As I mentioned in a recent post, I skipped out on the West Michigan Day of .NET to attend a “welcome home” party for my friend Wil.  Wil has spent the last 7 months in Iraq — primarily in the Fallujah area and documented some of it on his blog.

The party was a pretty small gathering of friends and family at his mom’s house just a few miles from where I live.  After several email exchanges over the past few months, I finally got to meet Wil’s fiance.  She’s definitely a special person if she can put up with his BS.

It was interesting hearing first hand accounts of life in Iraq and seeing some of his pictures, but for me, the high point was a debate between Wil, myself and another guy named Mike about how sucky Star Wars episodes I, II and III were.  I hated all 3, but Wil put up some arguments (all BS in my book of course) for them.

At some point, the final hardcore group made our way back to a small park on his mom’s property, started a fire and spent a few hours BS’ing and drinking.  My wife went to school (of course, in our day, the school didn’t have a website) with Wil and I so there was some reminiscing, mainly about some of our high school exploits and one of Wil’s ex-girlfriends.

Overall, it was a good time and I’m glad he’s home.  He’s got 4 more years before he can retire so he’ll probably be deployed at least one more time (unless she convinces him to quit now).

I’m hoping to spend some time with Wil at their new house in Chicago…possibly in June.  It’s been a long time since just the two of us have talked and I’m really looking forward to it.