days of our lives

Well, it's been a while since my last post. A lot has happened since that time. Although Ground Hog Day has pasted and Punxsutawney Phil has predicted another six weeks of winter we have our own Balad version of that little rodent and he has said there will be 160 days of our "winter" left. While we are stuck in the never ending ground hog day we do have our own little bit of drama that's going on here. How could there really be any drama in our little sand globe you ask? Well, let me tell you.
There are rules here. Yes I know that is hard to believe but there are rules and some are mandated from the company level and some come from the general himself. The later are the ones you really do not want to violate. One of such rules(orders) is "thou shalt not drink any alcohol". Not just by those who are under 21 but against ALL from alcohol consumption. Yea, it's a "dry county" out here. It's for good reason. You can't have kids hung over going out on missions trying to clear a road that's full of IEDs. Know what I mean?
The desire seems to be in every high school or college kid to obtain and drink alcohol, lots of alcohol. It happens in EVERY secular school. It happens, probably, in every private school, yes that means you send your kid to Liberty U and he/she is probably trying to score some hooch. Now let me define "hooch". I know in today's world there's actually a second meaning to the word. The younger people might be thinking one thing while the older peeps may be thinking it's another. The "hooch" I am talking about is bootlegged alcohol. So what do you do if you don't really have anyone to buy alcohol from? You brew your own. So a couple of people decided to start brewing their own hooch. Well they brewed their hooch, partied, and had their fun. From what I was told they really did have their "fun" but were later caught and most of them got into a lot of trouble. Oh, what kids will do when challenged. Challenged with the desire but no alcohol. On one hand you have to give them credit, they recognized something that they were lacking, brainstormed, and came up with a solution. Great problem solving skills. AND some pretty good brewing skills if they made hooch that was good enough to drink.
It happened, they were caught and rightfully punished but the good thing is they all learned a valuable lesson from this. I am being serious about this, they really did learn a lesson. They learned that if you are going to choose to do something that goes against the rules/laws then be willing to take the punishment. They took their punishment, which was quite stern (but fair), and moved on.
I think that is the problem with today's society, most of the people do not want to take responsibility for what they have done. It's always someone else's fault. Bernard Goldberg gives mention to this in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, see #71. We as a society need to own up to the mistakes that we make. Stop blaming our parents or friends or the government. It's not their fault! Yes those can have a negative effect on us and they can leave scars but it is us who make the decision to do what is right or what is wrong.
This was not supposed to be a soap box for my venting about owning up to your actions but I just kind of went with it as I was thinking about these people who recently got into trouble. They are good people who did what a lot of people their age would do and got caught. I am just proud of them that none of them (at least not to my knowledge) tried to lie and get out of it. Which was good for them because they would have received worse punishment had they lied (the truth was known even before they were questioned).
As you see we have our own little drama(s) going on here. This is a good group of people to be with. They are working really hard and doing an excellent job. There's a lot of stress from the war and being so far away from our family but they are hanging in there and keeping their spirits high. Our soldiers should be proud of what they are doing and if that was the worse that happens out here then we should be so lucky.