To prove that Karyn does indeed dance. Here she is ballroom dancing like no other.

Proof you see, I have proof.

There’s one pattern I’ve fallen into here, and that is of not sleeping.  No matter what time I go to sleep, be it 9 or 10 or 12 or 2, I always have a nearly impossible time waking up.  Around 3pm is when my body realizes it’s been woken up; for the first 9 hours of the day it still thinks it should be curled up in bed. 

Since my body wakes up at 3pm, that means at 9 o’clock, it’s mid day for my body, and that’s when I am really going.  As I’ve mentioned before, I go to the cafe every night and sit around chatting with my friends.  The group changes slightly from night to night, but it generally stays pretty much the same, quite diverse - me and 2 other women in the Navy, about 3 or 4 guys in the Navy (one of whom I found out on my first or second day in Fort Jackson is stationed with me in Spain and works a stone’s throw away), a couple of Army guys, some U.S. civilians, a Turk, an Italian, and last night, a Bosnian.  This sounds like I’m setting up a lame joke.  So a Turk, an Italian, and a Sailor walk into a cafe…

Last night everyone left pretty early to go salsa dancing.  Add that to my list of things I wouldn’t expect from Baghdad.  That’s the happenin’ place on Saturday nights, but I don’t dance, so I don’t go.  Instead, I walked back to my neighborhood and sat down with my friend (that I’m stationed with) and we continued the game we’d started a few nights earlier over a conversation about philosophy, religion (specifically, Pastafarianism, which you need to read up on in order to understand anything henceforth in this post), and the quality of wireless internet on Camp Victory. 

This game has turned into an almost-marketable game called “Pirate’s Revenge”.  Unfortunately, not having thousand-pound slabs of concrete readily available makes it a little bit unfeasible for playing at home.  We’re working through that obstacle, and pending the arrival of our t-shirts, pirate hats and eye patches, we will continue to develop our game until it’s ready for release to Pastafarians everywhere. 

Someday I want to experience O Fortuna in person.

And the Three Tenors, too.

Bubble wrap

The term “faux-reality sitcom” (3rd paragraph from the end)

Pastafarians

My package that came in with my new lip gloss

My camera

That my teeth are still straight and I can smile. 

This article

A step closer to my quest for total world domination

This picture that I played with of my friend Christina…who is helping me to adapt to the fact that not every Christina starts wtih a K.  It was a fun night last night, with lots of laughing, few explosions, and nice conversation.

I really live in this strange state of not being scared when I hear 60 cal gunfire and only giving a moment’s thought to explosions, and a helicopter flying so low my trailer vibrates doesn’t even register on my list of things to worry about. 

And yet it does affect me.  Though I’m not usually scared about those things, I do think a lot about the what ifs.  It’s just so strange to think about the what ifs, and then 5 minutes later you hear a mortar explosion and just go on with what you’re doing because you figure you didn’t see anything so there’s nothing to worry about.  It’s kind of exhausting. 

My friend was walking back to work the other day and saw little puffs of dust coming up along the road…turns out there was a gunfight nearby and somehow the rounds were landing around him.  He (and everyone else) was OK but it was one of those things that just increases your stress level just hearing about it. 

I went on a convoy the other day, my first.  It was terrifying until I got out of the gate, and then I suddenly felt very calm.  But then every time I would see a car on the side of the road, or a piece of garbage, I would feel scared again until we passed it.  Just to give you an idea of how often that happened, think of a New York City junkyard strewn on the side of the road. Or, if you’re my family, think of my bedroom as a kid.  Or, if you’re my husband, think of our bedroom if you didn’t nag at me.  So in one way, I was telling myself that I was calm most of the time, when in reality, as soon as one thing would be passed safely there would be another approaching to increase my anxiety again.  We made it back safely, and then an hour or so later when one of the people that I had driven with went back toward the gate, he said there was a large amount of black smoke right outside the gate. 

So you can see that for the most part, there is a large amount of stress going on.  But like I said before, I don’t necessarily feel stressed most of the time.  However, recently, I realized that all of my stress is manifesting itself in two places:  1., my weight, and 2., my hair. 

My hair is not falling out like many people under stress have happen.  Oh, no.  I’m getting new hair.  Lots of new hair.  And they are all gray.  Scratch that: white.  And they couldn’t even give me the respect to just start growing where the hair already is.  No, I’m getting all new hair, and it’s all white, so I have these little hairs that stick straight up, and no matter how I do my hair, they’ll never be long enough to smooth down so all I can do is walk around with my hairs screaming, “HERE WE ARE! LOOK AT US!”

I know, I know.  I haven’t been updating very well lately.  The internet in my mansion is now completely gone; I haven’t been able to even get connected, much less online to be able to post. 

Yesterday we made a little trip around the base in the Humvees.  We stopped at one of the BXs for a few things, and then on our way to a market, we made a stop in between.  We drove along a lake, one of several on the base.  I wish I had had my camera with me but I didn’t know we were going to be going anywhere out of the ordinary.  At any rate, along the drive we passed many beautiful houses; as we drove along the water there was one particular place that got my attention.  It’s hard not to notice a giant, beautiful palace, with parts of it rubble falling into the water.  From what I understood, this palace had been damaged way back in the Iraq-Iran war? and was still undergoing repairs when we took this area over and made it a base.  Repairs halted and it stays in a state of disrepair with the cranes and scaffolding still in place. 

Across from the palace, I could see this very strange area.  I couldn’t quite identify what it might be, but it looked very out of place:  Smooth, rounded, kind of cavernous looking.  It turned out that that was where we were going.  And what that turned out to be was a playground that Saddam built for his children and grandchildren.

It was a complex of caves and large rooms: all the rooms were cavernous, even the tiled bathrooms.  There were fireplaces, there was a shaft of a now defunct elevator, there were little caves with skylights way up above, hiding spots, large caves with great, big openings overlooking the lake and the palace, a walkway down through the cattails and underneath a willow tree. 

It was kind of hard for me to think about it…it’s easier to think of SH as nothing but evil, but to see this magnificent playground that had so many details that would make it fun for his kids and grandkids…to think of children there laughing and playing so innocently…I left feeling…I’m not sure of the word for it, really. 

It’s kind of funny, Baghdad is. 

So far things are going very well: work is from about 7:45 until somewhere around 8 or 9.  You get out at 8 if you sneak out without being noticed; otherwise, you can be sure something will come up that requires immediate attention, even though if you weren’t there, certainly the building would still be standing 11 hours later when you came back into work. 

I had my first half-day off last weekend.  It was the first time since I got here that I have had off.  It was a very nice treat.  My half day working hours on Sunday were from 7:45 until 1:00: it would figure that at 12:45, not one but BOTH of our printers stopped working.  I’m thinking sabotage, people.  I fixed the printers and left at 1:45, and by the time I got to the chow hall, it was closed, so I missed lunch.  But it was still a nice day, and I got to take a nap and have some quiet time to just relax by myself.

My daily routine pretty much goes like this: 5:45, wake up.  Gives me enough time to not have to rush around.  Leave at 7; every 3 days stop by the laundry to drop off/pick up laundry.  Breakfast until 7:30.  Bus at 7:35, to work at 7:45.  Work until noon, break for lunch.  Back at 1.  Work until dinner, 5 or 6ish.  Off at 8ish.  8:30, coffee time.  This is, for obvious reasons, the best part of the day and thus I usually don’t end up getting home until 10-10:30.  At that time, I take off my shoes and unleash the fury of the Sweaty Feet.  Thank goodness I brought my Crocs…they are a god-send!  Perfect for tired, sweaty, smelly feet.  Then it’s email, or egging the wireless antenna, depending on whether or not I was able to get online.  I usually get into bed at about 11:30, far too late but I’m just not willing to sacrifice any of the things after work that make me feel more normal. 

Every night when we’re out drinking our coffee, we can hear explosions, and helicopters fly low over our heads, and it’s just a wee bit strange.  Everyone just keeps on drinking their coffee, because what else do you do?  There’s a warning system in the event we need to take cover; otherwise, we can assume that either a. the explosions aren’t close enough to where we are to worry, or b. dude, when it’s your time, it’s your time. 

That mentality has been something that I’ve had to learn rather quickly to accept.  There really is nothing we can do.  Staying at home in your trailer affords you no additional security as the walls are about as sturdy as aluminum foil, and wearing all your gear is completely unfeasible, not to mention you might as well just crumple up some of that foil and make yourself a nice little hat.  There is a time and place for wearing the gear, but within the confines of the base on any given day is not that time nor place.  So like I said, you just learn to accept that ’round here, all you can do is hope your number doesn’t come up.

And the strangest part is that this all doesn’t bother me.  But the smell on the bus to the chow hall today made me think that 72 virgins in the afterlife doesn’t sound so bad.