UPDATE: still near Lebanon. its getting quite boring now...

bought a replecment cord for my electric razor today. the powercord for my laptop was delivered to the house and should be on its way, whenever mother sends it out...

got a VERTREP in a couple hours. rumors have it theres 30 or so pallets coming, mostly food and tons of mail. thats good. i could use some mail. outgoing mail will go today too.

the fighting in Isreal/Lebanon is more fierce then ever. each side is threating to demolish everything the other side stands for. rockets and bullet rounds flying everywhere. and it looks as if more countries will soon be involved...
crazy stuff in the states too. protests and riots all over. angry people and hurt people and people who dont really care. businesses scheming and scams being carried out. hot triple digit weather and pollution "contributing" to the earth. scary stuff really.

the judgicial system tried a lady who pleaded she was insane when she drowned each of her 5 kids one by one in the bath tub. her first trial they found her guilty of murder. now for her second trial the jury found her not guilty for reason of temporary insanity.
wow.
so she was sent to a mental rehab for life. and the thing that gets me is the husband and her mother and father acted like it wasnt that big of a deal. they said "it was what they had wished for".

sick mo fos out there.

what has this world come to.

well the 23rd marked the last day of evacuating. we took 529 Americans out of Lebanon to Cyprus. they were all very, very thankful for what we did.
the ship has gotten a lot of press time, though it has died down a little bit. but it was really cool to be on the news. it was not only good for us, but for America and its military as well.

now we are off the coast of southern Lebanon on standby in case any more evacuating needs to be done. it doesnt look like we will be needed, but you never know.

day TWO of evacuating.

yesterday we transited back to Lebanon, and took on 1156 more people. it was chaos through-out the ship. every little open space was occupied with a sleeping person. our berthing was one of the lucky ones that wasnt converted to a civilian berthing, but we still let six or so people come and sleep in our tiny lounge area, where there is a couch and a couple mattresses we supplied. it may not have been much, but to those six people it was everything they ever wanted.

right now we are back in Cyprus, and offloading all the baggage and civilians we took on. in a few hours we will set sail again, and back to Lebanon to rescue more Americans.

even though i have gotten a total of maybe 10 hours of sleep these past two days, and have been working three times as hard i normally do, i am still filled with pride and feel like i have done something to change the world. i dont know any of the people we bring aboard, but it really means a lot to me to be helping them out. even if its just showing someone where the head is, i feel good about what we are doing as a command, and i am proud to say i am in the US Navy serving onboard USS Nashville.

well well.


again i have the chance to tell stories.

almost two months in and we've done a lot. to start where i left off from last time...
after Greece we went to Jorden and dropped the Marines off so they could do their stuff. then we transited down to the Red Sea, patrolled around and queried merchant ships. our main goal was to weed out the smugglers and pirates. we didnt come across any, so thats good.

a week or so into it, we got the news about Isreal attacking Lebanon, and about all the Americans that were in the war zone.

then just a couple days ago, we got the message to transit up to Beyruit, Lebanon to help in the evacution of Americans from the area. we turned around, picked up the Marines, headed north, and thursday morning we pulled up to the coast of Beyruit. we launched our LCU, and all day she went back and forth from the beach and our well deck, filled with civilians. at the end of the day, we had evacuated 1052 people.
we then transited up to Cypress, and here i am now. at this moment we are working to get the evacuees off the ship and onto shore to saftey. after all this is done we plan to stock up on some food and supplies, and head back out to Lebanon for more evacuating.

this whole thing is a lot of work, but its really cool. i feel like i am actually doing something that really matters. theres a ton of media coverage of the ship and crew, since we are the firt US ship to aid in the evacuating. CNN sent some reporters to stay on the ship through the whole ordeal, for interviews and in-depth coverage. its very bad ass. we are definetly making history!

i can rest easy tonight...

here i am, here i be.
i was in Souda Bay, Crete (Greece). we pulled in wednesday.

its really nice there.

friday i did a COMREL project. we painted a few rooms at a nursing home. that was pretty cool; after the work was done the cooks made us all lunch, damn was it good greek food.

that was the only time i went out in town though. mainly relaxed on the ship otherwise. we had a "beer on the pier" event each day we were there. im not much for beer so i didnt drink, but i went to the gathering anyway. fun times.

we had some liberty incidents unfortunetly, causing the captain to change the liberty hours. that sucked. hopfully people will have more common sense at later ports.

while transitting to the Suez Canal one of the ships was doing flight operations with their Harrier jets, and one went down over the water near the ship. so that caused the whole strike group to stop all operations and hover around for any emergency help that may be needed. well, the ship managed to get the pilots out and safe and was able to salvage the jet.
we started our Suez Canal transit on the 4th of July. 18 hours of hot, slow, narrow transitting...oh what fun. it was cool to see the difference in terrain between Egypt and Saudi Arbia. very interesting.

so now we are transitting along to our next operating area. its sure to be hot, so ill be inside the skin of the ship most the time.

good old AC....