A week in the rear

The past week has been spent on a border crossing and on the quick reaction force, but I was tasked with command post duty several times, which was dreadfully boring. The upside of CP duty is that I got extra time off to do things on post. I got to compete and win first place in a 5K run and a climbing wall competition (on the "treadwall" that I like to call "the infinite monkey wall"), and I will go to another competition (about six strength and endurance events) tomorrow. I also got to set up for a distance class from the University in Sitka, and I took a defense proficiency language test in French, just to test the waters for the Spanish test. The DLPT turned out to be a very well designed test, which looks for the ability to understand subtleties in the language. The soundbites and sample articles were quite original and interesting as well. I also used my time off on post to catch up on a mountain of army paperwork that needed to be filled and filed.

Outside the wire, on the border, I found several neat pieces of shrapnel, bullets, rounds and cartridges. Another interesting time was talking to a Kuwaiti policeman at a rather isolated outpost. Some of these people are posted to truly perplexing stations, such as that one built to make sure that vehicles do not drive into a restricted but completely empty part of the desert. Never mind that the restricted area is large, wide open, and not fenced or marked in any way... The two police officers we found at that particular post were sleeping, and their .50 cal machine gun and their humvee were left unattended.

Another event this week is that my laptop computer fried for no obvious reason. I am hoping that it can be fixed in some way, but this situation is definitely inconvenient. It hurts to lose my computer right after I replaced my camera. I am just glad to have bought the cheap one.