Expeditionary home improvement

Beautiful mountains surround the base 360° (not recommended to take a hike up there though!)
You can tell winter is coming, as the snow reaches lower on the peaks each day.

The internet is a fantastic thing, especially when you're nearly 7,000 miles from home. Everyone on the installation - several thousand of us - rely on WiFi for entertainment, talking to loved ones back home, some of us even for ongoing college education. The entire WiFi system is managed by one man here in the comm squadron - arguably the most important man on the whole base - and it runs great. What else is the 'net great for? Expeditionary home improvement!

It's highly recommended to pack lightly for deployments. You don't want to be lugging around several hundred pounds of stuff, especially when they add a sack full of body armor to the pile. So, I restricted myself to just the bare essentials, and ordered a "welcome kit" for myself prior to departing Milwaukee. Amazon Prime is great, offering free shipping even to this place. My packages have been rolling in steadily, one box every couple of days, turning my cold bunker of a room into an acceptable little home!

The first major morale boost was when my mattress pad, sheets, and blanket arrived, replacing my sleeping bag. You bet your bottom dollar it's all pineapple themed!!! Then, some more functional items - a plastic storage drawer system, desk pad to cover the funky plywood desk they gave me, and an over-the-locker-door organizer. A pop-up air freshener has helped get rid of the years of funk buildup, and a battery push light to help my find my way in the pitch black. Finally, some pineapple string lights, and push-pin clips to hold up some photos really gives it that Pinterest-esque appearance!

One additional life hack for the next time you deploy to Afghanistan: cardboard bed silencers! We use old, rusty metal bunk beds, and every time you shift or turn, the creaking sounds like a horror film. Take some cardboard that all your junk ships in, cut it out, fold it up real nice, and stuff it in the joints where the sections of bunk bed fit together. Instead of noisy metal-on-metal rubbing, enjoy the silence of the thin cardboard buffer!

While traveling over the past years, I've found myself thinking this on several occasions: Having a tiny, cozy room of your own, even in an otherwise crappy situation, makes a huge difference. It's almost nice to have so little stuff, so little to worry about or keep maintained; it allows you to have a "home base" that requires almost no upkeep, so you can keep your focus and energy directed at things other than chores. Perhaps I have a tiny house in my future? It better still be tall enough!

Look what else I got in the mail!
Someone likes me a little too much :-)

It's been a busy week, the days flew by. The clock shows us at 10.63% through already - yikes! We really hit the ground running here, with numerous compound defense and accountability exercises already under our belts. At work, I've begun shifting from learning to free thinking, and have already begun refining some processes and programs around here, with mostly positive feedback. Innovation and "leaving it better than you found it" is one of the core concepts here, and that lines up really well with how I address new duties.

Tomorrow is my second LBR day, and I hope to get away from the Commpound a bit. With the long work days/weeks, I haven't been able to get away much at all. There's a nearby bazaar to practice my haggling skills at, a pretty solid Afghani restaurant, and plenty of other interesting things to see. Any bets on if I get out of bed before noon???

That's it for now! I'm guessing the number of new and exciting things for me to write about will decline sharply now that I'm in place and stable, but I'll try to explore and get interesting stuff up here as often as possible!