It has been a while since I posted anything. Army South had its major exercise for the year PANAMAX 09. Pretty amazing stuff overall, several hundred people in at least 3 different states and 5 different countries and about 14 different countries had officers participate. It was only 8 days but working 12 hour shifts in a noisy tent and sleeping on cot wears you out. I used alot of new systems that I was totally unfamiliar with, but thats what training is for. We had communication through a system called DCO, we were able to have a conference with people all over the exercise area at the same time on the computer and not only type, but talk and in some cases have video along with email; and pull up powerpoint all with everyone hearing and seeing the same thing at the same time. Kind of amazing since everything is in tents and run off of generators.

Right before the exercise my wife and I went to Sea World, I can't remember if I mentioned that before but it was fun to just go out with the two of us. We went to see a 4D show, pretty cool stuff especially since it was all free for military.

The Jeep is out of paint and about 95 % reassembled only some minor bolts and pieces left and fixing a bad carb seal leak. Should be able to drive it out of the shop by Saturday or Sunday. It looks awesome and other than the leak it runs pretty well.

I will be going to Brazil to conduct an evaluation and exercise with the Brazilian Army, not a whole lot of info on that yet so I will let you know more later.

I also will be going to a Humanitarian De-mining Course (also known as the Humanitarian Mine Assistance or HMA) in November and December for 3 week at Ft. Leonard wood, MO. Honestly I have never been there and I hear it is not the most fun place to be, but its only for a few weeks. I will explain this more later but HMA is one of the primary missions we conduct as Civil Affairs in the Central and South America regions.

Thanks for reading.