Greetings!

Welcome to my new Iraq blog. After seeing a few members of my residency build blogs where they chronicled their deployments, and recognizing my poor record when it comes to regular letter writing, I figured this might be a good way to help me keep friends and family informed of how things are going overseas. I'm going to try to put up posts on a semi-regular basis so that everyone can know what I'm thinking, what's going on, and how things are going. If you've got any questions about what I'm up to or how things on deployment work, feel free to email me and I'll see if I can't explain it for everybody.
At the moment, the "Sean in Iraq" title is a bit of a misnomer, as this first post is being written from St. Louis. I was scheduled to fly out at 12:30 today to eventually meet up with my unit in Ft. Bragg. But, the trip's already off to an inauspicious start. The government bureaucrat in charge of arranging my deployment travel only did half of their job. A reservation for my flight was made, but the flight was never "funded" or paid for, so I had an empty reservation without an official ticket. This error was compounded by a trainee clerk at the Delta check-in desk, who didn't recognize that the ticket wasn't paid for and issued me my boarding pass anyways. The problem wasn't picked up until I attempted to board the plane, when the "friendly" (and I use the term loosely) gate attendant turned me away. So, end result, my duffel bag flew on the scheduled flight to Atlanta and will hopefully end up at Ft. Bragg, but I'm still here at Lambert Field. Carson Wagonlit (the government travel agency) is still floundering attempting to get my ticket funded as I sit and wait.
In the meantime, I'm hanging out here at the USO, which is new to me, but pretty darn cool. They've got a place with free coffee and snacks, a computer lab, a TV-viewing area, free wireless, and even a couple of random guitars sitting around that you can pick up and play while you wait. On the whole, a handy and much appreciated service to provide to our nation's soldiers. I'm able to sit down, plug in my laptop, and type on this while I wait for the travel agents and government travel office to get their act together.
So, in summary, welcome to my blog. Hopefully, more posts will be coming soon, and hopefully none of them will be written from the St. Louis airport.