Thanks Family & Friends!

Not much going on here, just more routine as usual. It's starting to get VERY groundhog's day. Every day I do the exact same thing at the exact same time. Days of the week have no meaning any more, except Friday's we sleep-in and Wednesday's we get up early to unload all of the stores of food that gets delivered and Saturday night we eat ice cream with the Iraqis. Other than that, it's incredibly hard to keep track of days.

Today's highlight was taking ALL of the little individual size baggies of dry ice that our frozen food comes packed around and putting them in one bag and then dumping all of the dry ice (pounds of it!) over the side of the platform into the warm Arabian Gulf beneath us. (don't worry, we didn't throw the actual bag into the water, just the dry ice in it). The sight of pounds and pounds of dry ice bubbling up like a witch's cauldron was really cool. There were like 15 of us lined up peering over the railing, ooh-ing and ahh-ing. One of the guys behind us was like "I wish had my camera- this picture would be called 'you know you've spent too much time on ABOT when..."- here were were a dozen grown adults mesmerized like children. It was the best part of my day. I will try to remember to bring my camera to next week's food onload so I can take more pictures of dry ice.

Yesterday I received an AWESOME care package from my friend Heather on the JPJ; it was like 15 full-sized candy bars and a BAG of dove dark chocolates! I quickly took out Nicole and my favorites candies and took the rest up to our office (which, BTW, they were all gone by this morning's meeting!) I am really looking forward to having this little bit of dark chocolate to munch on at night in my room


















So thank you, Heather, for sending over such an awesome package on your small boat!

Today I received a package from LLBean from my dad (who knew that LLBean shipped to FPO addresses?!). It was a new nice towel and these cool fuzzy ugg-like slippers that are actually sandals (pink! my favorite color!) so I have something clean and soft to walk around in my CLU without getting the bottoms of my feet dirty (despite our best cleanliness intentions, we drag in an inevitable amount of dust).


















These are my new sweet slipper sandals (I only wish I could exchange them for my combat boots!) I will definitely take them to wear around in my super-spacious stateroom on the Nimitz, whenever that is.

Well, that's about it for now. I think my list of things to write about is starting to dwindle. I will try tomorrow or Friday though to post some good trivia clues for my game. I am feeling very under the weather today; I think it is the gaseous fumes. The tankers are supposed to vent their fuel tanks BEFORE pulling in but they don't ever do it until they pull in (and I live like 50 feet from one and 150 feet from another) and the smell is awful. Usually just my throat burns a little but yesterday I was really nauseous. I thought maybe it was just me but I talked to a bunch of the big strong looking guys today and they said that they were really nauseous too yesterday. Halfway through my work-out on the elliptical, they passed the word that everyone had to stop smoking and exercising/working-out due to high levels of fuel fumes. Needless to say, I stopped.

Apparently it is carbon monoxide that they vent and while it's not like the same effects as being in your garage with the fumes, it apparently has long term brain effects. We're supposed to get something put in our medical record before we leave so that it is documented any long-term effects. Seriously? I'm only 24!

Anyways, thank you family and friends for your endless supply of things to keep me amused and keep me happy here on ABOT. Miss you tons!

Love,
M