Friday Night

A couple of days ago, I discovered that the Corps had slipped my training schedule by a week.  So I get to spend an extra week here at home with my wife and the dogs, working in the studio and around the house.  Yeah, it breaks my heart, as you can imagine.

I got to do some painting this week.  It was so good to work with oils again, as opposed to the acrylics that I had to work with in Baghdad.  I did a small oil sketch of Janis and another of one of the dogs.  On Wednesday evening, I had a life drawing session in my studio, and did a small painting of the model which turned out fairly decent.  I'll try to get some images of them up on the blog.

Come to think of it, I already promised you some pictures from my journey home and haven't posted them yet.  So here are a couple of pictures from Sather Air Force Base, which is the military side of Baghdad Airport.

Fast food in Iraq looks a little different than it does in the U.S.  And you have no idea how cool it is to see a familiar name like Taco Bell again, when you haven't seen it in months!

And if you don't like Taco Bell, well, there's always Subway and the Green Bean, which is our version of Starbucks.

Speaking of things that I don't get to see in Iraq, I'm sitting here on Friday night watching practice and qualifying for the NASCAR race at Bristol.  With the time difference, races come on the tube in Baghdad right about the time I hit the rack.  I'm a race fan, but not so big a fan that I'll skip sleep!  So it's great to be able to watch a race again.

Another thing I don't get to do over there is play with my dogs.  One of them just woke up from her 3-hour nap and is looking for some kinda trouble to get into.  So I have to go find some for her.  Right now.