No, I am not engaged.
Just thought I would throw that out there, since it seems to have been a popular question since I returned to Seattle from Mexico and since I returned to Afghanistan from Seattle. Mexico was absolutely perfect, Seattle was uncharacteristically sunny, and I had a great time with both Joanna and my family, but alas, no rings.
Mexico was everything I expected and a fair amount more. Most of our time was occupied with either sitting by the pool or sitting on the beach, and my only regret is that we didn't have more time available to sit around and actively do nothing. Believe it or not, after almost exactly two years of being together, the fifteen and a half days of my mid-tour was the longest continuous stretch of time Joanna and I have been able to spend together, and it increased the days we've actually spent in the same time zone by almost a third.
And now here I am, back in my room in Afghanistan, trying to fight the impression that the whole trip was a fleeting daydream that feels like it ended before it even had the chance to start. The good news is that I only have four months to go - maybe slightly less, depending on when our replacements get here - and after eight months (ten, including the two months that Fort Bragg stole from my life), another four really doesn't feel like that long.
Back to the mid-tour...
Among the many differences between the Army and the Air Force, the most recent to strike me is a vastly different approach to safety briefings. Before I was allowed to get on a plane and fly home, I had to attend a "reintegration" briefing, part of which dealt with safety and good decision making. The Air Force is big into safety, but they tend to be kind of diplomatic and even head-in-the-sand about it. Everybody knows people under 21 tend to drink, but I've only ever seen one Air Force safety briefing where a renegade senior airman got on stage and said "I know you're going to drink, so please be careful and don't do anything stupid". Usually it's more of a Don't Drink and Drive speech followed by And If You're Under 21, Just Don't Drink. It's like abstinence-only sex education...everyone knows most everybody is doing it, but they won't really deal with the problem.
Anyway, the Army is different. My alcohol awareness briefing consisted of the caution that when I get home, a six-pack of beer will treat me like a case would have before I deployed. Honest, concise, and true. Well, true for some people. They should have said that two beers with dinner would treat me like four beers would have before I left. Which is to say, I had two beers and a big bloody steak the first night I got home and, as Joanna can attest to, I was feeling pretty good.
Everybody says that you're supposed to come back from R&R motivated and ready to finish out your deployment. Trouble is, everybody is full of crap. I'm back, but I still find myself spending an inordinate amount of time here,
which is in the pool at the hotel in Zihuatanejo.
I've also discovered that a two week vacation apparently won't mellow me out and take the edge off of all the little annoyances that were irritating the hell out of me before I left. I had two blissful weeks without having to think about how obnoxious it is to be stared at by everybody, everywhere you go, all the time, or to have to swerve around people who knowingly refuse to get out of the middle of the road, so they can prove they know you won't run them over, even though it might be really really tempting sometimes. I spent my first seven months trying to rationalize the terrible driving habits and senseless pedestrian habits of the people around here - to include analyzing it from the perspective of exposure to defined traffic laws during early childhood development - and now that I'm back I'm starting to realize that no rationalization is necessary. Some people simply have no sense, and if that means they get clocked in the forehead with a side-view mirror, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
Since I've started plunging into cynical ruminations on the nuisances of chaotic Afghan traffic, I'll leave you with this last picture of Joanna and I on the beach. I attribute the smirk on my face to Franco, our charming but somewhat overzealous waiter who was a little too fond of cheesy questions like "How is it, peachy keen or okey dokey?" It was a great afternoon, regardless of the expression on my face, and if anybody needs a vacation, I can't recommend Zihuatanejo highly enough.
