Road Trip: Kirkuk

Yes, I'm on a road trip to Kirkuk, Iraq. Kirkuk is in NE Iraq. It's a city that is central to the future of the country. Kirkuk sits on top of some of the largest oil reserves in the country. It's claimed by both the Kurds and the Arabs. Years ago, Saddam Hussein forced out a lot of Kurds and bused in a lot of Arabs in a deliberate effort to change the city's ethnic makeup. Now the discussion centers on whether they're going to undo that change, or live with it, or what. There has been no agreement on any way forward yet and there doesn't appear to be any breakthrough on the horizon. It could cause serious trouble to the future of Iraq in the future.

But that's not why I'm here. I'm meeting with a lot of different people about how to move one of my capacity development programs forward. It's been a very interesting trip so far and there's still more to come.

I left Baghdad on Sunday morning. Our little convoy of armored SUV's headed north out of Victory Base. We passed a lot of Shi'ite pilgrims who were walking back home from their pilgrimage to Karbala, a city about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad that is one of the holy centers for their branch of Islam. (Yes: the ones we saw walked at least 60 miles to Karbala, and were walking back home.) Almost all the pilgrims wore black. There were men, women, children, and even some dogs on leashes, heading north along the road. Some of them carried black flags. None of them looked particularly friendly to us, but at least none did anything unfriendly. Enterprising young boys had set up small stands to sell water, drinks, and snacks to the pilgrims.
We headed north up the main highway past Balad (where a huge US air base is located) to Tikrit. Along the way, I saw a bunch of "gas stations in a box". There are a lot of cars on the road, but the large filling stations must be charging a fortune for gas. So there's a company called Patrol that takes the short shipping containers and put a tank and a fuel pump in them. They drop them off every few miles along the side of the road. They don't even put 'em on cinder block foundations - just plop it down on the dirt, open up the doors to reveal the pump, set up a chair for the guy operating it, and they're in business. And if that guy is too expensive, well, there's always the kid down the road who has a bunch of 5-gallon containers lined up, ready to provide service for somebody. They don't even give the kid a chair.

There are a lot of security forces on the roads. You can't go a mile without going through a checkpoint manned by police or Iraqi Army soldiers, or passing by some soldiers or police or even some Sons of Iraq on the side of the road. (The Sons of Iraq are civilian paramilitary forces - the subject of a whole 'nother post).

We rolled into Contingency Operating Base Speicher outside of Tikrit (Saddam Hussein's hometown) about three hours after leaving Baghdad. We'd made pretty good time. I then made like a Pony Express rider: a quick pit stop, a run to the Subway shop next door for a sandwich (yes, we have Subway's on our bases), and then I changed to another team that would take me on the next leg.

We rolled out about noon and continued north to Baiji, which is where the oil fields begin. There's a huge refinery there, as well as a large power plant. Which, to judge from the black smoke pouring from the stacks, has no pollution controls whatsoever. Once over the small mountain range by the power plant, the road ran straight as an arrow to Kirkuk. That's not to say that we went straight. The road is full of potholes and we were constantly zigging and zagging to avoid them. And in a top-heavy uparmored Ford Expedition moving at high speed, that's quite an interesting experience.

Some of my fellow travellers go right to sleep as soon as they get rolling with one of these security teams. I don't. Can't. If I'm in a new area, I'm wide awake, looking around to see what's there. Fortunately, the security team is doing the same thing, only they're usually looking for something different. I took a lot of pictures and will post some once I get home and can download them to my own computer. Some of the things I noticed:
- Everywhere I go in Iraq, I see piles of dirt. It's as if somebody swept up the rubble, put it into a big wheelbarrow, and then randomly dumped it. I don't care where you go: north, south, west, the piles of dirt are everywhere.
- So is junk. Serious junk. Stripped cars. Truck bodies. Big rusted metal casings that could have gone around industrial air conditioners. Piles of URO's (Unidentified Rusty Objects). We passed a junkyard with squashed cars, trucks, buses, and other vehicles that seemed to go for miles. They could do a huge scrap metal business in this country. Maybe they will, eventually. Meanwhile it all just sits there.
- Once we got into the oil region, it was pretty obvious. Oil is everywhere, all over the ground, leaking out from trucks. I saw one tanker that had backed into a depression so that the driver could finish draining the oil out onto the ground. Environment? What environment?
- Never thought I'd see a mud hut with a big satellite dish on the roof. Now I've seen a whole bunch.

We arrived at the US base outside Kirkuk in mid-afternoon. I jumped right into discussions with some of the people I'd come to see, and it turned out to be very worthwhile. Then I got settled into my room, had some chow at the DFAC (theygripe about their DFAC just like I gripe about mine ... only theirs is better), and hit the rack early. It was a long, tiring day, and I was a beaten little puppy.

Today was just as interesting. Up early, over to the DFAC for breakfast, and then on the road again. Today we went to Sulaymaniyah. "Suly" is in the Kurdish autonomous region. It is almost a separate country. We rolled through Kirkuk right during morning rush hour. Our security team knows the town like the back of their hand, and we went through neighborhoods and down alleyways that I'd have never suspected led anywhere. Eventually we popped out onto the divided highway that led eastward. The landscape became hilly and dry, much like some parts of the American southwest, and we climbed pretty steadily up a very long, slight incline.

We were able to relax our security posture as soon as we crossed over the provincial border. In the Kurdish region, everything was in markedly better condition: roads, buildings, everything. There were crews out repairing roads and re-installing guardrails (which were demolished a few years ago to prevent them from hiding roadside bombs). There was little visible war damage - occasionally we'd see a building still damaged or even destroyed, but not often. Off in the distance to the north and east we could see high mountain ranges with snow at the top. Very beautiful country. The people seemed much more friendly toward us. Not that there's a lot of interaction between people on the street and passengers in armored SUV's, but there's a noticeable difference between the cold hard stare we got in, say, Baghdad, and the open, friendly expressions we saw in Kurdistan.

The team dropped me off at the office on an Iraqi-controlled base outside of Sulaymaniyah. Slight correction: a peshmerga-controlled base. Peshmerga are the Kurdish military forces. There's not a whole helluva lot of cooperation between the Arab-dominated Iraqi military and the Kurdish-controlled peshmerga. The two forces have fought many battles over the centuries and so they still keep their separate identities. The peshmerga seemed very efficient. They certainly have more Western ideas: I noticed that almost all the crew at the gate to our compound were female. Can't imagine a woman in the army in Baghdad ... where would you put rank insignia on an abaya? Anyway, I had another very productive meeting with several people about my program. They opened my eyes to some aspects of it that I had not foreseen ... which, of course, is exactly why I wanted to come talk with them.

We had a great lunch and finished up with a good bit of coffee to get ready for our afternoon discussions. And that's what gave me trouble. About as soon as we got back into the office, I found out that my team was going to be leaving very soon to head back to Kirkuk. Uh oh ... there's no way my body could process all that coffee that fast. I delayed as long as I reasonably could, made a final pit stop, and off we went. Ten minutes into the trip, I knew I hadn't delayed long enough. Thirty minutes later, my teeth were beginning to float. I tried to keep myself busy by looking out the window, but all I could see were things like a man watering his plants, or a big yellow gas can, or the splash from a car going through a puddle. It was NOT FUN, so quit laughing! I made it back without embarrassing myself, but it was a near thing ... a portajohn never looked so good.

So now I'm back in my room. This place has its own bathroom, a good internet connection, and even a phone on the desk. I'm waiting on my wife to call right now, as a matter of fact. Very cool and much better than my own room back at Victory Base. Tomorrow I have some more adventures planned. Hopefully, tomorrow's post won't be quite as long as this one.

And I won't have any coffee at lunch.

'Twas The Day After Christmas

This tree kinda sums up how I felt most of the day yesterday: pretty sad. Three of us celebrated Christmas Eve by going over to the clinic and getting our H1N1 innoculations. I had an extra bonus shot with an anthrax vaccination. Yessir, we know how to have fun on Christmas Eve in Baghdad!

Christmas was a full day off for us and I finally had an opportunity to sleep in. So, of course, I woke up at 5 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. The shoulder that took the anthrax shot felt like Mike Tyson had landed a huge blow to it. No bruise marks, but man, was it sore, and I think my body's reaction to the H1N1 shot left me feeling a bit down, too. And I wound up not getting any coffee in the morning, for no good reason at all. Combine that with my main gripe: this was the second Christmas in a row that I've been deployed to Baghdad and away from my wife and friends and dogs. So with lack of sleep, lack of coffee, sore shoulder, H1N1 shot, and general Christmas blues, I was not exactly on top of the world yesterday. Waaah.

So what did I do? Caught up on my reading. Opened a few Christmas presents from family. Went to the gym to push some weights around and loosen up my shoulder. Finished up a painting. (At least, I think I finished it up ... often I don't know until sometime later whether it's really finished or not). Not much else.

Our DFAC has been the butt of many of my sarcastic comments, but yesterday they did a good job. The DFAC elves worked overtime to redecorate the place during the night and to cook up quite a spread for lunch and dinner. Ham, turkey, steak, veggies, several different salads, soups, deserts, and more. Quite a big variety. Was it much better than normal? Well, no, not really, but it was a lot of enthusiastic work and I appreciated their effort.

The decorations, though, still make you scratch your head and go "huh?". Gone is the Thanksgiving painted backdrop with the Spanish conquistadors and in its place was a styrofoam-and-plaster Santa, with sleigh and reindeer. That was good, but we didn't understand the styrofoam-and-plaster woman with gorilla arms in a white dress, sitting with her feet in a pond with some styrofoam ducks. There was a big section of the dining area that had been cordoned off for a couple of days; yesterday a big structure appeared there. We think it might be a chapel, but nobody's sure. It's made out of styrofoam, of course. They must have gotten a helluva deal on styrofoam. And in front of the White House, there's a figure that we think is President Obama, along with a hunter toting a shotgun. Any of that make sense to you? Me, neither.

After making a run to the Green Bean with some friends in the afternoon for a cappuccino, I felt much livelier. And we had another beautiful sunset to cap off the day as we were getting ready to head over for dinner. Despite the occasional bout with the blues, life here really isn't bad.

And today? Today's Saturday. It's another full 10-hour workday.

Christmas Eve Eve

It's hard to get in the Christmas spirit when you're forward deployed. You can't go shopping in the mall with several thousand of your new closest friends. Well, you can go to the BX, or one of the little Iraqi marts on base, but that's not the same thing. There are no lines of kids waiting to sit on Santa's lap and get their picture taken. No Christmas carols blasting. No sales clerks frantically trying to get you to buy something - the clerks in the BX don't care whether you buy something or not. Actually, most of the Iraqi store owners don't seem to care, either. They got what they got; if you want it, buy it; if not, there's another store next door. Even the weather isn't cooperating: our highs for the past week have been about 70, and lows around 50. Perfect jogging weather at lunch time. Not so good for getting psyched up for Christmas holidays.

To be sure, our DFAC is certainly doing what they can. They took down all the brown and gold streamers and put up red and green ones instead. Little cardboard Santa faces hang like little decapitated heads from the ceiling. The DFAC workers took down the plaster Pilgrims and put up a couple of Charlie Brown prefab Christmas trees. Oddly enough, they didn't take down the painted Thanksgiving backdrop, so now we have these two trees standing in front of a really weird Thanksgiving scene, which appears to include an oversize Irish elf, a hippie, a Spanish conquistador, a midget, and a few Indians ... from India, not North America. And we still have this mysterious 10'x20' styrofoam model of the front of the White House. Nobody has yet come up with a rationale for that particular decoration. Yes, Victory Base is a strange place.

My whole office went out to eat at the Babylon Restaurant last night. It's a new restaurant located on a far part of the base. I ate there once before and it was really good. I mean, it was really good - and not just for Victory Base, either. So we were pretty excited: good food, good company, Christmas, the whole deal. And we were let down. We discovered that the restaurant staff has no clue how to handle a crowd. By "crowd", I mean anything over, say, four people. Total. In the entire restaurant. We had nine in our group, and there were three other groups of similar size that arrived at various times, plus several small groups of two to four. "Chaos" is a pretty good word to describe the experience. To make a long story short, we finally got most of our orders about two hours after we got there. At least the food was good. To tell the truth, I didn't mind all that much (although it would've been nice to get a glass of water at about the 1-hour mark). I was deep in discussion with one of our support contractors. He is an Iraqi who left in 1989 and settled in the U.S., eventually getting US citizenship. He came over here several years ago to do what he could to help his old country get back on its feet. He's sorta optimistic and sorta not, and it was very interesting to hear his viewpoint.

A lot of people have gone on R&R. Seems like a bunch of them left here just in time to get snagged by that big snowstorm that clobbered the US. I imagine we'll hear lots of horror stories when they return. I'll be heading home on R&R next month, right in the deepest part of winter, but hey, it's a trip home. I am NOT going another six months without seeing my wife and dogs again, not if I don't have to. From the "work" side, the timing looks pretty good. I should have a lot of my projects out for bids from contractors, and when I come back, it'll be time to hit the ground running hard so we can get those contracts awarded and launched.

So that's the scene from my little corner of Victory Base, Iraq. I hope you and yours are having a wonderful Christmas season and that you get to spend time with your families. If you're a veteran of Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Lebanon, Panama, Grenada, or any one of a number of other conflicts, a tip of my hat to you and enjoy your holidays. You earned it - and the young soldiers out here right now are holding up your tradition.

Dilbert

This hits a little close to home ...

A USO Christmas Tradition

Last night the USO brought a Christmas show to Victory Base. I went with a small group to have some fun. The turnout was good: several thousand soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, civilians, and contractors gathered by the stage near the Oasis DFAC. I was sitting in the bleachers with a bunch of junior soldiers and sailors - a rowdy bunch, to say the least, but enthusiastic and totally into the experience.

There was a large open area in front of us and many people brought fold-up chairs to sit and watch the show. The area filled up until there was only a narrow strip in front of the bleachers. Then along came an older couple (KBR employees, by their tags) who brought, not chairs, but cardboard boxes to sit on. The soldiers and sailors around us thought this was hugely funny. Then it got worse: the woman parked herself on her box, but the guy just couldn't get himself down: he was leaning on other chairs, people, his wife, and having a really hard time getting his butt down to box level. Finally he did, and on the count of three, the box collapsed. So did all the soldiers and sailors around us. I tell ya, some civilians give the rest of us a bad name. The gent? He sat on his collapsed box the rest of the evening.

We had a surprise opening act. ADM Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his wife opened the show. They came out and had a lot of really nice, appreciative things to say. Very cool and a class act.

The next act was comedian Dave Attell. He was quite funny and very crude - but we're talking about a pretty crude audience, anyway, and he played to it. Then he brought out Anna Kournikova. She can't sing or dance or act, but who cares? She's great eye candy and was definitely a bigger hit than Dave was. The fact that she just recently became a US citizen endeared her all the more.

As I mentioned, we had a big, enthusiastic crowd.

The main act was Billy Ray Cyrus. He brought two members of his band with him and they put on a really good show. I'd never thought of "Amazing Grace" done as a blues song, but he did, and it was indeed amazing. They did a great job of getting people up, moving, and laughing.

At the end, they got everybody up on stage, including one guy from the audience who showed up as Santa, complete with his pistol. He got to pose for pictures with Anna and every guy in the audience is going to show up as Santa the next time she comes through town.

The USO has been around for 70 years now, and it was really cool to be part of a tradition that goes back to World War II. I used to watch the Bob Hope Christmas shows about the tours he'd do in Viet Nam. Now I've been to one. Many thanks to USO, to Admiral Mullen and his wife, to Billy Ray Cyrus and his band members, to Dave Attell, Anna Kournikova, and everybody who worked to make this happen. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines loved it. So did I.

Our Office Christmas Tree

As promised in my last post, here's our pink office Christmas tree, courtesy of Gus, our macho Latino.

Sunday Morning

I can't believe it's been almost a week since my last post, but Janis was on my case about it this morning. Since my trip on Monday, it's just been Groundhog Day, every day. Not a whole heckuva lot is new.


We have a young Iraqi rug merchant on our compound. He's turned a shipping container into a rug store. He's a great young man, full of energy, always with a huge smile on his face. And he seems to be doing a fair business as well.

I'm able to get a little painting in once a week. Here's what my "studio" looks like these days, now that I've got an easel. (It's a piece of junk easel, but an easel nonetheless). All of you painters out there will appreciate my fine taste in taborets and lighting.

We're starting to get into the Christmas season. Some people are heading home for the holidays, a few decorations are starting to pop up here and there, and we have an inordinate amount of candy, cookies, and other sinful foods floating around the office. We also have a Christmas tree in the office now. My co-worker Gus, a macho Latino from Los Angeles, has a friend who sent him a small pink Christmas tree with a feather-boa angel on top. Gotta get a picture of it and post it here. As for me, I haven't really gotten into the spirit yet. Hard to do with our work schedule and this will be the second year in a row that I've been gone for the holidays. It'll also be the LAST time I'm gone for the holidays. No more.

Last night we had a big rainstorm move through. Big rainstorms mean big mud for the next five to seven days. Yuck. I could have done without that, thank you very much.

Okay, back to work. I have five contracting packages that I have to make some progress on today, and I can't make progress while poking away at my blog. Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Road Trip: Ramadi

I took a road trip today to Ramadi. Two of us from my office went out there to meet with some people about two projects that we're about to launch. This was my first trip to that part of the country and it was quite interesting.

Ramadi is about 90 minutes by up-armored vehicle west of here, pretty much a direct shot on their major east-west highway. Our little convoy went by the town of Abu Ghraib, including the infamous prison (now run by the Iraqi government). The land out there is FLAT, reminding me of, say the Texas panhandle. It's an odd mixture of desert and prairie, too - the reason is that even though there's almost no rain, the water table is just a few feet down, so trees grow remarkably well. The highway was in much better shape than I would have thought and we zipped along pretty quickly. I did notice, however, that the guardrails had been literally ripped out a few years back so that they wouldn't provide hiding places for IED's. Security now is pretty good. The Iraqi soldiers manning the checkpoints were invariably efficient and polite - I spoke with an Iraqi about that, and he said that this is a result of the training that US Marines provided over the past few years, so the troops they trained will understandably have some of the Marines' clipped efficiency and politeness. Good on 'em.

We met with some Americans at Camp Ramadi to discuss the projects. A little while later, a large cadre of Iraqi officials arrived. They will be the beneficiaries of one of my projects. One of my purposes in going out there was to meet with these officials and assure them that the project really is going to go forward. They've become very skeptical over the past few years of our efforts. Some of this is our fault: previous teams have told the Iraqis that the US would do this or that for them, only to have the project shot down at some other level. Of course, part of this is their own doing as well: they have a tendency to hear the phrase "we are going to try to do something" as "I promise you it will be done and that we'll give you $X dollars as well". So they didn't really believe that this project would happen. Since we need their cooperation and active participation, I wanted to make sure that they understood that, yes, it really is going to happen, and here's the timeline, and here's what they need to do to make it a success. Message received. I think. Insha'allah.

The trip home was much the same as the trip out, except that the Iraqi soldiers at the checkpoints were much more particular, and had to check everything out. Our security team said that part of the reason was that they are, in general, more particular about vehicles heading toward Baghdad; another part is that there were five bombings in Baghdad today and so they're being more vigilant ... after the fact, of course. But despite the checkpoints, the trip home went well and we got back on time.


I shot a whole bunch of pictures out the window of our vehicle. Please excuse the quality; we were usually moving pretty quickly, so getting anything was just a matter of luck. This is a typical side street off the main highway.

Out on the highway, there are lots of vendors selling fruits and vegetables. Our convoys don't stop, but I hear from some of our Iraqis that these fresh fruits and veggies are quite tasty.

Just to the north of the Victory Base complex, there is an area that was fiercely fought over during the 2003 invasion. Because it was a poor area, it has never been rebuilt.

Home, finally, after a long, successful day!

A Little This 'n' That

I just got back from dinner at Taco Bell. Yeah, I hear some of you out there making gagging sounds, but sometimes you just gotta have something that's NOT FROM THE DFAC. Doesn't matter what it is. It could be old shoe leather wrapped in a Stars and Stripes newspaper and you'd think it was the greatest thing in the world. Hey, it didn't come from the DFAC, it has to be good!

Our DFAC recently won some sort of award. None of us can figure out why. It has essentially no variety whatsoever. If it's Tuesday, you know what they're serving: the same thing they served last Tuesday, and the Tuesday before that, and the third Tuesday from now as well. As for quality, well, it's really not bad, but after a while, the same ol' same ol' kinda tastes the same ol'. Right before Thanksgiving, they actually decorated the place a bit. They hung yellow and orange and brown streamers from the ceiling and taped up cardboard cutouts of pilgrims and turkeys on the wall. Up front, they set up a scene with several plaster of paris figures that looked amazingly like inflatable dolls dressed in plaster pilgrim and indian outfits. They also, inexplicably, put up a 10' high, 20' wide styrofoam model of the front of the White House. Even the people that work there don't know why.

The internet in our rooms is pretty much unusable now. If I try to go online from there, I literally get a book or a magazine to read while the pages load. The reason for the slowness is that the barracks only have a certain amount of bandwidth, and over the past few months, we've moved more and more people into the barracks as we downsized and centralized things, and everybody has a computer nowadays, so there we are. We probably won't get any more bandwidth since it's so frickin' expensive. So I go to my office in the evening, like now, and use my computer at work. Just what I wanted to do in the evening: spend even MORE time at my desk!

We haven't had any rain in a couple of weeks now, which is a good thing. Any time it rains, it takes at least five days for the mud to dry out. Walking on concrete-hard dirt is much easier than walking on slippery goo.

Despite my griping about the DFAC, the internet, and the mud, I have to say that I really love what I'm doing at work now. I'm convinced that I have the coolest job in the entire command. After months of work, two of my projects will finally go out for bids from contractors in the next couple of weeks. Both of them are projects to provide training to Iraqis all around the country in things like equipment maintenance, urban planning, construction management, facilities management, and several other areas. The Iraqis, at the worker level, are showing more interest in learning how to do these things for themselves. I've got three more projects in the development stage to create detailed plans for some critically needed services in one city, economic growth in another province, and a significant improvement to a large university. Not only are these important projects in their own right, but the Iraqis involved, from the provincial governor on down, are excited and anxious about them as well. To me, that's critical: what good is a master plan if the people you're giving it to just put it on the shelf? But it doesn't appear that's going to happen. Not only do they want the master plan, they want to be actively involved in putting it together. That's some serious buy-in.

Presidential Ponderings

There’s a lot of discussion today about President Obama’s speech last night. I gotta throw my two cents’ worth in. I read the transcript and thought it was an excellent speech. It shows a deliberate, thoughtful, and reasoned approach. Obama’s refocusing of the mission, I think, is right on target. Our main concern should be in ending the threat from Al Qaeda and other such extremist groups in the border area. Those are the loonies who attacked the World Trade Center and are the threat to the US and other western nations.

Lots of people are wondering why we care about Afghanistan. It has nothing in the way of natural resources, no industry, nothing much to trade with the rest of the world. Which is why it’s so poor, and because it’s so poor, the people (young ones particularly) turn to anything that offers them a smidgeon of hope and purpose. Which is what the extremist groups offer.

I don’t think we’re really there for Afghanistan. We’re there because its neighbor, Pakistan, has nuclear weapons. Al Qaeda would love nothing more than to get their hands on one of nukes. Pakistan is unstable, with a weak and corrupt civilian leadership, and its military and intelligence services have a long history of ties to Al Qaeda and other extremist groups. Apparently, those who support the extremists are still leery of giving them nuclear weapons, but who knows how long that will last. As long as the extremists were just a bunch of loonies running around Afghanistan, the only danger was that Pakistan and India would start lobbing nukes at each other. Now, though, the extremists are threatening the very existence of Pakistan. We can’t go into Pakistan to fight them (at least, not overtly), so we have to fight them in Afghanistan. I think that fight is worth it.

I like Obama’s approach toward the Afghan central government. He’s giving them a timetable: quit dicking around and weed out the corruption, because we’ll be leaving in 18 months, after we take care of Al Qaeda. (Well, we’ll see). Obama is already bypassing the central government and providing aid directly to those government agencies and local governments that have proven themselves capable. Good for him.

So, my bottom line, I think Obama’s on the right track with this approach. He’s got my support.

His predecessor, though, is coming under some scrutiny overseas. For the past couple of weeks, the British have been conducting an inquiry into the beginning of the war with Iraq. You really have to look to find any coverage of this in the US press – CNN seems to think that whether or not Tiger Woods was cheating on his wife is a much more important story. But today’s Wall Street Journal ran a report on the British proceedings. The revelations have not been surprising; rather, they’re high-level confirmations of things we’ve known or suspected for some time. The former British ambassador to the UN told the board that Bush was “hell-bent” (his words) on going to war with Iraq from the very beginning and even undermined the UK’s attempts to build international support. The former British ambassador to the US told the board that the White House was trying to make connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda within hours of the attacks. And Tony Blair bought into the invasion in April, 2002, five or six months before Bush & Co. started their public march to war.

No surprises there, really, since Bob Woodward reported many of the same things in his books Bush At War and Plan of Attack several years ago. Still, it’s one thing when a reporter says these things in a book he’s trying to sell, and another when they are coming from high-level officials who were involved. This investigation promises to be very embarrassing to Bush and Blair for their arrogance, duplicity, and stupidity in the run-up to the war. As it should be.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all! I hope you have a wonderful holiday. I got to sleep in this morning, a very rare treat. Then a group of us went on a "One Lap of VBC" sightseeing tour. We treated ourselves to some cappuccino and a little Cinnabon, paid homage to SFC Smith, who earned a Medal of Honor in a small courtyard near my old building, and visited Flintstone Village again. A few months ago, a group of soldiers worked with the Iraqi Boy Scouts and Girl Guides to paint over the graffiti in several of the rooms, but the graffiti is back in spades. We finished up with lunch at Sather Air Force Base, which is part of the Victory Base complex. In typical fashion, the Air Force has the best DFAC on the entire complex, at least in my opinion. I just went for a jog, and will do some painting here in a few minutes. This evening, the command is going to have a lamb roast outside. Should be a lot of fun.

Now I want you to give yourself a quiet Thanksgiving treat. Watch this video of an incredibly beautiful piece of music. The composition is "Il Silenzio", written by the Italian trumpet player Nini Rosso in 1965, based on "Taps". This particular performance took place in August, 2008, in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The trumpet player is Melissa Venema, who was 13 years old at the time. I never knew a trumpet could be so beautiful.

A Bit of This and That

Things have settled down with me now. My little dog Soozee has responded very well to her medications and you would never know that a week and a half ago she nearly died. Her appetite is back, she's going on her walks every morning and evening (a full mile each time), and she's rambunctious around the house. One side effect of the steroid medication is that she has suddenly taken a great interest in humping her sister, Indy. And Indy has gotten sick of it. (Indy has also conveniently forgotten that, when she was first on the same meds 20 months ago, she did the same thing). So Soozee looks like she's going to continue to be a healthy, happy dog.

While Soozee's crisis was going on, life here in Baghdad continued. We're definitely getting into winter now. The temperatures have dropped, with highs in the 50's or low 60's. Definitely jacket weather. It's the rainy season, too, which is no fun at all. When it rains, everything turns to mud. It's a slippery, sticky mud. Most of it is pretty shallow, maybe an inch deep, with hard-packed dirt underneath and this slippery goop on top. The only shoes to wear in this mess are Army boots. You need something high-rise with deep chunky treads on the bottom, and Army boots are it.

This is the DFAC parking lot. Imagine having to shlep through this every time you wanted to go eat. And imagine having to walk a half mile along a busy, muddy road before getting to this parking lot. And then having to walk back. Sounds like fun, huh? It does? You're sick. We carpool.

And here's a typical Victory Base drive in the rain. This road may or may not be paved. Doesn't matter, it's got an inch of slippery mud on top regardless, plus big ol' puddles and potholes and ditches scattered randomly around.

I've made an interesting discovery about the military postal system. I've got a subscription to Time magazine, but over the past two months, I've only gotten about a third of them. Who knows where the rest go. But you know what does make it to me? Their renewal notices. Haven't missed a one.

We have the most complicated timesheets to fill out that I've ever seen. When I was in the Navy, of course, we didn't do it at all, but in the civilian world, you have to account for every minute. I don't know about you, but just filling out a basic timesheet makes me feel like I'm working at McDonald's as a shift worker. In my current job, it's even more complicated, because I have to account for the time spent on different projects so that my time can be billed against them. Very much like a lawyer's "billable hours", only lawyers aren't as high on the status ladder as McDonald's shift workers. But somebody here has a sense of humor. Our timesheets are called "Time and Attendance" reports, or T&A forms, for short. 'Nuff said.

Our internet has been really bad in the rooms lately. I keep hearing rumors that they're going to upgrade the servers and fix all the problems, but we'll see. We've been having issues in getting our computers, which we brought with us from our old office, to work with the systems here in this new office. Ever notice how IT techs always seem to hold all other IT techs in contempt? A typical conversation:

Me: "Well, the tech came by and said he saved the pst file to my hard drive."

Tech: (snort) "Who was it?"

Me: "Joe."

Tech: (eyes roll, disgusted tone in voice) "Oh, well, that explains it. WE do it the right way, those guys don't know what they're doing." And he proceeds to spend 10 minutes changing files around on my computer. He leaves, I reboot, and now my email doesn't work at all. It's Joe's fault, of course.

The Armed Forces Network shows news programs from all the reputable networks, plus Fox. I've noticed that CNN puts up the BREAKING NEWS banner at random intervals. Now BREAKING NEWS to me means that something big is happening, like Nancy Pelosi just got caught in bed with Rush Limbaugh. But no, evidently CNN thinks BREAKING NEWS applies to an Anderson Cooper interview with a B-list movie actor I never heard of. Most annoying - I get all excited thinking something important is going on, and it's just Anderson. Again.

Fox seems to have a policy that 75% of its anchors and reporters must be blonde babes. I don't complain too much, as long as the volume is turned off. But they have this need to justify the blonde babe's existence on the screen, besides just being eye candy, so they'll say something like "Jane Doe, PhD". Well, I can put a lot of letters behind my name, and as my wife will tell you, that doesn't mean squat. Why don't they just be honest? "Jane Doe, Hot Chick".

And that's the way it is, Tuesday, November 24th. Good night.

- Skip Rohde, CDR, USN (RET), CD PgM, BSME, MBA, BFA, SoB

Iraq Reconstruction

The New York Times has an excellent article today on reconstruction in Iraq. The article says that US officials fear that Iraqis will not maintain what we've built for them over the past six years with $53B. It goes on to cite several projects, including a $270M water treatment plant in Nasariyah, several hospitals including the Basrah Children's Hospital, and the Fallujah waste water treatment plant, among others. I highly recommend the article - well-written and pretty accurate. A friend of mine sent me a note about it today. I sent him a bit of a long response and decided that I'd post it here as well.


John -
I saw this article this morning. It is pretty accurate. I'm familiar with the Nasariyah water treatment plant. It was the single most expensive project we've done here. Within months of turning it over to them, it was running at 35% capacity. The reason is that the local government down there is run like a bunch of Tony Sopranos - they give the jobs to family and tribal members, not to engineers who know what they're doing. We (the US) went back in and spent a lotta money to fix it back up again. Haven't heard anything since we finished, but what do you want to bet that it's falling apart again?

Yes, we built a lot of Public Health Centers that were immediately shuttered because they didn't have the staff to run them. Most were connected to the power grid, water lines, and sewer lines, but there was an early agreement with the Ministry of Health that we'd only go so far outside the PHC to do the connections, and after that it was the Ministry's responsibility. To my knowledge, they never made any of those connections. Some PHC's have been repaired and opened (all of those with good results so far), some were never opened, some have probably been stripped, and some are probably being used for other purposes. Or various combinations of the above.

Because of the issues with project turnover, we started requiring Letters of Sustainment to be signed by the ministries or local officials before we'd start work. Basically, it says that they want the project and will take care of it once it's done. Probably not worth the paper it's printed on, but at least it makes them address how they're going to support the project.

The Basrah Children's Hospital is still a major issue. We turned over ownership back in February (I'm the one who put together the signing ceremony for the Ambassador and the Minister ... wrote about it in my blog). To my knowledge, the Ministry still has not budgeted a dime for support. At a lot of government agencies, the people working there are not getting paid, so Dr. Ahmed at the Basrah Children's Hospital (have been in several meetings with him) may very well have not been paid for months, if ever.

The NYT article is incorrect about the Fallujah project. It is not yet completed. My command is in charge of that project and right before I went on R&R, I was working on the way forward with it. This is something that should never have been built. It's Boeing 747 technology in a place that can't support a Piper Cub. But there it is. Two friends of mine were killed on a visit to this project on Memorial Day. I can't tell you if it will be completed by us - there are some serious issues that a lot of people are working their way through on the other side of this cubicle right now, but I can tell you that we are doing everything we possibly can to finish it and leave an operating system in that town.

Iraq is still facing a serious shortage of educated and trained people. That's why I'm so excited about the projects I'm working on. They're all designed to help the Iraqis take steps forward themselves: some are training programs to do things like run the PHC's and hospitals and schools. One is to bring a university's engineering curriculum up to western accreditation standards. Two are to develop master plans in places that badly need them - and to train the Iraqis in how to do planning, and how to implement the plans once they're done.

Will it answer all their problems? No, but it will answer some, and provide them with some tools to take the next steps themselves. They're so much to be done that, as this article indirectly noted, you can do $53 BILLION dollars' worth of work and people still think you didn't do anything. But we did - for example, just go visit Sadr City (umm, on second thought, don't) and you'll find several hundred thousand people who now have reasonably clean running water. Or towns where they now have a solidly built school instead of (literally) a mud hut.

Yeah, there was a lot of waste, but the great majority of projects were done and are being used. Just remember that journalists tend to overstate the negative and sensational because they wouldn't have a job otherwise.

Glad you saw this article.

All the best,
Skip

Soozee's Status Update

Our vet confirmed today that Soozee has Addison's disease. We were 95% sure that's what nearly killed her the other day, and now we know and can move forward with treatment. Addison's is never cured: with this condition, the adrenal glands just quit working and never start up again. But, as we have experienced for the past 20 months with her sister Indy, Addison's can be treated. Indy gets a cortisol shot every four weeks and takes Prednisone every day, and once we got her dosage levels figured out, she has been perfectly healthy. Soozee will probably follow almost the same regimen.

The reports from Soozee's RN (Janis) have been very positive over the past few days. Soozee is at home and resting comfortably most of the day. Her spirits are up and she is beginning to eat and drink on her own again. She's still very tired, but then, if you were in critical condition and on life support on Friday, you probably wouldn't be a bundle of energy, either. She finally had a nice poop on her own this morning, but you probably didn't need that level of detail.

Thanks to all who called and sent us notes of support. They were more important than you know. And many thanks to Jennifer and Darryl, our next-door neighbors, who jumped in and helped Janis out. And, as I said last time, Dr. Ryan Hammond at the Animal Hospital of Reems Creek was the one who pulled Soozee back from over the brink and saved her life.

I consider myself very blessed - I have two of the sweetest dogs in the world (who are both alive today because of Dr. Hammond), a wonderful wife who kept her head during this crisis, and friends and family who provided us with support. You can't ask for much more than that.

A Very Bad Scare

Yesterday, we very nearly lost the sweetest little dog in the world. Soozee has been sick since Tuesday, not eating anything, throwing up occasionally, and having less and less energy. Janis took her into the vet on Thursday. The vet thought that she may have pancreatitis. She was certainly dehydrated, so they gave her a subcutaneous injection that seemed to revive her. He also took some blood tests, but they wouldn't be back until the next day. Janis took Soozee home and kept an eye on her. Mostly, Soozee just slept.

Friday morning, she wouldn't, couldn't, move and lost control of her bowels. Janis took her in to the vet right as they opened, and as soon as they saw Soozee, they went into gear. Soozee was dehydrated again, her heart rate was very low, blood sugar was very low, her blood pressure was so low they couldn't get an IV into her, and her temperature was ten degrees below normal. The poor little dog's systems were shutting down and she was literally at death's door.

The vet gave her a shot of dextrose to get her blood sugar up and a shot of cortisone to get her system going again. She stabilized and then, slowly, started to come back. It took six hours for her blood pressure to come up enough for them to finally get an IV into her. A little later, Janis was able to see her and got a weak tail wag in response. By evening, she was looking better. Weak, but better.

Soozee spent last night in REACH, the emergency animal hospital in Asheville, still with an IV in her. By today, she was much better, jumping and licking Janis when she arrived, and very happy to see her sister Indy. She still won't eat anything, but I think that's because she's in a strange place and they want her to eat strange food from a strange bowl. Soozee is a piglet, but she's a very particular piglet. At this moment, she is still under observation at REACH, but may be able to go home soon.

We think that Soozee has Addison's disease. Her sister, Indy, came down with it in March '08 (see my entries here, here, and here). Addison's is not really a disease, it's a condition in which the adrenal glands quit working. Forever. It is deadly if not caught in time. We caught Indy's in time ... I thought her case was a close call, but then we damn near lost Soozee yesterday. But although Addison's can't be cured, it can be treated. Indy is on a regimen of a shot at the vet's every 26 days, plus half a prednisone pill every morning and evening. Once we finally found the right dosage, Indy's body chemistry settled down and she's been her normal self since then. The vet will give Soozee a specific test on Monday for Addison's, but since it's hereditary and Indy already has it, and the symptoms are much the same, we're pretty certain Soozee has Addison's, too.

Janis handled everything like a trooper. She was an emotional wreck but was still able to think things through and do what needed to be done. Me, I was a basket case. I was stuck here in Iraq, seven thousand miles away, and unable to do a thing to help. I've often said that if anything ever happened to one of my dogs, they'd have to put me down. Well, they almost had to last night. I was worried sick, shaking, unable to talk to anybody without breaking down. After all, this was my little girl who might die at any moment. It's an awful, gut-wrenching, unbearable feeling.

But she came through. She came through thanks to Dr. Ryan Hammond at the Animal Hospital of Reems Creek. This is the second time he's saved one of our dogs for us. The staff at REACH kept that momentum going. These are good doctors, good people, and I owe them.

I am not a religious kind of guy, but last night, I thanked God from the depths of my soul that He let my little girl live.

Just Stuff

I finally hit the gym last night. Between going home on R&R, and then having a cold, it's been a month since I last pushed some weights around. So I eased off some on both the weights and the reps. Good thing, too, because I'm sore today. Thighs are sore, abs are sore, chest is sore, arms are sore. Must've been a good workout!

Work is going pretty well. As I mentioned, I've got six big projects that I'm in charge of. Two of them have recently been started and the people we're doing them for are hounding me every day, asking about what's going on, and what's going to go on, and when, and why we aren't further along than we are, and they're going to sic their generals on us if they don't like what we're doing. And I'm thinking, dude, I've only had this job for two weeks, what the hell do you want?

The other four projects are still being developed so that I can get them onto a contract. I've never put a package together for a contract before, so I'm still on the steep side of the learning curve. And a couple of these projects are hideously complex, never-been-done-in-Iraq types of things that are confounding even our contracting experts. And, of course, the people we're doing them for are hounding me for progress reports. At least they're not threatening to sic their generals on me. Yet.

Still, I'm having a good time. These are very worthwhile projects and I'm just as qualified (or unqualified, depending on your viewpoint) to run them as anybody else is. My new bosses are very understanding and supportive, which is wonderful, and are letting me do the job however I think it needs to be done. So work is going well.

Way, way back when, I read the book All I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, by Robert Fulghum. It's a remarkable book. Robert has a knack for finding deep meanings in the simple, everyday experiences of life, and then writing about them in a way that expresses his fundamental joy in life. My sister pointed me toward his blog some time ago. Go take a look, you might enjoy it.

I finally got some mail today. It's been six weeks since anything arrived through the postal service. Back in September, we were given our new mailing address, and I dutifully sent it out to my magazines and family and friends. After I arrived here, I found out that they gave us the wrong one. Nothing like quality support from your command, huh? Fortunately, all those guys are now back in the States where they can't do any more damage here.

So now I have a newly opened back of Nature Valley Granola Nut Clusters that's sitting here on my desk, fresh from a box that arrived today. I better put it away before I eat the whole thing and undo all the benefits of yesterday's trip to the gym.

New Drawing

Ruined Guard Tower, Victory Base

Pencil on paper, 9"x12"

This afternoon was my weekend, all 5 hours of it. It was a beautiful day, absolutely perfect, clear skies, mid-70's. I took my iPod and a magazine outside and vegg'ed for a while. Later, I went out to sketch this guard tower. I've had my eye on it for several months - it's a perfect subject for a drawing or painting. So here's the drawing, but the painting may take a while.

Return to the Grind ... but it's a new grind ...

I've been down for the past week with a cold. Picked it up while at home on R&R, evidently, and it finally took off after I came back here. The medical center reassured my hypochondriac self that I didn't have pneumonia again (have had it three times in my life, no fun) and that I wasn't going to die anytime soon - at least, not from a cold. So they gave me lots of good drugs that made my sinuses drier than the Mojave Desert. Yesterday, my body told me that the virus was officially dead, so now I'm just getting over the residual symptoms.

As a result, I hit the treadmill tonight after work. It whipped my butt, but sure felt good to get moving again. Tomorrow: weight room.

I'm much happier at work these days. My little group of people has transferred into the Gulf Region District, so we have a new set of bosses who are still learning what we're all about, but they're very supportive. Most importantly, my job has completely changed. I was working on organizational issues and creating PowerPoint briefings for high mucky-mucks who didn't understand what we were telling them and didn't seem to care. Not a lot of job satisfaction there. Now, I'm running six programs with budgets of many millions of your taxpayer dollars. All of them are designed to help Iraqi provincial officials and people run their own country in a more effective manner. A chance like this is the reason I volunteered to come here, and I'm going to give all of these projects my best shot. It's a really tremendous opportunity.

In addition to the job being so good, life in our new location is better. I moved into our new office this past week. It's on the same compound where my barracks room is. So instead of having to take the special bus in to work, and being tied to the bus schedule, I now have a commute of (by actual measurement) 2 minutes 30 seconds from my room to my desk. Pretty cool. Okay, so it's about 45 minutes if you include the trip to the DFAC for breakfast, lunch, or dinner (10 minute walk each way down a dusty road heavily travelled by MRAPs, semi-trucks, Strykers, John Deere gators, and every variety of SUV and pickup in the world). The air in our office building seems to be much healthier than the old building, too. My eyes aren't bothering me like they did.

And if all this wasn't good news enough, this past week we won a painting from a dear friend of ours in a raffle. The artist is Genie Maples. Her studio is just down the hall from mine, and she paints wonderful, powerful abstracts. This one is particularly strong - you can read about it in her blog. Suffice it to say, it's about a lot more than you think.

So the next six months look like they're going to be an exciting time. Work is fun again!

Back in Baghdad Again

So now I'm back in Baghdad. The trip was a 48-hour marathon. Asheville to Charlotte, Charlotte to Dulles, Dulles to Kuwait on the first day. The flight to Kuwait was twelve hours. It always amazes me that a big honking piece of machinery with over a hundred people inside plus tons of fuel and luggage can get off the ground at all, much less stay in the air for half a day. But they do. So the takeoff roll for me is an exciting time: the noise, the gradual buildup of speed, the vibration and bouncing, then it rotates back and feels like it goes straight up. That's cool!

Kuwait wasn't. It was warm and muggy. There aren't any regularly scheduled flights to Baghdad on Wednesdays, but there are plenty of other planes going back and forth. I put my name on the list for anything Baghdad-bound and waited for my name to get called. There were about ten flights on the board between midnight and noon, so I was up all night, cat-napping in the world's most uncomfortable chairs, and my name was finally called about 11 a.m. for a flight that eventually left about 3 pm. Yes, MilAir is not your normal airline. We landed without incident in Baghdad and I was back in my barracks room by 5:30, just in time for dinner at the DFAC.

Everything at work is changing. Almost all the people who were making my life difficult over the past couple of months are now gone - they left when the organization was officially disestablished last week. There are just a few of us left rattling around in the huge building. But that'll change in the very near future. My group is moving over to our new command, which is where our barracks are. So in a week or two, my commute will shrink to about a two-minute walk.

In the meantime, I'm fighting a cold. It hit hard this afternoon and I'm feeling pretty miserable. Yuk. I'm hoping it clears up quickly - I don't have time to be sick!

While I was home, I met with Ted McIrvine in my studio. Ted writes an online arts column that focuses on the western North Carolina area. Frankly, his article just blew me away. You can read it here.

So. I'm off to bed, with a box of Kleenex and some NyQuil. Hopefully, I'll be feeling better the next time I post something.

R&R Wrapup

Tomorrow, I start my trip back to the sandbox. My R&R is just about over. Being home is pretty much indescribable after being in Iraq for so long. I've got a completely different attitude now about "home" and what it means. Things that I took for granted before are now things to be savored. Some highlights:

- sitting in my own chair watching a NASCAR race on the tube;

- going out to dinner and having a meal that was cooked just for me;

- listening to my dog softly snoring;

- talking with old friends;

- seeing real art and artists;

- just being in the same room as my wife again;

- experiencing autumn in the mountains;

- hopping into my own truck to go somewhere;

and many many more.

Experiences like this are not to be taken lightly. Not anymore.

Here are a few photos from my all-too-brief time at home -

We went to the opening of the new Echo Gallery in Biltmore Park. Most of the artists are friends of ours and it was wonderful to see them get this great opportunity to help establish a gallery in this new section of town.

Yes, I got to spend a lot of time with my two hairy little daughters.

Here's Janis with our anniversary present to ourselves, a painting by our friend Genie Maples. Genie is one of the artists in Echo Gallery.

Right at the end of my visit was the peak of fall colors. The maple tree in front of our house went from green to this beautiful gold in three days.

Here are some fall colors in my neighborhood.

Here's my sweet little Indy, ready for her afternoon nap on our bed.

We had some beautiful flowers around the house, too. Smelled wonderful, too.

A Good Read

David Rohde (no relation to me that I know of) is a journalist for the New York Times. Last year, he was taken hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan and held for seven months. The Times has just published his six-part story on his captivity. It is well-written, eye-opening, and harrowing. Go read it.

More on R&R

Tent City, oil on panel, 12"x17"

I'm thoroughly enjoying myself on this R&R break. My cousin came down from Baltimore for a visit and we had a great time playing tour guide around Asheville. I've spent some time in the studio ... my own studio ... doing some drawing, painting, and just messing around. Most of what I've done has been wiped out or tossed in the trash, and deservedly so, but I think this small panel titled Tent City is a keeper. Art is one of those things you have to really work at to keep the creative juices flowing. I've barely been able to keep the rust off, and haven't gotten the rhythm flowing yet, but in this short time I didn't expect to. It's just nice to know that the eye and instincts are still there, even though they're not fully warmed up.

It's been great to see a lot of old friends, too. I've caught up on events with friends in their studios, the grocery store, on the street, over dinner, in the coffee shop, even in the dentist's chair. Most everybody is doing fairly well. This recession is really clobbering some, particularly my artist and general contractor friends. How some of them are making it, I don't know. One friend has a daughter who's autistic, and because of that, no insurance company will cover her. None. The right has been railing about "rationed" health care under Democratic proposals, but we already have rationed care - only it's by insurance companies whose focus is on profits, not health care. And speaking of ripoffs, I see so many of my friends who are working their asses off trying to keep from going under, and at the same time there are billions of dollars going out in bonuses to Wall Street execs who are already making fortunes. Something is seriously wrong here. Those bonuses would cover a lot of health care for a lot of autistic children, for example ... a much better use of resources than buying a new Ferrari for somebody that already has three. And I say that as a guy who appreciates Ferraris.

As I was writing, my dogs finally got up. We have a routine here: we humans get up earlier in the morning and have our coffee and so forth while the dogs sleep in until 9 or so. Then they come out and we have a big fuss over them, with their tails wagging, lots of rubbing of hairy little bellies, and a quick trip outside to water the grass. Then - BOOM - time for a nap again. They're both down hard and they haven't even had a walk or anything yet.

So now it's time to get rolling. Got a lot to do today, friends to visit, and projects to accomplish. I hope your day goes as well as mine is going to.

Picture Time

While I've been gallivanting around the world, I've kept my camera with me to capture a few happy snaps here and there.

When you go through Ali Al Salem, here's the 5-star hotel that they put you up in. See my previous post for some words on the complete experience.

This gent was catching a few z's in the Dulles terminal.

Taking my two dogs for their twice-daily 1-mile walk is such a joy.

My cousin Bridget is visiting us ... finally ... only took her TEN YEARS to come down from Baltimore ... and yes, I'm giving you a hard time, Bridget!

The three of us went to the Southern Highlands Craft Guild show on Saturday. I spent some time talking with some artist friends of mine there, and also got to listen to some really good bluegrass/mountain music from these gents.

Today, I got to spend some time in the studio, working on some projects and knocking out a small painting on a panel. Life is good.

And Now for a Little R&R

Home. It sure is good to be home. I'm in my own house, sleeping in my own bed, being with my wife, playing with my dogs. Life is good.

Had a great welcome-home. When I arrived at the airport, Janis was waiting out in the parking lot with the dogs. The dogs didn't see me until I called out to them. Their two little heads snapped around, there was a split-second hesitation as if they were thinking, "Daddy? Really?" and then they came running at me full-bore, jumping and licking and wagging their whole bodies. Janis's welcome was a bit more subdued since we were in a public parking lot but she made up for it that evening ... (okay, that was TMI; I'll try to restrain myself).

Unlike some of my previous trips home, I don't really feel a culture shock. Rather, I feel a great appreciation for all the little details of home. It's cool here, very green, and the leaves are changing. I'm looking out at my back yard right now, at the trees and juniper and the wet grass. I'm sitting at our kitchen table with a cappuccino that I made from my own little espresso machine. Janis and the dogs aren't up yet, and the house is still and quiet. I feel whole, blessed, and relaxed.

Going out and about in town is quite a change. I can drive my own car without having to check it out from some admin wienie. There aren't any checkpoints on the roads. No armed guards. The roads are in good shape. I'm dodging 18-wheelers, not MRAPs.

We took a road trip on Tuesday over to Pigeon Forge. It's probably the tackiest town in North America, but it's a beautiful drive to get there, and we needed to do a little shopping at the outlet stores. It was so good to get started whenever we were ready, to cruise down the 2-lane highways over the mountains, and see whole hillsides with trees changing colors. What a great day.

Janis put me right to work with a honey-do list. I've knocked off about 2/3 of them and am making progress on the rest. Feels good to putter around the house, y'know? No stress - get 'em done whenever, and if I don't, I don't.

Yesterday, I spent much of the day in my studio. No, I wasn't painting, I was cleaning. The place is, to use a highly technical Navy phrase, a shithole. My studio is in a 110-year-old industrial building, meaning it has it's charms, but it also has industrial-strength dirt, spiders, and bug carcasses. And cobwebs that shame the ones in bad horror flicks: big, heavy, gray, nasty things that drape across all the places you want to walk. I share the studio with another painter, but she hasn't cleaned the place since I've been gone ... and I didn't clean it last time I was home, either ... so it has about a year's worth of accumulated dirt/grime/gunk/cobwebs. So I'm doing a bit of spring cleaning. I don't care - it was just good to spend time banging around the studio again. I'll do some paint-slinging in a few days.

It has been really good to see some old friends. Yesterday, some of them heard that I was around the studio and stopped in to say hello. Janis and I are going to have lunch with some more today. And there are more that I need to at least say hello to.

Now it's time to get moving. Got a lot of stuff to do today. And NONE of it is work!

Chilling at Ali Al Salem

I'm sitting in an internet cafe at Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait. This is the portal for all US troops going into and out of Iraq. I arrived here yesterday afternoon and will leave this evening. Not much to do here, which right now is fine with me. I'm decompressing.

Yesterday was the first leg of the trip home. They picked us up at 8:30 so we could check in at Sather (the USAF base at Baghdad Airport) at 9 a.m. Our flight didn't load up until 1:30 in the afternoon. Think about that the next time you gripe about having to arrive at the airport a half-hour early! I ran into two friends, one from the Embassy and one from my Corps training, who were also on their way out for R&R. You know you're getting to be an old-timer when you're running into friends at the airport, I don't care where you are.

The last time I flew on a C-130, I learned that you want to sit in the very front or the very back. The reason is that the passenger "seats" are really four rows of red canvas netting running fore-and-aft, with two rows facing each other on the right (starboard) side and two on the left (port) side. If you sit in the middle of these rows, you're jammed in with people on all sides of you and your knees and feet are sandwiched in between the knees and feet of whoever is sitting across from you. If you're in the very front or the back, you have a good chance at some leg room. So this time, I tried really hard to drag behind the others on the cattle-march out to the plane. It worked. I wound up sitting in the very back of a row, with nobody in front of me and nobody to one side. For a C-130 flight, this was heaven!

Previously, when flying in and out of Baghdad, it seemed like we taxiied to the Green Zone and back before our takeoff roll. This time I was ready for another long trek, but we made about two turns and off we went. The flight was smooth and uneventful (yay!) and we landed in Kuwait about an hour and a half later. Then there was the admin of checking in, turning in my helmet and body armor, and finding someplace to crash for the night.

Now, remember: this is a temporary military base. Accommodations are, to coin a phrase, "spartan". You're assigned to a tent and get to pick your own rack. Once you get to the tent, you'll find that it has 8 sets of bunkbeds. That's it. A concrete floor, a heavy canvas tent, an a/c system (more on that in a minute), and 8 sets of bunks. The bunkbeds, by the way, have a mattress with a heavy waterproof canvas cover. No sheets, pillows, blankets, or other sissy folderal. You're expected to sleep in your clothes, like God intended.

I was fortunate in that there were only 8 of us in there last night. And none of my seven new best friends snored. So it was quiet. It was also cold. Our a/c system cycled on and off between two settings: icy and frickin' frigid. It got so bad that sometime in the middle of the night I got up and went over to the terminal. They were showing the Yankees/Twins baseball game on the big screen all night long (it played three times that I know of), but the terminal has big black floppy armchairs and is a bit warmer than the tent, so I was able to doze. Got up sometime around sunrise, about the time they started calling all the flights and the noise factor went way up. After sleeping in the arm chair, my legs just didn't want to work right, and I must've been quite a sight as I staggered out the door like a drunk. Back to the tent, which was warming up a bit under the sun, and I slept another three hours.

Sometime around 9, I finally got moving. Wandered over to the Green Bean for a cappuccino and a really good Danish and read the Stars and Stripes newspaper cover to cover. Later, I found the gym and pushed some weights around. Felt like a new man after a shower and change of clothes. Had a long lunch at the DFAC and then came over here. Sounds pretty exciting, huh? The rest of my afternoon is going to be more of the same, at least until they take us over to the airport.

But for now, I'm a happy man. I'm unwinding, decompressing, and getting ready to go home. Nothin's better than that!

It's R&R Time!

FINALLY! I'm heading home in the morning! It's been six months since I've seen my wife and children (the two dogs). But tomorrow morning, I'm going over to the airport, and then sometime later (hey, it's military air: there are no schedules), I'll fly to Kuwait. And on Sunday I'll land in Asheville. HOME!

I haven't started packing yet, but what the heck, I'm just taking a carry-on and backpack. I figure, I've got clothes here, I've got clothes there, why do I need to take more clothes from place to place? A toothbrush, change of skivvies, and some entertainment (iPod, Kindle, computer), and I'm good to go. Oh, yeah: passport and orders, too.

I was getting a bit stressed out the past few days. I scheduled my trip for right after the new federal fiscal year. Not too swift, there, Skipper. What with all the financial confabulations going on with setting up the new FY accounts, I didn't get my orders until this morning. Still don't have confirmation that my airline ticket has been paid, but they assured me that it would be done today. And if it isn't? I've got American Express. Don't leave home without it. I'm goin' HOME, by damn!

'Nuff said. Got some packing to do. Next time I post, it won't be from here!

Still Surviving

We arrived at work yesterday to a rather frightening sight. Thick smoke was billowing up from someplace very close to our building. The closer we got, the worse it looked. I went down to a guard tower and took this picture. The actual fire was about a quarter of a mile away, right at the entrance to the base. We thought that a suicide bomber had struck. Today, we heard the rather mundane news. It was apparently started accidently by the driver, who had squatted underneath his gasoline tanker trailer to cook his breakfast. Yes. Cook his breakfast. Nobody was hurt, but there was one helluva big load of dishes to clean up.

I haven't made any posts in a while because my blasted internet connection has rarely been up. It's going now, but I'm typing like a mad man, trying to get this post in so that all my fans (all three of you) know that I'm still alive and well.

Our hectic pace at work continues. Our Exalted Leaders are still revisiting the how and why of reorganization. I'm pretty frustrated - we're three weeks into the implementation phase of our transformation, and they're still trying to figure out what we're going to transform into. Meanwhile, I have stacks of real work on my desk: new projects that need to be started, questions from the field to be answered, one major set of decisions to be negotiated with one of our primary clients. And what am I told to do? Make colorful flow charts of our processes. The very same processes that we're not doing because of all this transformation stuff.

If I ever say I'm going to work for the Corps of Engineers, or the Army, again, will somebody please just shoot me?

On the positive side: The weather here is cooling down. The middle of the day is just warm, say in the lower 90's, and morning and evening are pretty much perfect. There have been no more sudden squalls and only a few very minor dust storms. Good jogging weather. I'd be outside running, if it didn't mean getting up at 5 a.m. I don't do 5 a.m. For anybody. Sorry.

And on the really, really positive side: in four days I'll be heading home on R&R. I am way past excited. It's been six months since I've been home and that's too long. So any time I get stressed in the office, I just shut my eyes for a second and think, "there's no place like home ... there's no place like home ..." Clicking my heels together in patent red leather pumps doesn't do the trick though - I still have to get on that C-130.

Soon!