Merry COLD Christmas!

Just a quick update, I managed to avoid the pink belley and I am offically safe now! :) I know some people wondered why I would post it here when anyone can read it, but the people in my platoon DON'T read my blog, because well, they'd be reading their own lives. So yeah. Also I noticed this is my 100th post!! Wow, I can't believe I have managed that many things to say about this place. Well still should be a few more coming before I head home...

Alright well Christmas is just about finishing up in this part of the world but I wanted to give a quick update. I figured that this Christmas, being that I was in Iraq, was not going to be the best of them, but it has turned out to be much worse than I would have expected.

Our rotation out to the outpost was working out so that I was going to be out here, away from the comforts of the home FOB. I was ok with that. I was also ok with not having a good Christmas meal or anything. I was fine. I was also accepting of the fact that I would usher the transition from Christmas eve to Christmas in a guard tower, probably cold as hell. Again no problems there.

A little divergence here for a minute. Let me tell you how damn cold it has been lately. If theres one thing that I cannot stand it is the cold. I know I had talked about this before and how I was dreading the winter approaching, but now that it is actually getting cold, I realize how much I truly hate it. The thing is, its not really all that cold. Its probably dropping down in to the upper 30's at night, but after going through a 120+ degree summer, thats a huge temperature difference. Add to the fact that this rotation my squads manning the guard positions durring the coldest part of the night. It probably wouldn't be all that bad if it wern't for the simple fact that the Army is great about not allowing you to be warm, despite the fact that they issue you all these different types of cold weather gear. But God forbid that you try and keep warm you know?!?

Well we've managed to make use of what items we are allowed to wear and I guess it hasn't been THAT bad. About a month ago or so I had order some skin tight winter underarmor pants and shirt which are great for keeping you warm. On top of that I wear this thick cotton shirt all under my uniform which together makes it not too bad. Ive got my gloves and a fleece cap that I wear under my helmet and late at night I use my issued poncho liner blanket and half ass wrap up in an attempt to keep warm. Normally our guard towers have these AC/Heater units in there, that last time we were here, they were functional, but somehow in the last 2 weeks that we were gone, they ALL ended up breaking. Fabulous. Also within the places we stay at the outpost, it is cold as shit, and it has been made clear that we must maintain the "standard" appearance, so no wearing jackets around or the fleece cap when not on guard. How retard!?! Theres hardly anyone here of any significance and for Christ sake were living out in the middle of Baghdad. Is this really necessary??

So enough of my bitching and complaining about the cold. Back to Christmas. So we started off on guard, cold, but anyways time passed and finally we were done. Immediately afterwords, our squad drew names for the Secret Santa that we were doing. We all bought gifts in the $10 to $20 range and drew random names and got whatever gift that person bought. Following that, we had our "Christmas Dinner" which conisted of some smoked sausage and pepperoni with some cheese and crackers. It actually wasn't too bad. Following that several of us light up some cigars and celebrate the day of Christ's birth. It wasn't turning out to be all that bad of a Christmas, until we found out that they were planning on having another platoon relieve us for a bit so we could travel to a nearby base and get some real Christmas dinner.

This doesn't sound like a bad idea right? Well you have to figure all the time of getting everything ready, getting the handover going, heading out, getting back blah blah blah. Nobody in our entire platoon wanted to do this, but we were being forced. How joyful! To make it even better for us, the time we were going to be heading out was going to be smack dab in the middle of my squads sleep time. Awesome, now we are giving up sleep to do something that we don't even want to do in the first place.

Well seeing as how we had no choice, we were woken up got ready, and then headed out. Once we got there we receieve a speech that basically stated the time that we had, and that everyone was being forced to go in to the chow hall, to grab a plate of food, sit down and eat it and enjoy it and be Merry. Wow, I'm now being ordered to have a Merry Christmas in a manner in which I don't even want to do. And they wonder why a 26 year old who doesn't like to have his life run like he's 12 doesn't want to re-enlist!! HA! The food was actually pretty good, but all we could think about was how we didn't want to be doing this in the first place. Oh well, its the Army. What can you do? And of course leave it up to them to take something and ruin it. Well thats about all that I have for now. Hope everyone back home has had a good Christmas, or whatever you celebrate!