I'm a combat veteran

Haha.  I say the title as a joke but it's true so that's pretty cool.  I've flown six combat sorties now.  Your first 20 combat sorties get an air medal.  Every 20 after that you get an additional little pin on your medal.  The people who leave here are averaging seven air medals.  So I'll make my goal to leave here with eight.  That's 160 flights..... That's a lot.

I've done some pretty cool stuff so far here.  Unfortunately there's not too much I can talk about.  I can tell you that while I'm in the plane it's awesome.  Afghanistan looks eerily  like Southern Texas.  Which I'm not sure sounds bad for Texas or bad for Afghanistan.  But either way it's mostly flat, in the southern region, and dry.  The five hour blocks that I'm in the plane are basically dust free!  Which is AWESOME!  Clean air is great.  Also, the sunrises are beautiful.  I said the word "pretty" the other morning in the plane to the crew describing the sunrise and got flak, but it was.....pretty. I've been flying the midnightish lines so my days have been completely backwards.  I'm awake every night and sleep during every day.....it's weird being tired at 8am

My first camel spider.....it's not that big

I have been assigned an additional duty over here.  I'm now also the Assistant to the Chief of Scheduling.  Which is basically just me helping out the scheduler.  Scheduling is a tough job.  The Chief of Scheduling right now for our squadron is a pilot, but he's not one of our pilots.  He is on a non-flying deployment where his whole job is to make the schedule.  Which may sound easy but we're flying 24 hours a day here. And we're always upgrading people and keeping currencies with different flying tasks and techniques so it's a TOUGH job.  Everyone is always asking for their PFA (Personal Flying (subsitute word "flying" as you see fit) Agenda) to be looked after and such so there's a lot of qweep (Air Force word for paperwork) to do.  So anyway..., I'm slowly being trained and tasked with different things with the job.  I'm basically going to be the scheduler for about 3-6 days a month to let him have some days off (he hasn't had one in three months).

Which reminds me to tell you that I'm on a day off right now.  Which may sound good but I don't want it.  I want to fly everyday!  Once I get my hands into the scheduling biz some more I'll make sure my PFA is taken care of.

We wear pencil pocket patches over here when we're not flying.  It's the small patch that covers our pencil pocket on our left arm.  The squadron made some number patches.  Numbered 1-69.  Each pilot gets one that corresponds to the number of who the next one is to go home.  I showed up here and got number 57.  I just got moved to number 51 so the countdown has started!  Haha.

I also got some pencil pocket patches made for the Lieutenants out here.  There are only three of us pilot Lieutenant types here right now.  And we have to stick together.  It's called the LPA (Lieutenant Protection Agency).  Every squadron has one.  It's just to help us stick together since we're the young/new guys.  And in this squadron we need it since we're outnumbered 20-1 over here.  The rest of our squadron is comprised of half Captains and the rest crusty Majors and Lieutenant Colonels.  We're really all cool with each other so it's just kind of a fun thing to do.  I'm picking up the patches today.  They are brown and sand colored and say "MFLPA" which stands for Mother Freakin' Lieutenant Protection Agency.  Haha.  Everyone is going to get a kick out of it over here.

This is why I'm glad I'm aircrew

A few buddies and myself also made a music video.  I can't say too many more details on it because it's still in the works but it's pretty funny.

Kristen sent me a picture of Dallas "playing" frisbee

I talk to Kristen over the phone just about everyday, thanks to the internet, and email.  I talked to my dad one via phone and some emails. And I kinda talked to my mom once on the phone (she's not up with this computer thing just yet).  So overall it's not that bad over here.  I'll take more pictures next blog. Peace!