MinnesotaMel

Almost R&R #1

While here in Baghdad on a one year tour, we receive 3 R&R trips, each 22 days long. That is a whole lot of leave, which sounds like a whole lot of fun. In reality though, the act of scheduling 3 R&Rs in a single year, and the act of making the plans to travel 3 times in and out of this place is a nightmare of planning. I depart on my first R&R next week, and now I am in the flurry of final desk clearing, project pushing and plan-making. Whew.

Today is an early Labor Day for us. It made it a three day weekend, with the holiday on Sunday for us. I decided to celebrate "No Labor on Labor Day" with a soiree of friends. We watched Mad Money, a traditional chick flick, and chit chatted about men and drinking. The drinking topic came from the wonderful sangria and margaritas that we created in our happy kitchen. The movie was enjoyed by all. The topic of men included much revelry and bawdiness. To celebrate having a party, Norma and I completed the decorating of the walls of our apartment. We took photos and hung them on photo wires around he living room. It looks very homey, and the smiling faces of our family and friends and pets make us both very happy.

The past few weeks have been mainly a time of work. My boss was away for part of it on her R&R, so I had a "stand in" boss. He was a lot of fun, and we were still able to accomplish a lot. It continues to amaze me how many things we achieve every single week. Countless memos, policies, notices, info papers, etc, each of them helping the mission to become a better place, or so I hope.

Toastmasters continues to be one of my biggest treats of the week. This week I gave a speech from an advanced manual. It was the first speech I have prepared from scratch in quite some time, and I conquered my normal reading of my speech by completely adlibbing the whole thing using the competent leader's manual as my guide. The speech went well, but I should have done some more preparation to give it the extra sparkle that would have made it great.

I hope everyone is great.

posted by MinnesotaMel @ 9:58 AM