My dogs are barking, there must be someone around

Well, It's mid-August, and we're well into the dog days of summer. Daytime highs in Baghdad have been reaching a modest 120 to 125 degrees, and, of course, with lots of sweltering summertime sunshine. On the upside, the nights have been getting cooler, dropping to the eighties or so. It's funny, thinking that the mid-to-high eighties would be considered exceedingly "pleasant."
In other news, I think my leave is going to begin on or around the thirtieth of September. That's a little later then I would have initially liked, but there's always an upside. I'll be gone for the better part of October, and when I get back, I'll get infected with a severe case of short-timeritis. Fortunately, it's rarely fatal, and the best cure is coming home, which most doctors prescribe within sixty to seventy-five days of symptoms.
I also recently got recommended for promotion. Like I said some months ago, the Army enlisted promotion system is kind of whacky. I put in a promotion packet, which is kind of a little biography of military and civilian accomplishemts such as education, physical fitness tests, marksmanship and other awards. All of these things are comverted to points. Your personal points are augmented by points from your commander, who assigns a number (sometimes very arbitrarily, I'm sure) of points to you based on how worthy he thinks you are. Lastly, your packet is presented to a promotion board. They also give you points, based on your packet, and either recommend you or disapprove you for promotion. At that point, assuming there was a positive recommendation, the packet is forwarded to the proper order-issuing authority, which is usually the higher major command. In my case, this is the 88th, in Minneapolis. From there, they finalize the packet, and issue promotion orders. After this whole ordeal, you can start wearing the new rank. Hopefully finance got word of the promotion, too, and you start getting paid more. With any luck, my packet should be arriving in Minneapolis any day now, and my orders should be cut by the end of the month. But, this being the United Staes Army, I would be not at all surprised to see myself not getting promoted until December. Merry Christmas!


Album of the week: "Armed Forces" by Elvis Costello and the Attractions