Shir Zai chow hall

The new mess hall right here on Shir Zai is due to open today. I'm very much looking forward to that. Having it right there will make guard duty less onerous, make it easier to do my workouts after eating, and give us a place to sit and relax in the evenings.

I've read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was pretty good if you just take it as another Harry Potter book. It was kind of disappointing if you consider it was the culmination of something like 5000 pages of storylines. Still, it wasn't as terrible as I expected it to be, so kudos to JK Rowling for that one.

I read another Terry Pratchett book (thank you, Lynn, for sending me Thief of Time. I never would have read TP otherwise), and found that, yes, ALL of his books are funny and most of them are easy to read. This one was called "Wee Free Men" and I really enjoyed it.

In addition, having been on several missions this week, I have some new pictures of Canadian bases in the Kandahar area. They're called Moshwen Ghar and Sperwen Ghar, and they're both pretty much on top of rough mountains. Which, of course, makes for some excellent scenery. From Moshwen Ghar, I could see a LOT of greenery, which is pretty surprising. The route to Sperwen Ghar actually travelled over a deep, fast-flowing creek, which was even more astounding. Oh, and there was a LOT of marjiuana. There were fields on both sides, and the plants were six to eight feet tall. (I wouldn't have known it was marjiuana but for the people in the vehicle with me. I know nothing about pot.)

Today is pretty much a day off, which we really needed, since we were on missions every day for the first four days of our mission rotation. We didn't expect that and were starting to get concerned that we would have been better off staying on guard duty for rest. You know how the Army is, they like to keep you guessing!

I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but back when we went to Alizah Kalay, Sgt. Hall (our supply Sgt) bought two chickens from the locals. They live on top of the boxes of bottled water next to the laundry room. He's hoping that they will lay eggs for him, but they haven't yet.