Just an update.

I thought I should write a little, but it won't be as good. Just a little update for all y'all because I had such a good day. I felt motivated the past few days. I have been moved in for almost a week, I have gotten my bunk set up (for the most part) and feel somewhat settled. I don't really, but I know that I am out of transition mode for at least 10 months. Which, after moving around to a different home each month, feels pretty darn good. This place is different. I don't like it. I would honestly rather be up north in Iraq...but it is what it is. *famous military saying.
Today was an amazing day. It was my first day 'off' in a long while. Now, let me tell you about my 'day off.' Sigh....I am getting upset just thinking about it:
I'm going to shorten it up because it is 0000 here and I have a 5K run in 6 hours.
It is Sunday...well now technically monday...but roll with me here. We had a company wide weigh in (in which I was 5 lbs overweight! augh!) and then the whole company had the day off. First Sergeant said the next formation was 0800 Monday morning. Sweet!! Well, then our LT decided that he wanted all of 1st platoon trucks in numerical order....today. It couldn't wait one day until we had really nothing to do. We were all pissed.
Well, he told us this last night after formation..so me, being the little miss future LT that I am went down the line and wrote down a map of our truck line (how many trucks, and what order they were in) so as to set up an order of march for the next day to limit the amount of time we would be in the motor pool. I took said map and put each in numerical order on a new sheet as a future map. Found out which trucks were hooked up to the wrong trailers and how we should unhook them and hook them up to the right ones. Which trucks we were missing for maintenance, or other such reasons.....and came out with a pretty slick looking set up for the next day. I stayed up late doing so. We ended up starting to move the trucks at 1030 and finished by 1230 (I honestly think I shortened the chaos by 1/2 just by putting forth a little extra time and effort). In addition, I was running around telling people what to do....which felt pretty good because no one else was taking charge. I felt like I made a good impression of my leadership skills and showed that I am not afraid to work and get dirty. I was literally running:
Clare's Papa taught me while working on the farm....never walk when you can run and get something done faster. I feel like I earned respect from a lot of the guys out there today, and maybe I even impressed my Platoon Sergeant. Who knows. But we were done early, went to lunch and had the rest of the day off with the whole remainder of the company. I took a shower after chow and rested for a bit, then my friends invited me to go to zone 1 with them to hang out. We ended up spending the whole day there shopping at the little hadji vendors they have there and watching a movie at the MWR (morale, welfare, recreation) building and playing spades with this random guy at 'oldies' night. It was a pretty good day.

Oh, and I lost my sunglasses and then found them! They're like 200 something dollar pair of perscription oakley's....I was so upset, and then so happy in a period of like 10 minutes when I realized they were lost ;-) i'm so ADD sometimes!!


I am really missing Christmas this year, I realized it when I was in the PX (Post eXchange, like walmart) and they were playing Christmas music. I went ahead and bought a green garland with fake snow on it to decorate the B's (barracks or billets).
I love you all and can't wait to come home!!
Write me! :)

SPC KEEHNER, TARA A
778 Trans HET Co, 1ST Platoon
APO, AE 09366