I have spent the last five days playing soldier, but playing soldier is not really play anymore. We are getting ready to live out of a Hummer for the next year---three people to a Hummer. Despite their appearance and apparent size, they are very cramped. Once eachof use puts two personal duffel bags and all of the common equipment in it, we often do not have room for everyone and have to strap a lot of stuff to the outside of the vehicle---even then the gunner often is more comfortable in the turret than inside.
I got another anthrax shot today. It is killing my arm. This is my seventh anthrax vaccination in 5 years, and I did not have problems with the other ones. This one burned for several minutes and now my arm is pretty sore.
This weekend I read Pen & Sword: A Journalist's Guide to the Military by Ben Offley. He is a retired print journalist who covered the military for 22 years and has a lot of interesting things to say about the stuff the actually happens and how the idiots that report on it muck it up. Think Java programmers writing about Perl and you get the same thing.
