it only applied to soldiers in direct combat, but there are things everyone in Iraq goes through that Dr. Hoge gives good advice on. 
(I can hear some of my friends saying "Going to Iraq for a year can be stressful--this is news to you?!)
Anyway, Dr. Hoge saw my name on my backpack and introduced himself.  We talked for several minutes about the book, Iraq, and reading and then I had to run off to move my car which was parked in a 2-hour meter zone. 
On the way down to the meeting, I talked to a friend who served was in Iraq last year and is having trouble getting back to the old routine.  He has two kids (age 9 and 11) and is having trouble with managing work, family, and all the details.  He wants to go back to fixing Chinooks 14 hours a day.  If he would read the book I would buy it for him, but reading would just stress him out more.  He seems ready to ask for help.  That's good news.