Not very busy lately

Well, I haven't been very busy lately.  With only about 2 and a half hours of power at our school, there isn't much need to stick around there in the afternoons.  It gets pretty hot in there without air conditioning.  Even when the power is on, it goes out two or three times in the 2 1/2 hours.  I found out that this is so that the air conditioners that people leave on will shut down.  When they reset the power, the air will be off unless they switch it back on manually...saving some more power.  Yesterday we had a meeting about this, which resembled more of a government organized shake-down for money.  Let me explain...

Each commander is given so much per month for life support based upon the number of soldiers that he has.  From that money he has to pay for food and upkeep of facilities and fuel.  The location commander is responsible for the generator farm that provides base-wide power (yes the 2 1/2 hours of it, anyway).  He has asked all of the tenant units to give him some of their life-support money to pay to have fuel hauled up here (and I don't think that all of the fuel that we receive is consumed by the generators, if you know what I mean?).  He asked my commander for more money per month than he even receives!  Each commander had to commit to sending this guy money for fuel.  A total shake-down.  We don't have a back-up generator, so we are screwed in this deal from the start, anyway.  The Location Commander was nice, though...he said he would make up the difference.  I am not sure how the soldiers are going to eat next month.

So we left that meeting for another one.  But at least this one was something productive.   It seems that we may get the school over on the Iraqi side that I used to live at.  That is good news, since we were going to need a bigger place if we were going to expand, and that place has good plumbing system already in place, a dining facility, laundry, store, barracks, etc.  This could be a good thing.  Anyway, we ate lunch there then headed back to the school.  Was too hot to do anything, so day was relatively over before 3pm.  Or so I thought...

I am not sure what is going on in the IZ, but apparently they needed a lot of information from us last night.  The thing is, the people up there seem to not talk to each other.  ALL of the info they asked us for existed down there in the IZ in one form or another.  Rather than ask the people that HAD the info down there, they decided it was easier to send out shotgun blast email after email.  Only the emails didn't do a very good job of explaining what information they needed.  So we spent about an hour going round and round trying to figure out what they wanted, then they had to spend, I would guess, another hour or two collating the data and submitting it.  They could have just asked the people who were supposed to be the keepers of the data...for said data.  Oh well, it was fun to keep sending them stuff that we knew they didn't need.  And to ask the same stupid questions they ask us all the time.

I can't wait until the Hockey Semi's start.  I will get no sleep.  I think that the Blackhawks will do a lot better against Vancouver than they did with Nashville.  It is a shame about Washington Caps losing to Montreal...NO IT'S NOT!  I am pretty happy that the Caps are out of it.  I was scared of them.  Now they are gone.  I am pretty much scared of all the teams in the East.  Seems like the Hawks don't really do so well against them.  I am finally watching that Game 7, and the end WAS pretty exciting.  I do really feel bad for my Caps friends.  They definitely deserved to be in the finals this year.

Maybe the Cubs start turning it around now?  I really don't like Ariz-z-z-z-z-z-zona.  Well, it is Thursday night, so I think that I will go and try to find a card game.  Hopefully some Euchre, and maybe some Dominoes.  Will have to see.

Night all...