There is a 51% chance you will be deploying to Iraq again. The following is a list that will prepare you to better deploy next time. Or what you can do is to send it to the next group that is replacing you so that they can get with the program. (We don’t want any violators).

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2. Replace the garage door with a curtain.

3. Two hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot." Repeat in two hours.

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the shower-head down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter
mile away.

5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.

6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.

8. Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

11. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

12. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

13. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking, don’t clean the pot.

14. Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Eat every meal with them.

15. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

16. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.

17. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

18. Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."

19. Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing level 4 gear. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.

20. Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.

21. Demand each family member be limited to 20 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

22. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.

23. Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and mortar fragmentation.

24. While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding

25. Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.

26. Drink your powdered milk and sodas warm.

27. Spread pea gravel throughout your house and yard.

28. Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clear ring barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in and place them flat on the floor beside them at the dinner table.

29. Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.

30. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.

31. When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a supply request and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, fill out the form again, it was sent to the wrong base. Never give your son the gum.

32. Announce to your family that the dog is a vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit you dug in your neighbor's backyard.

33. Wait for the hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get hot.

34. Rent an industrial fan from Home Depot. Buy 200 pounds of play sand. Pay the neighborhood children to constantly throw the sand into the back of the fan you have placed in the opened French doors of your living room.

35. Require your family to wash their hands outside with the garden hose before entering the house for meals. Place a roll of toilet paper outside for drying their hands. Hire a neighbor to walk through the dining room every few minutes looking for rule violators during meals.

If you read all of this and did not laugh then something is wrong with you, and yes all good humor has its basis in truth.