Silflay Hraka

How to clean a shark.

is a fool’s delusion. John Tierney says as much, but he’s nicer about it than I usually am.

or, at least what was known as Texasgulf in the halcyon days of my youth, is pulling 68 million gallons of water a day from the Castle Hayne aquifer under Aurora without depleting the resource. Most of it is never used.

“Some of that water is used in our chemical plant, but most is pumped into a canal which leads to the river,” he said. “I assume most of that water ends up in the Pamlico Sound. If we didn’t locally depressurize the aquifer, water could burst through the surface and flood us out.”

It’s pretty hard water, but I’m still thinking “build a pipeline to the Triangle and Triad, then turn on the flow whenever those areas go into severe drought status.”

The latest from LTC Bob, in an email he sent to a school class that had sent his unit some posters and drawings.

Dear Class-

Thanks for the great poster and the book of pictures that you sent me. I have shared them with the rest of the Engineers here in Baghdad. We really like them. We have Soldiers from the US Army, Sailors from the US Navy, Airmen from the US Air Force and Marines from the US Marine Corps working here, and we have some civilians and contractors helping us, too.

We do lots of different things here in Iraq, like build roads and bridges, help the Iraqi Army, and try to help the Iraqi People make their country better. I sent you four pictures and also a map of Iraq for you to see. The first picture is of me standing by a US Army helicopter.

The second and third ones are pictures of Iraqi farmer’s houses in the south-central part of the country. You can see goats, turkeys, sheep and cows in some of them.

The last picture is a Polish helicopter – some of the soldiers here are from Poland and they are helping us.

I hope you have are having a good school year.

Take care-

LTC Bob

found that they were down a person Saturday night, so I was pressed into service on short notice as the gibbering crazy who escapes from a jail cell to press the group on down the trail. All we had in the house was vaseline, cornstarch, and food coloring, but it turned out ok given the inherent limitations of the medium.

Needs more around the eyes, but as I spent most of my time in the dark, no one really noticed. Certainly the black ladies and teenage girls shrieked as if they had not.

I scared Scotty M. so badly when I came down the stairs that he sat in silence for two whole minutes, then burst into tears.

G.I.Joe

“When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machine gun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire.”

The hill had held, because on the hill remained the minimum number of able-bodied United States Marines necessary to hold the position.

saw her first comet tonight…Holmes.

Uncle Jawbreaker has reproduced. Ryan Alexander; 8 pounds, 20 inches.

The more that are recognized, the bigger the geek.