It's raining, it's pouring, the blogger is snoring

It was another busy day and I continue to grow smarter, or at least I know a lot more facts than I did yesterday. Hopefully some of them will be useful over the next year. I'm sure many of them will be. One pass-down point we got from a group ahead of us is that our tent tends to flood when it rains. It rains rarely enough that the ground gets sun-baked and hard, and the rain doesn't have anywhere to go. Many people have been putting their bags on top of their cots when they leave for long periods of time, just in case that happens, although it's been dry since our arrival. Until last night, at about midnight, when we got a mini-thunderstorm. I think I was one of two people in the 30-man tent who did *not* get up and scramble to put their bags somewhere. I decided to risk it and rolled over to go back to sleep. Turns out my gamble paid off, as it was apparently nothing compared to the rain they get in the "rainy season" which just ended. Hopefully I'll be in more permanent digs by the time a real rainstorm arrives. And speaking of thunderstorms, or noisy things overhead, the office where my group works is in the landing pattern for the blackhawk helicopters that fly to and from the base. It's one of the loudest reminders about where we are and the fact that there's a war going on out there, since it's relatively quiet most of the time.