The Official Blog of Rob Smith

Last weekend I went to East Side restaurant in New Britain with some of my friends. For those who don’t know, East Side is a German restaurant who advertises extensively on billboards in the area. They’re well known for their beer, along with their atmosphere, and their German cuisine.
In the days leading up to [...]

Yesterday we went to the New York Mets game. I went to Jim and Michelle’s house around 3pm, then Perrotti, Kohanski, and Laura arrived soon after and we left. The ride there was good until we reached the outskirts of the city, when the traffic got bad. Still, we arrived at the stadium at least [...]

Yesterday I went to the beach, and now my fair skin is absolutely ravaged by sunburn, stemming from uneven, non-comprehensive sunscreen application. I’ve got another beach trip coming up on Friday so I will have to be cautious. I’ll likely be already peeling by then. I’ll need to do a better job applying sunscreen, or [...]

So, plenty has happened since I last posted. The main highlight was the ceremony in Massachusetts when our unit was dismissed to go home. The police escort was probably 20 cruisers, some motorcycles, and the state police helicopter (the brother of someone in the unit is the pilot) and they met us halfway through CT [...]

Tonight is the last night of the deployment. All we have left is turning in our barracks and the van Fort Dix let us use, then a bus ride back to western Massachusetts through a lot of traffic. We will have police escorts through Connecticut and Massachusetts so that part of the trip should go [...]

Remember that my family will be throwing me a big party in Hebron on July 17th, beginning at 2pm. Everyone from TicketNetwork, all friends, and www.therobsmith.com readers are invited. I think I will also be making an appearance at some other area parties in the days and weeks after I arrive home on July 2nd. [...]

So we’ve been pretty busy over the last few days. Getting an entire National Guard unit transferred from active-duty status back to National Guard status is very complicated. There is lots of paperwork having to do with accrued leave, finance, then other tasks having to do with logistics, travel arrangements, etc. Some tasks need to [...]

First, on the U.S. soccer goal that was taken away – I think it’s unbelievable that a ref is able to make such a big call and not be required to tell the players, coaches, or media which player the foul was called against. To this day no one except him knows who committed the [...]

So I am back at Fort Dix. It’s a pretty surreal feeling being here again and knowing that our deployment is all over. I got here yesterday around 12pm after two days of nonstop travel. Today I woke up around 3am, and I’m reminded of the jetlag I had while I was home on leave. [...]

I will officially never set foot in Iraq again (unless something unforeseen happens). The two people I’m traveling with and I were very lucky to get routed directly to Kuwait from our base, without having to make the planned stop at another base in between. If we had made the planned stop it would have [...]