Nicholas Bush

Which number do you like better; 39 or 130? Well I am definatley looking forward to 39 which is how long until I get to go on leave. I get a full 15 days to spend at home, plus whatever time it takes for travel. Looking at about 20 days total. However I would definatly say that 130 would be my magic number and that is the "Estimated" amount of days I have until I get to go home. Sorry I cannot say, and sadly I dont really even know when that magic day is. However, we have been told that unless some significant event occurrs we should be home for Christmas.

So . . . 15 days til I get to go home. Time starts the midnight following our aircraft touching U.S. soil and ends the midnight prior to my return flight. I can only hope that I land at 1:00 AM and fly out at 11:00 Pm giving me just short of 17 days home. I have mixed feelings about how I want to spend time when I get home. After pulling 7 months here of 6-7 days a week and 12-14 hour days I really just want to go home, relax, keep visitors and travelling to a minimum. Another part of me wants to have some extravagant vacation. I was originally planning on taking my wife to her dream vacation in Gulf Shores Alabama. Im not quite sure why its her dream vacation, you would think it would be more like a tropical beach on a remote island in the Carrabean but thats what she wants. Anyway I was looking at vacation packages and ideas for the trip but with my leave time being variable, I did not want to make any reservations and risk loosing them and the down payment because my flight was delayed in Iraq.

My main concern with leave is all the people that want you to come visit. When I came home for leave on my last tour I had all kinds of friends and family calling and emailing asking em to come visit them, some several states away. They all wanted to see me but it was expected of me to go around to all these different places just to visit them leaving me no time to relax. Needless to say there were some angry people when I refused to travel. But we can do all that once I am back home for good. My plans right now consist of coming home and relaxing for a few days. I do want to travel back to my hometown to see my family. I plan to take one maybe two days for that. I am also talking with my dad and brother-in-law about trying to join the Masons. (I figure with all the other changes for the good in my life, (becoming a Realtor, getting married, getting ready to start a family)this may be one of the best.)) I also think I will take my wife to the beach, she is really looking forward to that Then back to relaxing before returning to this place for two-three more months.

So another 130 or so days until I get to come home. That is the true number I cam counting down towards. Home by Christmas, and hopefully never gone again. I have decided that it is time to get out of the Army. I plan to put full emphisis on my Real Estate career and do not want the distraction of going to weekend duty, or leaving for several weeks at a time to get in the way of my potential as a Realtor. I still have until August 2011 until my contract is up but they should not be able to deploy me again beofre my contract ends. I have had second thoughts about getting out but my wife is so excited that I made the decision to end my career that even the mention of staying in those last eight years seems to break her heart. Of course in her defense. The Army did take me away from her a mere three months after our marriage. This deployment is hard enough on her and I can't imagine doing this once we have a family.

So here I am, the end of July, just counting down the days. Actually its almost the end of the work day so I will go ahead and change it to 38 and 129(ish). It sounds a little better anyway.

Nicholas S. Bush

Realtor®

Total Auction and Realty

IJango Representative

www.homesaleseastTN.com

www.nbush.IJango.biz

NBushRealtor@gmail.com

My last post I had mentioned that we had finally past our half way mark. With that it seems like the time has suddenly started to fly by. I beieve that I had told you all that my biggest thing to look forward to was my Sundays, the one day that I get most of the day off. Well they seem to be coming and going faster than ever now. I believe this is because of two things, we have passed the half way mark so we are starting to talk about our re-deployment and everything that goes with it, the paperwork, supply issues, timeline. The other thing that I contribute it too is our unit finally flowing without problems. Its sad to say that it took almost six months to get here, but we are finally in our groove. I guess it is not too bad considering that the last time we had almost smoothed everything out we had to up and move from Baghdad to Basra. Also the division that we were working with left and a new one moved in, and with that came a different set of rules, a different way of organizing things, and in all actuality a new style of living. Now that we are settled in again, and we have fixed all the internet connectivity problems, electrical problems, our offices are fully functional again. There is hardly anything un-expected popping up anymore and with all this means that we now come in do our job and leave with much less stress then before. Now it seems as though nothing ever changes.

Here's the one problem with nothing ever changing. All the days seem the same. Every day (except Sunday) I get up around 0630 usually fight to sleep as long as possible, get ready and in the office by 0700. I have a daily routine that I work through, it varies very little from day to day, fill out the same paperwork, send in the same reports, create the same slide show presentations for the commander. Hardly any variation in the day. I usually either go to lunch around 12:00 and come back at 1:30 then leave at 4:30 and go to the gym. Or I go to the gym at 10:45 followed immediatly by lunch and back in the office by 1:30 and finish the day at 5:00. Dinner around 7:30 and in bed by 1030-1100. Sundays I sleep until about 0930, church at 1000, lunch at 1:00, staff meeting at 6:00 dinner at 7:30, and sleep by 1030. It very rarily changes. There is no exceptions, no variations, not even for the 4th of July.

How Ironic, I missed the 4th of July. Apparently they did have something lined up here on post. There was a country music concert put on by Artie Dean Harris and a talent show was scheduled as his opening act. I guess several of the larger units were able to attend. Especially the soldiers whose jobs are much harder than mine, going out, patrolling everyday, doing typical Army stuff. They were able to take a break and go have fun. As for me (and almost everyone in my office) it was just another day. Get out of the Office around 5:00 do laundry, get dinner, clean personal area, and go to bed. Just as every day before and after. All days come and go without a change, except another "X" on the calender and one less number on the countodwn to returning home.

Also for all that are interested I have finally got internet connection in my room; however the payments and collections suck. I cannot believe that the Army is allowing some Iraqi company to come in and rape us on these prices. The only connection that we have available to us that will allow us to access personal email, myspace, twitter, facebook is this civilian company and the packages are as follows:

$40/mo for 64 DL and 32 UL

$70/mo for 128 DL and 64 UL

$160/mo for 256 DL and 128 UL

$330/mo for 512 DL and 256 UL

I will never again complain about my internet prices back home. Anyway I signed up for the $70 plan so that I can get on all those sites, finally be able to see AR the right way as all pics are removed from it on my office internet, and get to upload pictures to put on the internet. This means that hopefully next Sunday or Wednesday I am going to try to do a wordless post with a bunch of pics of the area here. (But dont hold me to that, I will have to see if the internet will in fact allow me.

To all reading, again, thanks for your support

SGT Nicholas S. Bush

Realtor®, Total Auction and Realty

www.HomeSalesEastTN.com

Well, we have finally reached the half way point. My unit was mobilized at the end of December, got to Iraq in the beginning of Feburary and we are now half way done! I guess looking back the time is kinda flying by. While each day seems to take forever I believe the past six months has flown by. I think it has helped that most of us find something in the near future to look forward to.

For most it is that beloved Sunday that we get most of the day off. Alot of units do not get that luxury but we managed to get "Mountain Time", named after the 10th MTN Division that started the Sunday break. It is the one day a week we are allowed to sleep in, take most of the day for ourself, we only have to report at 6:00PM to ensure that we did not miss anything important. Every week it seems the same, everyday feels like it is no closer to the next Sunday, however once Sunday hits it seems like it was yesterday when we had the last one. Funny how that works.

For me I think it is the care packages and online orders. To be honest I don't really need the care packages. Every once in a while there is something I am really looking forward to, like the one coming from my wife right now which has a digital photo frame so that I can put 500 pictures of her and us on my desk. I also have an order from a store coming with some games on it to help pass what little bit of down time I get. On average it takes about 10-14 days to get a package, and I try to space them all out so that I am always waiting on one. This is my near future goal that helps me pass a week or two at a time.

Right now its in the countdown stage. First I am counting down to leave. I scheduled my leave for late September. I wanted to take leave at the last possible moment during the deployment. I did this because the last time I was over here I remember that I was fine until I took leave. Then once I got to visit home for a few weeks when I came back I was not worth anything. All I could think about was getting back home. I wanted to put this off until last moment so that I would reduce my "worthless" time. I scheduled this at the last moment so that when I come back from leave I only have two things to worry about; packing up, and training my replacement.

And of couse I am counting down to time for "re-deployment" (thats when we come back home). I have total about eleven weeks until I get to come home on leave. I have about 20 weeks until my replacements come. I have about 23 weeks until I leave Iraq. And i have about 25 weeks until I am back home at what we all like to call Fort Livingroom.

Thank you all for listening; oh and if you have not checked it out yet I am still excited about my new website. Let me know what you think. www.HomeSalesEastTN.com

Thanks again,

Nicholas S. Bush

Total Auction and Realty

www.HomeSalesEastTN.com

Well today was the first in about two months. It finally started raining. It is almost a foreign feeling. We have been seeing clouds gather and the wind pick up for the past week or so with no results. This is great as the temperature today has dropped from about 120-125 degrees down to about 105-110. The light cloud cover outside also makes a huge difference.

There are three main problems with this. One, there is so much dust and sand just floating in the air here that when it rains, everything gets nasty. By the time that it hits the ground it is already practically mud so everthing that you have out in the weather is absolutely nasty. This means cleanup once the rain starts. Two, this country is nothing but dirt, sand, and dust. This means that the whole country will pretty much turn into a large mud puddle. Once again the bad side is that there will be alot of cleaning over the next few days. And lastly, while today is nice and cool all the rain will make tomorrow EXTREMELY HUMID.

So in the end, having just one day of rain I still have not decided if it is worth it or not, but since I dont get to make the decision I guess I will just enjoy it today while I can.

Have a good day:)

Nick

Well for all those that have been following my stories on Abbie we actually managed to save her. For those that don't know, I am a new RE Agent that was deployed to Iraq as soon as I got my lecense. I had been asked by multiple members of my AR family to post my experiences on here, you can view my previous blogs to see what has happened so far. For the dog lovers is my recent story on a "force protection" dog that we received from the British army. She is about 9 month old now and we have been desperatly trying to find a way to get her to the states. However after about a month and a half we started getting resistance from my chain of command and was recently told to "get rid of her". You ca read the rest of these stories in my other posts.

Well for the rest of you that have been tracking the story I have some really good news and some bad news. The really good news is that we found a way to save her. Things were coming down to the wire and it was looking like we was going to have to put her down. In the last post I explained why this was the probable option. Anyway was it got close to time we all pulled our heads together asn was able to find her a good home.

We found a small unit of Navy Seebee's who had their own camp within this camp. Their camp is fully inclosed with a single gate that is guarded 24-7. They actually knew of Abbie becuase it is the same camp that the Brit's had her on before they left. The SeeBee's were extatic to get to have her on the camp. The big bonus is that she is able to run freely on the small camp and will not be caged up 24-7. Plus I believe the people there will take better care of her than what she received here.

The bad news is that she still will not be coming home with me (or any of us). We are hoping that the SeeBee's will contine the work that we have started on getting her back to the states and to a good home.

Good Luck Abbie

Nick