Back on Track

The last couple of days have been extremely hectic, many thanks to Sheryl for keeping everyone updated in my stead. The “old” crew is getting ready to leave, the “new” crew is trying to take over, so the reality is that there are twice as many people trying to use the same number of office assets and occupy the same limited office space. To make the situation worse (which I did), I lost two days of work on a three day project by trying to save 40 minutes of work by merging two data bases. There were some common sense steps that I could have taken to avoid the catastrophe, but occasionally—when under stress or when other factors are brought to bear, like lack of sleep, the pressure of a deadline, environmental factors (like temperature, dust, candle power per square foot, etc.), sense is not so common. Thanks for those of you who were praying for me, I was able to recover a positive mental attitude in record time, and with the help of a Marine in my shop, we were able to repair the damage in an acceptable time frame.

One thing that seems sort of out of kilter over here is that since getting on the bus back at Pendleton, I’ve not spent 5 continuous minutes on the news. Here I am in a place that is constantly in the news back home, but not only do I not have the ability to ascertain if what has been said in the past is even partly “ground truth,” I do not even have the time or the means to determine if what you back there are currently hearing is actually what is going on over here. The capital city might as well be the moon, it seems so far away from here—to me, at least, as I’ve only been two places in this country, and both places I got to by air. There appear to be some pretty barren (not to say, flat—some areas are pretty rugged) expanses of desert between just about any two spots on the map here, and generally only one way to get between those two point on the ground. The weather is still very moderate here, not far from what southern California weather is this time of the year.

Semper Fi, Jon G.