... and then there was one

My friend Joe left Iraq today on his way home. His deployment here is over and he's on his way back to the real Navy, where the water is salty, ships are gray, and men don't wear cammie pajama outfits to work. Joe's the last of our little Band of Buddies to leave. Everybody else has gone home or been transferred to other bases in-country. There was Robert, who's home now - he was our absent-minded professor, always taking pictures of things he shouldn't and getting away with it ... usually because he was never aware that he wasn't even supposed to have a camera there! There was "Air Force Joe", a really smart guy who kept a tight rein on his projects. He went home, too. There was Eric, a scary-smart Air Force captain who is (literally) an astronautical engineer, who is now in Fallujah to work on a sewer project (aren't you impressed with the way the Army decides where to put people?). And Cody, another scary-smart Air Force guy with a PhD in aeronautical engineering, who's running construction projects down south. And now it's just me, the retired-Navy-guy-turned-artist, still working away here in Baghdad. Bummer.

I'm heading home in two weeks for some R&R. I need it. I am tired. Been here almost six months now and have had a total of two days off, not counting our Friday half-days. For most of that time, I've been working on one crisis or another, trying to plan this project or that transformation plan. Even when a plan gets accepted, it can be undermined almost immediately by some minion with an axe to grind. It happened again just a couple of days ago, where we were being directed to provide information that we already provided weeks or months ago. Don't you guys read your frickin' mail? It's getting old and I'm "crisis'd out". Getting an attitude - cranky and "who gives a shit" at the same time. I need a BREAK!

So in two weeks, I'll go home. See the wife, play with the dogs ... or see the dogs and play with the wife. Visit with friends. Take a nap on the couch. Go to a restaurant and have a dinner that was cooked just for me. Drive my truck around and not have to go through checkpoints. Mow the yard. Spend some time in the studio.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?