Tut, tut, looks like rain.

Holy shit. I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post. I hope this whole deployment goes that quickly. Seems like last week I sat down and wrote in this thing. How can someone be so completely bored and yet so busy at the same time?
Well, it's wintertime in Iraq, so that means we're firmly entrenched in the rainy season. Now guess what that really means. Mud! Lots of mud. And not normal mud like you would find in the US. I say this because normally in the US we find mud where dirt used to be. However, here in lovely Iraq... there's dirt everywhere. So what does that mean during the rainy season? That's right, mud everywhere. All the dust that lays like an old dog on everything turns into a slop with the consistency of baby shit. So I've got that going for me for the next few months, which is nice. At least when there is plenty of water that's one less thing for them to kill each other over. Although that leaves no shortage of viable reasons to blow shit up. Or shoot at each other for that matter. Bring on the rain.

First real post

Well, as the dates show it's been a pretty busy couple of months. You try moving to a new continent and see how often you have time to write in your lame ass web log. Same rules still apply. I wanted this stuff written down in case I happen to not be around to tell about it. Which sounds silly to say and I feel like an ass for saying it but it's the truth.
There was a extra amount of heaviness going on in my life in August and I thought if I wrote about it it would help. I had just moved to a new duty station and found out we were deploying in three weeks. Pause life. No big deal I guess, they were nice enough to give me three months to get back to good from the three months I had just been gone.
Then it kind of snuck up on me. I'm eating breakfast and I get a text message from a friend that basically informs me that someone I knew from AIT had just died in Iraq. I don't really know how to say that. "Informs me?" How do I phrase that? How can I write that so it sounds like a normal text message that one would receive during breakfast? --Well this guy we lived down the hall from for five months just got blown up by a molten-hot piece of copper that flew through an armor-plated vehicle. Want to hang out later?--
So I find myself two days later loading my company's gear to head to the desert. And I'm thinking to myself, man I hope I don't get ripped apart by a piece of molten copper. That would be a shitty way to go. So this blog is partly yours Taylor Marks. I can only hope you're the last one I know that doesn't come back. Unfortunately I know that won't be the case. RIP man. I hope this is all worth it.

This Desert Life

I always said I'd never start a blog about my military stuff, but recently a few things have happened and I figured I should write down some of the shit that goes rolling through my head before it's gone (the thoughts or the head). So if you're reading this then welcome, but I need to establish a few precedents:
1. I don't claim to speak on behalf of all soldiers. The Army has all different kinds of people. Most of them are weird as shit.
2. I think blogs are a major OPSEC violation so don't expect details about anything, anywhere, anybody, or anytime.
3. I'm not doing this for attention. I don't give a fuck if no one reads this. At least it's written down.
The title is a reference to a lyric in a Counting Crows song which doesn't really have anything to do with the Army, but I think it accurately describes what the Army life can be about. And I like Counting Crows.
Some might not like my bad language, some might not like my macabre sense of humor, some might not like me just because of who I am and what I do. This place isn't for you, this place is for me.