Two dozen down

On June 4 I celebrated my 24th birthday. As you can imagine birthdays work a little differently when you’re on deployment in Iraq. First off, soldiers don’t usually hang up balloons and wear funny paper hats to celebrate the birth of one of their own. All you can really count on doing on your “special day” is a lot of pushups. So forgive me if I let this one slide by with as little fanfare as possible. My family would probably be disappointed to learn that I didn’t do anything particularly fun or interesting, but I really don’t mind. After all, anything that you might celebrate here can’t be all that great; you’re still in Iraq. I’ll save my excitement for my final return home.

It was nice to have my email flooded with well wishes though. My family sent me a great gift this year also. About a week ago I received a brand new guitar in the mail. I’ve messed around with the instrument for years but have never really taken the time to get any good. Now I have nothing but time and I intend to spend as much of it as I can learning to play this thing. I‘m really excited. I’ll be sure to thank all of you in the liner notes of my first Grammy winning album.