Finish with a bang!

Merry Christmas to everyone! All is well here with the Italian division of the Frantz Clan. We hope that all is well where ever you are.

Lots of new photos in the gallery

The Home Stretch

Just five weeks to go....

Gelato

233 and the bloody Queen

Last night, we celebrated the 4th of July here at good ol� Camp Cupcake (�Camp Cupcake� being the mostly affectionate but somewhat derogatory nickname of this installation). The whole camp partook in the celebration, including the 350 or so British servicemen. Celebrating the 4th of July in such company easily qualifies as one of the strangest and most awkward events that I have participated in. But to make matters worse, during a public speech to kick-off the event, one of the more senior US leaders included the following remarks in his speech � heh...so ah....are there any Brits out there? ...yeah! That�s right! How do ya like us now!?!�. I kid you not; these words were actually put out over a loud-speaker. The Brits seemed to take the whole thing in stride and tried their level best to ignore these and similar remarks of equal and even lesser taste. Happily, everyone seemed to keep things even keeled for the duration of the party. However, by the end of the party some silly things were starting to come out. I overheard a mostly intoxicated British Army Captain give the following toast: �well...God save the bloody Queen and that bloody George fellow� I wasn�t sure if he was referring to George Washington or George Bush. In either case it didn�t make any sense as George W has long since passed away and George B is no longer the sitting President. So although the evening was beginning to get very entertaining (lots and lots of funny stuff being said!), I decided to split.

Anyways, for those of you in the States: Happy two-hundred-&-thirty-third birthday to you.

Dante, Bill and God Fearing Persons

Here is a little known (and nearly utterly useless) fact. In Dante�s original draft of the Divine Comedy, he described the ninth and innermost ring of the Inferno as: a condition of union and being with all things having to do with Micro Soft Power Point.

You might ask: What life lessons could possibly be derived from such a nearly utterly useless fact? Well, Ill tell you:

#1 Dante evidently thought that imparting to God fearing persons that eternal damnation might involve Power Point was too horrifying to divulge (in the end, I think that he went with the whole river of lava and being burned alive thing�).

And #2 evidently Bill Gates (the founder of Micro Soft�and therefore the evil architect behind the advent of Power Point) is in fact a major Demon if not the Devil himself!

This image is from the original illustrated draft of the Divine Comedy

The image just a reproduction of course. Had you viewed the original, it is very likely that you would have turned to stone within mere seconds.

melting under the snow

A thing that I will never get used to is the way in which this place can maintain snow covered mountain peaks well into June, all the while searing everyone in sight with temperatures well into the 90s and beyond. But stranger than this, is how easy it is not to notice the beauty of this place. It is very possible and likely for a man to become overly occupied with his immediate tasks and purpose, to have one�s head oriented down, to stare only at a specific pile of tasks�.a specific pile of sand. Never pausing to consider how all of these things connect and how they matter to each other.
Today is my 35th day on station. The shock of being back here has passed and I have settled into a routine of sorts. Time seems to have slowed to a crawl. As ever, I wish and pray for time to speed along it�s path so that I can make my way home.

bland rocks

So here�s the deal: Uncle Sam has been putting the beat-down on blogs recently. Thus I will not be writing and posting with the same fervor as I displayed during my last trip to this vicinity. This beat-down is focused more on the facebook / myspace crowd but no one is exempt... I am sorry for this. But it is what it is. Ill try to post now and again, but it will likely be pretty bland stuff.

That said, I am doing well, I work with some exceptionally talented folks, and have reasonable access to mail, internet, and the like. All and all: not so bad. The food could be better though. Every time I leave home for any noticeable length of time, I always wind up wishing that that I was back in my wife�s kitchen. Serves me right, I suppose.

I hope all is well wherever you are

Spring

Spring is here ... and boy has it been missed.

So first off: to every one who's b-day I missed: Happy belated birthday! (I think that 90% of the people I know were born between February and April). I have a reasonable excuse this time: rather than going to Iraq I will be going to that other place (again). Over the last moth 'they' have been trying to figure out exactly which unit/location I will be going to. This location-question was finally sorted it out about two weeks ago and I have subsequently been rushed all over kingdom-come to get the requisite training. I still have a bit more training to do, but I should be all done before long. (sorry to be so vague, but thats the way it has to be these days...)

Anyhow, Spring is finally here in all it's glory, and Italy is very beautiful at the moment. The sun has been out, the weather mild, little to no bug activity, lots of flowers and lots of wildlife running about. Over the past few weeks, Lucas and Aurora have been diligently excavating in the sandbox, conducting land-speed trials on their bikes, officiating numerous gelato & pizza tasting events, and have been collecting various boo-boos (but nothing too serious ;)

Winter update

Well, things have been busy of late. But maybe that is the way it should be.

Back in January, we finally made our way to Venice. It was nice; not too crowded, not raining, and lots of pidgins available to chase (more pics in the gallery).

Lucas turned five years of age this last weekend. We had a big kiddo sledding party at the top of the Mountain. As you can see, he is already rather popular with the ladies.

After much resistance (almost exclusively from me) we gave in to the 'familiy' desire/need to add a dog to the house hold. We recently adopted 'Lady' from another service member. She has been a big hit....as well as a big shedder. But strangely, I love this dog; very unusual for me.

Carnavale has been raging over the last few weeks. This whole region is saturated with parties, parades and the like. The locals have assimilated Rheagan into their schemes. This is a pic of her in the Marsure Village float in full Gypsy costume.

As for me, I have been training for the Rome Marathon (22 March) and for the Austrian 1/2 Ironman Triathlon (June) (this is about the same length as an Olympic triathlon...maybe a bit longer). Training has been going well: I recently logged in my first 20 mile training run and a 2 kilometer continuous swim. However, I have just been informed that I have been tagged for an all expenses paid trip to historic Baghdad... (more on that Baghdad stuff another time). So now I will miss both the Marathon and the Triathlon. Maybe another time.

Dont eat the neon-orange snow!

Monday was MLK day, and dear ol Uncle Sam gave me the day off. :) We took the opportunity to scoot to the top of the Mountain for a bit of sledding.

However, this little excursion did not proceed without incident. Aurora started the day with a sick tummy and a relatively grumpy disposition, but we decided that this was not going to stop us [in retrospect this may not have been the best decision...] So we stuffed all of our various winter sledding survival implements into the back of the Volvo and the pedal to the floor....sort of. Actually, it was more like 3rd gear; the mountain is kind of steep.

Anyways, after the first switchback, Aurora indicated that her tummy hurt a little bit.

Daddy -- "Sweety, are you gonna make it?"

Aurora -- "yeah"

Daddy -- "Are you sure?"

Aurora -- "un-hunh"...she nodded her head and gave me the big fake grin (fake but very cute)

Daddy -- "Woah!" I was looking at the fake-but-very-cute grin and not the road....more specifically the impending switch-back. But no harm done.

The switch backs continued for another 20 minutes. Just as we reached the 2nd to last turn. Aurora produced a barely audible announcement that her tummy didn't feel too good. This last plea had a more sincere tone to it than before and was not followed up with any fake-but-very-cute grins.

I quickly scanned the road ahead for any possibility of stopping. However, we were now at an altitude that included two inches of snow on the road. I didnt have chains on the tires, and would not have felt comfortable stopping on a 15 degree incline in such consistent snow. So we pushed forward. I focused on expedient, but smooth and safe driving. Rheagan focused on soothed Aurora to the best of her ability. Lucas focused on pretending that he was somewhere else. And Aurora focused on....well actually, she kind of lost focus.

What happened next, may well last in my memory as one of the most harrowing events of parenthood. Semi digested mack-&-cheese merged with the aft regions of the Volvo (to include just about everything Aurora was wearing).

There was no where to stop as the shoulders were all covered in two to three feet of snow. I decided to push ahead....turns out we were only about 90 seconds from the summit and ample parking. Ah, timing is everything.

We speedily pulled in to a mostly vacant parking lot and every one spilled out of the car. Save Aurora, who just kind of meekly stared at the gigantic mess of semi digested mac-&-cheese that had sprawled out in front of her.

As we scrapped the mess out into the snow covered ground, one couldn't help but notice the locals looking on with a quizzical pity at the American mess makers. I imagine their conversations went something like "oh that's bad....silly Americans....glad thats not me....ewhhooo!....don't eat the neon-orange snow!" Actually, this is also what Rheagan and I said to each other; .....except that it was us.

It took a good fifteen minutes to get everything sorted out but eventually things were clean enough for us to actually consider not going strait home.

So after some conjecture, we decided to delete the horror-film-quality experience by pressing ahead with our sledding plans. Aurora, didnt sled so much, and instead ate snow here and there....but not yellow snow (and not neon mack-&-cheese orange snow)....and generally had a good time despite herself. Actually, all of us had a good time in spite of our selves. And all was right with the world.

Some news from Nangarhar

I nearly cried (for joy) when I saw this news release from the Air Force Link. Mike S., the Captain that replaced me on the PRT last year, forwarded the link to me with a note that everything was working out nicely. Evidently so!, as the article says that the PRT now has $70 million under contract. When I arrived in March of 2007 the PRT only had about $1 million under contract (less than a dollar per-capita for Nangarhar province) with plans for perhaps anther $1.5 million over the coming years. When the 07-08 PRT crew pulled out last year we had about $20 million under contract (100% of which was directly to Afghan firms) and firm programing for another $150 million dollars in projects. And long range plans for more than $1 billion dollars in development projects. ...so to see that the PRT now has $70 million under contract is very gratifying. It means that they have turned the switch up to 'full-tilt-boogy!' and that they are continuing to think big-picture/long-range about what needs to be accomplished.

The note from my buddy also mentioned that province's southern-ring-road was now under construction. See #s 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, & 11 from this map. This is also really good, as this road is an extremely important project that will greatly improve both security and commerce in the region. This road project road hugs the base of the Tora Bora Mountain range (and borders the ever news worthy region of Waziristan....). Very very promising stuff. :)

Smarties (....did I spell that right?)

I bumped into this link quite by accident while conducting a completely unrelated Google search.

But I couldn't help but scoff. The link is to a ranking-system that ranks all 50 US States by 'smartness'. The rankings are based off of 21 metrics that, for the most part, evaluate the respective public education system for each State.

I am a true-blue product of Virginia's education system, having attended Virginia's public school system from 1st grade right on through to my ill-used bachelor's degree (although, I should point out that these particular metrics do not appear to consider universities...). I absolutely cannot believe that Virginia is #6 of 50 (beating out California, New York, & Pennsylvania to name a few).

To prove my point; i had to spell-check 'Pennsylvania' before publishing. Virginian's can't spell. Lets not even discuss the grammar. (oops: I had to spell-check 'grammar' as well....what's with that second 'm' anyways?).

Five years for a busted grill

In the midst of the holidays, all of stuff (household goods) finally arrived. This last batch of things came from a storage unit near Camp LeJune in North Carolina. We haven's seen these things since early 2004 when we moved to Japan....so just about 5 years.

Over the last three weeks, we have been trying to dig ourselves out of the mess of forgotten things; much of which is unwanted, and most of which is unneeded. For instance, we discovered that we no less than eight coolers (igloo brand etc....). What on earth are we going to do with eight coolers! Then there are the multiple boxes of cloth diapers, new parent books and maternity clothes. We also discovered that many of our things were very badly damaged: For instance, we had two grills: one for charcoal (broken) and one that used gas (totally destroyed...I didn't even recognize what it was when I first saw it). Loosing the grills was unwelcome. Every family man needs a good grill! I also came across all of my power tools; this was indeed a welcome site, as everything seemed to be in good order. However, it was bitter sweet, as none of these things will work here as all of the power runs on 220 vs 110... oh well, maybe the next continent we move to. Then there are the many boxes of books. Holly illiterate cow! We have so many useless books it is ridiculous. Things like: The 1993 'instruction manual to the TI-82 calculator', 'Programming in C++ the exciting new field', 'The pocket guide to Swahili' (no kidding we have a book on Swahili!!!), 'America's Conflict Free Future' (written in 1999...not the best job of predicting the immediate future), 'The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam' by R. S. McNamara (why would we have any book written by this moron!?!),...the list goes on and on. I opened one box of books to discover that all of it's contents had in fact turned to petrified wood! Evidently these particular books had just plain given up their collective will to live.

Then comes the tough part. Rheagan and I unearthed all of our old drawings, paintings, renderings, & models. This brought back wave after wave of carefully tucked away goals, desires and dreams. In a way, this was like opening Pandora's Box, as I now can't shake all my little schemes of Architectural conquest.... more on this another time.

We also unearthed box upon box of old photographs/albums. This slowed the whole unpacking process way down...as we naturally had to hem and haw over every single photograph. This in turn made us feel guilty for not writing more Christmas cards more quickly and more often.... {please insert the most convincing and sincere excuse that you can think of here}

Christmas Pictures

Please visit the gallery for newly posted Christmas pictures.

Thank you again for all from all of us, to all of you, for all of the wonderful gifts and well-wishes. This has been a wonderful Christmas!

Reflecting on the year that would never end

Unlike many previous years, 2008 did not flash by at the speed of light. It was more on par with 'longest-year-ever': Afghanistan & Japan, seem like a long time ago, and so to does the US (Alabama, Maryland, Virginia). I feel like we have been here in Italy for a few years already; though it has been a great deal less time that that.

Anyways, the good news is that overall, we transitioned from bad to good...from unpleasant to pleasant. But man did it take forever.

So, many cheers to a New Year!

This is a view from the Dolomite foothills to the North of Marsure. Our house is in the village directly below (on the left-ish part of the village).