Nicest Guy You'll Ever Meet

Two funny, but somewhat inappropriate events happened today. First, one of the guys in my office is heading home. He's a contracting officer and has been here about 7 months or so (he claims 9, but we know the truth). If you don't know what a contracting officer does, they basically buy goods and service from local providers. They essentially establish contracts between companies and the government. They build pretty good relationships with the contractors who provide those goods and services, so one of them wanted to buy a cake for the office as a way to say farewell.

That all seemed pretty normal to me until the time came for the contracting officer to say his farewell remarks. He said all the normal stuff and he's really looking forward to seeing his kids. Out of nowhere, the contractor who bought the cake grabs him in a bear hug and begins to cry. At first, I figured he had to be joking, because I've never seen this type of emotion for a deployment farewell. The rest of us looked at each other dumbfounded not knowing what to say or do. Lucky for me, they gave me a phone with a camera.

Little did I realize, that the contracts that had been awarded to this guy weren't just good for business, but they were life changing. There is a lot of money in government contracts. I can only imagine what the last year of business has done to his way of life. Not sure it's worth crying over, but it made for a good picture.

The second story occurred at my house. My housemate was talking to me and it sounded like he had cotton balls in his mouth. I asked if he was ok and he said he bit his tongue earlier yesterday and had some gauze in his mouth because of that. He was standing next to a local guy I didn't know whom I looked at and said 'you know how he bit his tongue don't you?' He said no and I promptly made the universal symbol of the BJ. He looked at my housemate and said 'really?' We laughed out loud, which made the local guy a little uncomfortable. I'm sure its now the inside joke between my housemate and I, but I probably won't use any more dirty jokes with the locals.