1/2 way done (maybe)!!!!!

Our last day "together".... many more of these great days in the future!

OK, let me explain this "short tour credit" thingy.  OK, so as a pilot in the Air Force you get to fly..., duh!  But you also have to do a short tour at least once in your career (and more often now that we are involved in like 3 wars at a time).  A short tour is defined as 179 days (6 months) or more deployed.  Once you get that under your belt you get put back to the bottom of the short list.  So I really want a short tour credit for this deployment.  I'll get it if I stay deployed for at least 180 days then this deployment will count.  The Air Force likes to play the game of sending you home at 179 days so that you still "owe" them a short tour.  And this is a GREAT deployment to count as a short tour.  Most short tours given to pilots are non-flying so that's whay this one is so good. 

So I want to get home ASAP to be with Kristen, family and friends, but I also want to stay out here for 180 days!  That would almost guarantee me no short tours for another five years or so which would be great!  If I don't get the credit for this deployment (less than 180 days)  I could be re-deployed again next year if they wanted to.....that sucks.  And the worst past of all this is they just upped the "short tour" definition to being deployed 300 days in a 365 day period.  So, right now I'm grandfathered in to the old short tour definition...., which is awesome!  So hope and pray that I stay here till Halloween.... then I'll be good to do.

I dropped a bunch of numbers this week.  I'm P-30 now!  I started at P-57 and this is my half way mark, so I drop an average of 1 number every 3.3 days out here. So that works out for me being here another 99 days, which would be awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Which means that I still have 4.5 days till I'm actually half way done.  But that's me stepping on US soil somewhere around 9 November!!!!  Which kinda sucks because my wedding anniversary is 8 November..., but I think Kristen can wait an extra day to see me.  I love you Kristen!  PS.  Some people are extending their deployment to 270 days to guarantee their short tour credit.

It's hard to read, this is from my flight hours iPhone app.  Basically, I've been flying A LOT

49% of my flying time has come from the MC-12!

I topped 600 total flying hours in my lifetime this week!  251.5 of those have been here in the sandbox!  I'm flying A LOT!  I need 1000 hours before any major civilian carrier will look at you application.  They really like you to have 1,500 hours.  But I have 9 1/2 years left on my commitment so I think I'll be alright. 

Someone is about to get SOAKED!!!

We're always told in the Air Force that as the newest military organization (18 September 1947), we don't have real traditions..... But I beg to differ!  It seems like I talk about an Air Force tradition every week on this blog.  Here's the AF tradition for this week.  On a "fini" flight (your final flight at current duty station or current airframe) you get soaked with champagne usually...., or water.  It's supposed to be by your wife, but out here there's no wives.  So this week a fellow 1Lt was having his fini flight.  We took some water bottles out there and I found a water gun.  We got Shiv (call sign) pretty good.  We all hid around the back of the jet and he had no idea it was coming!  Good times.....

Shiv got it!  Congrats on getting the heck out of the sandbox!

I got a letter from Kristen with kisses all over it and colored pictures!!  It was the coolest!  Dallas signed it also so she helped out too.  I love them!

Thanks to CJ and Ben for a "fun" package.  Haha.  The package included four wooden model type airplanes with propellers and rubber bands to make them really fly.  These looks like to much fun for over here.  I haven't unleashed them yet to the "common folks" at my squadron just yet in fear that they might put someones eyes out.  But in time, one by one, these planes will be set free in to the general squadron population.. I should just know what I am asking for when I do this...., because someones eye WILL be poked out from someone throwing the plane with little to no aim..... oh well...., good times!  I took one of the plane out for a spin.....took a video of it.....with a friends camera......it's still on his camera.....video coming to a blog near you soon.

Kristen supporting her deployed husband...me!  Thanks babe.

I was told today that my mustache looks good today.  That was awesome!  Haha.  It made my head slightly bigger but it's under control.  Also, I still have a case of pilots foot so my head has shrunken back to normal size.

Dallas had fun in the mud....then got a bath....Haha.  She's great.

83 days down...., about 100 left (give or take 20...Haha).

I'm still pilot #37....

Nine new pilots got here this week so I'm expecting my number to go down withing the next two to three weeks by at least nine.  My commander is really good about keeping the minimum number of dudes here as possible so as soon as we get more than our quota then he finds older dudes rides home.

OK, let me start this blog off with a "hit" on me (A "hit" is what we call it during a debrief if you point out what you messed up on/ your own mistakes during the previous flight...., I usually have a couple of hits per flight).  My mom sent me a package two weeks ago and I never said anything about it.  It was a good one.  Some more drink mixes, a t-shirt and a few kiddie games.  The kiddie games are fun.  You can usually find these said games just sitting around the squadron after people are done playing with them.  Us aircrew over here are such kids.  There are bouncy bally all over the place, etch-a-sketch pads, and coloring books just to give a few examples of some of the "fun" things we do while at work.  She also sent a pair of plastic deodorant ball thingys.  You put them in your shoes when you take them off and they absorb the smell.  I didn't know that my room smelled so bad, but now that I'm using them my room smells better...thanks mom.

This week I got e few packages.  I got one from my dad.  He sent me a 100oz. mug filled with water flavoring and then the rest of the box filled with water flavoring!  It was awesome!  I have so much water flavoring!!!  I wanted to count it but I don't think I can count that high.  Haha.

And Kristen sent me three boxes this week.  A few weeks ago I made a comment on facebook about wanting some Mexican food....., and Kristen delivered.  She sent a few bags of chips and salsa, cheese and been dip!  I haven't eaten any of it yet, because I'm waiting for the perfect time in the next few weeks to crack them all open.  She also sent me Family Guy trivia cards (to play during boring moments here).  And she sent me a lego plane!  Haha.  That was funny.

One of the dudes in my tent got sent home early this week for medical reasons.  That sucks in a way for him but I'm also happy anytime someone gets to go home so I'm happy for him!  He was only gone for four days and they sent some new dude in his place.  So we got a newbie in our tent.  You may have heard about the "forming, storming, norming, performing" theory.  If not, the Air Force teaches it heavily.... it's basically the different stages a group makes when a group gets together.  And every time that a new person enters the group the process starts over.  Well, our group just got started over and we were already at the performing phase!!!  Aggghhhhh. We'll have to break him in right.

My buddy Joab spilled a bottle of water on his Macbook Pro a few weeks ago..., the whole bottle.  Don't ask me how.  I was sitting right next to him and I still don't know how it happened.  But I asked Kristen to send me a spill proof sippee cup that i decorated when I got here.  I gave it to him a few days ago.... funny stuff.

I've been flying sooooo much this week.  I flew for eight days straight.  It's my longest streak so far. The longest they let you fly is nine in a row anyway so that eight in a row was great! I broke 200 hours of combat time this week which changed my code over here from in experienced to experienced which makes me feel good.  I have 51 sorties over here now so two air medals and over half way to my third one!  Some people are medal chasers during their military career, and some people never try to get any at all.  I want to be somewhere in between those two kinds of people and just happen to get medals.  But, I want to have a chest FULL of medals for my sisters wedding next May!  So, for that reason.....I'll be a medal chaser for the next year (I won't try to get a purple hart....I promise).

Oh, and since we got those nine new pilot type here..., they have to be trained up on our plane.  And that takes 20 rides, which means about 20-30 days with all nine of those dudes flying and us co-pilots not getting to much "stick" time.  So I'm getting up for that in the upcoming 3-4 weeks time frame....Aggghhhh!

And one more for the road...... I have athlete's foot!!!  And I'm not even an athlete!  I'm a pilot!  So I'm renaming it to pilot's foot for my sake.  I mean, tomorrow I'm going to go to a flight doctor to treat my pilots foot not a regular doctor so I must have pilots foot.  A secretary can't go see a flight doctor, just pilots so from this point on..., the fungus on my feet will be renamed to pilots foot.  Thank you.

At the end of this month I'll have been here for 90 days which is SUPPOSED to be my halfway point.....we'll see.  That's about all I got this week.  I just scrolled back to the top of this blog entry and wow.....I didn't do to well with pictures.  I'll take that hit on me and do better next week.  Till next time.....

I miss you Kristen!  I love you Kristen!

Pilot #37

This is the front of one of my planes.  The symbols mean different things.  To be honest...., I've never asked so I don't know.  But I'm sure it's something cool.  Haha.

Not to much to report on this week.  I'm now P-37 instead of P-38 so I'm down one number......I'll be down 3 or so more in the near future....!

This week I was able to visit this marvelous airplane called the WB-57.  The Soviets shot down one of our U-2 spy planes while it was "flying" over their airspace back in the day.  We told them that a U-2 would never spy on them again...... So we kept our word......, and built a "U-2B" type of plane.  It's not the same plane so we kept our word! Haha.  Now NASA uses the only two left in existence as "weather birds".  They fly really high over here and check the "weather" and such.  NASA took off their logo from the tail while it's over here because that would just look bad.

The Weather Bird has HUGE wings and way over sized engines.  It reminds me of some of those bass boats with the over sized motors on the back.  When this thing takes off it GOES!

Kristen went to "Corks and Canvas" this week with Emily.  It's a class where you bring a bottle of wine and paint a picture.  Kristen painted our newest kitchen artwork.  She's good!

Kristen brought her car to Acura this week for a regular oil change and got that plus two new headlights out of the deal!  I'd like to say it were that easy but....., the old headlights were recalled.  They changed one and left the other one old.....Wha?!  Seriously!  They left one old one on there because it had a crack.  They wouldn't change their DEFECTIVE headlight because it had a crack.  Welllllll, it took a few days and a few phone calls up the "chain of command" at Acura, but she finally got her now well deserved new headlights fo' free!  I hate that sales game that dealerships like to play.

Kristen was so excited to go see Nikki Minaj and Britney Spears that she broke her iPhone.  Ha.  And......, she already was working with not an iPhone 4, not an iPhone 3GS, but an archaic iPhone 3G!  She's waiting two more months for the new iPhone to come out.  And now she has to wait two more months with a broken screen too!!!!  SUCKS! (should have had her $50 case on it)

Kristen had a great time at the concert.  Here's some pics from her time there.  Till next week......See ya'!

It's Britney Bitch!

Kristen and Courtney

Kristen and Courtney "singing"

My wifey is so hott!!!  And so is Courtney!

Dallas is watching the Bold and the Beautiful

Yes..., still pilot #38

Someone, not me, made a pipe cleaner model of the MC-12..., pretty good job.

So, it looks like I'll be pilot #38 for at least one more week.  We're on a kinda hold right now.  The training for my plane moved bases.  And the move takes time (hopefully not that much)....so, we're all over here just waiting.  The #'s 1-7 dudes right now have their dates to leave so they'll be getting out of here for sure fairly soon, first couple dudes at the end of July and the rest of them the first few days in August.  So..., as soon as we start seeing new dudes showing up here from the new training base we'll all start to breathe again over here. But as for now we're just waiting for the first dude to get here from the new training base so we know the system works...... that sucks.

This is me "Chuckin up the deuces" so ya know what I'm talking about

On my day off last week I made the July MWR calendar for my squadron (my self appointed job) to let people know what's going on around the base.  That night I went with my buddy Chris and two cigars to find a good place to light up (it's a war thing... Haha).  We found the BEST spot ever.  We smoked cigars 40 feet from a taxiway under the tower here as the sun set over the mountains.  We sat there for about two hours.  We were even on the flight line.... and flight line security just let us sit there and smoke...... COOLEST THING EVER (probably not the smartest or safest..., but cool none the less).  I always wave at people when the see me in the plane.  People ALWAYS wave back.  It makes you feel good if the pilot sees you,  I always give the "hang loose" sign with my hands.  And Chris and I kept chucking up the deuces to the pilot and they all waved back.  It was cool to see everyone's "wave".  Just like I do the "hang loose" other pilots do their own little "wave"  one plane even flashed his lights like a disco ball.... one my best memories over here so far!

Then the next day I was the scheduler.  Ok, Ok...., my official title is "Assistant to the Chief of Scheduling", but I like to just be called "Scheduler".  The other title is to long and it's cooler to take out the word assistant.  Because was I've actually been doing as scheduler has been going in.  Making sure there are no glaring mistakes for tomorrows schedule (that was already made the day prior ) by the "Chief of Scheduling".  And then I just print out the schedule and get it signed off (by the Ops Sup (Operations Supervisor (dude in charge). And then I usually go home and the Chief of Scheduling comes in the afternoon and creates the schedule for the next day...... wellllllll.......  I decided to give it a hack to do the whole thing.  And I did AWESOME!  Which is good and bad.  Good because I'll get trusted with more, show that I'm competent and just because I showed myself that I can do it. It's a DIFFICULT schedule to do!!!  We fly a bunch of sorties over here (if I told you the number I'd have to kill you)..., and each plane has multiple people on board.  And out of those people on board they all have to have crew rest (12 hours), currency, not to many days working in a row and a number of other things..... so it's DIFFICULT.  The bad part of thins now is that now I can be trusted to do this and probably expected to as well...... oh well.....

This carved fruit on a Thanksgiving tablecloth is cruise ship worthy!

The 4th of July started out awesome over here.  I started out the day with an organized 5K.  Those are so much fun over here with all the different organizations and countries coming together and running..., it's just cool.  And I shaved a minute off of my last 5K time which is amazing!  After the race some Canadians were asking me who was coming to the 4th of July celebration..... I didn't know.  See, General Petraus was coming I knew (it was a secret) to re-enlist about 200 soldiers here and that's all I knew.  Canada just had their "Independence Day" on the 1st of July.  They closed down their complex to outsides and had alcohol and some Canadian celebrities in their compound to entertain them.  So after the race the Canadians were asking me who "famous" was coming?  I didn't know.  Two years ago it was Toby Keith and last year it was some members of Aerosmith.  So it was natural to assume that there would be someone cool showing up this day.

How patriotic!!! USA USA USA!!!  Haha.

I'm focused might as well say CHEESE for the pictures OOhhhhhh

 Well,  I had to fly.  So I'd worry about this 4th of July stuff when I got back.  I flew/had work right in the middle of the day (10am till 8pm).  I got on the bus and went straight to the boardwalk so excited in anticipation of what celebrity was going to be there.  Guess what..... it was no one.  Bummer. And on top of that everything was over.  There was just some Army dudes singing horrible karaoke.  I felt a little uneasy about all the TCN's (Third Country Nationals (mostly south Asians who work "odd" jobs around base) just standing around.  So I went and got some ice cream and sat on a bench by myself and watch Army dudes "sing".  I was almost sure I was going to be witness to a suicide bombing..... but it never happened thank God.  And to top it off..., the USA didn't discriminate, we let EVERYONE, from EVERY cuntry in on our celebration and I heard the TCN's were being really rude.  We had "carnival" type games out there for free that gave tickets for doing well.  And you could trade the tickets in for USA paraphernalia like t-shirts with our flag on it and stuff...... and the TCN's wanted the prizes soooo bad that they were pushing to get to the front of the line.  Just more proof that our country is the BIG DOG.  Everyone wants a piece of our American Pie....., well you can fight for that, I'll just sit back and eat my ice cream...., thanks.

My dad was in Orlando, Fl for the 4th!!!  Awesome!  I can't wait till I'm hanging out with JUST Americans ON AMERICAN SOIL too.  I didn't realize I'd miss stuff like that.  But right now I'd even take hanging out with Florida Gator or Atlanta Falcons fans.....and that's bad!  I also recieved a package from my dad this week.  I had A LOT of beads!  I handed them out to people here and they were pumped up.  I also got an LSU football which I can throw at the head of any Auburn or Florida fans out here.  And candy/snacks.....it was some good stuff.  Thanks dad.

My "buddy" Chris also played a prank on me this week.  Someone sent a pink bag to the someone.  It was left out.  Chris decided to take my helmet bag (the bag I fly with with my gear) and change it with the pink bag.  It was pretty damn funny.   He wanted to see me walk to the plane with that thing.  I couldn't though.  If I was not in a war zone I would butt I could see crashing or worse somewhere and evading the enemy with a pink bag so I borrowed someone else's bag for the day.  My helmet bag was returned when I landed..... Good one.

I flew the next few days in a row and had a day off on Saturday again.  I slept till noon!  Then I just lounged the rest of the day...., that was nice.

I flew today and am on the schedule to fly the next two.  I fly my 40th combat sortie tomorrow.  So that's another medal (every 20)!  That will look good on my uniform.

I got a card from Mama Oddo.  What up Mama Oddo!?!?!?  That was nice to hear from the Oddo's in the desert, haha.  Also, Uncle Jack..., I love to read your comments on my blogs!!!  Thanks!

Wow....  thought that I didn't have anything to write about this week.  Sorry about the long one this week (STS).  I'll try to keep the reading to a minimum and the pictures to a maximum from now on, haha..... Till next week.....

This was Nala while neighbors were popping fireworks (She hid in the shower b/c she was scared).

Dallas has been enjoying the weather.

Check out my buddy's blog if you want to read more about life over here...he's funny!  Just click on this sentence. This is him sleeping on the bus.....good guy.

Skypeing with Mrs....... my better half.