Bullets

It's pouring rain on Ft. Polk, LA. While I wait it out inside what for the last month was the 2-23 IN TOC, I'll listen to the sounds of the teardown crew packing it up, and post a bullet-point update. To begin:

• No, I don't live in Louisiana now. Rae and I live in Olympia, WA-I work at Ft. Lewis and Rae is hunting for work. Meanwhile, she's transformed an overgrown yard into a garden, turned our house into a Martha Stewart look-alike, read for fun for the first time since before law school, and been a constant encouragement as I've started a difficult new job.
• I'm currently the assistant operations officer in a Stryker battalion out of Ft Lewis, meaning I plan, write, and publish most of the training for the battalion. I should take company command sometime around the New Year...
• ...meaning that I'll take command while in Iraq. We will deploy at the end of the summer for 12 months. I don't think we expected another tour to come this soon, but that's reality and has been for the last six years. Hopefully we shut this thing down in Iraq this next year and call it good.
• Family updates-Ben is in Iraq doing his first tour, and doing well by all accounts. Eric is in WA for the summer training and visiting. Pam is now the two-time Regional high jump champion, placing 7th in the state of Ohio this year.

That's all I have the time or attention span for right now. JRTC has smoked my ass, time to go rack out for a time period longer than five hours, and perhaps get a shower.

One Year

One year to the day-remember the fallen. Durrell Bennett and PJ Miller, taken by an EFP on RTE Florida, Muallameen, New Baghdad, Iraq, March 29, 2008. Carl Reiher, Rob Winegar, and Pat Hanley-lives forever altered. Remember their sacrifices. The men of 3/A/2-16 IN who served during OIF 07-09 will never forget our brothers. Remember the Fallen.

Champ

Happy New Year! Rae and I rang in 2009 with another day hike at the beautiful Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park. It was a beautiful day in Georgia, unlike what we're used to at this time in the Cincinnati area, so we took advantage of it. Rae is an absolute champ, continually overcoming old athletic injuries to perform feats like hour-long treadmill runs on top of an hour in the weight room. Yesterday it was turned ankles plus an upper leg pull sustained right at the beginning of the hike-of course she didn't tell me about it till we were four miles in. When I asked her if she wanted to take a shortcut she fixed me with a look that almost knocked me over. The look was followed by an emphatic "hell no!" as she kept on trucking up the trail. I had to haul ass to keep up with her the next half mile.

Had a great time in Cincy for Christmas, great to see everybody that we saw and sorry to those we couldn't catch up with. Congrats to Brent and Lauren on their engagement!

Tradition

Justin, Ben and I got our semi-traditional Christmas ride in this morning-the conditions, however, were dramatically different this year. If we look frozen (love Ben's face) its because we rolled around in 40 degrees and raining for two hours. I for one needed it no matter what the conditions, was feeling pretty plump after the last couple days indulgence. Hopefully this all pays off this spring-Ben will have strong legs for Ranger School and I will have a good spring cycling season in Washington.

On earth, peace.

8In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night.

9And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened.

10But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people;

11for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

12"This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

13And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
14"Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."

Merry Christmas from Nate and Rae

Gift-ing

*Note-This post has been edited from the original. I wrote it like I was talking to a group of Soldiers and I don't think it originally conveyed the message I wanted to get across.

For my thoughts in keeping with the spirit, I first cite Scott Deuber and his note on my post of 5 July, 2007-take a look at it and think about the subject of materialism and how it affects your life. I have no intent, desire or qualification to preach at anybody-however, people, however...I still have all these images in my head, so many images from 15 months. Some are good, some are bad, some are just bizarre, and some are recurring-like right now, right now I'm reminded continuously of the way that the people of Fedaliyah and Al-Amin, New Baghdad lived.
Bad picture, yes-it was taken out the window of a Humvee, sorry. That's a sewage trench at those kids' feet, by the way. That's their house on the left of the picture, the mud hut-picturesque isn't it? Remember the fact that this is the way a vast majority of the world lives. I say all that to suggest this: consider making your gift to each other a donation to one of the literally hundreds of legitimate organizations out there that exist solely to help and serve others. I like http://www.heifer.org/, http://www.younglife.org/, and http://www.fightforthetroops.com/. The last one is a pretty sweet team effort on the part of the UFC and the Intrepid Fallen Heroes foundation to build a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) center for research and recuperation. We are incredibly blessed just to live in this country. Merry Christmas everybody, and remember this season the reason we celebrate.

Party Time

Yep...time to party down with old friends.


Presenting CPT & Mrs. Mike Williams

Mike and I graduated together from Xavier. It was a true honor to be in his wedding this past weekend, and to see all my boys from the ROTC days. I tell you that we got back together like it had been last week since we'd seen each other, instead of almost four years in some cases.

Hope everybody enjoyed Thanksgiving-Rae and I truly enjoyed our time back home, being with the family and stuffing ourselves on Mrs. Stephen's cooking. Ben Showtime dominated all of Cincinnati with a 20th place finish in the 11,000+ participant 10K race Thanksgiving morning-told you he was chomping at the bit to throw down a strong race. I probably shouldn't have run but it was great to cover the distance with my sister. Now I won't be running for awhile to stave off the stress reaction that I feel developing but its a perfect time to start training for the spring cycling season-always a silver lining there people! You just gotta want to find it.

Last-Band of the Month! In addition to the left panel of the blog, I've been stuck on Old Crow Medicine Show's newest, Tennessee Pusher. Listen to "Caroline" at http://www.myspace.com/oldcrowmedicineshow