From the time I woke up Sunday until the time I got into my house, I was on the go for about 62 hours. While I was supposed to have a nice place midway where I could sleep in a bed, take a shower, feel like a person, that was not available. So I spent all that time in the same set of clothes, feeling more and more tired.

I did get some sleep on the plane from Qatar to Ireland. This was a plane with about 250 seats and only 100+ people to sit in them. So I got a row of 3 seats all to myself. I curled up as small as I could and slept across all 3 of them. Of course, that's by no means stretching out, so when I woke up my legs were all sore from having not moved.

In Ireland there was a nice spreads put out by the ambassador there - Orange Juice and home made cookies and cake. Some of the kids of the local military were there to hand things out. It was very nice. We staying there for just over an horu and then we were back in the air. Theplane landed in Bangor, Maine with its final destination intended to be Washington State. By previous arrangement, when the guys disembarked for refueling, I said my thanks and goodbyes and went to the commercial terminal.

The conversation with the Delta counterperson was amusing. It must have been early in her day because it took her a few minutes to piece together all the uniforms she saw walkig about and me explaining to her that I needed a one-way ticket to Washington DC and the sooner it got in, the happier I'd be. She kept asking me how I planned on getting home, and I kept telling her that going to DC was going home.

My folks were at the airport to pick me up, which was great. Relearning that DC traffic sucks was not so great, but what can you do. The flight lands when it lands, you can't really control that by too much. In the car was my first opportunity - in 60+ hours - to take my showes off and rub my feet a bit. Hoo boy was the stench huge.

Later that night I called Ray and the kids (who are all in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving). They were ecstatic to hear that I was home. Saturday I'll head over to the airport myself to pick them up and we'll have a wonderful reunion, I'm quite sure.

Today, I get to go and play Heroclix for the first time in months. I can't remember the last time I went this long without playing. But I got me lots of new boosters (yeah, Hammer of Thor is released) and the day all to myself.

Tomorrow, I'll clean the house up a bit so that everything is spic-and-span for Rachel's return. No doubt we'll go out for some dinner and then spend Sunday just enjoying everyone's company.

Yes I'm so glad to be on the road again!!!!

Sort of.

Wave 1 left Saturday. They were originally scheduled to leave Friday, but despite our coordinator using their own web application to book the travel, that said booking utilized a list of flights supplied by the travel organization, somewhere a miscommunication took place and they never ordered a plane for that date. BARNEY took the news real well.

By this time, Wave 2's travel had been set up as well - we were scheduled to leave Sunday. Now, there were three of us scheduled for Wave 2. Two of them took it on themselves to decide that their work was as done as it needed to be and personally reached out to the travel organization and switched their reservation to Saturday's flight to go out with Wave 1. GILLIGAN was thrilled. He didn't force anyone to change their plans, but it was obvious that he was annoyed.

For me, I was annoyed because it meant that instead of traveling with 2 other people, I'd be traveling alone. I'm the only one left in Wave 2. But, as in all things on this trip, when GILLIGAN says "you gotta go do this", that's what I go and do.

THE PLAN: Get picked up around midnight to be taken to check-in. It is usually about 4 hours between check in and the plane leaving. I would then fly to Qatar (about 4 hours) where I would be met by a guy who works for the travel organization in this area. They would facilitate me emigrating into Qatar, either arrange military travel back home for me (unlikely) or take me to a regular travel agency where I'd be able to buy a commercial ticket home (reimbursable expense). Qatar Air has a daily flight out of here, so it would very l ikely be no more than a day in Qatar and I'd land at the airport of my choice (and there is a direct flight to Dulles, so how easy is that).

THE PLAN IN MOTION: Pick up was on time, though rain had started to come down. The wait time in the terminal was less than expected but still, we took off about 4 hours after pick up, so no problems there. Flight time was as expected, if not a little early. The travel guy was there to meet me (along with 4 or 5 others from my flight, people I had never met before). And then... things took a turn.

My ID card for this adventure says on it that I am a Civilian and that I am affiliated with the DOD. That should allow me to emigrate into Qatar without a visa. In fact, going from Indiana to Alaska, we spent a day here in Qatar and I emigrated just fine on my ID and orders. Not this time. They refused to let me in without a visa, claiming I was a contractor. I showed them my official passport and my real-jobs credentials to illustrate that I am NOT a contractor, that I'm assigned to DOD for the TDY (as stated in my orders). No dice - I'm not oging to be allowed into the country.

So now, I'm in the process of being deported. It's not as bad as it sounds. Basically it means I'm restricted to the terminal. The military guys are working to get me on a plane home, but it is not commercial, it is not necessarily any particular time, and it is a constant game of "we think it'll happen at this time..."

On the plus side, everyone is very nice/polite. This is a problem that has happened many times in the past, so they are set up for it. For food, there is a checklist to fill out and someone will go and get me my meals For internet, there's wifi. Other than that, it's waiting. And waiting.

My next shot at a way home leaves in about 6 hours. That plane goes to Ireland and then to Maine. Once I get to Maine, I'm on my own, but I see that there are lots of flights in the afternoon/evening to get me to BWI. If this flight lines up, I may be back in Maryland late Tuesday night.

Interestingly, there is a flight that leaves here about 3 hours earlier. It goes to Dover, Delaware through Germany. For a while, I was trying to get on that flight and in fact had arranged for that to happen. Leaving earlier and getting closer to home, you'd think that would be a good thing, right? Not when you learn that the Germany layover is 24 hours! So following that path could have been worse. Fortunately, I was able to rearrange to get back on the Maine flight.

That's where things are now. 360 minutes in which anything can change. Again.

For those keeping track, I woke up this morning around 8:30 AM Zulu time. I stayed awake for about 20 hours until I was on the plane leaving Alaska. I got about 3 hours of sleep there. So I'm now running on 3 hrs sleep out of about 33. At a minimum, I'm looking at that being 3 out of about 40 hours. I tried napping here on the benches, but that didn't really work.

Meanwhile, I've been completely incapable of reaching out to GILLIGAN to let him know what's happened with me. There's a phone here, but it doesn't seem to be able to connect to the phone back at the base. I'll be able to send an email to him once I get back to work, but that's nearly a week from now. Hopefully, I'll be able to figure something out before then.

My workload is in a bit of a lull just now, because folks are winding up their stuff. Once their reports and edits are done, I'll need to write some programs, import the stuff into the database, and then execute some new reports for the final report. My time here is no longer being measured in months or even weeks.

We were told to pack our necessities into out 36-hour bag. "Tht's the stuff that you're going to keep with you the rest of the trip." we were told. Everything else got packed into one of two packages. The first is a package of stuff that I don't really need - mostly gear that I'll be giving back to the organization that supplied it. That package got put on a pallete that will get to North Carolina sometime before January, which is when I'll be there for a follow up series of meetings for the final report. One of the days there we will return our gear, so it's in the perfect place.

The second package is made up of stuff that's mine, that I don't need, and I shipped that home. To be specific, I actually sent it to my parents house since I'm not 100% sure if it may arrive while Rachel and the kids are out of town.

Sitting on my top bunk is now 3 sets of clothes, my essentials (laptop, zune), and anything I want traveling WITH me (e.g., gifts).

The only possible issue is my sleeping bag and sleep roll. Coming out here, I had a really big bag that the sleeping bag fit in, so my bed roll got strapped to the bottom of my 36-hour bag. That big bag is the one I sent off to the pallete. So I'm hoping that I can wrap the sleeping bag around the bed roll and that can be strapped to the bottom of the 36-hour bag. If not, then I'll have to choose one or the other, and I'l lhave to choose the sleeping bag since it has to be returned. Still, I'm hopeful I can get both home.

I bought a trunk today - it's a plastic trunk that is sold en masse at the local shops. We've been told to get our belongings down to what we can carry in our standard 36-hour bag. Just so I'm clear - I still don't have a date for when I'm leaving. As I've stated in numerous entries, it is event driven and wave 1 has not left yet.

Still, to follow orders, I made a list of the minimum things I needed along with the list of things that I didn't want away fro mmy person. So while I'd be willing to be without my laptop for a couple of weeks, I'm not willing for it to travel by US Mail. So it stays. Nintendo, Zune, etc. all the same thing. Though I'm not willing to be without my Zune - it's how I go to sleep at night now, watching Buffy till I'm too tired to move.

Speaking of Buffy, I am finally FINALLY through the horrible season four. The year of Riley was just so painful. I almost skipped the season, but there are enough fond memories of things in there that I worked through it (notably Willow's coming around to an alternate lifestyle). I was absolutely stunned when the Season 5 opener (Buffy vs Dracula) was an episode I had never seen before. I can't understand it. I've had the DVDs for years, I've watched and talked the show with Tara and other friends and this epsiode has never come up. Ever. So I actually got to see something new. Of course, Riley is still in it, but I know he's a short-termer this season - I'll be glad when he's gone for good.

Back to packing - the original plan was to put everything into my new trunk - all of my stuff and all of my issued stuff that will need to be returned. The plan was to ship that home and then bring the returnable-gear with me on a trip to be done later. However, when all was said and done, and I had everything organized I had:

* A 36 hour bag packed relatively full with the stuff I needed to keep here.
* A trunk full of my stuff, not counting returnable gear
* A duffel bag full of stuff that is gear to be returned.

So I now need to inventory the duffel bag and get that put onto a pallete that is going back to the main camp, so it can sit there waiting for me until I can get there to return stuff. Fortunately, it is now sounding like the "back home follow up meeting" will be taking place at the location where we left from, so I can kill 2 birds with one trip.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping someone can find us a truck for tomorrow. I'm not the only one with stuff to ship home, and no one relishes the idea of dragging a 25-30 pound trunk about half a mile down the road.

And suddenly, it's freaking cold!

About 2-3 days ago we had rain. That was the sign that the winter weather was moving in. Thankfully, after the rain was over, we had a day of sun (though it was still a bit nippy). Most of the water evaporated off of that. So now it's cold and windy. I've got my gloves and my hat (and my Mountain Hard Wear jacket) to keep me warm, and so far, all feels okay. If it drops another 5-10 degrees, I may need to start layering up with some of the warm weather gear they issued me, but so far, it's pretty bearable.

The one area I'm not doing so well in is evening wear.

Now, possibly in the TMI category, I like to sleep au natural. Have for at least as long as I've been married to a woman who enjoys the same. I knew that was not going to fly out here. So I made sure to pack a couple of extra shorts and t-shirts to act as my sleep-wear - same thing I do when I share hotel rooms at conventions. No problem.

But now, I am actually debating in my head whether or not I'm going to go take a shower tonight. Oh, there will be hot water - there are 4 different places I know to go for a shower now and one of them will have hot water. it's not the time, I typically prefer taking showers at night - if for no other reason but because it seems like only about 10% of the population here take showers in the evening, almost everyone else takes theirs during the day-time - either when they wake up or after they finish their workout. No, for me the issue is how freaking cold am i going to be crossing camp in shorts. Upper body will be fine - I'll have a hat, I'll have gloves, I'll have one to three layers of shirt. But legs, all I'll have is shorts. I suppose I could put my pants on again after my shower. But then I own't feel as clean. *sigh* Added to the list of things I'll never take for granted again - showering steps away from my bed.

The last alternate site trip is coming up soon, but I'm not going. My database/flowcharting skills are going to be used to start prepping the final report. Or the draft of the final report. Or the input to the draft for the final report. I dunno - it's still a bit vagued up for me. That's ok. I've learned to cope without having the complete picture. I keep my zen, let my mantra flow, and only tense up slightly when it becomes apparent that I NEED to know something. Then I shift into my socratic mode, ask pointed questions to ensure I understand. This sometimes puts the person I'm talking to on the defensive, but I'm at a point now where I'm at peace with that, especially with certain individuals.

I must have been more tired than I thought - I actually slept until my alarm went off this morning. That's pretty unusual - I think it's happened two or three other times on this trip. Granted, my alarm is not typically set of the god-awful early hour that it is at home, but you'd think after a while, my body would adjust to sleeping past the alarm.

Yesterday was bazaar. It's the equivalent of a flea market, where they allow locals to bring their wares to sell. Like the bazaars of other places I've been, the price you are intially quoted is known as the "sucker's price". You never ever pay that price. For the most part, when I hear a number I'll either pay half price or I'll buy two of that item for that price.

I still need to get souveniers for folks and the bazaar is the most likely place that I'll get something somewhat native of the region. Yesterday I was looking for something for the wife and kids. At this point, I think I've figured out what to get for each. Unfortunately, by the time I finished walking around the place, it was close up time, so most of these purchases will wait till next week.

Now, for the most part, there are a limited number of vendor types. There are those with jewelery, those with clothes, those with wood-work, and those with electronics. There is one place I found on my way out that sold shoes. And boots. I was so excited. I found a piar that looked decent, found a pair in my size. I asked the vendor the price and he told me $65. Using my typical rule of thumb, I offered him 25. We went back and forth until we settled on $40. I can't tell y'all how delighted I am to have found a pair of boots for less than 1/3 of what the regular store tried to gouge me for.

I'll grant you that these boots are probably not "name brand" and may very well fall apart in much less time than a normal pair. I'm ok with that. All they NEED to do is last until I get home and they seem sturdy enough for that. Just in case, I'm keeping my 15 year old crappy huiking shoes so I have a fall back pair. But that pair is certainly not coming home with me.

For as long as I've been out here, I've known that there have been Jewish services of some kind. Often it has been at the chapel not close to where I am. I thought that was the case here, but a random posting led my eye to the fact that services were actually being held less than half a mile from my main area. Now, no one needs to ge tantsy - I have not moved much from my long standing position. But a combination of (a) intellectual curiousity to meet the jews in the military that may show up to service, (b) what kind of service would be held and (c) something, anything, that has familiarity and "not the same old thing" is a welcome change of pace.

So I went.

The chaplain (I don't know if he's actually a rabbi) is a nice enough ortho who grew up in Maryland. He didn't know the rabbi from back home, but he knew the area. Nice enough guy who provided a service with minimal Hebrew and gave the people there a few words on what the significance of the specific prayers were. Services were relatively abbreviated (from an ortho perspective) and followed by a small dinner (which I wish I had known would be there, I ate dinner right before going).

I would type more, but this public use machine is about to reboot for it's nightly updates. So I'm off to sleep.

Every few months one system or another tells me that I have to change my password. This is not a bad thing. In fact, anyone of you who do not change your password at least every 3 months, set up a reminder for yourself.

Since I have an extremely weirdly compartmentalized brain, I have a formula I use for passwords. So at the root of every password is the same thing. However, the password itself is different for every place that I need it. So when it comes ot be "that time" when a password expires, it's not only time to change that password, it's time to change ALL the passwords. Because I change the root and the real password at the end of the tunnel is different for each site/system I need it for.

Logging in to my regular job's network today, it prompted me to change my password. I knew that this day would come and it would come while I was on my grand adventure. But now I am in a bizarre limbo. Some of my passwords are now changed to the new standard. For the most part, I'm leaving everything to the old password so that I can catch everything up in one big sweep when I get home. But I'm instinctively putting the wrong password in systems. Not terrible, you just retype and put in the right one. But it's mentally wearing. (sigh - pooooor Norm).

Speaking of "poor", found a funny thing in my bank account this morning. Before I cam out here, I set up a new bank account. Now, with each payday, some money goes to the "save a little bit every month, you know you can" account, a standard amount goes into the "automatically pay the mortgage" account, a standard amount goes to the "Ray pays the bills from here" account and the rest goes to this new account. In this way, any overages to our normal paychecks go to this account so we don't accidentally spend anything.

The last time a paycheck hit that account was 10/30, right on time. Imagine my surprise to see a deposit in there from 11/04, just 5 days later. The amount is a weird amount too - it's more than my usual "not-on-an-adventure" check but it is less than my current checks. The depositor description is exactly the same as my normal paycheck, so I know the source is my job. But I'd like to know if this money is mine or if it is going to be pulled out at some point. In any case, I've told Ray to just leave that cash alone until we hear otherwise.

Earlier this week, my mini-team moved from day-cycle back to night-cycle. That meant one day where we finished with about 14 hours until we had to report to work again. It was great, particularly since I was stil so tired from the long long day the week before. And yet, when I went to sleep, I ended up waking up about an hour after I usually did when I was on days.

This same thing has repeated itself 3 times now - each time I wake up from sleep, it's about an hour later. I'm fully refreshed and have o problem getting through my day, but I keep worrying what happens when I've fully acclimitaed back to the night schedule. It's like my body is functioning on a 25 hour day - wake up, work, go to sleep - all wrapped up in 25 hours.

I had an interesting conversation with GILLIGAN about how, despite the fact that we've been "at work" for essentially 50+ days in a row, no one (well, most folks) do not feel that same drag you feel even at the end of a 5 day week or if your boss needs you to work a weekend. Maybe it's because it's what everyone is doing. Maybe it's because it's all you have. Maybe it's because there is no commuting or outside distactions. Whatever it is, I can definitely see/understand the appeal this has to certain kinds of people. If you want to work, earn money, and don't have issues with being apart from folks at home, this is a really really good place to work.

Now, I'm not that guy. I can't wait to get home and see friends and family.

I have to shout out ot my friends at work. They organized a package to send me here that included a wide variety of things. You guys were so creative and I really appreciate it. I've got some new puzzle books now, and Oracle magazine (which only had one article on Apex, the bastards), way more candy than I should eat (hey Kevin - how did the Halloween Witch score this year?), scarvesm and more. Much thanks to all of them and you guys are indeed on the list of things I'm looking forward to when I get home.

So apparently even trees with caked on dust are affected by nature. As the temperature here gets cooler and cooler, the dusty little leaves are dropping like flies. 3 days ago, we walked along the main road and there was nothing on the ground but sidewalk, dust, and rocks. Yesterday, there was a carpet of leaves. What's weird is that the trees don't look all that empty. So I'm wondering if these leaves fell from the trees or if they were imported and placed on the ground. Very odd.

With November, we've been on this adventure for about 2 months, so talk of bringing it to a close has started to pop up. Rather than commit to times (that couldn't be guaranteed anyway) our tour guide has declared that there are 3 milesotnes to be reached, and that a group of us will go home with each milestone, depending on our skills and our necessity to the next milestone. The first wave has about half the group in it, the second wave has 2 or 3 people in it, and the final wave has 6 folks in it. And it looks like I'll be with the last group.

There's a difference between "smart" and "informed". I am fully well versed in how smart I am. I know a lot of things and I have a keen analytical mind. Yes, that's ego, but I dare say it's not something many folks will disagree with. Any trepidation I've had about coming out here has instead been more about information. All other members of this group have so much more information about how things work out here, what the different agencies are responsible for and can do for each other and how they interact. These are HUGE assets when you are interviewing someone about their process, because you have a baseline of "SHOULD" to map up against "REALITY". Supposedly, I'm an asset in that I'm not "colored" by a pre-existing opinion, but in truth, I feel like that has not been such a great asset. It means that when someone talks about sending stuff to ABC, I'm wondering why and when I ask, I look like an uninformed moron. I get the answer, but that colors the interviewees opinion of me for my next question (which might very well be from an area I understand).

So in order to feel like I am pulling my weight, I've gone out of my way to apply the skills I'm really good at. I understand data, I can build databases, I can manipulate relatively unstructured data into structured data, and I can generate queries/reports for any management level. I've facilitated a standard spreadsheet for people to use to annotate each of their interviews. I've put together an Access database (ugh, yes - I had to use Access) to import and collate that data. I've written some tools so that the report-writers can get overviews of the reports, comment, and edit the data.

All of which puts me into wave 3. Here till the end. In a way, it's not that bad. The difference between that and wave 2 is probably a matter of less than a week. Plus, the way home through wave 3 handles a fair amount of the administrative crap as well (i.e., returning the gear I was issued). Whereas if I went home through wave 1 or 2, I'd need to schedule another trip for the return of gear.

Speaking of another trip...

It's always been known that there is a report due out of this assignment to the sponsors. It's also been known that the same group out here is supposed to get together for that. What I didn't realize is that the plan is for that meeting to be in mid-to-late-December. Not at all sure how that's going to play at work, but I guess we'll see.

3 days have gone by, so it must be laundry day again. It's not that I need to do laundry - I have plenty of clothes and pants. But there are the shirts I like to wear and then there are the ones I can wear. Pants aren't much in the way of selection - I have khaki, khaki, hunter green, and khaki. And I usually save the hunter greens for flying (they are the warmest).

I had a conference call with some people for Heroclix Friday night, so in order to make it I had to (1) get through a regular work day, (2) take a brief nap (4 hours), (3) get up for the call, (4) choose between a 2 hour nap or just staying up a little longer so that I could (5) work another long day. I opted not to take the nap, figuring it would be a bunch of maneuvers to risk oversleeping and not getting really rested anyway. Besides, my Sunday schedule was light, so I knew if I could power through Saturday, I'd be able to make a case to sleep a little later Sunday.

Last night I slept for about 9 hours and I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy every single one. I went to sleep kind of going through my normal routine. I booted up the laptop to play some chess. Decided naaahh - I'll play chess tomorrow. I took out my Cross Sums mag to do a puzzle. there was one half done, so it got knocked out a little faster. Lay down and turned on some Buffy, got about 11 minutes into it and decided, hey - I'm a little sleepy. Off with the TV. Next thing I remember is my alarm going off. But rested - I haz plenty of it.

For those who don't follow <a href="http://malkatsheva.livejournal.com>my wife's blog</a> too, the Maxda started acting up on her. This might put us in a position to take advantage of a deal out here that I wasn't thinking we would need. Apparently, along with soft drinks, Pizza Hut, and magazines, they also have car sales of Ford, Mercury, and Plymouths. You buy it out here, they have (apparently) huge discounts and they will deliver it (free) to the distributor of your choice. How awesome is that? So I've told her that while I'm not in the mood to necessarily buy a new car, if the problem with the minivan leads her to believe that now is the right time to start shopping new car, it may make sense to buy now while I'm out here (though I am fairly certain there are no 0% financing deals here, I'm confident then cost savings more than makes up for it). What I wonder is if she does go for a new car if she's going to stay minivan or go smaller - station wagon or even a sedan. The kids are plenty old enough that we don't need the ease of access the minivan gives you for handling small children. Who knows? In other news, rumors abound regarding going home. Some folks are saying we're going to be leaving in a few weeks. Some folks are saying that we'll be here a month past that. Some say we're going to split up, with some leaving soon and others leaving a month later. All in all, it amounts to a hill of beans. What I've noticed is that I've come to a very peaceful place with how life goes. If you ever wanted to see/learn just how "not-in-control" you really are, just spend some time on an adventure like this. Nothing is in my control. I go where I'm told, I eat from a specific selection, I sleep when I'm told, etc. For some folks, it is incredibly stressful. BARNEY would like nothing more than for this to be over so he can get back home and "control" his life. I explained that he doesn't really control his life. He has more options when he's back home, but he still needs to go to work, he still needs to deal with his family, etc. No one is free. You have to do the things you have to do. The ticket to happiness is accepting that, doing what you got to do, and making the most of the free time your taskmaster (whatever form it takes) gives you. One thing this trip has taught me is just how much I miss/need Rachel and the kids. I've never been away from the kids this long and the last time Rachel and I were apart this length of time it was before we were married. But since we've met, this is easily the longest we've ever been apart. I'm really glad that one of the opportunities that came along with this adventure was to sell my half of the mail-order business to my buddy/partner Jon. I don't know what form this newfound fondness for closeness will take, but I'm glad I won't have that many distractions on my time outside of work. Anything else I'm involved in, I want to find a way for them to be involved too. Anything that they are involved in, I want to find a way to be involved. (Well, except for some of that hippy-dippy New Age stuff Rachel loves :))

In my last post I neglected to shout out to my beautiful bride who was so nice as to send me a care package. I've got Jerky, South Beach Snack Bars, 2 new books and a couple of packages of peanut M&Ms now. The M&Ms are one of the first snack foods I've had in almost 8 weeks. WOW - the sugar was so so sweet. I wouldn't say I've "lost my taste" for these, but I am definitely going to wait a while before I eat the second pack. I've got enough SB Bars to last me 2-3 weeks if I eat one a day, so I'm using them as my after-dinner treat.

The books are not quite just-in-time, but I am in the middle of the last book. I've been greatly enjoying this series, so the next 2 books inthe cycle are a great thing to have on hand. I suspect that I'll get through at least one of these before I come home and get significantly through the second one (assuming I don't finish both).

Best of all were letters. Rachel wrote me a lovely note that is none of your business, thank you. But Anna wrote me a note as well and it was AWESOME. She is such a good story-teller and she decorates her note with art all over it, all relevant to the story she tells. I showed her note to everyone, and all were impressed what my 10-year-old could do. So he doesn't get in trouble, I will point out that Jack has sent me email instead of writing me a note and that's ok.

So, my dear Ray - thank you ever so much - your package made my day (and will for many days).

I got to learn what rain in this place is like. Fortunately, I was not caught in it, as reports from people who were indicated that it was quite a downpour. When I went to bed at night there was some slight drizzling and by morning it was over.

But the smell. Horrendous. One guy turns to me and says "I don't mind the rain, but why does it have to smell like ass?" I replied that the smell was not that unusual for our camp. He agreed, but I had to agree that the smell of ass was particularly pungent this morning.

Despite the rain, walking down the main road, looking at the trees, you can STILL see more dust than leaves on the branches. It's weird, interesting, and depressing all at once.

In other weather updates, winter is definitely settling in around here. The nights and mornings are significantly cooler (and I remain oh-so-greatful to my wonderful wife for purchasing my Mountain Hard Ware jacket. It is nice and cozy and I now bring it with me anywhere. This morning, while walking to an interview, we noticed that the mountains all had snow sprinkled upon them. We are fotunately still about a thousand feet below them, so no snow for us (yet). By early afternoon, all the snow was gone, though. So it's weird temperature swings up there as well.

A group of us left this evening to go have dinner. We got turned away about halfway there by a Marine who informed us that the D-Fac (Dining Facility) was closed. In fact, all of the D-Facs on the base were closed. Apparently, there was a concern about contaiminated water. Our best guess is that whatever truck delivered today's "potable" water for the D-Facs to cook with made a huge error (either when they loaded or unloaded). While it's weird eating a bowl of cereal and a small packet of jerky for dinner, I can't say how much happier I am eating this than the poor schmucks who went to dinner about an hour before I did - they got into the D-Fac and were puzzled why they got unceremoniously thrown out. Poor saps.

In the meantime, today is also an historic day. Today I am able to comfortably wear my belt on its final notch. I plan on celebrating by gorging myself on Pizza Hut and cookies. Nah, I'm just kidding. One of the things I've gotten a bit of control around here is "rewarding" myself with food. It's not because of limited options. There are cookies, cake, pizza, tons of stuff that are yummy to eat that would have kept my weight higher than it is now (I'm certain I'd lose weight anyway being here just through stress and all the walking you have to do). So far, I can control myself simply by saying "Yes, I can have a cookie. I can have it - but I'm not going to."

If you must know, it does hurt to reach behind me to pat myself on the back like this.

So things are pretty much same same here. They talk about life being like "Groundhog Day" (a movie starring Bill Murry for the pop-culturally impaired) and it's very true. You get up, you go and do the things you gotta do, you go to bed. There's no weekend to break things up. There's no social events or the like to look forward to.

There is the Excel spreadsheet with dates that I open every morning. On it, I've got a counter that is counting the number of days since we have started this adventure, it had a countdown to day 43 (which is when post-diff pay kicks in), it has a countdown to the 2/3 mark and to the final date (that I think we'll hit - it's not a hard date). My morning ritual is to check that sheet, fill in my spreadsheet for the last day's hours (my timesheet is significantly more complex than it is back home), and check e-mail. After that, I'll do any database reports, queries, or programming that came up yesterday (these requirements usually come to me in the evening roll-up meeting).

My day gets different in the interview cycle. I talk to different people, talk about different things, so there is a degree to which it is different. On the other hand, at this point, many of the processes are the same and we're not learning anything all that new, so it IS Groundhog Day in that respect.

The big thing that broke up today was that it was laundry day. Typically, every 4-5 days I'll do laundry. Unlike my original location, this place does not have a service. Instead, it's a room with 40-odd washers and dryers. You just take a machine, throw in some soap (available free) and let it run. You are very motivated to get there in time to change over to a dryer because someone waiting for your machine IS going to take it as soon as they can. Same thing with the dryer.

The dryers here are interesting (and I may have mentioned this before). I basically set the dryer to "maximum time" which should be about an hour. I will come back at the hour mark and check the laundry. It is always consistently dry and nice and warm. So I'll take everything out and start to fold and fold. Eventually, I'll come across one sock - ONE SOCK - which is soaking wet. Everything else is dry. Except one sock. I've done laundry here 4 or 5 times at this point and it has happened every single time! It is so strange.

My boots are starting to show signs of their age. These hiking boots were purchased over 15 years ago when Rachel and I were joining her family for a trip to the California mountains. I've used them on-and-off since then on the oh-so-rare occassion that I've ever needed boots of some kind. To that end, it shouldn't be all that surprising that there are certain areas of the shoes that are showing signs of age/wear. I checked the local stores (there were 2) to see if I could find another pair to get me through the last month or so and the prices are in the "are you freaking kidding me?!?!" range. At least, that's my opinion. I'm told by others that as shoes go, it's a normal price for that brand, maybe even cheaper. Again, emphasis on "for that brand". But there ain't no way in hay-ell that I'm paying 160 bucks (OR MORE) for a pair of hiking shoes. No way, no how. I'll just take it and add it to my list of things that EVERYONE ELSE HERE (military, civilian, and even those who work for my organization) was issued FOR FREE that I didn't get. More and more, I'm sure that one of the key items going into my final report to the folks who sent me here is the fact that I got treated "like every other employee sent overseas" except for gear. Every other organization bites the bullet and equips their folks, including my organization. But because I went through a different section - one that has no experience sending folks overseas - I came out here using my own nickel for gear.

Bleh. I hate that last paragraph. I hate the resentment that is clearly inside me about this whole aspect of my trip. It's not like I'm being left in poverty because of this. And I knew enough about the incoming monies that I could have easily have purchased that stuff for myself and not sneezed in the long run. But I'm too cheap to treat myself to that kind of stuff.

This is the last time I will issue this reminder. If you are enjoying reading this blog and are wondering what happened to many of the entries you saw before, I have activated a number of privacy securities. At this point, everyone who I have friended is able to see all of my private entries - so friend up!

Note - please don't assume I'll know who you are from your screen name (unless it's a really obvious screen name) - I won't add random people to my friend's list - I'll need to know who you are. :)

We had a follow up interview today and other than that, it was all about the individual teams briefing each other on previous interviews. The fact that I am awake now is a testament to the power of caffeine. I'm hopeful that it's not too much in my system, since I need to go to sleep soon.

Most of my time here, I live on GMT. That means I spend most of my time living in the dark - my wake up time is around noon local. But starting Monday, the people I need to meet with all live on the normal day. So tonight, I am going to bed early so that (hopefully) I wake up at least 2 hours early. If I somehow wake up refreshed 4 hours early, then I'll have completely converted over to the new schedule. But most likely, I'll lay in bed, watch a couple of episodes of Buffy and pass out.

For Buffy fans - watching from the beginning has been great. I'm in the middle of season 3, which is probably my favorite season. It's iffy for whether or not I'll actually get through the whole series before leaving here, but that's something I can live with.

OK, here at alternate site #2, I think I may have mentioned how dusty it is. Seriously. Dust everywhere. So how do the restrooms hold up?

They're dusty, of course.

OK, the showers are actually pretty good. Obviously, there is no potable water, but the shower tent has 2 rows of showers with (a) decent water pressure (b) an actual shower nozzle instead of a pipe that leaks and (c) hot water as a common occurence. Between the tent entrance and the showers themselves is a grand hall with 2 rows of sinks (not potable water - do not drink) and tables. So there are no cubbies for changing, but it's fairly airy. Of course, there is dust all over the floor, so once you leave the shower (and the washed off dust that has accumulated there) you are walking (in your shower shoes) on top of dust. Your challenge now is to (1) dry off then (2) take your feet out of your shower shoes while placing them down on top of same then (3) get dressed - carefully balancing yourself on one foot (on a shower shoe) and placing that foot down on the other shower shoe and then repeat for the other side and then repeat both sides again as you put your pants on. Failure in any of the above results in dirty feet.

Bathrooms are a bit more interesting. On the plus side, there is generally not a general smell of poop all over. As you get closer to the poop trailers , it gets a little riper, but you come to expect that. Inside, you have to picture a hall about 20 feet long and about 8 feet wide. Jutting out about a foot and half on the right side of the back half of the trailer is a troth. Like a giant sink sticking out of the wall. It's a urinal for 4, basically. Doesn't sound so bad until you consider that on the left side of the wall - running the entire length of the left - are the sitting toilets. Those take up about 5 feet of space. So there is about a yard of "wiggle room" to navigate up and down this hall. Do you move to the end of the hall to minimize the number of people who walk by you while you stand there pissing? Or do yo ustay up close so that you can get the hell out of there sooner? These are tough decisions and often you don't have a lot of time to make them.

I swear I shall never take a private bathroom for granted ever again.

Outback made a special delivery to Alternate Site #2 today. Thank goodness "steak" is well within my eating plan. To my credit, all of the other goodies that I could have partaken from were avoided through sheer willpower. I'm talking bloomin' onion, a yummy pasta dish, cheesecake and key lime pie. (sigh) One more belt loop and I'll start allowing myself one dessert per week. But I'm not there yet, but I can feel it getting close.

Weather today - dusty with a high of dust cloud. It's craptastic.

Today had 2 meetings that were so boring that I was nodding off. At the end of the day, when the team does its wrap-ups, we go through our notes together and build the outline of our deliverable. I could not remember taking nearly any of these notes and was stunned by the one that said "Product has trouble with butterflies on jelly." My hope is that at least I looked like I was paying attention.

I am currently at Additional Site #2 - internet access out here is somewhat limited. Quarters are somewhat... spartan. More later, just wanted folks to know why things will be quiet here for the near future.