Lazy Fridays

Today was a pretty chill day, we usually have a relaxed day on Fridays because it's a day off for most Muslims, a day of prayer for them. We match days off with their culture to get more stuff done the rest of the week. We don't have weekends, just a relaxed Friday. We sent a orphanage trip out today and gave 2 SUVs full of donations to the kids there. I wasn't able to go because I had to take a convoy to a nearby airfield to pick up some replacements this morning. We left at ohdarkthirty...there's not a single snowplow or salt truck in this country and it's been snowing for about a week and a half straight, so the roads were icy...but we were trucking along in fourwheel drive, its similar to driving in a blizzard in Missouri. Visibility sucked for a while...about 30 feet until the sun burned off the fog. We got to the base, grabbed our people and started heading back. The trip back was interesting because there were a bunch of jingletrucks that spun off the road, one was on fire, it probably slid of the road and hit an AT (antitank) mine. So, lots of people and objects were on the side of the road and in the middle of the road, always interesting because you're wondering what the objects are and what the people are doing. But the roads are relatively safe, they found an IED on one of the main routes, but I think that's the only one in a few weeks...versus a couple a day, everyday, in Bagdad. We got back before lunch but power was out so all the food had to be cooked on charcoal grills, so we had to resort to eating steaks :)
Our power is very stable here, we only lose it every other day for a few minutes (a couple hours max), it can be annoying sometimes but it's so good to have power that consistant. But even when power goes out and the room gets cold enough to see your breath, you still have to count your blessings. You know the power and heat will come back on, that you have a bed to sleep in and three hot meals a day. There's a lot of people that don't have that. The fuel here isn't the best quality, there's some water and impurities in it, and it just gets so cold here that the fuel for the generators freezes causing the generators starve and putz out. Usually at the most inconvient times, like when I'm on the toilet reading (always carry a headlamp or glowsticks)or really far in a video game and haven't saved my progress. There's this trick you can do in Final Fantasy X2, you tape down the direction key and a button and leave the playstation running for a few hours, when you come back your character has gained a great deal of experience and is much stronger. But with random blackouts...it doesn't work as well.
So after lunch I set up this trick, and fell asleep. I woke up cold...the power cut out and the heater stopped. But I got a good 4 hour nap in the middle of the day! So I pulled on my fleece and a stocking cap and walked to my office and watched a few episodes of Robotech while eating dinner, steak again :) Then I went over and jammed with the band at this set we do every Friday night for everyone at the compound. We turn the chapel into a coffee house and play live music every Friday night, it feels like you're back in the states and lots of people come from all over Kabul to hang out. One girl made and showed an emotional Toby Keith music video reminding us why we're here, one guy did a freestyle rap that got the whole place shaking and another did a solo acappella to say goodby (he's flying home to his wife and kids tommorrow after a year here) and everyone was really touched...it's like a big family here. These guys I play with are soooo good, we played Amazing Grace to the uber-blusey melody of "House of the Rising Sun"...our female lead vocalist sounds like Janis Joplin, and our male lead sounds like Eddie Vedder...we just went off and jammed on that song for a while, we have two awesome lead guitarists and wow...they just were jamming and syncopating to each other and harmonizing with the vocalists. Really amazing sounding, everyone was feeling the vibe. After that i walked back here to my office to check my email and post a blog. So that's my day, time for me to trudge over to my bed. I love my down comforter, it can hide the fact that the room is 20-something degrees :)