Hi Everyone!! Well, another week has gone by, and I'm still doing well here. Work is slowing down in anticipation of Ramadan, the Muslim Holy season. An insurgent uprising is expected, so travel is restricted, and everyday we are on stand-by to see if we can even go to work. We are kind of expecting to be locked-down early next week when Ramadan starts. So not alot to talk about on the work front this week----some of our new projects are still in the works, but the level of paperwork has slowed as the projects are reviewed by the people with the money. All are expected to be approved and running in a week or so. Not really a whole lot more to say this week.

I'm including a pic of the sheraton hotel taken just a few minutes after it got hit by rockets last week. the Sheraton is about 2 blocks from my hotel.

I tried to get a video of the firefight after the rocket attack, but it was too dark and didnt come out--sorry.

I did, however, get into my first sandstorm this week. It has been relatively cloudy all week, and one night after dinner it looked really foggy out. We thought it was kind of weird, because the trees were moving from the wind. We went outside (which is NOT the smartest thing in the world to do), and were sand blasted. visibility was limited to about 300 feet. After only a couple of minutes, we came in and both my partner and were covered in a fine, gritty, dust. Now i know why the locals had thier scarves over their faces---perfect dust filters!!!

Since I keep mentioning my partner, Dan, I'm including a pic of him and I today also. He's a super guy, good operator, and has a great attitude on life.

As you all know there was an attack at the Green Zone this past week, and 4 americans were killed. The 4 americans were employees of DynCorp, the same company I work for. They were assigend to PSD, which is a dignitary protection unit. I'm not going to dwell on this, but if you could, say a prayer for them.

Thats it for this week. Take care of each other--------jim