Afghanistan: Number 24

Clearer view of mountains after rain

Alright, so I am a few days late.  This was kind of intentional, as I didn't want to post on my birthday, which was Sunday.  I turned 25 and as you might imagine, it was really just another day in Bagram.  It was a normal Sunday, in that I got up, video chatted with Kevin, had the morning off, went to lunch, then work then church after dinner.  Unfortunately, we had a rocket attack that night that was probably the first one that actually scared me, but at least it happened after midnight and not technically on my birthday.  Aside from that, it rained on my birthday, which is the first time I have seen rain since June (it technically rained for a few minutes last week, but I didn't know it was happening, so I didn't see it). But all in all, it was a regular day in Afghanistan.  So here goes another post for Afghanistan, knowing I should be home in just a few weeks.

Physical:  No new updates on this one, and there probably won't be much the rest of my time here.  Now that I have maxed my APFT, my fitness goals are pretty much complete.  I am probably in better shape than I have been in a long time, but I have never really been out of shape so that isn't saying much.  The goal now is to maintain when I get back, and that will be very difficult when I am back to the land of good food.

Financial: So there isn't a ton new to report here.  I did learn something new the other day though.  Basically I learned that if I hold onto my stocks for under a year, I am taxed on my gains in my current bracket (25%) but if I hold onto them more than a year, they will be taxed at 15%.  So I think I am going to try to hold onto both my stocks for the next year if I can.  And since I am getting so close to going home, I think I will even share what those stocks are.  One of them is Home Inns & Hotel Management Inc (HMIN) and Yandex (YNDX) which is basically the Russian version of Google.  Both are doing well for me and looking pretty strong.

Mental: So Lean Six Sigma is going well.  I am working on a second black belt project right now that basically covers proper planning within the Army.  Overall, I am showing that proper use of Army planning and design models paired with Lean Six Sigma can save the Army a lot of money compared to just picking projects not aligned with already set planning efforts.  My second project is going to help me get certified in Lean Six Sigma on the civilian side, since I already have my certification all settled on the military side.  This is also going to help me pursue my Master black belt.  Really, in the next week or so, I need to brief a General Officer from our division my path and plan for certification.  If he approves it, then I will be going to school for it next year, most likely.  If not, then it is dead in the water and I will just maintain my black belt.

Emotional:  So this one has been pretty good.  Life has been pretty easy going recently and I am very thankful for that.  I am also very happy that my replacement is here and we are officially starting our change over training.  She is catching on quickly and I think that change over process should be pretty seamless.  Once the new unit officially takes over in a couple of weeks, we will start heading home.  I think during that time of travel, I will be doing some automatic blog posts.  I am planning on doing a "stuff I learned on this deployment" post.  I am working on it now and am just debating whether I should break it up into a miniseries, or keep it all together.  Once I have everything written out, I will probably decide which to go with.  Honesty, I have learned a lot while I have been here.  Things haven't been easy, but I know that I have learned a lot from the experience.

Spiritual:  So I have been continuing in prayer and reading.  In my prayer life, I have been praying very consistently for certain individuals throughout the deployment. I am not seeing any sort of answer to that prayer, but I am glad to have stuck by a spiritual discipline for over 200 days.  In my reading, Kevin and I caught up to where we intended to be.  We started reading through the bible chronologically in March and it is broken up over a year period.  So back in July, we decided to read two passages a day until we got caught up to the right day.  Oddly enough, it just so happened to work out that we were caught up on my birthday.  We enjoyed reading so much, we decided to continue doing two-a-days.  Which should have us done before the end of November.