Day 91 - Benchmark 2

If you've been following the blog, you'll know that I have set some benchmarks for myself. That is, things that happen on this deployment that are out of my control and are set only by the passing of the calendar. Benchmark 1 was my arrival in Kuwait. Benchmark 2 has been successfully completed. Today is the 91st Day I have been on orders. By successfully completing 90 days on orders this side of 9/11 I now qualify for the new GI Bill. As a National Guardsman I may not get the full amount, in fact I've heard they may be only paying 60% to us, but I think I should be getting; $792 a month for having deployed to Iraq, 60% of $1,000 a year for books, 60% of housing allowance based on a E5 with 12 years; the full amount is about $550 a month, and the North Dakota Guard should pay my full tuition and fees through a doctoral degree, if I choose to go that far with my schooling. Plus, my monthly drill pay is just over $300 a month, so as a full time student I'll make about 2/3's of what I did working full time for the Guard. One of life's little ironies; I had to leave home to come here so I can go home to start over. Oh well, others have fared fairly well after wandering through the desert for a time. I had practice tonight with the Band I play with in church. I'm not all that good, but they're just so happy to have a keyboard player they're willing to put up with my poor playing. I heard an interesting story this afternoon. When our people went to the Camp Post office today to pick up the mail, there was hardly anything there. They were told that the mail truck in the States had been accidently misrouted and ended up on a ship instead of being loaded on a plane. The best guess given for a delivery time was 'somewhere around 30 days'. Hopefully this doesn't happen too often. I guess the US Postal system delivers through rain, snow, sleet, and dead of night, they just take their own sweet time getting it there.