Today is my active duty anniversary.  Four years ago, I became an Active Duty U.S. Army Chaplain.

Of course,  I was a National Guard Field Artillery Officer from 1992-2000.  But, I went on active duty at Fort Jackson, SC on January 5, 2005.  That was 48 months ago.

Over those 48 months my life has changed drastically.  I have spent 33 of those away from my family–2 for training, 6 for the girls hospitalization and rehabilitation, 2 for the Officer Basic Course, 2 for moving and 21 (between 2 separate tours) deployed.

We have added three kids to the family.  Two girls and a boy. The family has moved twice. I have moved 6 times.

I have been in two wonderful units–one Aviation and the other Engineer.

I have become a blogger.  I have had 10,000 hits on one of my blogs (this one) and 7900 hits on comicbookday.com.  955 of those hits have been on a post I wrote called “I can’t stand to fly”.

I became a comic book fan since I went on active duty. I have grown a comic book collection of over an estimated 2500 comic books. (we’ll be getting a better total when I go home on leave.)

So, when I look back–I know I am probably missing something huge–I’ll here about it later, I’m sure.  But, when I look back, I see that all in all–it has been challenging and rewarding.  I look forward to the next four years–what will it bring?

I was reading in National Geographic the other day, a recent article about light pollution.

I have always known it was a problem near the cities in the U.S.  It was able to see more stars at night in the mountains where I spent several summers.  But, I don’t believe I was ever seen the stars as bright as I have here in Iraq.

At FOB Hammer–there was always a problem with dust or air pollution blotting out the stars at night.  Here in the city–there is plenty of sky.  I will admit that we have many outside lights out here.  I have to walk away to see the stars clearly.  But, i can see more stars here than I ever could in South Carolina.

It is a beautiful sight.

In America, we need to take more steps to reduce our outside lighting.  Some are necessary.  Some other spades of lighting could be use to disipate the lights more.  Mainy of the office building lights need to be turned off at night anyway to save electricity.

I believe that we need the night as free of artificial light as possible.  Not only will it improve our stargazing, but it will improve our sleep as well.

I started off my new year with 10,000 hits to this blog.

This is exciting for me because I really haven’t done much to promote of network after I hit the ground here in Iraq.  I was once asked to do a guest blog on blogging in Iraq–which I am still interested in doing, but I haven’t had time to focus on blogging at all.  This is actually one of the issues that I would address, if I did go back and write on that topic. While I enjoy hearing from people and building readership, I have a focus and that is on my calling to the American Soldier.  This keep me busy enough.

Thank you for reading.  I think 2009 will give us much more to talk about, so feel free to drop a comment or two–I love to read them, even though I get behind frequently in responding.

Happy New Year from Iraq!!