Saturday Evening

Yes, I know I haven't written anything in the past few days.  I've been spending a lot of time in the office trying to get up to speed as fast as possible.  I hate being the "new guy" who has to be told or shown everything - I need to feel like I'm contributing to the effort.  And when the effort is being done in an entirely different universe from my previous one, well, it takes a lot of time to learn.  I filled out my time sheet today and saw that I put in 148 hours in the past two weeks.  Which is just a little bit more than my normal time in the studio.  Just a little.  By a factor of, oh, seven.

So what's my day like?  Well, I get up at some ungodly early hour because my eyeballs pop open at around 3:30 and don't want to close again.  Sometimes I force myself to at least doze for another couple of hours.  Around 5, I get up and go to the gym, the pool, or for a jog.  After a shower, I'll go catch the bus to the Embassy.  Correction: I get dressed first, then catch the bus.  I'll eat breakfast at the DFAC at the Embassy.  The DFAC (pronounced deefak) is the Dining Facility.  (Nothing here goes by a real name, just acronyms.  There's the NEC, the NOC, the BX, GRD, you get the picture).  I get into the office about 0800 (that's 8 a.m. for you civilians).  Most of my time after that is spent on the computer or in meetings or slogging to this office or that.  Our whole office generally goes to lunch at the DFAC around noon.  Then it's back to the computer/meetings/slogging routine.  Dinner at the DFAC around 1800 (umm, 6 p.m.).  Back to the office for another one or two hours.  Call it quits around 8 or 9 pm and go catch the bus back to the NEC (pronounced "neck"; it's where I live).  Try to videochat with Janis.  Climb in bed and read a few pages of a crappy Robert Ludlum novel.  Turn out the lights.  Repeat again at 3:30 the next morning.  And the next day.  And the next.  Some wag called it "Groundhog Day with a gun."  Hey, we're in Baghdad, what else is there to do?

Occasionally my office crew will get out for a while.  In previous posts you've seen pictures of some of our "road trips".  They're a good break, but we're never gone for more than two or three hours.  Then we're pulled back to our cave and our computers, like moths to a flame.

This afternoon I broke the routine, though, and was able to spend some time doing "mind maintenance".  In other words, just putter around doing nothing.  I did a few sketches in the compound and it felt really good to be drawing again.  I quickly realized that I need to do a lot more sketches over at the main Embassy, though.  The new place is visually BOOORing.  Nothing interesting to look at.  The main Embassy, by contrast, is in one of Saddam's palaces, which is visually fun in a kinda cheesy way.  I can't figure out a politically correct way to say it except that "good taste" was a completely foreign concept.  (My friends who know about building construction would also note that "good engineering" was another foreign concept).  All of which is much more interesting to draw than the public housing project where I live now.

So that's it for today.  A boring entry because I've been living a boring life.  But there are some things on the horizon that will give me something more interesting to write about.  More on THAT later!