Everyday life "over there"

Recently my niece interviewed Jon for her newspaper by sending him questions that he took the time to answer. I thought you all might be interested in some of these answers and since I don't have anything new from him, I thought I'd post a couple of them here.

Where are you staying?
I'm staying in a place that we call a "hardstand blockhouse." "Hardstand" because it is a hardened structure (made of reinforced concrete) that can withstand indirect fire (IDF). "Blockhouse" because it pretty much looks like a block--pretty simple lines, purely functional, with a square floor plan. The hardstand blockhouse I live in is in the middle of what we call the "battle square," not a very imaginative name for bunch of uniformed people living in a square housing area in a combat zone... I am on a base called a "firm base," because it is a big, well defended place that provides a fairly well defined level of security. Other places, in decreasing levels of security, are called "forward operating bases" (FOBs), "combat outposts" (COPs), "entry control points" (ECPs), and "observation posts" (OPs).

What is it like to live there?
I can honestly say that I am never bored. I get to work by 0800 (8:00 AM), take a short break for lunch, exercise for an hour, take a break for dinner, work until around 2300 (11:00 PM), and go to bed. That's pretty much it, seven days a week. Sundays I actually sleep in about an extra hour and go to church in the morning, but after church it's back to the routine. I know it sounds like total drudgery, and sometimes it is, but the work is important enough that the accomplishment of it lends at least a little meaning to the long hours.

What do you do for fun?
I don't know that anyone would say they have fun here, but there are certainly enjoyable things that can be done with little bits of leisure time that can sometimes be scraped from the daily grind. There is an organization called Morale, Welfare, & Recreation (MWR), and they have built a pretty nice facility here. It's got ping-pong tables, pool tables, several big-screen TV's with US Television (piped in through the Armed Forces Network--AFN), books to read, telephones to call home, computers you can use for free to send emails home, stuff like that. The military is pretty fitness oriented, and exercise, lifting weights, and running provide a very popular distraction. The food is really good at the chow hall here (called a DFAC, short for Dining Facility), and eating Baskin Robbins mint chocolate chip ice-cream is just about anybody's definition of "fun."

What do you eat?
Well, besides ice cream :), my favorite items at the DFAC are chicken cordon blue, Thai chicken, and navy bean soup. Recently, I've become partial to the chicken vegetable soup as well. Of course, I'm addicted to Mountain Dew, have a morning craving for banana milk (really, it's great, it's banana flavored milk. I've never seen it for sale in the US), and would testify that their pecan pie here is some of the richest I've ever had. Yes, when I was here back in 2006, I gained 17 pounds in my first six months :)

How is the weather there most of the time?
The rainfall here is similar to rainfall levels in southern California. However, it gets a little colder in winter--recently we had a bunch of nights where the lows were in the upper 30's (37 or 38) and the daytime highs were in the mid 50's. The spring and fall seasons are short, and summer temps range from lows at night in the 80's to daytime highs of 115 (it hit 119 when I was here in 2006). The sunrises and sunsets are really beautiful, I've been told that is attributable to the dust in the air. The night skies are simply amazing, as the firmbase is not close to a built up area, and there are little to no lights reflecting off the night sky. Usually, we can see the entire milky way across the sky, and when there's a full moon it's almost light enough to read a book by...