No, you’re not hallucinating:  I am actually posting twice in a 24-hour time period.  Will the trend continue?  Eh, probably not, but I do hope to post at least a few times a week, every week.  The unfortunate part of my job is that I hear so many amusing things but I can’t post about any of them.  What a waste, right?

So I’m left talking about the generally mundane parts of my life, usually relating to either me or the kids.  Or, periodically, such exciting things as income taxes (ooooooooh).  Since I covered taxes in the last blog entry, and the kids, this time it’s all about me.

Every week, the base Commanding Officer (CO) picks someone to be the “rock star” of his weekly radio show, usually someone recently returning from an IA assignment to the middle east.  This week it was my turn. 

It’s a 5-minute or so interview and he just asks the interviewee a few questions about themselves.  Everything went remarkably smoothly until he asked, “What one moment stands out from your time in Iraq?”  I’m really hoping the editing guys had time to edit that part of the interview (they had very limited time since an exterminator was clearing out the building shortly after my interview - nice!) because I’m pretty sure “uh, um, er, ehh, uhhhh,” came out of my mouth as all the inappropriate things to say passed through my mind (”Well, there was that time I was getting an IV for a migraine as a mortar hit the parking lot by the dining facility!”  “Yeah, the pool party where the star guest was a blow-up lifeguard was a blast!”  “How could anyone forget the time I thought I was being shot at and headed for cover and it turned out to be a car backfiring?”) and I ended up stuttering out something about how hot it got there.  I think that was safe because the interview continued without incident and I wasn’t sent to the mental health clinic after the interview. 

The show was set to air this morning at 7:00am; I usually catch the end of it in the car which was perfect because my interview was at the end of the show.  Of course, because it’s just the way it rolls with me, the power went out across the base this morning from 5:00-9:00am and my ticket to fame and adoration was zapped.  Soooo typical.

Fear not, my loyal claque; they are going to give me a copy of the CD and if it passes several strict reviews by the Editor-in-Chief of this blog (aka “me”), I will hopefully have it posted by this weekend.

Yesterday was a very long day of travelling, we were up in Kuwait at 4am and got home - HOME - in Spain 20 hours later.

I cannot describe how awesome it is to be reunited with your family.

Or how awesome it is to be able to go to the bathroom at 3:30am and not have to leave your house.

Today has been fantastic, warm blueberry muffins and coffee for breakfast, shopping for nothing at all, going through allllll of my clothes…I get to wear cute clothes again!

It’s lunchtime now, one of those things I didn’t appreciate so much before, and then decorate the Christmas tree, the movies later, the playground after that, and then…whatever.  Who cares!  I’m home!!

We just got back from a monumental moment in our deployment - the day we finally got the M16 off our backs.  Finally!!  No more weapon, no more body armor, no more 80 pound helmet to knock myself in between the eyes with.  Not that I ever did that, no, but I imagine it must really hurt for a long time if you did that, even more than if you hit your head so hard you got whiplash from the shelf on the bus, not like I did that either. 

It really is such a huge relief to have turned in all of our gear.  All that’s left is my personal belongings, including the extra seabag worth of stuff I just bought at the bazaar they have here.  Why oh why must they put sparkly things in the sunlight right outside of the coffee place? 

One step closer to being home - only one more day of outprocessing and then we’re more or less home free!

I saw a coffee mug a couple of days before I left from Camp Victory that said, “Happiness is…” and then it had a picture of a rear-view mirror with Camp Victory in it.  I was reminded of that mug when I was going through my pictures and saw this…looking out of the back of the bus as we left my office for the airport.

The day we left was a long one.  Wally and I stayed up through the night packing and laughing and running errands at 3:45am.  I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t procrastinate as much as I do!  We ended up borrowing an SUV in the middle of the night to drop off our stuff at my office and then hung out some more, finishing a video for one of Wally’s coworkers and laughing at at least a hundred more things. 

We had to be to work by 7, and had to stop along the way to pick up my letter releasing me from the country.  We got there and there was a giant cup of coffee sitting alone that was very generously donated to me by my friend, Mark…that helped make up for the lack of sleep!

We got on the bus and headed to BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) - my mind was racing with the thoughts that I was certainly forgetting to pack something or do something or pick up something, even though I knew I had everything.   

My poor coworker, Brooke…she did not want us to go. 

I know the feeling well.  It was strange being on the other side of a goodbye, where you are feeling sad that you’re leaving but you’re overwhelmed with the thoughts of everything else involved with leaving, so much that you’re not quite sure which emotion you’re feeling.  When I gave her her last hug, though, I didn’t have a hard time figuring out which emotion it was, and I had a hard time letting go.  I think we all did. 

We traveled with a lot of gear - 2 seabags of gear to turn back in, 1 of personal belongings, and my backpack which had my laptop which weighs 400 pounds and might as well be a desktop.  Wally and I kept running into each other with our backpacks and it turned into a war of the backpacks.  I think I won, mainly because behind the backpack was my ass, which in a battle with Wallys is like a rhinocerous fighting a mouse.  A Cuban mouse.  From Minnesota.

Self/portrait while waiting in line to get on the tarmac:

Our flight was on a C17, which is one of the biggest aircraft the military has.  So tell me why I was sitting with my nose inches away from the seat back in front of me.  I had to squeeze myself back in my seat so I could focus my camera ON MACRO to get this picture.

The lack of sleep caught up with me, and as I mentioned in my last post, I fell asleep before we had even started to move and didn’t wake up again until we touched down in Kuwait. 

I mentioned yesterday about almost having to go back to the States to do our outprocessing.  When we first arrived and were waiting for our bags, my friend Ronnie and I went to the liaison officer to ensure we were in the program to turn in our gear here as this is a new program and none of us got anything in writing saying we were going to do it.  However, we had gotten an email around Thanksgiving requesting a bunch of information, and I contacted everyone from my command who was leaving together and compiled a spreadsheet with all of our data on it and sent it along to the email address provided.  It was bounced back to me twice so I contacted someone who worked in the office that directly works on transportation for Navy personnel.  He forwarded my information to a person that works the travel issues and CC’d me on the email so I KNOW it went out.  However, they told me they never got it…except that all but 3 of the people on the spreadsheet were in the turn-in program.  Me being one of them.  The same exact thing happened with Wally, who is also going to Spain with me - he emailed them twice, it was bounced back both times, he contacted the same person who forwarded his information along as well.

So we get here and we’re trying to get into the program since it is just STUPID for us to fly back to the States when we’re going to Spain.  We made it very clear that we were going to Spain, and THAT IS STUPID, and that we have flights already arranged for Saturday from Kuwait and this will screw up everything, not to mention IT IS STUPID for us to have to go back to the States to turn in our gear when there’s the program here.  I promise I substituted the word “stupid” for more intelligent sounding words, or at least I hope I did.

We kept getting met with “No, there’s nothing I can do about it,” so we asked to talk to the next person higher.  We walked the marathon-length walk to find him and when we got there and explained that it would be STUPID to fly back to the states when we were going to Spain, we were greeted with more “No, there’s nothing I can do about it”s that went on for a good hour, until, wait, what?  You’re in Spain?  Spain?  You already have plane tickets?  To Spain?  Really, you’re going to Spain?  Well, that’s a different story!

I think I must have stuttered the 50 prior mentions of GOING TO SPAIN, but at least it was finally resolved and things moved along very quickly after that.  Because of our situation, Wally and I, along with a couple of other people in our group in a similar predicament, aren’t outprocessing with the rest of our group, most of whom came over with us from our training Fort Jackson.  So today, it was more goodbyes. 

When I woke up this morning, I thought that even though I may be even further away from my family right now than I was in Baghdad, I feel about a thousand miles closer.

I am finally out of Iraq!  Hooray.

Uneventful flight, I fell asleep before we started rolling down the runway and I woke up when we touched down 20 songs later on my iPod.  Thank goodness for my iPod! 

It is strange being back in Kuwait when it’s not 180°…we are staying in the tent next to the tent we stayed in when we came through in June.  It’s freeeeezing outside now - 40° after spending months in the extreme heat is a huge change. 

There was a huge “charlie foxtrot” when we arrived here and I was almost going back to the U.S. to outprocess in Fort Jackson but fortunately (very fortunately), after a few hours of arguing, we got ourselves back on track and we (we being me and my friend who is stationed in Spain) will be back on Saturday as originally planned.

I will write more again in the upcoming days; I need to go to sleep and catch up on the sleep I didn’t get last night because I was up all night packing and moving and goofing around since it got to that point of being too late to go to sleep.

I’m glad to be out of Baghdad where there’s a few less things to worry about.

I don’t know what I would have done here if it weren’t for Jimmy, aka “Jimbaba” (”baba” is “Godfather” in Turkish). I met Jimmy shortly after I arrived here and he had just started building up in front of his hooch (trailer). When it started, it was just a couple of booths and umbrellas and that was it…this first picture, in fact, was after a few weeks of us going there, when he had put up a strand of Christmas lights, mirrors, a shelf, and a few things on the wall:

There were a couple more of us in that original group, but it was pretty small. Over time, it grew and grew and now Jimmy’s gets so many visitors that it’s hard to walk through from one side to the other.
Every day I come, all the way up until last night, there would be something new. Jimmy never stopped adding onto it, and the more he added on, the more it became something completely unforgettable. First it was the mirrors, then he started putting up pictures from the get-togethers, then it was decorations on the walls, a markerboard for messages, candles mounted on the walls…Jimmy just never stops.

Despite vandals and threats to close it down, Cafe Baba has lasted and has become a place that I know has gotten some of us through this deployment. The friends made, the fun had, the barbeques replacing missed meals and late worknights, the laughter and just all-out fun. I don’t know what I would have done without Jimmy.  Not only is Jimmy’s a place for late-night fun, but if you come by during the day, he’ll brew up a pot of coffee for you and more than likely have cheese and crackers and cookies and candy and anything else you can think of.

Thanks, Jimmy, for all the memories. You are the best.