Random Day

Having failed at sleeping through an entire day here (although we're up roughly one eight-hour nap after each three-hour period of verticality), we futzed around and tried to stay busy.

First, there was the Chair of Death. Buying "local" is encouraged here - anything to stimulate the Iraqi economy. Sometimes, though, it would be nice if we could have gotten some office chairs from, I dunno...another economy that could use some stimulation. See, the local stuff kinda...sucks.



So we tried to fix it. This is the test of the first iteration of repairs.



Back to the drawing board... After about four tries we got it stabilized enough to stop whoever was sitting in front of the secure computer from occasionally being launched backward onto the floor. That pretty much qualified as a "win." So we went shopping!

This is not as exciting as it might seem. We have a "unit-run" PX, which means that every so often, somebody drags a conex up to the Big Base, puts some stuff in it, and brings it back. Normally it gets raided for the good stuff (chips and Ramen noodles) within 24 hours, but it's always got the really important stuff.



There's some word on the street that the Powers That Be have nefarious plans to enact a military-wide smoking ban in the middle-future. I will, of course, not say rude things about any plans coming down from On High. I will merely point out that back when we used to actually win wars, the Powers That Be actually put cigarettes in our ration packs.

Having done field chair repairs and having successfully procured smokes and chips, we felt like winners. I felt like such a winner that I rewarded myself.



That is a peanut butter and thimbleberry jelly sammich. I do not know what a thimbleberry is, but it makes a fabulous jam.

I just don't get it

I just walked into our "office trailer," to find SSG C watching the Michael Jackson memorial on CNN International.

No - we did not participate in the "join hands to pray for Michael" part.

Is it over now?

When posting is light...

When I decided to keep blogging during this deployment, I had to make a decision that ran counter to my every inclination. I was, I decided, going to have to be nice.

Now, you may have noticed I'm not always very nice, but trust me - I'm genetically inclined to be a total ranting bitch on wheels. I am of the school that tells children: If you can't say something nice, come sit by me.

But I didn't know what sort of...tactical situation this trip would present, and so I planned for the worst-case scenario. That one would, of course, involve people dying. And, given my ability to jam my feet in my mouth, I figured that if I went off on a good long rant about how much of an absolute shithead moron Captain So-And-So was, he would be immediately killed the next day.

Then, the way I figured it, his grief-stricken family members would eventually be directed to a post on the internet about him, written only days before he died, in which some random chick devoted paragraphs and paragraphs to describing him as dumber than dogshit. This would, of course, probably make his Mom sad. And really, if there's one thing I never want to feel responsible for, it's making someone's Mom sad.

So sometimes, when there's not a lot of posting, it's because I can't sit down at the computer and generate anything but a seething vat of rage and vitriol. As a deployment winds down, it gets worse. Everyone would rather be somewhere else, all grand ideas have been given up on, and frankly, we grow sick of the people we've been tolerating for months.

So - in summary - everyone in the Army in Iraq who is not on my Civil Affairs Team is an idiot. All of them suffer from cranial-rectal inversion, which might be solved if they extracted their heads far enough for good advice to reach their ears.

But, rather than write mean, bitter posts that would make me feel bad if someone's Mom read them, I will simply take a deep breath and sometimes, rather than write something rude, occasionally leave you with no Bad Dog howling. I think it's best this way.