You can go home again

Breathing a big sigh of relief right now. The federal government has shut down but I’m one of the people still cleared to work, however, I got an email telling me to “remain in TDY status,” which I interpreted as “stay where you are until the whole thing blows over.” Fortunately, I learned that’s not the case. What the person meant was “continue as planned and go home as scheduled.” That is a huge relief because I’m due to return to Baghdad at the end of the year and am there long enough to, hopefully, do some paperwork and some laundry and then repack and head off to my three-week vacation. Erbil is nice in its own way, but there’s no place like home.

Beyond school, I’ve never taken three weeks off at once, and it’s a lot of planning. My hope was to get stuff paid for in advance so that I will have empty credit cards once I land. As a result, the thought of having to postpone or cancel the trip was freaking me out. I think in one day last week, I charged four side trips that averaged $200 each, and that’s only a portion of what I’ve pre-paid. With few exceptions, lodging and transport (trains and planes) have all been charged and paid in advance. This is going to be a trip like Alaska was for me: really big and so expensive I really don’t want to know what the total cost winds up being.

It’ll probably be my only grand scale trip, though. I’ll get four long vacations in the year and a half I’m here but the next one is to America and the last one will be my first cruise, so it’ll be paid off before I depart. The remaining one is up in the air but I’m not in any rush to plan it and package tour sounds good to me.

Erbil is still good, too, although I am really chilly right now. Our housing units are on par with Morocco’s but most of the rooms have individual wall AC/heat units. To go from my room to the kitchen, I have to leave a warm fuzzy room with a nice rug and walk over cold tile through a room with cold, concrete walls before I get to the kitchen. There’s a heating unit in there, but since the door to the wide-open hallway is always open, it’s usually not worth it to turn it on.

I spent quite a bit of time in there over the weekend because we had a Christmas potluck dinner and I offered to bring mashed potatoes. Since I was the only one bringing them and you have to have mashed potatoes for Christmas, I bought a huge amount of potatoes. Scrubbing and chopping them kept me warm, and then I went to boil them. There were two giant pots in the cabinet and it took both of them. Although the potatoes would almost all fit into the bigger pot, water did not. I wound up spending about an hour boiling them so I could then mash them. It was warm.

And thank God, there was a potato masher. When I volunteered to bring mashed potatoes, it didn’t occur to me that a kitchen could not have a potato masher. I mean, I own two. But I hadn’t checked before I bought the taters, so I was really relieved when I found them in the third drawer I ransacked.

Fortunately, there was a cutting board. I hadn’t known this until my second morning. I make hash browns and eggs and couldn’t initially find the cutting board but on the second morning, I found it hiding behind the clean dish rack.

 

One of my roommates, the one from Albany, has been here for months and didn’t know about the cutting board. I timed my potatoes so she could have time, room and pots to make enough deviled eggs to feed a refugee camp. As a result, I’d abandoned the kitchen for warmer pastures and didn’t notice she was slicing eggs and chopping scallions on a plate. When I circled back later, she lamented about the lack of a cutting board, I showed her where it lived. She had no idea, poor thing. It was a lot of eggs and scallions.

In other news, I still haven’t seen “The Mule,” but hope to on my vacation. No clue if it’s playing in Oz, but we’ll see. Anyway, in doing a slightly stalker-ish Internet search for a different reason, I discovered that Toby Keith sings a song for the movie and there’s a video with clips from the movie.

I found Karen! She is behind Dianne Wiest, wearing the ivory dress and sitting with her movie husband. I can’t wait to see the movie. Clint Eastwood rocks.

There once was a woman who lived in a CHU. Thankfully, it wasn’t me.

We had container housing units at Hope Village. You might not have seen these, but you can picture them: A tractor-trailer, minus the tractor, divided into a couple of rooms. That’s a container housing unit, or CHU. Hope Village’s didn’t have any sort of plumbing because we had a separate trailer for it, but the ones here in Erbil are “wet,” meaning they have a tiny bathroom in them. But no kitchen or washer and dryer, two things that I really appreciate for a three-week TDY.

Fortunately, I am not living in a CHU. Instead, I’m in a giant house that’s designated for female TDYers here. Right now, there are three of us. The other two are in two of the three upstairs bedrooms, which is also where the washers and a bathroom are. I’m currently the lone occupant of the downstairs, which consists of 2-3 bedrooms (really it’s three, but one is half the size of the others and only contains an iron), a giant kitchen, a bath and a half, an oversized hallway that’s both longer and wider than some bedrooms I’ve had, and 2-3 oddly configured sitting room/living room/formal dining rooms. I think these used to be two separate rooms, because there are two doors within a two feet of each other that lead to the oversized hallway.

They’re nice digs for a couple of weeks and I’ve really enjoyed cooking. Since the temporary employees meander in and out, it’s kind of hostel-like (though absolutely not hostile). There’s a lot of random leftover ingredients laying around, like pasta, spinach and garlic.

Since basically our compound here is literally a couple of city blocks, there are little grocery stores (smaller than 7/11s) that sell the basics, which is perfect for me since I’m a basic kind of person. I got rice, macaroni (I didn’t know about the cache at first), milk and eggs and then loaded up with carrots, onions and potatoes when the veggie guy came.

And I got outside! The coordinator sent out an email for a supply run (my employer would capitalize the “s” and “r” but I refuse to). I didn’t even know where it was but I signed up. I just wanted to go “outside.”

Oh what fun! The outside world! Iraq! Lovely Erbil, Iraq. Which, since most cities look very similar, a lot like anyplace in Turkey, Morocco and Jordan, but who cares, right? I was outside!

Only a few people can go, and since we don’t drive, we all went together in a motorpool ride. Everything’s coordinated and such, so we only had an hour, but that was plenty time to hit the grocery store, what since I didn’t need groceries and all. I did manage to buy these cookies I discovered in Istanbul that are basically Twix bars, brownie mix (we’re doing a Christmas potluck), a couple Snickers bars, milk and juice. Oh, and, quite randomly, a nail file. I’d tried to buy one from both Target and Walmart, but neither would allow the $1 metal item to be shipped to me. And then I found one in Erbil, go figure. Also about $1, but most everything else seemed cheaper. I got a heavy bag of groceries, handed over a $20, and got enough change to go to the coffee shop next door and have Iraqi tea, which, let’s get real, is the same thing as Turkish tea. Not a bad thing, of course.

The downside of the whole “outside” trip was me managing to pull my back getting out of the car, which, since we’re American, was a giant Suburban or something similar. By bad luck of the draw, I was in the back seat and, getting out, managed to step out in massive pain. If I had been anywhere else but on my one shot at being “outside,” I would have gone back to bed. I hurt so bad and basically eased myself through the whole shopping trip. At one point, I went for a bag of rice on the bottom shelf and instantly regretted it.

What it is with backs that makes them somehow susceptible to the silliest movements? I remember two other times when I hurt myself. One was playing softball, when I reached down to get a ball at the backstop and couldn’t get up. The other was when I went to play with Kocur, who was more than delighted that I brought myself down to her level and then couldn’t get back up. So much more convenient to play with her, right?

Yesterday after the “supply run,” I pretty much loafed around in pain. I’d gotten up early and ran, so I didn’t feel bad about that, but I did eat a Snickers, a small bag of malted milk balls (alas, not Whoppers, but he best I could do) and a Twix-ish cookie, but that was over the course of a long day, not in a sitting.

With a little of the scrounging thing, I also tracked down some chicken that clearly had been in the freezer for longer than my two roommates had been here, so they were fair game. I had baked chicken and rice plus spinach.

And Star Wars. For some reason, two of the channels here are playing Star Wars, like all of the way through. They’re different channels, probably run by the same media conglomerate, but very definitely, Star Wars was on one channel and The Empire Strikes back on another, so go figure. For whatever odd reason, they skipped The Force Awakens (though they did Rogue One) and went directly from Return of the Jedi to The Last Jedi. Han Solo, I guess, isn’t out on TV yet so it wasn’t in the mix. But was nice having the Force with me as I spent the day in pain.

One thing leads to another

I’m finally in the part of my job where I am busy, and I am so thankful about that. I’m going from assignment to assignment, which will lead to my first vacation, which we call R&R.

People live for R&Rs here and, since we basically have to take three three-week ones, plan big trips. I talked to people who returned last week from Italy/Spain and Australia New Zealand.

You ask some about their recent or upcoming R&Rs and their eyes glaze over and their voices fill with wistfulness. People seem to live for them.

Not me, of course. I’m weird. I love it here. Not ready to go on R&R, but I am ready for my next assignment, which is at our consulate in Erbil.

For those who don’t know (and it’s OK; I didn’t, either), Erbil is in northern Iraq, and it’s where a lot (but by no means all) of the Kurds in Iraq live. To the degree that some refer to the area as Kurdistan, a T-shirt I am hoping to acquire in the upcoming weeks.

Staffers speak of Erbil as some kind of la la land. Well, la la land before La La Land became a thing. I tell people I’m headed up there, their eyes mist over as well. “You can go outside, you know.”

I didn’t know, and I’m fearful of believing such Utopian propaganda lest I set my heart on wandering outside of the Hundred Acre Sandbox and into … well, Iraq. Real Iraq. The thought of their being a real world outside our T-walls is downright delightful. I would totally love to wander into some kind of sore and buy some Iraqi delicacy, whether it be tasty, crafty or whatever else might lie in store.

There’s rumor of a mall that has a Carrefour in it. For those who’ve been around for a long time, that’s the Walmarty store from Jakarta. We also had one in Morocco (though not my town) and Istanbul.  I want for nothing but the idea of being able to purchase some little trinket, or maybe those knockoff WintOgreen LifeSavers called Polo is the kind of unexpected Christmas gift I’d welcome.

The bag I’m taking up, though, won’t have room for much. I’m allegedly heading up there for three weeks. It’s for work, so I have to do work clothes, after work clothes and workout clothes. Somehow, I feel like the R&R packing will be less, although I will have to also bring swim stuff since I plan on snorkeling.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the R&R is to Australia? I’m going to piecemeal my way through the country. I did Melbourne to Sydney the first time, Perth the second and now I’m planning Cairns to Sydney although I have one flight in there, from Brisbane to Sydney. I ran out of time. Three weeks doesn’t seem like much when you’re trying to bask on the beach and play in the water.

The No. 1 goal on that is to dive and/or snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, and I’m taking the train from Cairns to Brisbane, with three stops in there. I think it’s three, anyway. I made my last reservation right before I started the last three-week assignment and anything that happened before that is kind of a mushy blur now.

When I get back, I’m headed immediately to another assignment. This is what I signed on this tour, to wander from one department to another. There’s just the one department in Erbil, but there are three or four I could possibly work in this tour. I’ve done two of the three big ones already.

I feel a little like a tumbleweed in this assignment, because I bounce around from one place to another. You finish one and head to another. The good thing about it is that when I fly out of here for R&R, I am between assignments. I don’t come back to an overloaded inbox with projects coming due; it’s a clean slate in a new gig.

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.