The Alamo (Fwd) is almost finished

It is now the final day of the project. I will have to have it done by tomorrow morning. It is starting to look GREAT and I am happy and sad at the same time. It is kind of like seeing your kid go off to college. You are glad he is gone but you miss him. I finally got the electrical part of it set up. It is not up to code as of yet, but, it will be once my breaker panel arrives. I had a friend of mine pick me up an outdoor panel from home and mail it to me. For now, the entire system is running on an extension cord or two. I still have to hook up the wall outlets and the light in the storage room. Once that is done, I am going to put in the insulation and put on the outside walls and that will be the end of the project.

The Facade is done. The "T" patch, which is what we ware on our shoulder to identify what unit we are with, is made of 3/4 inch ply wood with the actually "T" being cut out of 1/2 inch ply wood and secured to the background. And the letters are cut out of 1/2 inch ply wood and individually secured to the silhouette with finishing nails.


I am looking forward to starting the next project. It appears that I am going to be going down range to build an office for one of the teams that is currently living in tents and have no place to do their work. It is a newly established Forward Operating Base (FOB).

Of course, this one will not be anything more than an office building so it is going to be pretty straight forward. 4 outer walls, a few inner walls and a hallway. Hope fully it is not going to interfere with my leave dates. I hope to be done with it before I get to go home on leave. I would hate to leave it half finished and have to return to it a month later. But, sometimes that is just how it has to be.

The sad thing is, that once I get back from leave, I will have only a few weeks to go, before the deployment ends all together. I still have not decided if I want to stay and help the next unit with their transition or if I am just going to go home with my unit and retire. It is another tough choice, since I have been in the military for almost 22 years now and have grown to like it. Retired, WOW, damn, I am getting old. Never thought that would happen. Honestly never really thought I would live long enough to say, "I am retired." Kind of scary.