My beautiful sister emily and I snowboarding the day before I left for Iraq

"mother, of course I never do anything dangerous over here"

This is what I do in my off time, two words "spider" "solitaire"

Interesting night last night. I rolled out with two missions, one from 19-23 and the other from 03-07. During the mission brief for the first mission we were told that we had intel that a V.B.I.E.D. (suicide bomber in a car full of explosives) was \operating in our area of operations. We were doing a route recon and at about 22:10 we saw a car. 22 is when curfew starts so we stopped the car. three men were inside and sgt. carter told them to get out of the car. I provided security while the car was searched and then went to search the trunk with sgt. carter. their was some fish in the trunk and a white metal box with a bunch of wires coming out of it. Sgt carter yelled "Oh F**k I.E.D. get away from the car" myself having having had an ied go off about thirty feet from my truck about a month and a half ago, needed no inspiration to get away and sprinted as fast as I could about thirty meters to get behind my truck. The three iraqis were making hand gestures and jabbering and looked about to bolt so me and two others approached the car again yelling at them to get down. We got them on the ground and I stood watch while the other 2 guys grabbed them up one at a time to search for a trigger device or weapons. All three of them were searched and sgt carter and the other guy went to get a closer look at the bomb while I covered the three iraqis. My heart beating a thousand times a minute and had my weapon pointed at the iraqis with a round in the chamber, safety off and my finger on the trigger ready to blast them. I got the iraqis in the kneeling position with their hands behind their heads and told the interpreter that was with us to tell them that if they moved their hands or stood up that I would shoot them. The guys looking at the box saw that it was a battery with wires coming out of it as well as a couple of electrical devices that we wernt sure what they were. Upon talking with the iraqis we discovered that they were fishing and were using the battery and wires to shock the water and kill the fish. After looking through the car again and checking their identity papers we let them go with a warning not to be out past curfew and explained why we did what we did. the rest of the patrol was normal but that was a crazy few minutes. That was the closest I've ever been to shooting someone, but fortunately the situation worked itself out and the guys left with a few bruises but their lives intact.

You ever have a "blond" moment? I had hoped that blond moments would go away the older I got but as I found out last week during operation swarm that they don't...

I was in the turret of my guntruck at about 22-2300ish watching for anyone trying to sneak up on our trucks and kill us all in our sleep. Through my nightvision I saw a bright spot to our northeast that appeared to be moving south. Curfew starts at 22 where I'm at so I figured it was a car that was out and we needed to go check it out. I radioed to my platoon leader and informed him about the car, he told me to continue to observe. As I watched the spot of light grew steadily larger and I got confused as to what kind of car this was turning into. I took off my nightvision to see with my eyes and what do you think I saw... the moon... yes the moon was rising and at first when it was just appearing and I only saw the tip of it I thought it was a vehicle so yeah, I reported the moon but their was no way the moon was going to sneak up on us that night.

We just finished Operation Swarm, the second largest Air Assault mission in the U.S. Armies history. hooah! Not much happened. We were supposed to be out for 2 days to clear an area of Iraq that had alot of insurrgents hanging around.  Some good stories came out of it, no one in my troop was hurt seriously while we were out and we found alot of weapons so all in all it was a good mission. The 2 days turned into 7 so we were out there for a while but now I'm back at wilson so things are back to the normal. However now it is time to go work out and get my "swole" on.