02 OCT

A quick and uneventful week in the books.

Besides an LSU squeak-by win , a few short convoys, and one real long one, I didn’t do too much. We went to Kabul and back in one day to drop off some guys so they could make the long journey back to their families. I look forward to making that same journey in 45 days; though, I won’t be home until mid DEC.

I have inherited some new responsibilities in the past 2 weeks. I was chosen to be the proof reader /reviser for a few award narratives and have now become one of the primary construction supervisors/approvers. Thursday, one of the construction interpreters found me…”Mr. Person, Mr. Person, we have problem, come I will show you.”

“Oh, I bet you do.”

So he takes me to show me how they were unable to drill 6” holes and could only drill 3” holes in the concrete because of the “webar” in the slab. I watched them try, and said that it was possible that they were hitting rebar, but more than likely, they just didn’t know how to use the drill. I looked at the drill, flipped a few dials and the drill came to life with a hammering noise as the bit spun violently. They stood back and watched as I made their 3” hole into a 6” hole with ease. They cheered me on as I did their work.

I relinquished the drill and made sure they understood how to use it and that they knew that in the future if they are having a problem, right after breakfast is probably a better time to tell me about it than after lunch.

The terp could only say, “Mr. Person, you are right, we will listen to you. This piece of equipment, we did not even know about it.”

This is a typical story for how the construction goes around here. We have one project that is 4 months behind on a 1 month project. The guy claims to be finished, but he is not. He expects to be paid immediately…our rogue little policy is to pay them day for day….he will be paid in February.

As far as my comments on current events goes, I was shocked to find out that B.O. has only spoken to his highest ranking officer in AF once via telephone since he was put in place at the beginning of the summer….I doubt it is just me, but that doesn’t seem right to me.

There has been a bunch of shuffling of people around here. A bunch of soldiers moved out of here today to go other places. There is supposed to be several hundred moving in throughout OCT, but that stuff changes day to day and is half rumor usually.

Keeping it short this week. Think of me surrounded by UGA fans watching the LSU game with a midnight kickoff Sunday morning. Have a good weekend. God Bless.

BMP