Devil's Day?
Current mood: hot

Today is devil's day. What does that mean to us here at Anaconda? About the same thing as when its Valentine's Day or Memorial Day or Flag Day or whatever. Not a dang thing. If you asked half of my guys what day of the week it is they couldn't tell you. Some of them even get fuzzy on the date.

One of our sayings around here is "The hours drag, but the days fly". It seems like it can take a week to get through a single day, and yet sometimes when you do stop to look at a calendar you're amazed that its already June or whatever. This is commonly called the groundhog's day syndrome. The name of this malady is based on the Bill Murray movie from the early 90's where a news reporter is forced to live the same day over and over again until he gets it right and he's allowed to move on. He was working at redemption; we're just trying to reach a certain distant date on the calendar.

Weather here is getting pretty brutal. The guys who spend all day out in the sun and the heat in their body armor and helmets typically go through seven to ten bottles of water per day, and when we get back to our barracks after shift they usually look like the walking dead. Their uniforms are completely soaked through with sweat, and it can actually be uncomfortable stepping into your air conditioned room. We're pretty adamant about forcing our soldiers to drink enough water to keep going, but sweating through all that body armor still takes a toll. All this, and summer hasn't even officially begun yet!

How did the ancients do it? We have gore-tex, under-armor, and Kevlar, and if it weren't for the fact that we understand that we have to stay hydrated we'd be dropping like flies. How did a Greek or Roman soldier, whose kit weighs almost exactly what ours does spend all day on the march in the sun and possibly fight a three hour battle at the end? It sure seems as though weve softened up quite a bit in the last 2000 years.

Were making progress on the internet connection. After poring through the manuals I finally found the information I needed to start configuring our satellite modem. Of course this information was buried in the middle of chapter four which discusses some completely different and seemingly irrelevant concept. With any luck I can get back tonight and try again to get it connected.