Won't Back Down...

I love the song Won't Back Down.  The Tom Petty arrangement is good, but my favorite one is Johnny Cash's.  There's just something righteous about it and it always gets my attention and makes me want to listen intently to it when it plays.  


Here are the lyrics:


[Verse 1]
Well I won't back down, no I won't back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down

[Verse 2]
Gonna stand my ground, won't be turned around
And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down
Gonna stand my ground and I won't back down

[Chorus]
Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground and I won't back down

[Verse 3]
Well I know what's right, I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin' me around
But I stand my ground and I won't back down

[Chorus]
Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground and I won't back down
No I won't back down.


[written by Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne]
copyright EMI APRIL MUSIC INC.

Christmas cheer? You tell me... (possibly NSFW)

Well... this Christmas is one that will be remembered forever, no doubt.  This is my good friend (and our squad's medic) SGT Larmer.  He's nuts, as I'm sure you can see at this point... and apparently has no problem risking his own ... well you get the idea.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Decorations!

Well, it's Christmas Eve and I finally put up some my decorations... I moved my roommate's tree because he's on leave and then set up my own in its place.  And then I strung lights all around my bed and shelving (as you can see in the pictures).  I don't have a whole lot to say about all this, I just thought I'd share the pictures, really...

Santa Shoemaker

So I got to play Santa over here in Afghanistan. My dad and his office sent over lots of food and batteries and some socks and head-lamps. There were tons and tons of Snickers bars, and Twix, and Milkyway. And tons and tons of AA and AAA Batteries. And also assorted snacks from other candies to beef jerky to chicken salad packs.

It was surprisingly difficult to get started, figuring out how to mix and match so many items without an assembly line so to speak... and all the moving around made me feel hot, and then I started to sweat and then my head felt itchy; but I powered through, Santa doesn't let an itchy head keep him from rewarding the nice with gifts and embarrassing the naughty with coal. So I had to trek onward.

Eventually I got sort of a system going, keeping track of which bags had what items and got them separated into different piles. Then it was basically as simple as just going around in a circle distributing the goods to the bags. As you can see, there was plenty of stuff and it all took up a lot of space in my little living space. I'm glad my roomie had just left for leave because that would have been more stuff and 1 person too many walking around our little room.

I kept stepping on the bags, and almost tripping myself, and catching stuff on the wires around

the computer, etc. But eventually, the bed was cleared off, the floor was covered with full bags, I was sweaty and ready to begin delivering the presents. Let's face it, there was no room for me to hang on to the bags until Christmas...

I took 3-4 bags at a time to each room and dropped them off.

Each guy was glad for the bag of goods (speaking of which, I hope my roommate doesn't mind that I used all his extra shopping bags...) It was fun to watch the ones that got head-lamps walking around with little red lights on their heads... and wearing smart wool socks with their flip-flops... silly soldiers.

It felt really good to give the presents to the guys, even if I didn't buy them. And it is really neat to see joy, happiness, and excitement in the guys. Morale has been a bit low as of late, but it's wonderful to see how the Christmas season can make a difference for soldiers who see hard things, traumatic things, and stupid things regularly here and where they don't have family to help them deal with it.

Mountain-Scapes and Sky-Scapes

Well, we just went on another overnight mission recently to support one of our platoons first missions into 'dangerous territory'. The most dangerous part turned out to be the trip out there... we had to travel along a mountain pass that was bumpy and sometimes was only a hair wider than the truck's track.

The last picture was at the Motor Pool at FOB Salerno. We had just returned from the mission and were getting our trucks looked at and maintained. The sunset was just gorgeous with the swirling clouds and the orange tinted sky... so I figured I'd share that with everyone.

Night Rainbow

I'm sure glad God chose to not flood the Earth again; and I'm grateful that He's given us the rainbow as a sign of His promise. But now I'm so thankful for Him giving me the opportunity to witness his promise at NIGHTTIME!

A friend of mine, SGT Larmer, was telling me this is pretty rare, and I know it's a bit hard to see it in the pictures, but there is a rainbow in the night sky, given off by the light of the moon. In fact there is a complete ring around the moon. If I had a camera and a different lens I could have tried to capture it, but as it is I couldn't

back away far enough to get it; but you CAN see the faint light arc above the moon in what I did manage to snap! The middle picture is probably the best one, you can make out the color change from inside to out, infrared to indigo.

I felt a little dumb... it's the kind of 'happening' that normally I would have liked to tell Natalie, take her outside and hold her hand and sit out in the yard staring and talking. But she's not in Afghanistan with me, so I went and got SSG Baker (my squad

leader). We didn't hold hands...

Well, we're moved. We've been moved for around a week now. As you can see it's tight but it's not too bad. We built shelves and stuff so we have places for most all our gear. We even have a little space set aside for Christmas! (not that presents will fit under our tree, of course...) What you can't see in the pictures is that I took my big Wall-Locker shelving unit from Salerno to here... hey, it fit in the trailer, so I took it! And good thing! It has all my clothing and food items on it! Anyway, we're all glad that it's not near as bad as we thought it was going to be. Granted, we have to go back to FOB Salerno every few days for laundry and showers... but still, it's not so bad.