What Is An Expat?

or,

New Guys Always Mess It Up

Newguys, I swear. They don’t seem to realize you wait until after evening call to prayer is over to start tossing rounds out. Dumb bastards. Kinda disrespectful, you know? The recording didn’t miss a beat however, and carried on the message to the faithful as it always does, without appearing to have any resentment over the competition.

It’d been quiet lately…too quiet. Until just now that is. I don’t think we’d even had an accountability for over a week. Maybe a little longer, but it was a 107mm air burst not too far away, so it was a good one. I used to like loud noises, but now I find I much prefer the gentle thumping of something that isn’t even remotely close. I’d guess this last batch was probably something like 60mm mortars, because they were almost inoffensively quiet — “I’m sorry, hate to intrude, but bang.” Even so, I sped up a bit when they seemed to be getting closer. I was attacked by a chair in the dark and confusion. My killer instinct and deadly reflexes made short work of the poor innocent chair, but hey…bad stuff happens in wartime.

I was headed to the house anyway, so I just went to my new next-door bunker instead. Needs a bench. Todd and I were sitting in there. We had our little LED flashlights out. Mine hangs off the end of my keys, so I let it dangle and whirl around. It was a nice little light show. His new blue one was significantly brighter than my old red one, so they didn’t blend very well. His tended to wash mine out in glare. I guess I need to get a blue one and a green one to be fully amused. I don’t think the white ones provide much in the way of artistic value.