Things look up if only for a moment.

Once the Marines left Al Asad things started to get different, to calm down. L-Word and I fell into a sort of rhythm with work – I would wake early and run or work out while he slept in. At around 1130 in the morning we’d show up for work and rather than do work we’d drive off to lunch. Back by 1 if we’d managed to find something decent to eat, the two of us would work for approximately half an hour and by that point I would succumb to boredom and notify L-Word that I’d be headed back to my room. There I watched TV shows, movies, listened to music, played video games, and killed time until 4 in the afternoon. Around 4 I’d go for a run or, that’s right, work out. Later we would go eat dinner. It would go on like this for weeks, sporadically interrupted with assignments from L-Word’s company (I was merely attached to his unit) or the necessity of a source meeting. These events would happen, as according to the schedule we devised, as infrequently as possible. Life was good, and it was well deserved – a miniature vacation for the last two months of a meaningless deployment.