Special Visitor

Today the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, visited the office.  These visits always require lots of preparation and coordination, and fortunately, my participation in that tedious task was nominal. I did, however, get to enjoy a little time in the lime light with my colleagues and it was cool to feel like a rock star, if but for a little while.

I suppose like everyone, there are those aspects of my job that I wish were better, but the overall satisfaction I get from my work is much greater than most people could ever dream about. As a DoD employee, it is nice to have the Pentagon Chief come and tell you personally what a great job you are doing. Even better that I had to share that praise with only a handful of other people. All of the office staff received a challenge coin and hopefully I will have some pictures to hold as proof of the visit soon. I was looking through my stash of coins and realized this was my third SecDef coin in succession.

I spent most of last week on the road, visiting two recovery sites in Quang Binh Province, one recovery site in ThuaThien-Hue,and one recovery site in Quang Nam Province.  We spent lots of time in planes, cars and helicopters, but it was good to see what the teams are doing. I suppose my sympathies go most out to the guys in Thua Thien-Hue Province because they are base camping on the southern side of the Bach Ma Mountains where it is very hot and even more humid. The humidity is so high that the team members are having problems drying out their clothes after washing.  It doesn't help that the site they are recovering sits on a 45 degree slope.  I can only imagine how miserable it must get moving up and down that mountain with socks that aren't quite dry. Trench foot sucks!

Final preparations are being made on our new accommodations; we will sign the new contract soon. I was very comfortable where we are now, but Diep was ready to move on. We should be living in our new residence at Frasier Suites at the beginning of next month. Since I spend such little time at home, this is all about Diep and Megan.  Hopefully this will be some place we can hang our hats for more than two years this time!