Genie Maples, Artist

A Life Gone Lacy

Oil on canvas, 36"x36"

Have you ever watched somebody slowly get better and better at what they do, maybe for years, and then suddenly something seems to click and they take off like a rocket? My friend Genie Maples is one such person. Her studio is down the hall from mine. When she moved in, she was painting large, vibrant, colorful, sometimes jolting abstract paintings. I've watched her work gradually get better and stronger since then. She is a very intuitive painter and works from some deep, non-verbal, but very powerful source. It seemed to me that immersion in our artists' community in Asheville's River Arts District gave her exposure to new ways of thinking about, and making, her paintings. She gained a lot of experience and understanding of her process, the technical and formal aspects of paint on canvas, and most importantly, how to connect her feelings and intuition with the expressive power of paint. So for the past few years, her work has gradually gotten better and better.

Over the past six to nine months, it's like she's hit afterburner. In my own opinion, her paintings have gotten much more sophisticated, sensitive, complex, and powerful. Her newest group of paintings, from which the image above is taken, just blows me away. She's going off in a different direction now and I, for one, am amazed. It's kinda like, "This is one of Genie's paintings? Our little girl has hit the big time?"

Yes, she has. Take a look at her web site and see. Genie's an artist to watch - she's going places.

A Poorly-Aimed Bill

Representative Bernie Sanders (D-VT) will soon introduce the "Stop Outsourcing Our Security Act" in Congress. The act would prohibit the use of private contractors for military, security, law enforcement, intelligence, and armed rescue functions. I think this bill is unnecessary and counterproductive. Below is an email that I just sent to my Congressman, Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC):

Dear Congressman:

I am one of your constituents who is currently working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Baghdad, Iraq. Rep. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) will soon introduce the "Stop Outsourcing Our Security Act". The act would prohibit the use of private contractors for military, security, law enforcement, intelligence, and armed rescue functions.

After having been in Iraq for 17 months now and counting, I see this Act as misguided. There are still lots of very valid reasons for using private security guards.

Here at Victory Base, we use Ugandan and others as guards at entry points all over the base. They're armed because this is still a war zone. If they were gone, then we'd have to bring several hundred more junior soldiers to pull various kinds of guard duty just for this base, and several thousand for the theater. There are guards at the gates, at the entry points for most buildings and offices, and escorting local and third-country nationals doing construction and other work. Trust me, this kind of guard duty is a waste of a trained U.S. Army soldier.

When I move around the country to our offices and job sites, I am taken by a private security firm who's under contract to the Corps. These guys are experienced, skilled, and professional - they're not maniacal killers as the press likes to portray them. Their mission is to get me from point A to point B and back again without any trouble, and they do that well. If we had to rely on US troops to get our job done, we'd need about another 500 soldiers just in Iraq; maybe double that in Afghanistan. And that's just for the Corps.

Politically, there is a huge difference between an Army soldier and a civilian security guard in the local community. Imagine if a foreign leader - the Prime Minister of Iraq, say - came to Washington with a contingent of armed Iraqi soldiers in Strykers and HummVees to escort him around. Americans would go nuts. The same thing happens here in Iraq: our heavy-handed (by necessity) military presence leaves a sour taste in most Iraqi's mouths. Private security firms, like those we use and those that escort Embassy officials, are lower-profile, using cars and trucks that are usually modified civilian vehicles, and the security guards may even be in coat and tie if the occasion demands it. A small group of up-armored Ford Excursions makes much less of an impact than a train of huge MRAPs.

Proponents of the legislation point to the disparity between what contractors make and what soldiers make. Private security contractors, at least those from western countries, do make a lot more than military members. The Ugandans make far, far less. But pay is only a small part of it. If we need more contractors, we hire them, and they're on the job within weeks. When we don't need them, we cut them loose, and we're gradually doing that now. We can't hire and fire soldiers that quickly. It takes one to two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to recruit, train, and deploy one soldier. Then they're with us for a period of years.

The differences in missions are what set contractors and soldiers apart. Soldiers are part of the government and their mission is to execute government policies. Contractors are there to provide support: food services, transportation, maintenance, and self-defense security among them. Take away the contractors and you'll have either a much bigger military presence, or else a reduced military effectiveness. And as our military leaders, from Mr. Gates on down, have made clear, our military is already over-stretched and over-stressed.

We're moving toward a more realistic balance of contractors now. The Bush mindset of privatizing everything is gone, thank God. But there is still a need for contractors in a war zone, so this bill makes no sense. It removes a valuable tool from our toolchest based on misperceptions of things that happened years ago.

Regards,

Skip Rohde

Marine Corps Combat Artist

All of the services have a combat artist program. A couple of years ago, while I was working on the "Meditation on War" series, I tried to do some work with them. It never happened. The Army, Navy, and Air Force had their funding zeroed out, while the Marine Corps had an artist on active duty. I never found out who that was, but today I did. His name is Kris Battles. He's a talented, skilled, and trained painter and sculptor who is currently deployed to the operations in Haiti. Take a look at his blog and his web site. The guy is good.

Changes

Never volunteer to work in a contingency environment if you can't deal with changes. You may go into the office in the morning doing one thing, and come out in the evening doing something entirely different. It's certainly going on in my world.

Two of my projects have been cancelled in the past week. The reason is that the Embassy changed the required completion dates. Where we had been planning on a 1-year period for these projects, from the end of March this year to the end of March next year, suddenly the Embassy moved the required completion dates up to the end of December. That meant that two of mine were no longer viable - there wasn't enough time available to do the required work. So with two whacks of the ax, two projects were gone. More may follow.

One of the killed projects was my biggest - a huge effort to provide training to Iraqi provincial governments all around the country. We've been working on developing this thing for nine months. It was extremely complex. The ground rules that we were given were vague, amounting to little more than "provide training to any provincial government on any kind of subject they need, anywhere they need it, any time they need it." Figuring out how to do that took a lot of work. We were just a couple of days from putting it out for bids when it was cut.

On the one hand, it's very frustrating to see nine months' worth of work thrown out like that. My predecessors put heart and soul into it, and then I picked up the ball and pushed it as hard as I could. This was a project that could have had a very positive impact on the ability of local governments to do things like get the roads paved, provide electricity and water, and pay the salaries of school teachers. All to no avail.

On the other hand, they just made my life a lot easier. Managing that program would've been a nightmare.

I'm seeing a very different mentality from US leadership now. They're definitely shifting into a "no more" mindset. For the past several years, fueled by huge amounts of money that Congress allocated, the Embassy and the Corps have been working feverishly to build infrastructure (schools, water, sewers, roads, hospitals, you name it) all over the country. We're now in the end game. By August, we will be down to 50,000 military left in Iraq, none of them (officially) "combat troops". (We will have "advisors", who look remarkably like "combat troops" - the difference is in their mission). And by December, 2011, they'll all be gone. Meanwhile, we're drawing down, too. Our projects are wrapping up. We have just a few left on the drawing board, mine included. But now I'm seeing our leaders thinking that we should close things down even quicker. Starting new projects doesn't close things down quicker. So, of my seven programs, two are now cancelled, I think two more are in danger of being cancelled, one may not go forward for other reasons, one is about to wrap up, and one is safe.

It's a lot of fun being on the front end of things, starting programs and projects left and right. Wrapping things up and shutting things down isn't near as much fun.

But for now, I still have five active programs that I believe in.

Two New Paintings

Here are a couple of small paintings that I did last Sunday - our holiday. I went up on the roof of our barracks and spent a few happy hours slopping paint around. Both of these are 12"x16", in oil on linen board.

Abu Ghraib Wall

Just to the north of our barracks is the wall that separates the base from Abu Ghraib. The infamous prison is a few miles west of here.

Abu Ghraib Afternoon

As the sun set, this was the view looking out to the west, along the wall.

Flying Things

There's a lot of stuff in the air here. Besides dust, I mean. Birds and bugs and machines. It makes for some interesting experiences.

Early in the morning, right around sunrise, our compound is the gathering place for thousands of crows. Literally thousands of them. You see 'em flying in from wherever the spent the night and they converge on top of us. They'll go for the radio antennae, or settle on the barbed wire on top of the walls, or perch on top of the streetlights. Mostly they fly back and forth, pushing and jostling in the air and for landing spots. They're a noisy bunch, too: cawing at each other and raising quite a racket. After a bit of ruckus, they'll settle on the wire fence. Long rows of crows, all lined up next to each other, all facing into our compound. Then it gets quiet, just an occasional squawk. Seems like they're getting their marching orders from their command sergeant major.

Crow Sergeant Major: "Blackie! Take your squad and check out the dumpster behind the DFAC. Report back to me."
Blackie: "Yowp!"
Crow Sergeant Major: "Yellowbeak! You get your boys and recon the fire station."
Yellowbeak: "Aawk! How come we never get to do the DFAC?"
Crow Sergeant Major: "Shaddap! Squawker! Your squad's got the north canal. Get goin'!"
Squawker: "Aaarp!"

Then all the crows scatter for their work day. Not all at once: one leaves, then two and four, and within just a minute or so, the thousands of crows are gone. And the next morning, they do it again.

We have a lot of pigeons here, too. They don't seem too bright. They'll come flying in right about the time all the crows arrive, only where the crows are pushing and shoving each other, the pigeons are more like "Pardon me! 'Scuse me! Sorry, sir!" They're all flustered, trying to get out of the crows' way, ducking for cover. Then, of course, they make the same mistake the next morning. Well, duh: if you don't want to get into a shoving match with the crows, then don't show up over our compound at sunrise. But there they are, every morning. "Scuse me! I'm sorry!"

I get a kick out of the sparrows. At least I think they're sparrows: little bitty mouse-brown birds, all chirpy and alert. We don't have a sparrow-tree on our compound - maybe because of the crows - but I've seen sparrow-trees on other parts of the base. Sparrows like to congregate at sunset. They'll have hundreds of them in one tree. And they don't just amble in, either. They'll come screaming in at high speed, slam on their brakes just inches from the leaves, and disappear skidding into the tree. Where crows have the morning mission brief, sparrows have Happy Hour!! which is properly spelled in caps and with exclamation points. Happy Hour!! is very festive - you can see the whole tree vibrating as the birds hop from branch to branch, chirping with all their friends, telling tall tales about their exploits that day. They're just as noisy as the crows, but high-pitched and excited. "Whoopee! It's Happy Hour!! Let's get naked!"

We have a rather surprising type of bird here, too. Seagulls. Yes, you read that right. Seagulls. Damned if I know why they're here, but they are. I see them congregate around shallow ponds of stagnant muck as far as they can get from humans. Sometimes I see them circling in the air in some updraft, going round and round, not doing anything in particular. When they're on the ground, they just stand there, not doing anything in particular there, either. They're the wallflower of the bird world.

We also have a lot of flies. Iraqi flies are the most aggressive, persistent, and annoying flies I've ever encountered. Brush it away and it comes right back. If it decides that it likes your eye, it's going to land right by your eye come hell or high water. Moving to a different area will do nothing to dissuade it: it'll follow you around until it friggin' lands on your eye. Period. I guess life as an Iraqi fly is hard, so they have to be even hardier to survive.

Speaking of bugs, right around sunset, the gnats come out. I don't know if they're really gnats, or mosquitoes, or whatever. They don't bite me, they just swarm in different areas, going round and round, maybe following me as I walk, but not really landing and biting. They're annoying, but not for long, because just a few minutes after they show up, the bats do, too.

I like watching the bats. They're very quick, zipping around, changing direction inside their own length. They never present any kind of trouble to humans - it's really hard for a bat to eat a human - but they munch right down on the gnats and whatever other bugs are unfortunate enough to be airborne at sunset. They're quiet, too, since their built-in sonar systems are pitched way too high for us to hear.

What we can hear, and way too loudly, are the commercial airliners on final approach to the airport. They pass directly over our building, a few hundred feet up. Sometimes, I swear that they're trying to land on our roof. I can walk outside and do a visual inspection of the plane's landing gear as they fly by. Inside our office, sometimes the whole building shakes. I am not a fan of living under final approach, but so far, none have fallen out of the sky, so I guess we're safe.

But I like the helicopters. They're the reminder that we're not in Kansas anymore. Helicopters always fly in pairs. We see Blackhawks, the CH-46's from the Marines, and occasionally the Embassy's blue birds. As they fly over the base at night, the helos will have their lights on. As they pass over the perimeter, though, the lights go out. No running lights. Just the sound, which you can't really pinpoint. This is an extremely active base for helicopters. Go to the BX and there are two landing zones nearby, one of which is often being used. Right down the road is another landing zone. Cross the canal, and there's another. I don't ride in helos anymore, more's the pity - I always got a kick out of it. Sure would be fun to get one more ride before I leave here in April.

We have several blimps around the base, too. These have various kinds of bad-guy detectors on them. I like the blimps. They don't move around, they don't make any noise, they just float in the air and do their job. Cool.

Finally, there are the Predators. You can often hear them when it's quiet outside. Sounds like somebody's little model airplane off in the distance. Which it is, sorta. Sometimes you can even spot them, cruising slowly along at a few thousand feet. Predators have more bad-guy detectors on them, and ways to track the bad guys, and maybe even ways to hit at them, too. I really like the Predators!

In the Groove

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get caught up! Holy moly. While I was home having a good time, a lot of people were moving at warp speed here. Some evil trolls were trying to take money from my projects, some were trying to kill them off, some were making changes to the ground rules governing all our projects, a few were just monkeying around, deadlines were adjusted, tempers flared, and a few things actually got done as they were supposed to be done. I've got action items out the wazoo, all of which had to be done yesterday. Or last week.

So what can you do? You just do a triage on everything in the "in" box, pick the ones that need to get done first, and push the others to the back, often with a song-and-dance to try to keep somebody happy. I'll be pulling a lot of late nights for a while. At least it's not permanent - I do know that much.

I went to a meeting at the Embassy yesterday to discuss all my capacity development projects. It was a good meeting and I think we're all, more or less, on the same page. Some of the evil trolls mentioned earlier live and work at the Embassy, but we were all able to make nice and come to agreements on what we really wanted to get done. It was very encouraging, actually. I've spent today in a mad rush to try to answer a lot of issues that were finally decided yesterday (or at least the decision process was set in motion). As a follow-up, we've got a visitor here to work on some key documents with us bright and early tomorrow morning. We'll get that item nailed down by lunch time and we'll be making tracks by mid-afternoon. I'm pretty stoked about it.

Yesterday was the first time that I'd been in the International Zone since we packed up and moved back in July/August. The IZ felt much more like a unfriendly bunker than it used to. There were more checkpoints everywhere, all manned by Iraqi Army or Iraqi police. More heavy armor: one checkpoint had a frickin' tank sitting there, with it's barrel literally right in our faces. When US troops manned the IZ checkpoints, there wasn't that much of a visible presence and we could move in and out pretty quickly. Not now. Traffic is backed up and they search vehicles, even ours. I also noticed that they're using bomb-sniffing dogs, which is a big deal. Iraqis don't like dogs, considering them unclean. The last time I went through an IZ checkpoint, they used these little electronic wands to "sniff" vehicles. The problem with the wands is that they're completely useless. The Iraqis are finally wising up to that, after all these car bombs in the city, and now they're getting more bomb-sniffing dogs. Dogs: good. Wands: bad.

The weather on the east coast is affecting what we do here. We rely on our reach-back capabilities, most of which are in the Washington area, but others scattered across the eastern half of the country. And almost all of them are shut down. So this afternoon I got a frantic call from one of my contacts at the Embassy, needing an important financial report right now. Well, I can't provide it from here anymore, that comes from our reachback, so we'll get it for him tomorrow morning ... oh, wait, there's nobody at reachback today ... uh, bummer, dude.

We're having our own weather considerations here. We got a boatload of rain the other day. One day of rain means five days of mud, so we're on day 3 of mud recovery operations. Two more to go. In the States, you have things like grass and trees and drains that generally get rid of all that water pretty quickly. Not here - there's no real plant life around the base to suck up all that moisture so it sits in the top two inches of this rock-hard dirt and turns it into nasty gray stuff that gets in your boots and pants. Yes, I know, I'm whining. Deal with it!

On the positive side, my body clock seems to be adjusting pretty quickly. I take half a melatonin tablet before going to bed, and then if/when I wake up at 2:30 in the morning, I take the other half. At least, that's what I did the first three or four days. Now it's tapering off and I'm more or less on Baghdad time. I like melatonin. It's a natural chemical that your body produces to put you to sleep anyway, and I don't have any adverse effects like with Ambien - I felt like a zombie after taking that stuff. Might even be able to go off the melatonin tonight. We'll see.

I put in my redeployment package today. "Redeployment" means "going home". I'll be leaving here a little earlier than I'd thought: will be gone the last week in April. The countdown has begun. I've got a lot of work to do before then, but at least the end is in sight.

Starting the Final Push

I'm back in Baghdad again, starting my final stint in the country. The R&R trip was just what I needed: a break from the grind, a re-acquaintance with home, and a reminder of what's important.

The trip took 36 hours from home to barracks. The flight from Asheville to Charlotte was delayed a half hour due to weather. The flight from Charlotte to Dulles was delayed a half hour due to weather. The flight from Dulles to Kuwait was delayed 2 1/2 hours due to really bad weather: snow was coming down so hard that they had to de-ice the plane, and we were at the end of a very long line of planes. I had a window seat, which meant that I had something to lean against so I could sleep once we were in the air. Unfortunately, once I woke up, there was nothing to look at: there were solid clouds all the way from Dulles to southern Iraq. It only cleared up as we entered Kuwaiti airspace and by then it was dark. Bummer.

Ali Al Salem airbase was the same old same old. We showed up at 4 a.m. to turn in our bags, then had roll call at 6 a.m., loaded up onto the bus, and were delivered to the C130. This time I got smart. To get a good seat on a C130, you want to be either in the very front or the very back, where you can stretch your legs a bit. Otherwise, you're sitting sideways, jammed in like sardines, knee-to-knee with the poor slob across from you, with your carry-on carried in your lap. Oh, and you're wearing 40 pounds of body armor and helmet. So this time, I positioned myself at the very front. It worked out well, as I was able to stretch and move a little bit.

The flight to Baghdad takes about an hour and a half. We offloaded and went through the usual arrival drills. A guy from my command picked me up and took me back to the barracks. A shower, shave, change of clothes, and a bite of lunch, and I was a new man.

The evil trolls have been busy while I was gone, chipping away at the funding for my programs or causing delays or generally making mischief. I have a good bit of remedial action that needs to be taken quickly. But that's pretty much par for the course.

I feel a bit different this time back. I'm not as personally invested in these projects as I was three weeks ago - there's a distance there, so I can look at the projects a bit more dispassionately. That, I think, is a good thing. Maybe it's the fact that I had a breather and can look at the projects with new eyes. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm entering my final three-month stretch. Whatever the case, I hear a lot of noise and rumblings from On High, from the people we're doing these projects for, and from other related organizations, and I'm not taking it personally, as I might have just a few weeks ago. You want this project done? Let me run it. You want to cancel it? Okay, fine: here's the impact, now make the decision.

I turned in my notice yesterday that I will leave here when my term ends during the first week in May. It felt like a load began to be shifted off my shoulders.

So. Here I am. I still have a lot that I want to accomplish. I want to push my projects further along, and I want to find a good caretaker to turn them over to. Time to get to work.

Snowstorm

We're not in Baghdad anymore, Toto! Six inches of heavy, wet snow blanketed the area last night. I-40 and I-26 were shut down for a while. The weather guessers were guessing about a foot of snow in our area, but it didn't happen - we got a smaller amount of heavier stuff instead. So I got to spend a couple of hours outside today, shoveling our steep driveway. We have to do this because our driveway is steep and, as I learned during our first winter here, if I don't shovel the snow early, it turns to ice later on and is much harder to get rid of.

As discussed in my last post, I've continued doing a lot of nothing during my visit home. In the past week, I visited with friends, took the truck, Land Rover, and computer to their respective shops for some maintenance and minor repairs, and eaten way too much good food. We saw Inglorious Basterds the other day and Public Enemies a day or so later - both of which were extremely good and both of which are much better films than Avatar.

Among the old friends I've visited with this week are some artists. Two of them have done some work that I think is wonderful. Virginia Derryberry is the chair of the Department of Art and UNC Asheville. She was one of my instructors when I went through the program in 2000-2003. Her recent work is based on mythology, using contemporary real-world people as her models, including her son, daughter, son-in-law, students, dogs, and friends. They're beautifully painted works. Another is Genie Maples. Her studio is down the hall from mine. She's an abstract painter and her work has become much stronger, more subtle, better composed, and better painted. Images on the web look good but they cannot compare to the beauty of the real paintings. Virginia and Genie could not be more different in temperament and painting styles, but they're both outstanding artists. Go take a look.

One last note on politics. It appears to me that President Obama read my last blog post and took action on some parts of it. He opened discussions with the Republicans the other day. From what I saw on the tube, it was a bit like a first marriage-counseling session when both sides are still angry. Still, it was a start. Let's hope that both sides keep it up. Better yet, get the Senate and House leaders involved as well, on both sides. And if they don't want to do it, fire them.

Chilling at Home

There's a lot to be said for not doing much. For making a totally ordinary breakfast or lunch. For lying on the couch and watching the football playoffs, even if you're not a fan of football. (Yay, Saints! Boo, Colts!) For taking the dogs on their walk twice a day. For hanging out with friends and talking about whatever comes up. For going to a movie. All these little things that we normally take for granted have a lot going for them. It seems like we have to do without in order to really appreciate them.

Janis and I went to P.F. Chang's a few nights ago with some friends. The food, as always, was fabulous, service was excellent, and the crowd was animated and noisy. It was so nice to have a great dinner that was cooked just for me. We're big fans of P.F. Chang's and go whenever we can.

We also went to see Avatar in 3D. It was fun, but definitely not a "great" movie. I thought that the plot was stolen directly from Dances With Wolves with a twist to the end; a friend said it was more like Ferngully (which I never saw). Whatever the case, it was very predictable: I knew what would happen long before it did. Still, it was good entertainment with fantastic graphics. Much better on a big screen than it would be on your home TV with a Netflix DVD.

This week, I'll be doing maintenance. My truck's Check Engine light is on - I had it looked at by a local shop, but it came back on again within a couple of miles, so now it needs to go to a dealer. The Land Rover needs to go back in for routine maintenance. My MacBook has to go into the computer shop because of some issues with the hard drive. I replaced the hard drive with a bigger one last year and it isn't perfectly compatible. Minor annoyances: you get "stuff", then sooner or later, you have to repair "stuff".

As I write this, it's early in the morning and I'm the only one up. My body clock is still slowly migrating from Baghdad to Mars Hill. So the house is quiet and Janis and the dogs are still sleeping ... and one of the dogs is having a great dream and yipping away at something. Rabbits, maybe?

Since being home, I've been inundated with politics on TV. I can pretty much ignore it in Iraq, but not here. Turn on the news and everything is tied to politics. So here are a few comments.

- This past year, despite all the promises from both parties, Washington has been as polarized as it has ever been. The Democrats are guilty of the same hubris that the Republicans displayed under Bush, only at least they're not goose-stepping off to a new war. The Democrats could have accomplished so much more if they'd worked together. But as a wise man once noted, "I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat." By falling into business-as-usual, Democrats squandered their opportunity.

- To be an elected Republican these days means to have no mind of your own. They're the party of Just Say No. Where the Democrats have no party discipline whatsoever, the Republicans are like clones of each other and fall mindlessly into line behind whatever their leaders tell them to do.

- Both sides are doing a great disservice to this nation. I want my leaders to work together to address the issues facing us right now: the stagnant economy, lack of jobs, Wall Street excesses, health care, growing deficit, conflict with Islamic extremism, and health care, among others. Instead, leaders on both sides are more concerned with making political points than with actually getting things done.

- The election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts may be the wake-up call that Democrats needed. It seems like they finally got the message that they need to refocus. Like Bill Clinton said, "It's the economy, stupid." Dems have about nine months to get themselves re-tooled for the mid-term elections. Whether they do it remains to be seen.

- Republicans, meanwhile, are undergoing a hostile takeover by the Tea Party movement. The Tea Partyers are taking over the local Republican party positions that form the structure and determines who gets nominated. That's bad news for the party. Republicans are already a bit too far to the right for the majority of the country, but the Tea Partyers are way too far to the right. What I see happening is that the Tea Partyers ensure that only far-right candidates get nominated, but then they'll get clobbered in the elections. So the best news for the Democrats (as a party) is that the Tea Party is taking over the Republican Party.

So. That's my punditry for today. I hear Janis banging around in the other room now, so off I go.

Home Again

It sure is good to be back at home again. (Something about that line brings back the sappy John Denver song ... normally I'm not a fan of his, but that song is very apropos right now). Had a long trip home and have been going pretty hard since arriving here.

On Saturday, I was up early and was glad to see it was going to be a bright, clear day. I had to brief my boss on a significant restructuring of six of my programs. He had just returned from R&R a few days before and I needed to make sure he fully understood what I was proposing. He seems to now ... of course, I won't really know until I go back in a couple of weeks. Then I went back to grab my bags and throw them into the truck for the trip to the passenger terminal at Sather. As soon as the truck was loaded, both the driver and I were wondering "where the hell did all this fog come from?". Yes, fog - thick, too. On the drive to the terminal, we had to creep along as we could often see only 50 feet. It didn't clear up for hours and delayed a bunch of flights, mine included. So I sat at Sather from 8:30 until we finally loaded up and took off at 4:30 in the afternoon.

The flight to Kuwait was typical for a C-130: crammed like sardines onto the most uncomfortable nylon-net bench seats you can imagine. There's no padding and you have to wear your body armor and hold your bags on your lap. And you have to wear earplugs because there's no sound deadening either. My butt was numb and my legs didn't want to work by the time we finally landed.

Ali Al Salem has had some changes since I was last there a few months ago. Evidently a new commanding officer has come in and turned the place into a cross between a passenger terminal and boot camp. Once we got off the bus, we were lined up in rows, all of us, from the most junior private to most senior Colonel, with some senior State Department civilians thrown in, while a young private barked orders at us. Then we were marched over to our various check-in desks. Then down to turn in our body armor. Last time I did this, I walked in, filled out the form per the directions, turned in my armor, and was on my way in five minutes. This time, I had to wait until there was a full crowd, then a sergeant bellowed us block-by-block through the form. "BLOCK 14. WRITE YOUR LAST NAME AND THEN FIRST NAME. BLOCK 15. WRITE TODAY'S DATE. IT'S ONE SIX DASH ZERO ONE DASH TWO ZERO ONE ZERO. DO NOT WRITE IT ANY OTHER WAY. HOOAH?" In another tent, a master sergeant was doing the same thing with a batch of soldiers going on R&R. Sometimes you just gotta roll your eyes and go with the flow.

I hooked up with the Corps of Engineers detachment and they got me over to the Kuwait airport. Then it was onto the plane and off we went. The flight home is about 13 hours. I dunno about you, but I cannot stay in one position, or one seat, for that long, so I was up and moving around a bit. Still I managed to get some sleep, so I was ready to go by the time we landed at Dulles. Which is where the grumpiest scanner teams in the world work. I mean, they were crabby. I run into crabby people every time I go through Dulles - at the ticket counter, security screening, immigration, all over. What is it about that place? Other airports manage to have friendly, or at least neutrally efficient, people working there, but Dulles sets its workers on edge.

Our departure from Dulles was delayed due to weather, but not enough to make me miss my next flight. I wound up sitting next to a very interesting gent from South Africa and we had a great time talking about all sorts of things. Then it was on to Asheville and back to Janis. Home again!

We've been pretty busy doing a lot of nothing. I've run a few errands, walked the dogs, checked off some things on the honey-do list, played with the dogs, visited with some friends, walked the dogs again, and taken the truck to the shop. Lots of little things that are all about being home. My body clock is all messed up, of course. I've been waking up between 2:30 to 4 a.m., regardless of what time I go to bed, and I poop out about 8 pm if not earlier.

But that's fine. I'm home. What a great place to be!

R&R Time

These past several days have been a whirlwind. I'm heading out on R&R in the morning, so I've been busting my butt trying to get everything taken care of before I go. When I scheduled this break, I thought that I'd have a bunch of contracts that would be out for bids, so it would be a quiet time. Of course, that didn't happen: I have one that's almost out, three others that are in preparation, and a couple of others that need some major policy decisions before they can move any further. But that's okay: I have little to do with the contract preparation at this stage, and the policy decisions can be done without me, so I'm getting on that plane tomorrow.

So it's been a busy few days. Had to get as much done with all these projects as possible and tee up some decisions for the bosses while giving them as much information as possible. And the lady that's covering these projects for the next couple of weeks had to be brought up to speed on what's happening. Done, and done.

Everybody has been asking me about what my plans are for when I'm home. Very little, actually. Late January is not exactly prime vacation time in the mountains of North Carolina. But I don't need a lot of exciting diversions. I just want to spend some time at home with Janis and the dogs. Lay on the couch with a beer and watch the Chargers kick some butt. Have dinner with friends - at a restaurant, our house, or their house, doesn't matter. Spend a little bit of time in the studio. Go see Avatar. That's pretty much it. I don't need excitement, I need family and friends and dogs.

And now it's off to bed. Got a very early morning tomorrow - have to go brief the boss on my proposed realignment of my programs, then climb in the van and head to the airport. Asheville, here I come!

Road Trip: Talil

I just took a road trip down south. I visited a command down in Talil to discuss one of my projects. Talil is a former Iraqi Army air base that's been taken over by US forces for the duration. It's about a 5-hour trip by road, which is how I went.

The trip started on Sunday. We left in the morning and headed south. This is a typical farm that's close to the base.

We stopped for lunch at Scania, which is a small base that's really a convoy truck stop, then pushed on again. About an hour later, one of the vehicles in our convoy (not mine) had a bit of trouble. Specifically, its transmission literally exploded, blowing a huge hole in the side of the case, and debris knocked one of the tires off its rim. We tried to tow it, but the transmission was seized up solid, so we had to wait for a very long time for KBR to come out with a wrecker and a security team to haul us off. Fortunately, we were out in the middle of nowhere. An Iraqi police truck pulled up once, and a Bedouin came by with about 20 of his camels. All our security guys got their pictures taken with the camel, but since I was the "high value client", they wouldn't let me out of the truck! We finally got into Talil many many hours after we should have. After being in body armor and helmet all day, I was a tired little puppy.

The Iraqis built their airbase adjacent to the ancient city of Ur. This city flourished about 4000 years ago. At one time it was the largest city in the world with about 60,000 people. The prophet Abraham was reportedly born here, the patriarch of both Islam and Judaism. What was Ur is now a large dirt hill. Years ago, the Iraqis restored the famous Ziggurat, and there have been many archaeological digs at the site. We turned the site back to the Iraqis last spring, so technically it is beyond the wire for us and no longer readily accessible. I was disappointed because I really would have liked to visit it. At least I got to see the Ziggurat from a distance.

We were supposed to leave early this morning, but were delayed and wound up leaving right after noon. The southern part of Iraq is flat and desert. It's pale dust as far as you can see. About the only people who live here are Bedouin. Here's a typical Bedouin tent.

And yes, the Bedouin still use camels. We came across this huge herd ambling along the way.

The trip back was uneventful: no breakdowns, no problems, just a nice fast run. Got back to the base in time to get some work done and play catch-up. Tomorrow, I have to participate in a briefing to our general. I'm not looking forward to it since one of his high mucky-mucks keeps changing my slides so the information is incorrect. So tomorrow I'll probably have to put that individual on report. Maybe next time she'll leave my damn slides alone!

Groundhog Day, Revisited

Ever since I returned from my jaunt up north, it's been the normal routine here. Nuthin' much to report. I get up at 0615, shower, have something for breakfast, and get into the office about 0730. Make myself a cuppa coffee and open up my email. Then I try to remember what the heck I was planning on doing today, go through my calendar and notebook and yesterday's to-do list, and then scribble one for today. And off I go. About lunchtime, I often go for a jog or hit the gym. Back in the office in the afternoon I'm buried in this or that project, answering pop-up queries and stupid questions from On High ("On High" in this case being one particular organization that has no value added that I can see, but interjects itself into things it has no business being involved in ... it shall remain nameless, at least for now ...). I'll knock off work around 6:30 or 7 and go grab some chow in the DFAC. Back in my room, I'll do something exciting, like laundry. About 9, I'll try to Skype with Janis. The internet service in my room has been marginally better this past week and we can actually connect most nights. Lights out about 10:30. Alarm goes off at 0615. Repeat.

This afternoon we had our routine broken up. We were rousted out of our offices because there was a "suspicious package" right outside and the EOD guys were on their way. The package, of course, turned out to be a big nothing, but it required a couple of hours to determine that. I took advantage of the break to make a quick run to the mini-BX next to the DFAC. This mini-BX is, literally, a trailer ... the kind you see behind every 18-wheeler in the country. It's got steps and a door at each end and wall racks of geedunk (Navy slang for junk food). It's about as well-equipped as a tiny little mini-mart, only without gas pumps.

As I was heading back to the office, I spotted an unusual Stryker. Most Strykers are armored vehicles that carry a bunch of troops inside. Instead of troops, this one has a big cannon installed. I stopped and talked to the young private who was standing guard while his buddies were in the DFAC. Turned out that this version carries the 105mm gun from the early M1 Abrams tanks. They left off the heavy armor from the turret, but all the good shooting stuff is there. So you've got a lotta firepower in a much lighter and more maneuverable vehicle. Abrams aren't very good in cities, but Strykers do pretty well, so this is a great combination. Wish I'd been carrying my camera.

I've got another R&R coming up in another week. I'm ready for it. I picked this time because I thought it would be fairly quiet while all my projects were out for bids from contractors. Well, that's not quite the way it worked out ... hey, this is Iraq, NOTHING works out the way you think it will. Still, it's not a bad time, and I am NOT going six months without seeing my wife and friends and dogs again. I'm a bit worried about the weather, though. We have a lot of people who've been going out or coming back lately, and many of them have horror stories of cancelled flights, missed connections, $140 cab rides, and spending a day in an airport. Ouch! Let's hope there are two windows of opportunity for me to make the hops there and back without interruption.

Happy New Year

A happy new year to one and all. We had a fairly quiet one here. Our command got together for a party. There was plenty of food, karaoke (not for me!), and games. I got wiped out in blackjack as soon as I got brave. Played some Wii and proved to one and all how uncoordinated I am. Some built a bonfire outside and we roasted marshmallows - first time I've done that in many years. There were some fighter jets that made periodic low-level noisy passes over the base, which I thoroughly enjoyed. And we got to see a partial lunar eclipse from around 10 pm to around 11. A partial eclipse of a blue moon - how cool is that?

I got to sleep in today. Actually, I woke up at my usual time and then remembered that I didn't have to get up. So I didn't. Have been pretty much a slug all morning.

So goodbye, 2009. Goodbye to a pretty crummy decade in general. Let's hope 2010 and the teens are better.

2010 and the teens ... sounds like a pop band, doesn't it?

Road Trip: Back to Baghdad

We rolled out of Kirkuk this morning at 0630 headed for Tikrit. It was still dark at that hour and traffic was pretty much non-existent. Our little convoy made good time. I haven't said much about what our convoys are like, nor talked about our security measures - with good reason. I will say, though, that with a bunch of burly battle-tested guys watching over me, I felt pretty safe.

We went south by a different route than the one we took up a couple of days ago. The land south of Kirkuk is about as flat as eastern Colorado or western Kansas, only a grayish tan rather than bright green. There are a lot of farms, many of them using the wheeled irrigation systems like Americans use. Iraqi farmhouses in that area, though, are nothing like American. These are pretty small, maybe 400 or 500 square feet, made of blocks (often mud), with flat roofs. Often (not always), they'll have a courtyard that's maybe 100 by 100 feet surrounded by an 8-ft block wall, with a big metal gate covered with brightly-painted sheet metal.

We saw a lot of kids, maybe 7-10 years old, heading off to school. The boys were dressed like boys everywhere, and were clowning around like boys everywhere. The girls were usually dressed in black robes with white headscarves and seemed to be more reserved than the boys.

The trip through the countryside was pretty uneventful. Once we hit Tikrit, though, the tension in our convoy wentway up. Tikrit is still unfriendly territory and we hit it at rush hour. Americans do not want to spend any amount of time sitting stuck in traffic because we will draw unwanted attention. Fortunately, the police don't want us to sit in traffic at their checkpoints for the same reason and they stopped traffic and made plenty of room for us, as much as they could, at any rate.

The drivers in our convoy were pretty aggressive about moving through traffic, making holes where none existed, blocking other cars, using the horns, sirens, and squawk boxes pretty judiciously, and staying together. It wasn't like a Hollywood chase movie, it was more like "excuse me, pardon me, coming through, make a hole, sorry" as we cut and wove through backed-up lines of cars. I breathed a big sigh of relief when we hit the open highway again. The Aegis guys? They relaxed and joked about it.

We arrived at Camp Speicher, outside Tikrit, at about 0900. I had enough time to stretch my legs for a bit and then was bundled into another convoy and off we went again, bound for Baghdad. This leg had no drama, which was fine, since Tikrit was enough drama for me.

In the US, our roadside stops are often something like a big Mini-Mart, with the cashier tucked away inside, and you pump your own gas, thank you very much. And all the food is sanitized and wrapped for your protection. In Iraq, well, things are a bit different.

We cut around the town of Abu Ghraib, another place that is still not very fond of Americans, and arrived back at our base about 1 pm. Finally! I was glad to stretch my legs and get out of my body armor. After dropping my stuff off in my own little room and grabbing some lunch, I was back in the office to play catch-up. And by the signs of it, not much changed in the office while I was gone.

I've wanted to get out beyond the wire ever since I arrived fifteen months ago. This trip finally let me see more of Iraq. Different parts of the country are very different: landscape, people, politics, business, economy, everything. This trip was invaluable for making decisions on at least one of my projects, which is why I took it. But it also brought home to me a simple fact of life for Americans in Iraq: you don't go beyond the wire unless you have to. I felt safe, but as I noted, I had a bunch of combat-tested guys taking care of me. If you're going to risk their welfare and possibly their lives, the trip had better be pretty damn important.

If you've been reading the last couple of posts, they unfortunately didn't have any pictures. I'm going back to them right now and adding some, so go take a look.

Road Trip: Erbil

This morning, we headed out bright and early for Erbil, which is one of the major cities in the Kurdish region. We didn't have much trouble with rush hour here in Kirkuk and our little convoy was soon heading out onto the wide rolling flat plains to the north of the city. It was a really gray morning and even more gray looking north. We passed a Hyundai dealership on the way out ... first car dealership I've seen in Iraq. (I know there are some in Baghad, but I've never seen them). We also passed a huge trash dump. They don't have very many regular landfills here, there are just vast areas where they dump trash, and this was one of them. Right in the middle of it was a soccer field that had been carefully graded flat and kept clean.

The main highway is in pretty good condition and we were moving pretty fast. Our security team relaxed our security posture a little ways into the drive. As I mentioned yesterday, Kirkuk is still a contested area and there are some (not a whole lot, but some) insurgents in the city. To the north and east, though, is Kurdish-controlled area, and they don't put up with Al Qaeda nonsense.
There are lots of animals to be seen in the countryside. Camels, wild dogs, and flocks of sheep are common. And donkeys: attached to donkey carts, being ridden energetically by kids, or just standing patiently in the middle of the highway median. If you want a chicken for dinner tonight, there are lots of guys set up by the side of the road with eight or ten chickens walking around. Take one home, kill it, pluck it, and cook it ... they don't get any fresher than that.

There was a big traffic tie-up where a tractor trailer had tried to pull over on the shoulder, but the shoulder gave way and dumped the truck with its load of fruit all over the road. Quite a huge mess.

The further we got into Kurdish area, the better everything was built and cared for. There's much more small and medium-sized industry up there and the buildings were more modern. And there is lots of construction going on: homes, industrial areas, and apartment complexes. It's clearly a very energetic economy.


It was raining by the time we got to Erbil. The city itself looks like a contemporary European city. It's quite large with something like 3 million people. There are working traffic lights up there and, wonder of wonders, people actually pay attention to them. We passed a bustling university, a whole Miracle Mile of car dealerships, lots of new modern hotels, and a shopping mall. Some of the stores are quite high-end, too, and there are even a bunch of liquor stores. Absolut seems to be the poison of choice. Traffic was pretty wicked and our convoy had a heck of a time sticking together, but they did by ignoring traffic lights when needed and judiciously using their sirens and squawk boxes.

I had a good, productive series of meetings with my contacts once we arrived. Some of them are Kurdish engineers; very smart, very experienced guys who gave me a lot of insight into the issues that my project is trying to address. We had a Kurdish lunch: chicken, a very spicy orange cucumber/pickle thingie (really good), rice, and American sodas. Lots of fun with some very good people.

The trip back was more of the same. As I was the only passenger this time, I had a good chat with the young Brit and Irish lads in my vehicle. The truck was still on its side when we passed and they hadn't made a lot of headway in cleaning up the fruit. Iraqi/Kurdish drivers are even more wacked-out than Italians: one car ahead of us whipped out to pass a truck, and the car behind him whipped out to pass both the truck and the car, and there was oncoming traffic to boot! And this on a two-lane crowded road.


We arrived back in Kirkuk before rush hour and zipped right through town to the base. I took care of office business in time to catch pizza and a movie with the local Corps of Engineers crowd. The pizza was good; the movie (2012) was pretty bad but fun anyway.

All in all, a good day. Tomorrow will be interesting, too.

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.