Today was a banner day for me here in Iraq. I just got an internet connection installed in my CHU and I got a mattress to sleep on. I had been waiting hours for 20 minutes on a public connection and had been sleeping on plywood covered with a thin "therma-rest" type camping mattress. Let's here it for progress!

Now that I have a connection in my room I highly recommend that those of you who do not have Yahoo or AOL instant messenger go ahead and get that service. Its free and will be the best way for me to chat with you. My screen name is rotoravi8r on AOL and on Yahoo. I am 7-8 hours ahead of most of you.

The past few days have been relative quiet here for me. I hitched a ride on a recent flight as a passenger just to see what the flying environment is like. We flew all over northern Iraq without incident. Bagdad is really cool looking from the air with night vision goggles. The goggles keep you from really seeing the destruction so the city appears to be quite beautiful. I hope to be in the pilot seat soon. The guys who have started flying are flying a lot and I expect to get a lot of hours as well.

I am getting used to the routine and to my accomodations. I will send pictures in the next few days.