Running out of everything

I’m back for another round at the office in Erbil and have been welcomed with open arms, hugs and pleas of “never leave again!” The people here are so nice.

And the weather is much nicer than it was over Christmas. By that I mean warmer, I suppose. The mornings and evenings have been chilly but over the next couple of weeks they’ll warm up, I suppose. But it’s super wet and has been for awhile.

There was to be an outside meeting somewhere an hour or so road trip away the third day I was here. The sun had been out two days at that point and it started out gorgeous, and then all of a sudden these Noah-like floods came. They had to call off the meeting, and then a few hours later it was gorgeous again. And then, again, it was time for the ark.

It’s wetter than it’s been in years, and I didn’t bring a raincoat. I intended to, but I had to do some strategic packing this time around. Last time I was here, my bag was so crammed going back that I decided to upgrade to the big bag.

It’s not just a lot of root beer I need to unload. I’d sent all my dry food from Istanbul to Baghdad, and with our cafeteria offering all the already-cooked food I could possibly want, I haven’t used much of what I have. So I decided to pack up a bunch of it and bring to Erbil.

This meant taping up packages of lentils, pasta and rice, then gathering enough tea, Stevia, Crystal Light and hot chocolate for a month here. Also cooking oil (we’re OK with shipping liquids) and three soft drinks. I hit my weight limit or I would have brought more. I’m still seriously ahead of the game on the A&W. I brought two of those and a Dr Pepper. I can’t remember the last time I had a Dr Pepper.

It probably seems silly to have brought everything, but I hate wasting food and have no idea what I’ll do with what’s left after this tour. I was over the weight limit, though, and had to yank out a few things, like the raincoat.

Going back, who knows? There is a rumor there will be a carpet guy coming and I’m still working on the ACE Hardware mugs.

I should have room, though. On top of all the food, it seemed like every toiletry item I brought was going to run out, so I had to bring replacements. I thought about only taking the full ones but since I go home and basically turn right around and go on a three-week R&R, I figured I should just go ahead and unload.

So now I am settling in again. There’s an off-chance this might not be my last trip here, but I’m playing it like it is. Hoping the Kurdagonia T-shirts are available at some point, looking forward to seeing more carpets and there’s another textile vendor I want to check out if I can.

Not sure if I’ll have the opportunity to go off-campus, but I’m hopeful, not that I need anything. I have my staples and the veggie guy comes here, so there’s nothing I really need.

Now I’ve hit up the book and DVD library and am watching “Heartbreak Ridge,” an older Clint Eastwood one. I’ve got “Breaking Bad” in the queue again but might opt for something new.

I’ll have to check to see if the masseuse will be around this month, but if not, they have amazing massage chairs in the library room. Kind of hoping for a haircut before I head out on R&R.

Speaking of, I got the information on my Peace Corps reunion. We’re renting this place: https://www.vrbo.com/4754456ha. I might not leave.

Dog days in Baghdad

On Saturday, we had a K-9 appreciation day here on the compound. It was so much fun. They had about a dozen dogs out there and oh man, there were so many people who came just to play.

I went dog to dog and got to know all of them. Bud, one whom I’d met the week before, wasn’t there, but there was an aptly named Diva, as well as a Goldie. By the end, I knew all the dogs’ names, but not a one of the handlers’. Poor guys. They’re the invisible beings on the other ends of the leashes. Sometimes they produce treats that you can offer to their better halves, but in general, they are mounds of DNA who wear beige cargo pants with pockets than can hold a rubber ball on a rope. (We do have some dog handlers who are female, but none attended this event.)

Diva was a doll and knew it. My favorite was a humble (and chunky) black Lab named Panda. We’d also met before, and, even though she was on the clock, her DNA-on-the-other-end-of-the-leash let me play with her a bit then, so on Saturday, I was basically I was rolling on the ground with her. She loved it. She’s like 12 times the size of Batgirl, but it was the same theory: Rub my tummy. Scratch my ears. Rub my butt. Throw the ball. I’d toss the rubber-ball-on-a-rope in the air and most of the time she’d catch it, but sometimes she’d miss and ricochet off her nose, then bounce wildly on the pavement, causing her to jerk DNA-on-a-leash’s shoulder as she lunged for the wayward ball. But here DNA, and all the other DNAs, appreciated us. They’re with their pup partners 24/7, so they appreciated getting more people to work with them and wear them out a bit. I’m sure he was kidding, but DNA told me I was welcome to check her out over the weekend to give him a break.

He’d been on the other end of leashes for 16 years, and he rated Panda in his top 5. They can adopt the dogs after the dogs retire, which, for my department, is age 7. I asked DNA about his No. 1 dog and his voice trailed off as he said, “He saved my life.”

One of the DNAs was the first handler of his dog. It might have been Chanteuse. Anyway, he said the first handler is the one who has the first rights to adopt when it’s time to retire them. That seems fair. Another handler – John, who wasn’t on the end of a leash on Saturday, so I got his name – had told me previously that he hadn’t adopted any of his dogs, explaining that he was “attached, but not too attached” to them. By the tone in his voice, it seemed like he tried to keep a slight distance in case something happened to them. He said he’d lost dogs before. I can’t imagine how horrific that would be.

There’s a movie out called “Rex” about a Marine and her bomb dog partner. It’s based on a true story, but who knows what that means, you know? But both Rex and Rex’s DNA-on-a-leash got hit with a bomb, and both lived but sustained injuries and PTSD. The movie is about DNA trying to have Rex ruled adoptable so that she can keep him. That’s what John’s comment made me think about.

Back to Saturday and Panda: They did a demonstration and before it, her DNA-on-a-leach joked that he hoped she didn’t embarrass him. Well, they had 10 boxes set up, and the first DNA ran his dog down the line. When she got to about box No. 6, she stopped so short her hind legs popped up, and then she sat down at the box and refused to budge. She looked at DNA as if to say, “Hey, buddy, I win the game. Give me the treat!” And DNA produced a ball from his cargo pants, as the narrator explained that the dogs are rewarded with toys, not treats.

Goldie then ran the drill, to the same effect, although he’s a bit heavier (not Panda-like) and his hind legs stayed on the ground. Diva then sailed through, and even though DNA tried to coax her away from it, she just sat there like, “Hey, give me some love.” DNA produced the rubber ball and she jumped for joy – right into his arms.

Well, Panda just darted  (such that it was) and acted like a featherbrained ditz, only not so graceful. It wasn’t even obvious she was sniffing the boxes, she was just kind of lumbering excitedly along. She completely overran the guilty box and the audience gasped. She showed no reaction as she blew past it, then past the last four boxes. She then, still lumber-bouncing along, then circled back down the other side past four boxes, reaching No. 6 from the other direction. There, she was so frantic she pawed it, and then looked at DNA and said, OK, I’m done. TOY! Here we thought she’d lost the game, but she’d figured it out right off but made sure there was nothing else nefarious!

DNA-on-the-other-end-of-the-leash told me later that Panda was very methodical and thorough, and that’s why they’d made such good partners.

I miss dogs. We normally can’t play with any we see; they’re usually working, but sometimes I get lucky and get to scratch some ears or a tummy. The guy leading the demonstration said we have mostly Belgium malamutes, Labs and German shepherds, but in the past we’ve had some terriers and other smaller dogs. A Jack Russell probably, but not a Chihuahua. I just can’t imagine Batgirl or Rally earning their keep like that. 

I can’t keep up and you can’t make me care

No real progress on the assignment search. I have a job and that’ll continue; it’s just nailing down the assignment. Again, I have lots of time so I’m not sweating it but it’s just becoming more and more of a time suck.

For various reasons, three of the four from last update are not available, and I’ve mentally nixed the last one but it’s technically still in the running. And, because it’s just that complicated, three more contenders are in the picture.

A: Not a nice place, but the job I’d like at the grade level I’d like. Two years and, time zone-wise, not too far away. Due to hardship and other differentials, it would pay the most, I think, but it would also pretty much require a car.

B: A is at an “at-grade” assignment that goes all over an area for two years, like what I do now but over an entire area. Would necessitate living out of a suitcase for two years.

C: A higher-up position in an office that’s not my favorite but in a really nice location. It’s three years. Would probably also need a car.

A, despite not being the most attractive location, would probably be good for me. The thing is, no one’s contacted me about it yet. The date listed that they need someone is sooner, not later, so that might be it but who knows. I’m not wasting gray matter trying to figure it out. They get in touch with me or they don’t; no skin off my nose.

B is one I’d put in for when this whole crap started but I hadn’t heard so I thought they were ignoring me since I’m not available until so late. I’d banished it from my mind and then all of a sudden I got an email from someone about it. I replied that I was interested so we’ll see where it goes, if at all. Although I don’t like the idea of eating meals out for the next two years, I do like the idea of collecting Marriott points and frequent flyer miles. We’ll see if they want to talk.

Of those three, C is the only one for which I’ve already interviewed, and, being the red-tape inducing employer I have, I’d be expected to interview with two more people before committing, and so would anyone else who applies. I feel like I’d have a good opportunity to get promoted in the next three years if I was in that job. The downside to it is, there aren’t other people in my same position, which makes going on vacation hard. In that job, there has to be someone covering every working day.

Actually, that’s a beauty of B: you can go on vacation between assignments and don’t have to worry about your emails piling up.

I’m very much trying not to think about all this, but it pops up all the time because people ask or I get emails about it. Last week, my career advisor person sent a form letter to people who are yet unassigned to get a move on or be threatened with being assigned to DC. I don’t want that – housing is too expensive and I don’t want NoVa to get its state income tax claws in me – and since I’m not available until late, it’s OK that I’m still looking. I have a couple months before it gets serious.

And there’s plenty to do in the meantime. The weather is fantastic, at least today.  We had some serious could-hardly-walk wind, followed by a massive rainstorm on Thursday. I got home before the sky unleashed, then ran across to the gym to swim. Even though it’s just across the street, I arrived drenched but since I was jumping into a pool anyway it didn’t matter. I could see the lightning and torrential downpours but I was perfectly content to swim laps and work my shoulder.

We also got a first-run movie! Disney has some kind of deal with veterans, and they send a cast member to posts with the movie. The cast member, and I think a State courier, show the movie multiple times in a short time span. They do it as a goodwill thing for the troops, which is cool. We had, I think, six different showing including one outdoors on the side of a building. It seems like a cool gig, at least if you like the movie. Disney did it before with the last Star Wars movie. I think we also had a Mission Impossible one somehow, but I don’t know if that was Disney or another studio.

I’m not really a comic movie buff but it was fun, and I wasn’t doing anything else at 11 a.m. that day. Since I haven’t seen any of the other Marvel things, I was a bit lost when they were anywhere but Earth, but it was a nice way to spend an afternoon.

What’s in Play

Even though I am now leaving Baghdad earlier than planned, I’m not leaving anytime soon. As I understand it, I can leave between Sept. 21-30. By all but historical and Biblical accounts, that’s pretty much a long way off. There is no rush for me to find my next assignment.

And that is one of the silly things (I was going to say “the silly thing” but reconsidered) about my job. Every few years, I have to apply to another job, except it’s not a job, it’s an assignment. No matter what happens (God bless tenure), I have a paycheck, even if no one wants me. The saying goes something like, “You have a job; you have to find an assignment.”

Finding an assignment is basically finding a job. There are lists of assignments that are due to come out, list of ones that are open now and then there’s word of mouth about assignments that might be coming out. There also seem to be some one-off heads-ups about others; I’m not sure if those wind up on some official list later or not.

My position, basically the bottom on the totem pole, has a bunch of openings. Unfortunately, the way it shakes down is that the ones that are at my paygrade are mostly in DC. Well, being on the bottom of the totem pole, even if it’s the higher portion of that bottom level, doesn’t afford me the ability to both live and eat in DC. I like visiting DC, particular when I am getting per diem, but those jobs don’t allow for that and I’d prefer not to. Plus, seeing as how I’d either have to live in Virginia or Maryland and thus give up my Florida residency, I just don’t want to go there. Literally.

Most of the jobs at my level are in DC. The few that aren’t require a language that I don’t have. In many cases, jobs have time to learn the language built in, but these particular ones don’t What’s happened is that all those jobs have been spoken for; the main list I’m looking at came out in September and what’s left is what doesn’t appeal to most people and what has had people sign up but bail out.

I really don’t want another job not at my level. The base pay is the same and the “differentials” vary according to site, not position, so in some cases, the lower-graded jobs wind up taking home more, but it’s a lot harder to look ready for the next-higher level when you’re not even working at your current level. And since I got promoted my first year in Istanbul and this job is also a “downstretch,” technically by the time I leave here I’ll have already been at a lower level for three years.

I realize it makes no sense to normal people, but those who work for my employer understand it, but it boils down to there are not a lot of jobs out there at the moment for my pay grade. There are jobs popping up all the time and I’m content to wait, but I’m being pressured to lock something in.

Since I’m not hot for DC, I found four alternatives and, geeklily enough, hammered out the facts. For me, the job is more important that the location, so I left those out:

Posts currently available

A

·         05 DCM OMS position

·         Winter –TED December

·         Zero differential

·         No language time built in, but FAST language course available 11/4-12/20

·         Three years

·         OK’d cruise

·         Post gets rave reviews

B

·         06 POL position

·         Summer – September 2019 TED

·         15 percent differential

·         Language-designated 2/2 Spanish

·         Area of the world I haven’t visited

·         Three years

·         Interviewing tonight

C

·         06 P/E position

·         Summer – August, but is vacant now due to coverage switch

·         25 percent differential

·         No language

·         Not a position I’d look at otherwise; incumbent said it’s 80 percent travel arranging

·         Three years

·         I know hiring person and will interview tomorrow.

·         Same bureau as a previous tour

·         Post gets rave reviews

D

·         04 HRO position

·         Summer – August/Sept 2019

·         Has been officially ceded to EL but is still showing on NOW list. (

·         Would require curtailing for 7/8 HRO course

·         30 percent differential

·         No language

·         Desired skill; would provide training

·         Two years

Of course, as soon as the figurative ink dried (does anyone use ink anymore?), option D got yanked. (The “ceded” part; apparently there are no takebacks.) And option A, the only one at my grade, was also ruled out of play.

So that leaves B and C. Quite honestly, if I had seen the full list at the beginning, not just the leftovers, I wouldn’t have looked at either. It’s not the cities themselves, it’s that B requires language and C just doesn’t scream my name, plus I’ve lived and traveled that part of the world heavily. But C pays the most because of the differential.

Since I spelled out the options there, I’ve had both interviews and both are heavily recruiting me. For B, Spanish is the stumbling block; it’s not just one of those things that’s nice to have when you take taxis or grocery-shop; the person in the position right now used language, especially written, in her work on a daily basis. And I don’t have it. I could start tomorrow and work at it, but if Peace Corps taught me nothing about myself, it’s that I am not a good language learner. It scares me.

The other job doesn’t sound interesting, but I know the people there and they like me and were trying to come up with a different position. Both those jobs are open because the person penciled in have lined up a different job in Foreign Service. The B one is trying to find someone who speaks Spanish. If they can’t, there’s paperwork they can go through to try to exempt the recruit to get in with out it, but it’s not a slam-dunk.

What happened for the C one is that of the two admin positions, the big-league person changed sports altogether, C simply called up the next person down to fill the spot. The position that’s open is, in a way, the AAA spot. Since they found out I’m available, they’ve offered to ask the call-up if she’d prefer to stick to her original minor-league team, so to speak, or stay in the majors. Since the paperwork has already been done, it’s her call, not the coach’s, although the league gets a say. I’ve said if that big-league jobs comes open I’d take it, but right now I don’t know if it is.

If it is, it’s an easy decision because the job is “at-grade,” plus it’s in the 25 percent differential city and they’ve OK’d me to basically take off January to take my cruise. But, like option D, it might be too little, too late.

Going to be drinking a lot of root beer in the coming months

The cafeteria in my Hundred-Acre Sandbox has a phenomenal amount of options. With some restrictions, it’s all-you-can-eat-and-take, and wise advice given to me early on was to never leave without something. As safe as it feels here, it’s possible something hits the fan and we wind up hunkered down for a bit, so it’s a good idea to pack out a couple of Magnum bars here and there, right?

Most times I leave, I slip a thing of yogurt, a pack of those Crystal Light water enhancers, chocolate chip cookies, stevia packets or soft drinks into my pockets or bag. When I return to America, y’all might want to remind me that this would not be a welcome behavior in convenience stores.

Occasionally, the supply, wherever that comes from, runs short. People hoard things that are coveted, like soda water. (Yeech!) When I arrived, there was a selection of soft drinks, but they didn’t have root beer. Suddenly, root beer appeared and I started doing the five-finger thing two cans at a time (we do have a drinks-from-the-cooler limit, and I abide by it) at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Getting root beer before it ran out became an obsession, but all of a sudden, I realized that I had an entire shelf of A&W root beer. This is not in itself a bad thing, of course, but the thing that didn’t happen was running out of root beer. Apparently the maybe six weeks I was here with no root beer was unusual, not the presence of it.

It wasn’t until I had an entire shelf full of root beer that I realized that I was pretty much set, even if the root beer disappeared as quickly as it appeared. I drink one a week – it’s my reward on the weekend – and essentially, there’s a tour’s worth of it there. I’ve told people that if everything really does hit the fan, come to my place with vanilla ice cream.

   

With all the root beer I need to last through my May 2020 tour, I thought I was set. Well, yesterday I got a call that’s forcing me to start drinking root beer.

The DC office called and, due to shifting priorities of the administration, my job’s being eliminated. Yes, it’s not just journalism! As of this summer, my position and two similar ones are among a bunch more being eliminated. Normally, the tours are 12 months but I’d extended to 19, so basically what’s happened is the extension is being taken away.

People seem to think I should be up on a rooftop somewhere, but this is what happens in this job so I’m rolling with it. Since normally we know our new posts about a year out, I’m a behind the curve but there’s nothing I can do about it so there’s no point in worrying about it.

No matter what happens, I have a job; it’s an assignment I need to find. Right now, the pickins are really, really slim, but something will come up. I’m going to try to not think about it for a couple weeks anyway. There are some other work deadlines I should focus on because they come due earlier anyway.

Besides that, I have some root beer I need to get working on.

On the Far Side of the world

Still getting back into the rhythm after a long stretch away over here. For some reason this week in particular has knocked me. I’m exhausted.

As a morning person (don’t hate me), I usually get up at 6:10, go to breakfast, go back to apartment and hang out until 7:45, at which time my phone sounds this “get your motor running”-type alarm that jolts me into brushing my teeth, filling my Nalgene with tea, grabbing my latchkey lanyard and running out the door.

For whatever reason, I’ve had a hard, hard time getting up. I’m not one to hit the snooze button, but I’ve basically gotten out of bed at 6:30 daily. I really don’t know what’s up, although I’m taking a typhoid vaccine over seven days and wondered if that might be it. Fatigue isn’t listed as one of the effects, but who knows.

Friday’s my Saturday, and usually over weekends I still wake up at the same time, run for an hour and then go back to bed. In the evening, I do tae kwon do, albeit badly. This morning, I could only bring myself to do half an hour running. I just couldn’t. Tonight, I’ll go in early and do the other half, but today, it wasn’t happening.

Good job!

Maybe it’s because I redid my fitness routine post R&R and now instead of step class three times a week, I’ve cut that to two and added boxing. I also am trying to opt for the pool more and did that last night before boxing.

Today I can barely lift my arms. I try to do a lot of the shoulder rehab in the pool and it hurt even before boxing, where I totally did the punching thing. That might be tied to the fatigue more so than the typhoid, I suppose.

I’m also on a new assignment and even though it’s not physically exerting, I work a little late every night, which puts everything after leaving on an accelerated schedule. I’m getting into a routine at lunch a couple days a week where I take home an extra cup of soup and a piece of cornbread for dinner rather than going to the cafeteria in the evenings because there’s little time.

This place really really is like a cruise ship. There’s so much stuff to do that work gets in the way!

Last Sunday, our community rah-rah person (there’s a title, but it means nothing to people outside the job) put together a “Kindness Rocks” event, where we painted cheery rocks, thus channeling Leila and Riley. This was extremely hard to squeeze into my social calendar since Sunday is a work day and I’m super busy, but I cut half of salsa class to paint some.

The rock-painting event was several hours and people cranked out some really pretty ones, but mine were not among those. It was kind of amusing because Rah-Rah, who’s extremely sweet, would come along and talk about other people’s in detail, like, “Oh, this looks just like the Pinterest one you copied!” and her encouragement to me was more like, “Good job!”

I’m no artist. It was fun, but I did learn that rushing through rock painting doesn’t work well, especially when you need layers of paint. There just wasn’t time to dry. And painting little designs, or words, on small rocks is ridiculously hard. I made a cute little boat (if I do say so myself) but when I tried to write “Life is a Beach” on the back, it didn’t turn out so well. And, when I thought about the sentiment later, it didn’t make a lot of sense. If you’re on the boat, you’re probably not on the beach.  And I tried to paint a little eyeball followed by “Rock” but it when it was done – and I was out of time – it wound up looking like an “O.”

Merry Christmas to me

The next arty day will be making little hearts for Valentine’s Day. I think I will skip that because I really needed the salsa refresher. At Latin night, which was pretty dead, I drug some guy out to dance and promptly stepped on his feet. It was still fun.

But as busy as I am on weekdays, I pretty much chill out of weekends. Yes, I get up and work out for an hour, but really, after that, there’s no much. This morning I was so tired I came back from that half hour and put in a load of laundry. I set the timer to remind me it’s in there – the laundry room is down two hallways – and promptly fell back asleep. That rarely happens; sometimes I manage to sleep for 20 minutes, but I was gone the whole hour. The alarm woke me up from some weird dream. Then I stuck the stuff in the driver, set the timer for 45 minutes and same thing.

I’ve no idea what’s going on but decided to do little else this weekend but tackle my Christmas present to myself, The Far Side collection. Way back when, I had all the books but sold them after Peace Corps when I needed money. Now, they’re in a three-volume collection with lots of commentary from Gary Larson. It’s been so much fun to re-read these, although somehow I’m not getting ones that I thought I got before. Others I’m seeing things that I’m pretty sure I never noticed before and am cracking up. Man, they’re funny. Sure, sick and twisted, too, but what worthwhile isn’t?

The difference between Texas and Scotland, so to speak

Just back from my first long vacation and I’m trying to get re-acclimated to work life. With the shutdown, I think everyone’s adjusting. Though mine has been so much better than many other federal employees. My particular office is as unaffected as a federal office can be. There have been some adjustments buy by and large everyone is working and most of us are getting paid. I thought everyone was because I’ve been getting a paycheck but today, sitting around the knitting/cigar circle, I found out not everyone has been.

Anyway, I got back on Thursday, which is our Friday, so I’ve had my weekend to get back into the swing of it and over jet lag. Not much success in some of those areas, but I’m trying. Today I’ve done very little. I woke up and ran at 6, then did laundry and tried to stream a movie before church at 10, but it’s now 6 p.m. and my $45-a-month internet, the slow one, is still only halfway through the movie. In between, I ate a fabulous brunch in the cafeteria (oh, how I missed spinach omelets!)  and did the knitting/cigar circle thing. The weather outside has been gorgeous these two days I’ve been back.

 

The weather in Australia was gorgeous, too. I spent a little over two lovely weeks playing from Cairns down to Sydney. Cairns had the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest, then I took the train to Airlie Beach and spent four or five days sailing to the Whitsundays and flying over the GB Reef. We did a float plane and landed about 100 kilometers out, seeing the cute heart-shaped reef before snorkeling the reef there – what an amazing view. There is so much life under the sea, even if people freak out about the reef bleaching.

One of the little islands – nothing but a sandbar, really – was a total bird and turtle sanctuary. We could only walk on a little part of the beach there to pull on our fins, and the noise from the birds was incredible. It wasn’t turtle-hatching season so we saw none of that but there were three on that particular snorkel.

The next two nights I had a little midway stop in Rockhampton, or maybe it was Rockhaven. Rocky, the locals called it. I’d bought a rail pass and decided to break up the trip and just picked that one at random. I got in at midnight, and my AirBnB host picked me up at the train station, which was really nice. I didn’t do much the next day except walk all day, go to a movie and get a haircut. That probably sounds boring, but I can’t do any of that at home, so it was a lovely way to spend a day. Oh, I also ate at Nando’s, which was a treat.

For the first three stops, I had AirBnBs reserved and did pretty good. I walked everywhere, averaging probably five miles a day. I enjoyed eating in the AirBnBs for the most part; I miss cooking. When I went out, I mostly ate fish and chips because … why not? I love them, and I was on the beach.

I had a lot of trouble pronouncing things the Australian way. Too many times, I garnered scorning stares when I said “Cahns” for Cairns. Apparently it’s “Caans.” Airlie Beach was another touch one. And don’t say “Rockhampton” (or maybe “Rockhaven”) because you will really be distained. It’s “Rocky.” Period.

But for all the guff I took for my Ozzie attempts, I could have given it right back for some stuff that came at me. In Rock, as I was buying a little something for Riley, the clerk asked me if I was from Texas. I sounded JUST LIKE a friend of hers from there, she said. I had to giggle. No one from the Lone Star State would never mistake me for a Texan.

In Brisbane, though, I really did a double take. Someone asked me if I was Scottish. It wasn’t a joke, either, and the person was a native English speaker. HOW can someone possibly mistake anything for a Scottish accent? To me, that’s about the most prominent (not to mention sexiest) accent there is. I can’t even imitate it. I guess all non-Australian accented people sound the same to people who have Australian accents. I mean, there is a world of difference – no, makes that WORLDS of differences – between Texas and Scotland and me. I’m mean, I’m flattered and amused, but let’s get real. I in no way sound neither Texan nor Scottish. But thanks for trying.

My trip was great; we’ll see what the financial damage comes to later. Something came over me and I bought a really cool ground opal ring. I think that’s what it’s called. It’s dark brown with flecks of green. I also bought a hat, which I will probably never wear but it was my third trip to Australia and I looked at them each time and finally caved. The hat was really hard to get back without squashing it.

Movies were on my agenda, and I saw three in addition to the flights. “Holmes and Watson” kind of meh. Part of it was I was totally jet lagged and I fell asleep twice. I might have missed some parts.

In Rocky, both “Instant Family” and “Ralph Breaks the Internet” were showing and I asked the sales person for advice. She said she’d heard “Instant Family” was good, but “Ralph is Ralph.” And that was good enough for me. I love John C. Reilly and the visuals were fantastic. Later, in Sydney, I saw “Mary Poppins” and it was very much worthy. (So tempted to say ”supercalafragilisticexpialidocius.”) There were no catch songs this time around and I saw each plot twist coming down the pike, but that wasn’t bad in this case. And even though the particular song wasn’t in there, I’ve still had “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” going through my head ever since.

My friend Linda, whom I stayed with in Sydney, treated me to an amazing show at the Sydney Opera House. We went to see “The Heights,” which was playing for only a week or so. Holy cow, it was outstanding. I’m not even sure I could pick the best actor; they were all spectacular. I didn’t see the orchestra at first and later realized they were behind the stage. I’ve no idea how they did it, really. The entire performance was incredible, even if I did see those plot twists coming, too.

Other Sydney highlights included a walk around Bondi Beach, Cockatoo Island (site of old prison and ship-building factory) and the Blue Mountains.

On the way back home, I stopped in Amman for two days. One was dedicated to doctor visits, which was pretty successful. I didn’t know I had to pay cash so I kept running to ATMs, but the whole thing was a bargain. The dental visit included X-rays and a massive overhaul of my bite guard, and then I saw the specialists on my foot and shoulder. He ordered an MRI and get this – I made an appointment at 4 p.m. for it, but when I realized I had to pay cash, I walked over there to ask how much it would be so I could get the cash out. I said I was coming at 4 p.m. but, if they could do it so I could be done by my 2:45 dentist appointment, I could do it then. This was around 1 p.m., and to my utter shock, they said sure. So I ran and got the cash, which was harder than it should have been because the bank upstairs from the MRI place didn’t take my cards, and the next bank two blocks away didn’t have an ATM (something I did not think possible) and I had to go two more blocks downhill to find one, meaning I had to run back uphill four blocks to get back to the place!

At 4 p.m., I finished with the dentist and went back to the doctor’s office (five blocks downhill) to see if I could make a follow-up appointment for the next day to get my MRI results. I realized going there that I hadn’t asked the MRI people when the results would be done, although they did tell me they would get them to the doctor. When I went into the doctor’s, related that and the lady said, “Oh, they already brought them by. If you want to just wait you can see the doctor in a minute.” That would never, ever happen in the U.S. And for all that – the dentist and fixins, what amounted to two appointments with the orthopedic surgeon and an MRI, I paid less than $500 AND got the results right away. Why our health care is so bad I just do not understand.

The result of the MRI is the surgery was fine except he did not repair my bicep, which is still torn. The new guy said he would have fixed it but recommended right now an anti-inflammatory and more range-of-movement exercises. That’s fine with me; I mostly just wanted to know I hadn’t re-screwed it up again.

I was supposed to go to a physio the next day but figured I already know the exercises so I talked to the concierge at the hotel and hired a driver to take me to the site of Jesus’ baptism. That was really cool. The Jordan River has shifted through the years due to dams being built, so the actual site is a dry spot off the river now. It completed my trifecta of the sites of Jesus’ birth, baptism and crucifixion.

And now I’m back. Really no idea what’s going on at work. Since I was in Erbil before, it’s been six weeks since I’ve been here. I’ve pretty much stayed on top of emails but haven’t really done a deep dive into anything. I learned I am supposed to be “bidding” on my next assignment but I should get that fixed quickly. People are coming back from the shutdown now, though, and it’s (rightfully) a low priority. There are people with way bigger issues than me.