It begins

The man left recently for his tour of journo duty in Afghanistan. He will be happy to hear the first thing I did upon returning from the airport was wash the dishes. It's not a chore to which I gravitate naturally.

I am in much better spirits than I expected, and even his mom was tear-free at the airport. I think it's one of those things we were dreading far more than necessary - really, it's hard to miss him when he hasn't been away that long, so the goodbye wasn't bad at all. The sad will hit later, probably mid-way through the seven-week assignment.

We took care of the serious stuff, like him leaving me a list of passwords (including his facebook password - in case of bad things happening, I will control photo distribution, thank you very much). It's sort of morbid but has to be done. He also gave me orders not to do interviews if something happens. Our careers have at least given us an idea of what to expect in the worst-case scenario.

Anyway. Right now I'm focusing on how exciting this is, and how awesome he is to be 26 and reporting from a war zone. He's quite the guy.