How do we spend our downtime?

Well, today's Friday!!!  Which means we work a half day and it's the weekend!!!!  Just kidding.  It means we work about 8 hours and we still have to work the weekend.  But, it's not that bad. 

 

The Taliban or insurgents or whatever you want to call them decided they had left us alone long enough and sent another explosive into the base this morning.  It must have been on the other side of the base because we could barely feel it.  So off to the bunkers.  They must have some new guys manning the "Incoming Incoming Incoming" horn because there was a 5 minute lapse between the boom and siren.  I'm sure they'll get the hang of it soon.

 

So, how does someone on a FOB spend their afternoon off you might ask?  Well, we take a list of what we think we need.  Today's list is:  Laundry pick up, Coffee maker is broken so we could use a new one, it'd be nice to have AFN so let's look for a satellite, we need a new series to watch and maybe a trip to the PX.

 

Laundry pick up was not a problem.  Swung by the PX but there was a line and nobody needed anything bad enough to wait.  Since we were over there it was a trip to the coffee shop for smoothies.  Our RE, Maung, knows some people at the Mission Essential Personal building so he thought we might get a coffe maker there; even though he still owed them a favor.  After about 8 minutes he came out with 3 bags of steaks.  What an unexpected surprise!!!! The only thing they wanted in return was a freezer.  A promise was made, now we have to figure out how to find one.  Oh, unfortunately they just gave away a coffe maker.  Not good there. 

 

Next stop was the dvd stores.  Yep, it's Friday so most of them are closed.  Couldn't find anything we liked so we'll have to make a trip back tomorrow.

 

Maung also thought he had a lead on an unused AFN satellite.  We stopped and climbed around it.  What do you know?!  The cable wasn't hooked up.  After tracking down the person it belonged too he decided to give the satellite and descrambler to us.  I think he did it because he was sick and just wanted us to leave.

 

So, to get the satellite we had to borrow a gator and get it down from the bunker.  All went smoothly.  Got the thing set up and now we're just waiting for the activation to kick in within 24 hours.  If all goes well we might get to watch some football this weekend.

 

The final official act of the evening was attending escort training.  I can now "officially" escort local nationals around the base. 

 

HOME FRONT UPDATE:  Christian walked back home from playing at his friends house across the street. 

 

He walked in the house looking sad and said "I messed up my new outfit!!!!" 

 

Katy:  "How'd you do that?"

 

Christian:  "Pee!!..... I was pee walking."

 

I can only imagine what the neighbor's saw!!