A Bit of This 'n' That

You've been reading that we're drawing down in Iraq. I've been saying it, too. Let me give you a visual. Here is the group I worked with last summer, when we were still in the International Zone. This gaggle of folks oversaw Army Corps of Engineers construction and capacity development projects all around the country.

I'm somewhere in the middle. And if some of the faces look a little loopy, it's because I deliberately made them unrecognizable.

Here's what was left of that group as of two weeks ago. Since then, three of these people have left and two more of us (me included) will leave in the next week.

Recently, I came across an interesting blog on the Graphic Design Degrees site. They have a lot of links to other blogs and sites - for example, 100 interior design blogs, 100 web tools (painting applications, color analyzer, sweater pattern generator (this aimed at my niece, who has her own blog on knitting and a shop on etsy), notes on the psychology of color, links to comic strips, all kinds of stuff. I could go to that site and waste all kinds of time. Wait a minute, I did already.

Yesterday, I mailed my "keeper" junk home. Now my room is cluttered with the "take with me" pile, the "throwaway" pile, and the "giveaway" pile. Stuff keeps migrating back and forth between all three. My goal is to have a very small "take with me" pile ... but since I'm a bit of a packrat, the damn thing keeps growing. Do I really need to keep that big, heavy, very frayed 15-year-old sweatshirt from Bosnia any longer? (YES! ... well, ...) You get my point.

It's another beautiful day here in Paradise: no wind, no dust, blue skies, nice warm temperatures. And pollen. A bunch of people in the office have been knocked on their collective butts the past two days with clogged sinuses and watery eyes. People who've never had problems with allergies before will have them here. Last year I had a bit of trouble with it, but for some reason it hasn't bothered me this year. Knock on wood.

So now I need to go get some stuff checked off my check-out checkoff list. A couple of useless interviews, turn in my cell phone, things like that. Joyce, the proud recipient of all my projects, is happily working away in the next cubicle, trying to figure out what the hell I've done for the past six months and what needs to be done now. She's taking over at a time of big transition, when one project is just finishing up and three projects are all about to be launched within days of each other. So she's flailing around a bit, and I let her flail some and then give her a few pointers, and off she goes. She'll do fine. The projects will do fine. My work here is done!

Almost.