Blue

It'll be great to see the little guy again!


Blue catching his breath after playing ball.



Aren't I just adorable?!



And I'm famous!

Government Construction Contracting Dictionary

This seems very true many days!


**CONTRACTOR -- A gambler who never gets to shuffle, cut or deal.


**BID OPENING -- A poker game in which the losing hand wins.


**BID -- A wild guess carried out to two decimal places.


**LOW BIDDER -- A contractor who is wondering what he left out of his
bid.


**ENGINEER'S ESTIMATE -- The cost of construction in heaven. (Billy does a great job at these!)


**PROJECT MANAGER -- The conductor of an orchestra in which every
musician is in a different union. (Would herding cats fit into this category as well?! :-)


**CRITICAL PATH METHOD - A management technique for losing your shirt
under perfect control.


**OSHA -- A protective coating made by half-baking a mixture of fine
print, red tape, split hairs and baloney -- usually applied at random with a
shotgun.


**STRIKE -- An effort to increase egg production by strangling the
chicken.


**DELAYED PAYMENT -- A tourniquet applied at the pockets.


**COMPLETION DATE -- The point at which liquidated damages begin. (In Afghanistan, this is a synonm for a wild ass guess.)


**LIQUIDATED DAMAGES -- A penalty for failing to achieve the
impossible. (Absolutely, or it's something we don't enforce heavily because cash flow then becaomes an issue for the smaller Afghan firms and we end up with even less progress.)


**AUDITOR -- People who go in after the war is lost and bayonet the
wounded. (Or walk contractors through the termination for convenience process step by step so they can get money the contractor is already entitled to - so basically doing their job so we can get it off our books!)


**LAWYER -- People who go in after the auditors and strip the bodies. (Here it's about see all the grey that exists between the black and white.)

Cleaning the Lights

Women of Qalaa House

We did photos of the "Women of Qalaa House."

Sai (below) is a PM with the ANP group. She's the one who organized the photos. Sai and Dani sit next to each other.

Below is a photo of the NWD group currently deployed in Qalaa.