. . .

It's been kind of a weird month. One of my classmates from OBC died at the beginning of November when an IED hit her HMMWV. I haven't mentioned it before because it felt too much like jumping on the band wagon. She was a very nice woman, and we got along, but we didn't keep in touch after OBC except by staying facebook friends, so I didn't want to write about her death and have people tell me they were sorry when her real friends, the ones that kept in touch, were the ones actually dealing with her death (it was one of those friends that made sure the whole class knew and then others forwarded the funeral/services information). It was just such a surprise to hear - according to one of the other platoon leaders, only about three or four female officers have died in Iraq. I think my parents are more affected by her death than I am because it brings it closer to home for them since it's someone I knew. I can be very unemotional at times (we had briefly talked about trading duty stations with except she didn't want Carson; she ended up talking branch into switching her from Ft. Story to Ft. Campbell because Story had too many officers as it was). A little over a week later, our Battalion Commander announced the good news that there hadn't been any coalition losses for a week. Unfortunately, it was already too late for her.

I also found out that one of my favorite professors (actually, one of the two professors that inspired me to want to be an English professor) was going to have an extensive surgery. It was scheduled for yesterday but I haven't heard anything yet. Somebody told me it was rather routine, but any surgery that could last more than five hours sounds pretty scary to me. Hopefully, I'll get some news soon but I'm sure my mom would have let me know something by now if it had been bad (no news is good news, right?) - her bosses are my professor's neighbors.