A rare night without much homework so I thought I would update the blog. It would be nice to get a post in here from everyone before the end of the year.

I am now in the fifth week of my school here. The subjects of my studies so far have been national security strategy, military history, force management, media interaction, and studies in leadership. We move on to other things after the Christmas break. There are 48 students broken into 4 small groups of 16 each. There is very little interaction with the other small groups, and the instructors come to your "home room" vice us rotating everywhere. So you get to know the other 15 students really well and there is always lots of good discussion. Some of my peers here: helo pilot, public affairs officer, theater logistician, vascular surgeon, allergist, RN, combat engineer, Catholic priest, intel officer, PA, Info Systems, etc. So there is lot to learn from a wide variety of experience. The school is very well done. It should be. It is based on the same model they have been doing for over 100 years. Lot of reading and a little bit of writing. But, it is certainly less demanding than NPS.

I live in a hotel room which thankfully is equipped with a 40 inch LCD with some HDMI inputs. When I get free time I am able to play with my PS3 and 360. I get all my football games through Slingbox. All in all, I really cannot complain. They authorized me a rental car for the entire period and I get per diem for weekends. During the week I just eat at the chow hall. Usually for breakfast I snag a banana and yogurt from the hotel lobby on my way back form my morning run. I have been running 6 mornings a week and going to the gym Wed-Sat afternoons. It is a good rotation and I am feeling great physically right now.

For Thanksgiving I drove over to Fort Benning to visit some good friends. I spent a morning down at Fort Benning and even took time to run one of the old routes from OCS and Airborne school days. I got to see Jon Peterson who is now working at the Ranger Regiment. He and his wife stopped by Mom and Dad's house a couple of Decembers ago. After that visit they had a baby girl, he went to Afghanistan and commanded a company in the valley where Restrepo was filmed, and then finally got back to see his one-year old girl. It was good to see him back safe and doing so well with his career. I also found out two other LTs who worked for me are headed to the Ranger battalion at Fort Lewis. It is good to see success in those you mentored and led.

I fly home next Saturday (17th) for Christmas break. I am going to drive up to Greenville-Spartanburg, SC so that I can fly Southwest. I will just leave my rental in long term parking which is only 25 bucks a week (San Jose was 25 a day!). I come back January 3rd, Brooke visits mid-Feb and then I am finally reporting to my job at Fort Lewis on March 8th.

Anyway, that's about all I've got. Again, everyone please report in!