Fridays are the new Monday

We're supposed to have a slow day on Fridays. I can only think of maybe 2 Fridays so far that have been remotely slow and today was NOT one of them. I'm driving an SUV through Kabul thinking "Well, at least I'm not just sleeping late and enjoying a nice day off like most of the staff here is...."

I'm delusional, but it keeps me sane. I'd also go into a rant about some of the people that I have to deal with, but this is the internet. Which means that before I could finish typing this and hitting publish, someone here would hear about it.

But aside from the usual hustle, things are at least in a battle rhythm. I'm gonna try to start going to some Dari classes our interpreters give every morning now that I'm comfortable with my job. Also found out that the person I'm relieving may be here til December now, which is great cause we can kinda split the duties a little.

Elections are coming up, so I expect things to get hotter here (and I don't mean the weather). I just bought more stuff yesterday at the shops up on the hill. My room is starting to look like a central asian museum. There's a turkish made rug on the floor, persian pillowcases hanging on my afghan made desk, some things made in Pakistan for deco. And then there's me, a southern boy in the middle of it all who says things like "howdy" and "ya'll."

And we can't forget to mention my bottle of Febreeze for my convoy clothes. My set of ACUs that smell pretty freakin bad cause I sweat like a pig under my armor (pretty much everyone does). I refuse to wash them more than once a week cause they'll just smell bad again, so I Febreeze them. They still stand on their own, often times frightening me at night, but it keeps me from getting annoyed because yet another set of ACUs are nasty.