I had the day off today, for the most part. Just waiting for work to start and get going on the new position. Turns out I'm not going to An Numaniyah after all. I'm going to be living here in Baghdad in the Green Zone and working with CMATT (Coalition Military Assistance Training Team). The CMATT team are the people who are working to train the Iraqi military. My job will be to travel to the various training sites around the country and provide telecommunications services to each of those sites. It's similar to what I had thought I was going to be doing, but some of the details have changed. I'm pretty encouraged by my assignment plus or minus the means we use for traveling from place to place. Providing tech support to all those training sites may mean more driving that I had hoped to be doing. Some of the areas are a pretty good distance though, so I would imagine we will be traveling by air some. We'll see. If I'm out on the convoy and the little fuckers want a fight, we'll give 'em a fight.

There were a couple of mortar attacks on the compound tonight. I was inside the palace, so it didn't really effect me too much, aside from shutting down the internet cafe for a few minutes. There was a mortar attack last night which landed in Camp Hope (the living area over behind the palace) but it was a dud. Boy, you should have seen the 98th Div folks when the palace alarm went off! It was almost humorous watching everyone evacuate the tent last night. It was the first time we had heard the alarm and no one (including me) really knew what was going on. Folks were madly scrambling to get their body armor on and get into the bunker. Talk about keystone cops! Then, one knuckle head (who shall remain nameless) tells everybody to put a magazine in their rifle. Now picture this; we're all jammed into this little concrete bunker in the dark with no one really sure what's happening and he wants to have soldiers with loaded rifles in there? What is a rifle going to do against a mortar attack? I'm much more afraid of a nervous soldier with a loaded weapon in a confined space than I am of some Iraqi lobbing random mortars.

Fortunately cooler heads prevailed after the all clear was given. Once the senior folks had a chance to discuss it they made it SOP that in the case of an alarm we were to take our weapons and a magazine with us, but not to load the magazine without specific instructions (which is the right decision, IMO). The real failure in all this was that our group of incoming soldiers was not given a briefing about what to do when the alarm goes off and the command to take cover is given over the intercom. We had people just running for the bunker with no real idea of what was going on. In the dark, there's lots of voices and it's hard for the appropriate leadership to take control of the situation. Hopefully, now that the first time is out of the way, it'll straighten itself out. What they really need to do though is run a couple of drills so people have a chance to practice what they're going to do during the next mortar attack.

On a less combative note, I have been sooooo tired lately. I don't know what it is. My best guess is that it's a combination of factors: jet lag, not sleeping, wearing the IBA every where (that stuff is friggin' heavy!!), plus I think I'm coming down with a cold. I slept for about 4 hours this afternoon and felt a little better. My feet certainly felt better after taking the nap. I have some royal blisters from the boots they issued us in Bliss, and I'm still trying to recover from them. Walking has been pretty uncomfortable for the last week or so. Hopefully the blisters will get better soon. I put some athletic tape over them tonight and they felt quite a bit better. Here's hoping I've turned the corner and I can start to walk like a normal person again.