Update

Okay, I know you are all probably tired of seeing pictures of Al Faw Palace, but it’s kind of like the movie Groundhog Day here so I really don’t have much else that I can show you. For those I haven’t really talked to, here’s what “Groundhog Day” normally entails:

Wake up at 5am and meet co-workers for a run or gym time. I head to the dining facility (DFAC) at 7:30 for breakfast (usually cereal, but they also make great pancakes). Get to work around 8am for the morning update followed by meetings. Work in one of my cubicles (usually involving Outlook, Excel, or Powerpoint) from 10-12. Back to the DFAC for lunch (the caesar salad and the gyros are my favorite, and I usually get some soft serve after+). If it is a slow day I might go to the gym again after lunch, but normally it is back to work for meetings or computer work until around 5:30-6pm. Then back to the DFAC for dinner (I have whatever looks good for dinner, and then some chocolate cheesecake). Then back to work. I try not to “work” too much after dinner because I’m just not productive, so that’s when I clean up, clear my inbox and make my to-do lists for the next day. I usually go home around 7:30-8pm. I check my emails, talk to Kurt for 30 minutes, take a shower, and get to sleep around 10. And repeat. The days are long, but the weeks go by really fast.

Every once and a while we get things that spice-up the day such as Vice President Biden’s visit. It was pretty cool that he came to visit, but it had its downside too. My coworkers had a lot of extra work to do planning his aviation transportation, so the office was a little crazy the week or two prior. And then of course he came in on Sunday which is my only half-day off, so missing that kind of sucked. I did get to see him up close and personal at the DFAC, but I was in the middle of eating my ice cream and I didn’t want it to melt so I didn’t bother to get up and have a picture taken like everyone else. It was funny though seeing our 3-star General having to follow him around like a Private where ever he went and stand there patiently while people took pictures (everybody has a boss right?).

And every once and I while I get to sneak away and do something fun. Uncle Kracker came to visit just before the VP and I took one of my coworkers (an old guy who didn’t know who Uncle Kracker was) with me to see the concert. The posters over on my side of the airfield had the wrong time on them so we got there an hour early, but that meant that we got really good seats (MWR put out a few plastic chairs on the basketball court, everyone else either brought their own or had to stand). The concert was really good, he played a lot of his popular songs and he played a lot of other people’s popular songs as well. I meant to take my camera, but I forgot since I left straight from work. Okay, this next part is a little funny. I’m normally decent with maps and directions and once I have been somewhere I can normally remember my way. Well, after the concert we went to meet some friends on a part of the base I had only been to once, and that time I was in the backseat, and it was dark. Well, we found our way to the restaurant we were going to, but on the way home we missed a turn. We saw the guard shack of to our left as we were going in, but we missed the left turn on the way out and went past that guard shack through the gate instead. There should be some big sign or something that says “leaving Victory base or entering Baghdad” but there isn’t. I had been out that way once before (on a convoy with a General and some gunners) so I recognized pretty quickly that we had done something wrong (plus the signs for Route Irish kind of gave it away). My coworker was a little quicker than I was, I wouldn’t have known what to do next, but as soon as I said something was wrong, he did a U-turn and we were going back through the gate. Not a big deal, we didn’t make it more than a couple hundred feet outside the gate, but it was pretty funny in hindsight. I’m going to take a map with me next time and I’ll pay more attention to the guard shacks.

Okay, my half-day off is almost over so I’ll leave talking about my “new” old job for next time. On a good note – only four weeks until my R&R!