Latchkey life

Everyone in my little Hundred Acre-Sandbox lives a latchkey life. It is sort of like a prison, but a nice prison. One with two nice gyms and a place where you can meet to knit or smoke cigars, not that I do either of those things at this time.

It’s like a little city. Since we can’t leave, everything’s here, down to the hair salon and barbershop to the water processing plant and firehouse. They’re staffed with fellow residents of the One Hundred-Acre Sandbox, and we come from all over. It’s not just my department colleagues who staff the place; we have other federal employees and contractors plus a lot of third-party contractors as well.

It might be a prison, but I have the most amazing prison cell ever.  Although there are several other housing complexes in the sandbox, the people with DoS have nice little one-bedroom apartments with a little sitting area (mine has a kitchen table full of crap), a pretty big bedroom – big enough for a comfy chair – and a decent-sized living room. The living room is exactly the size of the bedroom; at one point there were enough people here to necessitate roommates, but fortunately I missed that. Oh, and the bathtub is pretty deep. I’m so glad I don’t have to share that with anyone. There’s even a great storage closet that houses all the toiletries I brought for two years (it looks like miniature Target). Really, it’s an incredible prison cell.

Like a prison, the whole sandbox is secure. I’ll never leave the compound, although I did get lucky the other weekend and was allowed to step outside the door to meet someone coming in. That’s probably as much of Baghdad as I’ll see, and the only thing I noted was that people drive really fast on the road out front. I also noticed, looking at an outdate map, that where I live is somewhere near Saddam Hussein’s old house. I’m a terrible map-reader, though, and I could be off on that.

Part of the security is the fact that we have to wear our badges every time we leave our little prison cells. As a result, everyone has an ID badge hanging around their necks. It’s kind of fun to see everyone’s lanyards. Certain themes recur: former posts, the generic Baghdad one, sports teams. It’s amazing how many people see my Florida State one and approach me to sympathize about football season.

Badge holders are another big thing here. At previous posts, I’ve had two card things I need to carry around but here it’s four. I have two for the office, my ID and the most important one: my food card.  I need that when I eat, so I carry it around all the time. So, like a lot of people here, I bought a little badge holder that holds three cards. It also has what was marketed as a change purse, but in reality it’s a zipper that leads to a narrow sleeve that I might could force a single sheet of paper into. Ah well; I don’t really need money day-to-day here. I mean, it’s not like I’m using cigarettes for currency instead or anything like that, but there’s just nothing to buy.

When we get our prison cells, we’re given this gas station bathroom-sized keychain with three, I think it was, keys on it. I lugged the thing with me the first couple of days and I finally realized no one was juggling the bulky things. It took awhile to catch on, but I figured out everyone had taken the one key they needed off the gas station keychain (seriously, here now for two months and I am not entirely sure what the other keys go to) and fastened it to their lanyards. Some people wear theirs in front, and when you see many people walk by, you’ll see their housekey dangling from the back of their lanyards.

We don’t wander around without our badges and keys. After locking myself out one time (in my first week, no less), I fashioned a hook right under my peephole so there’s no way I miss it when I leave.

It’s very much a latchkey life.

My vote counted and other things to be thankful for

It looks like the Florida elections – at least the results – are settled, and I’m glad my vote counted. It almost didn’t. My absentee ballot came in last month, I swear several weeks ago. I took it home, researched the amendments and then stuck it in the mail the same day.

But we don’t have daily mail service. It comes and goes in batches, and sometimes gets held up at the airport. How it works is my mailing address is sort of like a PO Box at an airport somewhere. The first-class stamp (I don’t even know how much they are these days, thank God for Forever stamps) gets it there, then your tax dollar gets it on the plane to me, wherever I am.

However, it seemed like there were 3-4 weeks in between and I really didn’t get my vote a second thought. I stuck my “I voted by mail” sticker on my computer at work and forgot about it until some Peace Corps volunteers from China were mentioning that they ballots had no been received. I asked how they knew – it’s not like absentee votes get confirmations – and they said they called the supervisor of elections. Off that, I called on Tuesday after Veterans’ Day and my vote had not come. I was kind of panicked, because, well, what do you do? She asked if I’d FedExed it, and that’s just not an option. They nicely took my name and said if it came before Nov. 15, it would count. This, of course, was during Florida’s recounts. Basically I’d have been screwed if it didn’t come in, but fortunately, it made it that day. So I am happy my vote counted!

The mail seems to be running again, which is good. I’ve gotten one of my replacement credit cards and the debit card. I still don’t have the American Express, but I was able to go online and get a couple of things done, bought and stuck in the mail. With one exception, I think I’m almost done with Christmas shopping.

With the release of the incoming mail, the two outstanding packages I had out also arrived: a gift box from a friend that included a lot of candy corn and my boat shoes from LL Bean, which fit perfectly.

I’ll be wearing those to work today, where I am finally earning my keep. After being last week in one department, I’m for the next three weeks in the executive section, which is really busy. The people are nice and so far I haven’t screwed anything up. My counterpart has been very helpful and I’m trying to soak up tips and knowledge in the three weeks I’m in there.

It’s still planned to be only two weeks, but I’m not convinced that’ll be all of it. We may have some staffing gaps coming up and I am just hoping that they don’t mess up what’s arranged. I mean, for me, it’s six of one, half dozen of the other, but the other place is expecting help and it would be a real bummer if they suddenly had to fly by the seat of their pants for the gap.

Next week will be a bit busier, if just by virtue that there’s no holiday but also because someone’s coming back from leave and that moves things around. We’ve basically called up people for the last few weeks and now the top one is due to return, so everyone (except those on leave) return to their normal spots. It means a shifting of personalities, but not a great one. Right now, the office of seven has three of us subs, so we’ll be down to two. We also have sort of a random person from another office that closed and right now no one knows how he will fit in to the long-term mix.

But yes, I am totally thankful that so far it’s been really good. I was a bit scared of this one; I’ve been in the executive office before but that was in the consulate, not an embassy. And even though Guangzhou was a ginormous and Istanbul a huge consulate, there’s still another layer when it’s an embassy.

One example is the first and second in charge both have residences that can be used for meetings and such, and working in the executive office means you have a hand in facilitating the planning. Not the planning so much (at least me), just coordinating with the people who want to hold it, the people who will invite and the people who will prepare the site itself and the food.  This is one of the things I’m trying to learn from my counterpart; how this whole process falls into place. It’s an element in most embassies, I think, but I haven’t seen it yet. And I’m really glad I am getting this chance to get familiar with the process. Next week will be a bit more complicated but I think I’m acclimating all right.

Two months in and I’m still enjoying it here. Yesterday, Thanksgiving, I had a great meal from the outside world with the office I worked for last week, then had traditional turkey in our cafeteria, which really does a good job for the holidays. My little group of four saw another younger guy sitting by himself and pulled him in and had a great conversation with him.  

Today I have to head into work in a bit, but not for long. I’ve finally gotten a little bit of OT but not enough to kill me; some people here work insane hours.

And I’m still planning my first R&R, which is coming up in a couple of months. I’d been waiting on a credit card to make some reservations so now I need to get to it.

Not having a ball this weekend

In addition to it being Zippy’s birthday, our Marine Ball Was Friday. It was a nice start to a three-day weekend, but of course I wasn’t about to go to the ball itself. This elicited surprise from some, though I can’t imagine why. It’s pretty clear by my day-to-day attire that I’m not a dress-up person. As much fun as the salsa class is, I suck, and I’m not a drinker. Those three factors mean I’m not a prime candidate for the ball. I do like birthday cake, though.

But I’m all about helping out, even if I’m not going to partake. I met up with a group in the morning to help set up after my morning run. There were something like 300 people going, and we fixed up the room, which included laying the place settings and, get this, dressing the chairs. Our chairs are these plain things and somewhere, someone created little clothes for chairs. That person probably is raking in the bucks, because we had 300 of these blue stretchy fabric things that went over the chairs Maybe they were slipcovers; I never thought about slipcovers having feet and these things did. Anyway, by the time I left, the room looks ball-ready.

I’d also volunteered to help take down, but I think they shut down the party earlier than expected (or, rather, shifted it to Baghdaddy’s earlier than expected) because when I got there are the pre-arranged 11:30 p.m., the take-down was almost complete. Instead, I grabbed a piece of birthday cake and headed back to my apartment.

Since the venue is the cafeteria, we’re sort of getting by on the food this weekend. There was no sit-down on Friday, so people were wandering around with Styrofoam containers full of whatever. I went the “grab and go” for lunch and got a turkey sandwich and celery/carrot sticks before turning the corner and realizing there was real food, so I went ahead and took green beans and a pork chop for supper.

I finally think that I have stopped gaining weight from all the food here and might have started losing, but it’s still utterly depressing. We have a TDYer here who’s a lot of fun and basically convinced me to go two weeks without carbohydrates. I’ve no idea how people do this, because everything good is a carb. The experiment lasted a total of two meals, because they had fish and chips the first night. I passed on the chips but ate the fish, which had some kind of breading.

I am trying, though. Breakfast is the worst because even though I would never eat grits, potatoes and a biscuit for breakfast, I want one of them with eggs and bacon. Lunch is hard because I am huge fan of the soups. Bypassing the chicken noodle – it’s fabulous – for fish of some sort (tilapia, maybe) and roasted veggies just wasn’t that great. I’m not a big of big lunches.

The idea is to do this for two weeks to try to jump-start weight loss, but we’ll see what happens. I really didn’t know practically everything was carbs and had yogurt for breakfast. I’m not really good at this.

Plus, seriously, who can live without rice? Why would you want to? A riceless world is not a pretty one. Or a tasty one.

It’s also a long riceless weekend since Veterans’ Day is Sunday. We’ve got a ceremony planned and a 5k. We seem to average one of these a month and I plan on running. One of the people who helped set up for the ball this morning runs at about my pace (which is pretty slow) and we’re plan on doing it together. I’m still kind of vague on the track and need to keep someone in my sites or I might make a wrong turn. The courses for the two previous races were the same but they change it up here and there, I’m told. You do two loops around, but the second loop cuts some part off and that’s where I get confused, plus at that point I’m pretty much sucking wind behind everyone else.

It looks like my job, the actual work part, will kick in for real next week. My job is to fill in for people who are on leave and someone’s finally leaving. At some point, this was going to happen, so I’ve tried to enjoy the lull as much as possible. Starting Monday, I’m pretty much booked through mid-February. That  includes and R&R but it’s still nonstop. I’m glad. Lulls are nice but it’s been something like six weeks. I’m ready to be busy.

Saving money, but not on purpose

I’m trying to plan my first R&R, which is planned to be to Australia in a few months. As someone who mostly takes trips over long weekends, trying to plan a three-week excursion has been a different, especially since there is no package tour involved.

Those are easy, as demonstrated by the fact I’ve already put a down payment on a cruise for January 2020. Write a check or give a credit card number and you’re done.

It’s a little harder when you’re trying to piece together different countries (I transit Amman) and multiple cities.

It’s really hard when you don’t have a credit card.

And that’s the situation I’m in now. Late last week, I went to buy a train ticket and realized my Visa card expired at the end of October and one debit card had expired in September (not that I want to use those on the internet). The new ones, I’m sure, went to Tallahassee but Zippy hasn’t seen them and likely accidentally shredded them. I spent time on with the State Department Federal Credit Union to see if I can get new ones, so hopefully that’s fixed.

Although Visa is “everywhere you want to be,” my card of choice is still American Express. This is a bit difficult sometimes, because it’s not accepted everywhere. Like the Australian train ticket, for example. But AirBnB takes it, so I’ve been happily making reservations in Cairns and Airlie Beach.

I’d intended to try to plan the rest of the vacation this weekend and decided to see what damage I’d done so far this month with American Express. You know it’s your preferred card when you not only have the card number, that little secret number, the expiration date and the card closing date by heart. I might have to look up my SSN, but I can fire off that number pretty quick. Just ask Amazon.

Before making any more reservations, I wanted to check the account. In doing so, there was an unfamiliar charge. Holy smokes.  I called AmEx (best customer service on the planet) and had the card canceled. After thinking about the charge, though, I realized it was from the same place I stayed over two years ago while on vacation. I have no earthly idea why they would have charged me again, or why my number would have been still accessible. I went in February 2016!

So the next step was to get a new AmEx card, which is harder than it seems it should be. The problem is I don’t have a phone number that you can call and I’ll answer. Now, I don’t understand why that’s a stumbling block to get something mailed, but OK. Personally, I have no problem with having no answerable phone because I can call out with few issues. However, even though I the Google Voice number and all, for whatever reason, it doesn’t ring and therefore I can’t answer it. While I’m not going to worry about it, it freaks people out. And I get it, really. I mean, I’m talking on the phone to a customer service rep trying to explain that I don’t have a phone. Why should they believe that?

Anyway, due to some policy, I can’t get my new AmEx sent directly to me; it has to go to my home of record first. So now I have to wait on it to travel the world, and in the meantime, I have absolutely no way of spending money.

It’s a really weird situation so I hope nothing comes up. It already occurred to me that my internet comes due on the 20^th, so hopefully by then I have something that works. But it’s a strange feeling, knowing that I’m pretty much unable to spend any money. I mean, if push came to shove, I could figure it out, but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. It’s not a bad thing to go a couple of weeks without placing an order from Walmart, Target, Amazon or some other place. I’m not even a big shopper but knowing I can’t makes me want to.