Dust or Mud?

For the last two days we have had weather in Iraq similar to what you might experience in Nebraska in late March where it's been raining and cloudy all day. That's enough to make it a dreary day, but here you can add mud to the whole combination. For most of our deployment we were able to forget about the mud we had to deal with when we first got to Anaconda. Along with settling in and learning our new job system and working environment, we also had to deal with rain and mud which we never thought would happen in the desert. However, summer came quickly and mud was no longer an issue, but dust was always there. It was hard to believe that the soil here would skip completely past being sand and just go straight to dust when broken down, but that's just the way it is in this part of the country. You could sweep as much as you wanted and still pick up more dust. Dust would settle on anything that wasn't moving or wasn't a vertical surface. Now the mud is back and it's hard to escape. You try and find a path on gravel or maybe take pavement all the way to your destination, but inevitably you get mud on your boots. Once that happens, nothing is safe. All I can do is wait for the mud to dry on the floor of my room and just sweep it up which is an evening event for the last couple days. Maybe I'm just making a big deal about nothing, but most of us just don't feel like dealing with much since the end is so near.

I've finally gotten myself to the point where I'm used to getting up early in the morning. The last two days I've gotten up at 5:30 do go lift weights at the gym. Today was my day off from lifting which was probably good because my muscles are sore all over. I will lift again tomorrow and the next day closing out the first week of my lifting program. I was on a role this summer until I tried to squat too much and my back gave out. That put me out of commission for a good while and I just wasn't quite able to get back into it again. I want to turn that around and get a good habit going through to the end.