Monday Updates

So I get up this morning and head over to the gym.  It's 6 a.m., which is normally a pretty quiet time in there.  Not today.  Seemed like everybody else had the same idea ... "hey, 6 am, the gym's clear ..." Nope.  The place was packed.  I wanted to hit the free weights today, which turned out to be a good thing as all the machines had people waiting in line.  But in the free weights area, there was this guy with shoulders that were 5 feet wide, biceps as big as my leg, and a mohawk, who was working the bench press.  He was making more noise than the rest of the room put together.  "UUUHHHHHH ...... OOOOOAAAAAAAHHHHHHH .... ggnnnnnUUUUUUHhhhhhhh"  And here I am, working my dinky little 15-pound weights right beside him.  A regular Mutt 'n' Jeff show.

One of my officemates left today.  He's been transferred over to Camp Victory, which is the American military base out by the airport.  Frankly, we don't know why he got transferred, but the people that control the billet said "we want him over here", even though the people that he'll actually work for don't know what to do with him.  Yes, it's the military bureaucracy that made that decision.  But we'll miss him.  Zach is hyperactive, slightly geeky, good-looking, and a bit over the top.  One of those kids to whom everything is "AAWWESOME".  He's the only one I've ever known to call an admiral "dude".  And he's a bit of a chick magnet, but naive enough to completely miss it until we point it out to him.  

Anyway, Zach had to take ground transportation out to Camp Victory.  This isn't like a quick trip to Safeway: it's ten miles or so over a route that was once the most dangerous road in the world.  It's pretty safe now, but that's because (a) violence is a fraction of what it was even six months ago, and (b) lots of precautions are still taken for every trip.  To go between Camp Victory and the International Zone, you have to ride in the convoy that ferries people back and forth.  It's composed of a bunch of vehicles straight out of Star Wars or Mad Max.  The Rhino, for instance, is the Winnebago From Hell.  It looks like a motorhome that's made out of armor plating painted flat black.  The MRAPs are big, evil-looking trucks with 50-cal machine guns up top.  And while I'm standing there looking the thing over, the driver jumps down and she was a little bitty blonde girl, maybe 19 years old, completely at home in this bizarre universe of armor plate and weaponry and the guys who use them.  Some things just don't seem right.  

Later that afternoon, the Colonel's relief came in.  The Colonel is our boss, a really good guy, a reservist in the Corps of Engineers.  Our new, soon-to-be boss is also a Colonel.  He isn't in the Corps, but he is an engineer, which is good.  Another good thing is that the two will get about a ten-day turnover period, which from my limited experience is absolutely necessary.  So we're pretty happy.

One person who isn't happy right now is my wife.  I talked to her earlier this evening.  It appears that our septic system at home has decided it's had enough and needs to be pumped.  You can guess how it communicated that to Janis.  And if you know Janis, you probably have a very colorful idea of how she reacted.  Which is probably very accurate, from what I heard earlier.  But J is a very resourceful woman and the problem is now under control.  And I'm sitting here thinking that sometimes being several thousand miles away from home can be a Good Thing.