Home Sweet Barracks

Soldiers are very talented at turning wherever they are forced to live into a little piece of home. Everyone has a slightly different idea of what these homey touches should be: One of our merry band has set up a jury-rigged home theater, using his MacBook laptop propped up on a footlocker. We huddle around the 12-inch screen to watch films from a huge library (everything from the Marx Brothers to new releases) contained in a portable hard drive...That's when our $10 folding lawn chairs from the PX come in real handy. Another guy decided that he wouldn't be truly happy until he had slung a hammock (yep, a $15 Wal-Mart special) between support posts, so he can pretend he's in Maui instead of Ft McCoy. I have opted for a 20"x 30" bathroom rug next to my bunk, so I can put my feet down on a comfy surface instead of ice-cold linoleum in the morning. I can't wait to see what sorts of remodel projects happen when the rest of our unit arrives tomorrow. By the way, I had intended to include a couple of photos to illustrate this post, but discovered that since my laptop has the Vista version of Windows, it won't support the software needed to download stuff from my digital camera. ("Thanks a lot, Microsoft!") I'll try to come up with a workaround with my Mac-using colleague's help.