  Today felt like my first real personal day off, finally. No appointments, in processing or long briefings (although we had a short briefing at the end of the day, but it was not that big of a deal). Woke up early, about 0700 after a short sleep night, which included talking on the phone with my sweetie and pounding out stuff on the computer. I first went to take a shower. This is something I haven’t touched on yet, the latrines. The latrines in our area are basically modified mobile homes with toilets, sinks, and showers.
The smell isn’t too pleasing (not that it smells like poop) it just has a strange odor. I think, though, you eventually get use to it because the first time I smelled it didn’t want to breathe through my nose, but now it’s not a problem. This is different from trailer to trailer. Some are cleaner, some are flooded from the showers, some don’t have any toilet paper and some are but outright nasty. The Forrest Gump adage comes to mind here, you know, the “Box of Chocolates” reference. One final thing to note here, the pipe that supply these trailers with water are above ground and because of the heat there is no such thing as cold water (at this time of the year).
You have two choices of water temperatures, either hot or really hot water. There’s nothing like taking a hot shower in 120-degree weather and getting out to get all sweaty and sticky again. I guess that’s life in the big desert. After the shower I went over to the chow hall with the other amigos for breakfast. One thing I have to mention here, the Army has particular awesome tasting breakfast items. All the stuff I like to eat.
Again, so much for losing weight. During breakfast we met up with yet another nice ITT guy who came from Afghanistan. We of course drilled him, like we do with everyone, asking about everything from what’s the company like to how are conditions in Iraq. He was very helpful and answered pretty much all of our questions. One thing that made me think, after I’m on this contract for several months if I ever run into a new person it will seem funny if they start interrogating me with all kinds of questions. Like I would be some kind of expert.
I spent the rest of the morning uploading pics to our website. There’s an internet café here that allows you to connect your own system to their network for internet access. The bad thing is the bandwidth is slower than dial up, I think. It took 2 hours to upload about 50 pictures. At home, on the cable modem, that would take a fraction of the time. Well it’s not like I have a whole lot to do anyway.
After that I went over to the ITT office and accessed their computer to check up on accounts and send out emails. I met even more ITT guys who were all friendly. I really like this company. It’s supportive and organized. Most of the people I talk to usually have positive things to say about ITT, much like my last company, OSEC. I’m lucky to keep finding these good companies to work for and not some trashy company who could care less about its people.
I finished up the day with that short briefing from an Army Major about security and dinner at the chow hall. The dinner menu isn’t too great though, at least if you’re a vegetarian. I’ll probably be eating more dinner meals at the food court. Not sure but I think this day might repeat itself for the next year. 
