Back from Iraq

Hi all-

Just wanted to drop you a line and let you know I'm back from Iraq. A lot of you getting this email probably have no idea who I am -- sorry for that. Gmail automatically captures the address of anyone with whom you send or receive, which has left me with an address book that's far too large to manage. In my laziness, I'm just sending to all...

I'm currently demobilizing at Fort Leavenworth, and will be returning home to Charlottesville soon. Yes, for now, Charlottesville will be home. Zenia has one more semester of course work on the PhD, and I didn't make it back in time for UGA's semester anyway, so we'll be there at least until summer. After that, who knows? For now, I'm job hunting. We're still planning on finishing out the PhDs -- either at UGA, UVA or a player to be named later -- but for the right jobs we might put it off or walk away from it.

If you're curious, this article has a little about what I've done the last 8 months: http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/iraq/2007/11/30/the-pentagon-deploys-social-scientists-to-help-understand-iraqs-human-terrain.html

So that's it here. Thanks, all of you, for your thoughts and prayers, messages and care packages. They all meant a lot. It's been a really rough time for both of us, and we're still dealing with parts of it, but we're looking forward to a new start together. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, this is a brief intro to what Zenia's been going through, and what we're still dealing with as we try to repair what they did to her clearance: http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4586. The issues I dealt with in Iraq are something separate, and took a lot out of me in their own ways, but not in any way that will have an enduring impact on me.)


Well, I hope that this finds you all well, and I'll talk to you sometime!

cheers,

Matt.