I went into the office to check e-mail and see what was going on. Sandy was there, and LTC Inglin showed up shortly afterwards. After checking my e-mail, drinking my coffee, and talking a little bit, we decided to go to the Afghan restaurant for lunch.
The restaurant was empty, much to my surprise. Last time I was in there, it was packed and I barely had any room to move in the tiny space I was sitting in. We were greeted by a smiling Afghan man, who held the door for us and ushered us to our seats. I noticed the banner with the menu on it had been moved, which opened up a big space on the main wall. I said something to the Afghan man about it and asked him if he was putting something up in its place. He responded with a smile, "yeah, yeah, thank you." At that point, I realized he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I forget that part sometimes. I really need to learn this language.
I ordered the chicken kabobs and palaw (rice) again like I did last time. Sandy ordered beef kabobs, and the boss ordered a burger of some sort. The Afghan man walked through the restaurant with our meat on the skewers and walked just outside to grill it all. Funny how they do some things here. I got some good photos of him cooking out the window.
It was nice to just sit and talk about things and give some feedback to someone in a position to do something with it. We're in such a small camp that you wonder sometimes if the people above you are just going to forget you're here. I don't think that's the case now. As I said yesterday, I have alot of respect for someone who will actually take the time to visit and find out what's going on with his people. We talked about everything that was going on; some things that had to do with work...and some things that didn't.
Our food came and it was wonderful just like it was last time. I was very full by the time I was done and knew that today certainly would not be a running day due to a bad knee...and now a full stomach.
We got back to the office, where LTC Inglin talked to us about more of the things we were going through and dealing with, and responded to many of the plans Sandy had written out for him to review. I had some EPR's (Enlisted Performance Reports) I had to write on my troops back home, so I worked on that for a little while, and also worked on the equipment "wish list" of things I need to finish setting up the ANA office equipment. I also worked on getting the videos I had done uploaded to IJC Headquarters so they could approve them and send them out. I talked to SMSgt Nicolussi on e-mail until I was able to figure it out and get the videos to him. It seems that the longer I am here and the more I do, the more networking I get to do. It's hard sometimes to figure out where we fall into the grand scheme of things here. The camp leadership here is Army...but we don't really fall under them. We inprocessed the country at another place, and there are a whole bunch of different acronyms of agencies we fall under that I could throw at you to completely confuse you. Hell, I'm the one here and I'm still confused sometimes. I guess the point to saying all this is that it's nice to finally talk to some people I actually work for and know are listening to us, understanding what we do, and are able to help out with issues. LTC Inglin being here is a very cool thing, and talking to SMSgt Nicolussi (an actual AF guy like me...and I rarely see AF people here) about the video upload stuff today was also a cool thing. It's just funny how things are starting to come together all at once I guess.
I didn't run today because of the knee, so my totals on the running board remain at twenty eight. Looks like Sandy and Chris are going to run away from me, as Chris ran for six miles today and is sitting at thirty nine. Today would've been the perfect chance to pass Sandy, as she didn't run today, but I just can't do it. At least I haven't done it yet. Hmmmmm. The night's still young.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow and following up on the boot camp graduation shoot we did the other day. I plan to work on interview techniques for training and put together another story to upload. Hopefully all works out as planned. Things are going good and we're making progress. I can't ask for much more than that right now.
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