Halpin at large: Dec. 20, 2007

About this blog: Michelle Halpin, Solano Magazine's production manager at large, is a public affairs broadcast journalist, currently deployed to Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, which is headquartered at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti. A member of the 69th Public Affairs Detachment, a California National Guard unit in Fairfield, Calif., she is currently attached to and deployed with the 131st Mobile Public Affairs Detachment out of Mobile, Alabama; she left in March 2007 and is scheduled to be back in the U.S. in early summer 2008. Halpin says, "So far on this deployment, I've bounced from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to Tampa, Florida, to Atlanta, Georgia, back to Tampa, Florida, to Qatar, to Djibouti, and to..."

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December 20, 2007

CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti -- Not much time to write today as I'm in training all day and am on a quickie lunch break. However, I couldn't wait another minute to mention the mother of all care packages to be addressed to arrive here at Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa Public Affairs.

I've received a handful of truly awesome care packages since I've been here, but this truly left everyone in the neighboring offices as stunned as mine. I should first mention that some of the wonderful care packages that have arrived here addressed to me and others were sent by Solano Magazine and a group called Treats for Troops, a soroptomist group over in Manteca -- and were truly fantastic.

However, in a very roundabout way, my name was given to a group called Operation Care & Comfort out of San Jose (2731 North First St., 95134). And let me tell you, Julia DeMaria over there HOOKED US UP!! Over two days, we received two packages, which contained a ridiculous number of individually packaged care packages and random awesome stuff. Hand-sewn hats, socks, girl scout cookies, Starbucks coffee, an obviously expensive NFL football (which caused my two dear North Carolina groupies here to go absolutely bananas), hand warmers, snacks, personal letters of thanks and encouragement, actual reply addresses, comic books, beef jerky (the most awesome I've ever had and never heard of made by The Jerky Guy), Cup O'Noodles, and on and on and on. The mailing labels said it cost over $70 to get here!

I've been giving stuff to some of the Marines here from the 3rd Low Altitude Air Defense Battalion out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., and will probably have a bunch of the packages that were inside the boxes sent to some of our folks in more rural areas of Djibouti and that are in some of the other countries here in Africa.

Well time to go back to training. Just had to mention this as it was better than Christmas when this stuff arrived. Also, many thanks to my husband's Navy Reserve unit (an Inshore Boat Unit whose exact name I can't remember this second since they just renamed the unit) over in Alameda for helping Operation Care and Comfort get all those boxes to the post office! (how my name got put on the list). Also thanks to Solano Magazine for the wonderful care package with the December/January issue inside that got a little overshadowed by the OCC's packages that arrived about the same time.

Read her previous entry...

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