For Christmas, kids, I show you a tiny peek at the future...

Thanks

Thanks, everyone for your kind words and wishes of encouragement for my fiancee and I as we begin the next chapter of our life together. We're both overwhelmed by the outpouring of sentiment from some folks one or both of us have never met, and that means a lot to us. Oh, and if you're wondering, she still hasn't changed her mind. Sorry fellas :)

Operation: Provide XP
The illustrious Mr. Clayton A. Oliver has recently opened the Operation: Provide XP website, and I strongly suggest you get involved. O:PXP is an effort by Clayton to provide troops deployed in Iraq with gaming materials - while it might not be much, these guys are having a helluva year and this sort of thing could mean a lot to them, especially when they're coming from fellow gamers.

Clayton really needs core books, and probably some dice, to send out to these guys, and will be setting up and shipping this stuff on his own nickel. I'm sending him my 1st and 2nd ed Star Wars d20 rulebooks to start, and will be looking for donations from friends for some 3rd ed DnD core books. If you have some core rulebooks from any system mouldering on your shelf, I ask that you consider sharing the gift of our hobby with some men and women doing a very tough job a very long way from home. Thanks.

Christmas comes but once a year
I also will be giving you all a small gift this year for Christmas, via the blog. Be sure to come back on the 24th for the surprise!

The Beginning of the End...

...of my bachelordom, that is. Yes, I got engaged last night to my girlfriend and best friend of over 5 years, Becky. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say, it was cold, romantic, and she said 'yes,' with a certain amount of disbelief that it was actually happening. We'll be having a long engagement, as Project X and just the next year in general work-wise is going to be an intense ride, but we're not worried about time.

Since I don't talk about her much here, let me tell you the best things about Becky:

* She's smart. God, she's smart. Like, microbiologist smart.
* She sings opera.
* She's wonderfully sarcastic.
* She's travelled the world.
* She loves trash TV (America's Next Top Model is a religious experience) and bad comedy (examples from her Xmas DVD wish list - "Team America World Police," "Dodgeball," "Shawn of the Dead," "So I Married an Axe Murderer").
* She has 2 wonderful laughs - a teenager's giggle and a full bodied gut laugh that fills a room. Plus she snorts sometimes when she gets really wound up.
* She's loyal.
* She's ticklish.
* She shouts out answers when watching "Jeopardy!"
* She's the most peaceful sleeper I've ever met.
* She speaks 5 languages (English, French, Spanish, Portugese and Italian).
* She can sing in 6 languages.
* She has a wonderful generousity of spirit and honesty that's truly infectious.
* She gets excited at the littlest things.
* She doesn't see how much other people appreciate her.
* She's got the best Evil Eye I've ever encountered.
* She loves my friends as much as I do.
* She's a nerd (video game nerd, but a nerd nonetheless).
* She accepts me - and for that matter everyone - for who I/they am/are.
* She tolerates weekly game night, with accompanying juvenile humor and farting.
* She tolerates my career as a writer and recognizes my passion for my work.
* She has made me a better man in every way I can think of.

And she's letting me marry her. That's crazy.

My wife-to-be (she's the one on the left). I still say she's nuts for letting me marry her, but she won't listen.

Ghosts of the Past

Hello, faithful blogsters. No, I'm not actually referring to myself (though I've not updated in far too long - damn you 2.0!). Thanks to Clayton Oliver's very thoughtful gesture of sending Spycraft books to troops in the Middle East, I'm thinking about the Coalition troops stuck over there in Iraq, and the whole damn situation. While reading up on the history of Russian Spetsnaz forces for some personal research, the ghost of the past came out and bit me in the ass, from an excerpt from "The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost," written by none other than the Russian General Staff and translated by Lester W. Grau and Michael A. Gress.

The topic was the nature of the Soviet handling of the civil war following the failed attempt to establish a Communist client state in the region, but if you are to replace the word "Soviet" with "Coalition," "Brezshnev" with "Bush," and references to Afghanistan with Iraq, you have a haunting picture of the future of the Coalition campaign:

"The obvious models for intervention were Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. These models served the Soviet General Staff as planning guides. General Pavlovskiy, the Chief of Soviet Ground Forces, who commanded the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, led a group of 50 Soviet officers on a lengthy planning reconnaissance throughout Afghanistan during August through October 1979. However, the general staff planners failed to note that Afghanistan was involved in a civil war and that a coup de main would only seize control of the central government, not the countryside."

"Although the units of the 40th Army were briefed at the last minute, the Soviet 1979 Christmas Eve invasion was masterfully planned and well executed. The Soviets seized the government, killed the president, and installed their own man in his place. Apparently, the Soviet plan was to stabilize the situation, strengthen the army, and then withdraw the bulk of Soviet forces within three years. The Soviet General Staff intended to leave all fighting to the armed forces of the DRA. However, Afghanistan was in full rebellion, the demoralized DRA army was unable to cope, and the probability of a defeat following a Soviet withdrawal haunted the Soviet Politburo."

"Invasion and overthrow of the government proved the easy part. Now the Soviet 40th Army found itself drawn into fighting hundreds of guerrilla groups throughout the country. The 40th Army's instincts were to fight the war that they had trained for, using large-scale, high-tempo operations. But the war was actually fought at the low end of the tactical spectrum where platoon leaders tried to find and fight small, indigenous forces that would stand and fight only when the terrain and circumstances were to their advantage."

Scary, ain't it? And with a little help from outside forces, Afghanistan is what broke the back (and bank) of the Soviet Union. And all for invading one little, dusty country for ill-planned reasons with no plan for withdrawal. We've managed to make every one of these same mistakes, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. All they have to do to win the wars there is not lose - they don't have to worry about political cost, or manpower, or building alliances. All they have to do is hang on and wait.

Well, that's it for my cheery update. I'll post something more joyous as Xmas approaches.