On the flip side (this is continued from yesterday, remember?), you’ve got the less desirable aspects of deploying into a combat zone. There are certain things you accept when heading downrange. When you volunteer to deploy, you know (or should know) it’s not going to be like your typical week-long TAD trip in a Doubletree Hotel on Uncle Sugar’s nickel. There’s no maid to clean up after you and leave a mint on your pillow. So you man up, shut up and deal with it. While I freely accept the degradations to my quality of life, it doesn’t mean I have to like them. Or bear my burdens meekly and in silence.
I won’t miss:
- Separation from family and friends
- Food that tastes like ass
- Long hours with no days off (177 straight work days as I write this)
- Oppressive heat
- Toxic dust blown into my every nook and cranny by high-velocity winds
- Overpriced and unreliable Internet
- The dicks upstairs with their inflated sense of self-importance
- Interminable conference calls with long-winded nimrods at Tampa
- Barbers whose repertoire begins and ends at “high-and-tight”
- G.O.-1
- No beer
- Body armor
- The pervasive smell of sewage
- Getting rousted out of bed in the wee hours to fix the chiller at the data center
- Rocket attacks
- Wondering if the Hajji who scoops my ice cream by day spends his nights hosing off rockets in our general direction
- 40-grit toilet paper
- Cheap mattresses
- Punching in a cipher code or combination to open any door (including the laundry room)
- Living in a tent
- Eating with plastic utensils off a cardboard tray
- Man-Love-Thursday jokes
- Pairs of F-16 taking off at full burner at 2AM
- Duck Butter
- Standing in line for 20 minutes at the DFAC on Soul Food Sunday or Surf ‘n’ Turf night
- Overcooked meat, pasta and veggies (okay, they overcook everything but the tubs of Baskin-Robbins)
- Did I mention “no beer?”
- The overtime
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