Chris' Updates

As I write, I'm sitting in Kuwait again, on my way back to Iraq. I had an excellent two weeks of leave; it was nothing short of amazing. It's not like I did anything way beyond normal. What made this visit amazing was the simple pleasures of seeing the people I love, and doing what I wanted to do, and going where I wanted to go. I had very little planned more than a day ahead of time, and that's exactly how I wanted it. On our first anniversary, Ashley and I went to Mass together, and then joined her aunt Carol and uncle Greg for the tail end of a seminar on the Shroud of Turin . Very interesting. After that, the four of us went to lunch and had a great time catching up. Ashley and I had planned on going to dinner and a movie possibly, but that plan was pushed to the wayside. I started tinkering with my computer, and Ashley curled up on the bed, and after a while I decided to join her for a short nap. When we woke up, it was 6am the next morning! So much for living up our a...

Happy New Year, everyone! It's been an exciting one for me, with many big events. I got married, got called to active duty and deployed, and was received into the Catholic church. (I finally have pictures up in the Iraq gallery .) I've made new friends, learned new points of view, and loved every God-given day! Not to say I wouldn't rather be home; I miss everything about home, and I'm looking forward to being there again. However, there are so many opportunities here, if one opens their eyes. As for New Year's resolutions... Well, I resolve to make it back home, for starters. I don't think that one should be hard to fulfill! As much as the army likes having me here, they don't want to keep paying us silly Reservists full time. Also, I want to spend more time with my wife and my family. Once again, shouldn't be hard, as I'm spending no time with them currently. There goes the C-RAM , sounding off for the new year! Let's hope it's a good one, ...

Hello again folks! We've had so many exciting events, it's hard to know where to begin. To start, we have a new soldier working with us, Spc. Bonita. She is a transplant from one of our subordinate units who had some personality conflicts with her own people. So far, she is a little fiery at moments, but overall very friendly and easy to work with. Also, one of our section was promoted; Sgt. Antonio is a brand new NCO, and filling his new role well, taking on a lot of new responsibilities. Beyond that, I've completed all of my RCIA classes for the church, and Fr. Hotel is going to welcome me into the church tomorrow at the Christmas Eve mass. I will be receiving my baptism, first communion, and confirmation in the Catholic church. While I wish my friends and family could be with me for this huge event, I've found that being out here in Iraq has given me an incredible opportunity to forget about most of my daily routine and focus on self-improvement. I'm trying to do...

I forgot to mention in my last post, a very exciting opportunity for my spiritual life found me out here. As you may know, I've pursued RCIA before, with little success. I just can't find a group or a time that... fits. However, I mentioned the fact that I'd like to go through the process to my unit chaplain, and he was able to dig up a group here on base! I didn't expect RCIA to be offered out here, but lo and behold, it is. An Air Force Catholic chaplain, let's call him Father Hotel, is a strong believer in evangelization, I think. He's going to make the process very simple compared to the other programs I've looked at. Instead of 6 to 8 months of preparation and initiation at Easter, he's expedited the course to just 16 weeks, and we'll be initiated at Christmas! He's also doing this because the Air Force has such short deployments, and he's only here from September to January. Fr. Hotel is a very interesting priest. He's relatively y...

The past week I've been a working fool. Four of the last 5 nights, I've taken bus runs ending after midnight. At least I'm making decent money. Saturday, Ashley and I attended a Catholic pre-marriage seminar that explained much of the theology behind marriage. I was surprised to find that they were fairly vocal on sex. We were informed of the usual notion that it's a defining marital act and shouldn't be done outside of marriage. However, in the past 40 years, and especially during the reign of Pope John Paul II, the role of marital sex has been recast as not just necessary, but also holy. Every time a married couple has sex, they are expressing a love for each other that is a mirror image of Christ's love for the church. They are also re-stating their wedding vows, through a certain chain of logic. It was a very interesting workshop. The next couple of days look pretty open, so maybe I'll get some down time. I hope.

Alright, so this morning, I woke up at about 6. I carpooled with Holly to Rational Data and worked for free. After that, I went to Fitzsimons and signed my request to transfer Army reserve units. From there, I dropped Holly back at home, and raced to Operating Systems recitation and Linear Algebra lecture. I then careened across Boulder to meet a guy and bought the Xbox he advertised on craigslist. (Yes, the original Xbox. I'm a little behind the times. It was cheap.) And directly after that transaction, I raced to the Transportation office for a charter run. By the time I walked into the office, I was pretty burnt out. I must've looked it too, because when I mentioned it to the schedule lady, she took pity on me and arranged a trade. All I could do was thank God that she was so kind. I was just about at the point of nervous breakdown, and she helped me out. I was able to eat a peaceful meal, attend my technical writing class, and now I'm taking a moment at home to relax. G...

Ashley and I went to Nativity tonight and met with the deacon again, and received the results from our bubble tests. According to the test we're fairly compatible. I could've told them that! Oh well. We're still waiting on the dispensation, though.

My time has been battling on four fronts for the past week; school, work, family, and PT. School has been busy as ever, and more so because finals are fast approaching. It's been a struggle to keep up, even after cutting slack and quitting calculus. I'm not doing as well as I thought in Components; my partner and I have done solid A's on our homework and projects, but I had forgotten how much weight the midterms carried. I always count on computer-related classes to be an easy A, but this class and its tests have really challenged me. Work has been keeping me busy. A lot of the other drivers have effectively started to refuse runs because they need time to study, and so I've been asked to take on more and more. I'm such a nice guy that I'll take almost anything from Ava, and I certainly don't mind the money. It just keeps me a lot more busy than I like. If that weren't enough, there's a PT test at the next drill. When they mentioned it at drill last ...

Yesterday was quite the long day for me. It started out just fine; I got out of the house at a decent time and made it to Arabic early. I stayed for my two early classes, then headed home in eager anticipation. I sent my MP3 player in to Best Buy recently for a warranty replacement, since the left audio channel had stopped working. I though perhaps the replacement voucher would be in the mail, so I came home and immediately check the mail. Nothing important, just the usual junk. To make it even better, Jackie was in a huff about something. I learned that she and Ashley had had a tiff about cleaning Alcott. Long story short, everyone was in a bad mood. I defused the situation somewhat, but there's no way to fix it entirely at this point. No one will talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the living room and kitchen, that being Cameron's mess. Now, calling it Cameron's mess is a bit of a misnomer, because everyone has contributed to it by now. I still think of it as Cameron'...

This week has been... busy. On Monday and Wednesday between classes I learned how to pretrip buses, so that was new and different. Monday evening I took a required Sexual Harassment Prevention class. Oh goody, another one. Wednesday evening was the calculus midterm, and I walked out feeling okay about my performance. Not great mind you, but okay. We got our tests back on Thursday, and considering the average was a 50%, my 60% was not too horrible. Today's Components exam was way too long, I don't think the teacher meant for it to be this long. Maybe we'll just get a good curve... Oh, and I looked into RCIA classes to get into the Catholic church for Ashley's family. As I told the lady, I would probably pursue the classes at this point whether I was dating Ashley or not. I've seen the Lord working in my life, in subtle ways, and I'd like to explore that connection.