Going on Leave Soon

My leave starts very soon.  I will be in Camarillo for 15 days starting sometime next week. Life as usual goes on here on JBB.  Work is busy, and there is always something interesting to do.  Last night, for example, I saw the movie “Terminator, Salvation” which is a first-run movie that played to a [...]

War is Hell

   Joint Base Balad has two swimming pools. One is indoors, and you can go there year-round to exercise. It’s a nice pool, but mostly just for lap swimming. Then there is the outdoor pool that is only open during the warmer 6 months of the year. It’s quite a luxury to have such recreation [...]

At the Movies

One of the nicer things about being at JBB is that we have a good movie theater. They show first-run movies, and these come out as quickly as a week after they premier in the US. For example, the new Star Trek movie just came out on May 9, 2009, and was playing in Balad [...]

Skype and Pixtorie

 My children are only 3 and 5 years old. Because they are young, it’s hard to have a good conversation with them on the phone. We do use Skype video conferencing a few times every week, and the children like being able to see me. The Skype video call looks like this:   (note Judy [...]

True Religion

Joint Base Balad has 30,000 people, and many different religious practices. To accommodate all this, there are dozens of chaplains. The chaplains also serve to offer guidance and counseling to military personnel.  There are dozens of different worship services that happen every week here, in addition to which there are over 50 weekly small-group meetings. [...]

A Few Interesting Things

Life goes on here at Joint Base Balad (JBB). A few weeks ago, I was asked to give a talk on divorce law. I’m no family law expert, but I do know more than a layman on the subject. It was a conference with about 20 chaplains, and the purpose of the speech was to [...]