Kicked off the island

Once again, I’ve been “evacuated” from the 100-Acre Sandbox. It’s been unreal, but not at all unsafe. Even though the Middle East situation is volatile, at no point has anything been aimed at diplomats in the sandbox, so this evacuation/drawdown/whatever feels a little extreme.

The whole thing is unsettling, though. I had been preparing to leave a whopping six days later anyway, and being told one day that you’re leaving the day after instead of in a week (on a nonstop flight, no less) is jolting. I’d been trying to prepare anyway for a gap (my successor doesn’t have a visa yet) and kept getting pulled to other things, so there’s no real SOP on my job. I can work remotely, but as I’ve discovered, the two things I really need access to are inaccessible.

The travel to D.C. – where I was to be on Tuesday, 10/31 anyway – was miserable. It’s possibly the worst travel day I’ve ever experienced.

We checked out at 9 a.m., each with a 50-pound bag, a 20-pound carry-on and wearing or carrying out PPE, which is heavy as all get-out. After weighing the bags four times in five minutes on different scales (??), we were brought in groups to the place where we catch the helicopter to our Sister Sandbox at the airport. There, we waited for a flight to Amman. We have a little plane and they kept going back and forth with groups. I know a lot of people at the SS, so I chatted with them and had lunch in the cafeteria. Whitefish and spinach, not a bad way to end. (I’d had a burger, fries, carrots and ice cream for my last meal at the main Sandbox.)

My flight got to Amman at 6:30, and boarding for my onward (my routing was Doha – D.C.) was to be in an hour, so that wasn’t bad. I ran up to the lounge, grabbed some chicken and rice and went to the gate, where I met up with some other refugees.

By 7:27, there were still no gate agents around. Eventually, someone came but no one ever made any announcements. They never put any information up on the sign, but we pieced together (which is hard since any information was given in Arabic) that nothing was going to happen any time soon. At some point, I got a text from the airline – the only one in the group of 6-8 of us who did – that said there was “mechanical trouble” and we would receive an update by 10 p.m.

We never did, but by that time we’d figured out that the flight wouldn’t go and somehow we had to get our bags back ourselves. The whole planeload of people had to. We saw people leaving in large groups and followed them, grabbing an airline person and basically forcing him to speak to us in English about what was going on. He explained (or tried to) that we had to get our exit visas canceled and get our bags. Telling him we didn’t have exit visas didn’t seem to register to him.

Meanwhile, one in our group was contacting the travel agency and trying to get us re-routed, and, as we followed the group outside of security – meaning we’d have to go back through again – we found a gaggle of people clamoring for … we weren’t sure. There was no information desk, no nothing. In asking for information, we got a QR code “chat.” I tried it and never got a response.

In the throng of hysterical people, a customs (or something) agent grabbed my passport as I was trying to explain that I had no exit visa to cancel. He grabbed it, and many other people’s, and went into a room.

Picture a hunch of hungry refugees at a door where people occasionally surfaced to hand out bags of food to specific people. That’s what happened – some immigration people (I guess) were copying a couple hundred people’s passports and handing them back out, calling names 2-5 at a time. It was a nightmare.

By this time, my group had been confirmed on a different airline scheduled for 3:25, and at this point it was maybe 10 p.m. Someone told me to make a scene and demand mine, so I tried to, politely, pull the diplomat card. I told one guy I didn’t need an exit stamp, so grab my passport, it was the black one. (Another guy in our group had his taken at the same time I did and he got his back almost immediately.) Well, it didn’t work. I think he moved me back in the line.

Finally, the airline guy we grabbed helped prompt, probably using his penis. Since I don’t have one, apparently my voice doesn’t work either.

Anyway, we then had to exit through customs, getting stamped out, and claim our bags. For the diplomats in the group, this wasn’t a big deal since we have a short line and free visas. But the poor contractors on the flight had to cough up $60 for a visa, only to grab their bags and then go check in again.

Since our rebooked flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 3:25 a.m., we couldn’t check in until 12:25, which meant we had to hang out in the crappy ticket area for about two hours. Finally, we got checked in and went through immigration/security for the second time and then headed up to the lounge for 2-3 hours – the flight was delayed until 4:20 a.m.

The lounge was nice and the whole thing was just so absurd. I went through the line to get food and I remember thinking, “Wow, this is exactly the same menu they had last time I was here.” And I realized “the last time I was here” had been 5-6 hours earlier. But we all got a table, got to know each other and talked, while some of us grabbed catnaps.

Finally, we went to the gate area, where we met up with a lot more refugees who had originally been scheduled for that flight. They looked fresh as daisies because upon arrival at 5-6 p.m., they took cabs into the city and checked into lovely hotels for a couple hours, showered, had decent meals and then set back out. We looked bedraggled and exhausted, but we all got on the flight to Frankfurt. I even got lucky and had an empty seat next to me.

Although that flight had some rough turbulence and we landed an hour late, we made it fine to the final flight. It was perfect. Although I cannot sleep on planes, I caught up on movies, watching the last Indiana Jones one (it tried too much), “No Hard Feelings,” “Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret” and “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.”

We landed and everyone dispersed, although we do have a WhatsApp group so, once we catch up on sleep, can get together and discuss the whole situation. It’s not something that people who haven’t been through it can relate to.

This morning, I woke up at 7 a.m. with a terrible migraine and I took a walk. I’m in Ballston and starting 10/31 I was going to be here anyway, so I got a hotel near where I will be then, since that other one wasn’t available today. I walked there this morning to figure out where it was and as I was nearing it, someone walked out who I thought looked familiar. I, not really loudly, called her name, assuming if it wasn’t hear she’d keep walking. But it was her! She’d been booted off the island a week before, in the first group and had landed there.

We took a long walk to Trader Joe’s and Target and just talked about the process. It’s just been unreal, especially since, so far, nothing that really screams “these people are unsafe, get them out of here.” We’re planning on dinner tonight and church tomorrow morning – there is one nearby.

Meanwhile, migraine gone, I came back to the hotel, took a long nap and woke up to the second quarter of FSU. I’m hoping to put this all behind me but it’ll take awhile. I’m still exhausted and the emotions are running.

But FSU is winning, so that is something.

Countdown is on

Well, it looks like I’m down to under 60 days in The 100-Acre Sandbox. Due to a personnel change, there’s going to be a gap when I leave and, since I could stay another month with only a marginal impact on my between-tour plans, I made the offer to remain here just a few more weeks but it didn’t work out.

Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about that, although I tell myself I’m ambivalent. The truth is, there will be a lot of guilt involved because it will be a problem that I could have helped solve but it’s not my decision to allow me to do it. As a result, whatever I convey to my eventual replacement will be a game of telephone: I’ll leave instruction and teach as best I can someone who has absolutely no idea what my department is about, and that person will then have to convey it to someone else. It’s really not setting them up for success, which makes me sad. I worked really hard here but by the time the next person arrives it will be in tatters.

But this means I should return to Uh-mer-‘ka around the end of October, although I won’t head home for a couple months. A lucky stroke scheduling lets me leave on a direct flight to DC for training – no stopping in Amman for 14 hours and being crammed on a Royal Air Jordanian flight filled with families loaded to the hilt with luggage to Chicago or JFK and then Charlotte and Miami before getting home. Just straight from the Sandbox to our nation’s capital. The classes I need to take just happen to be offered the next week, so I get to break up almost a year of training with a couple months off – getting to spend the worst winter months in Florida and not DC.

But before I peace out of here, I’ve got another pickleball tournament to plan. We’re going pink for breast cancer awareness. In the weeks leading up to it, the big boss requested a pickleball clinic. Somehow this also fell to me, even though I’m not exactly a superstar. This past week has been a lot of pickleball. We – one other guy and I – decided to, instead of holding a big formal clinic, have one of the four courts available for lessons on the regular pickleball times. So three times this past week I’ve done “clinics,” although, to be honest, that’s basically what happens every Monday, Tuesday and Friday anyway. There are always new people and it’s usually me who gives pointers. In about 50 minutes, they’re better than me.

Although it’s noticeably cooler than when I left for Iceland, it’s still in the triple digits. Essentially, it’s gone from being 117 to 107, and there’s little shade on our pickleball courts. It’s quite toasty. Today, not a clinic day, I and the other guy decided to just got out and play, so it was two of us for 45 minutes and then another person heard the POP POP and came out for another half hour, then, as I was trying to leave, someone else came by and we played one game of four before I finally bailed. I sweat buckets and had to shower before church!

Looking at the sports and social calendar, I have spin class, pickleball and water aerobics plus two or three 5k run/walks before I leave. This will give me at least three more T-shirts from Sandbox events, and I have decided to make a quilt (meaning pay someone to make me a quilt) from all my event T-shirts. This morning, as I was cooling off between my post-pickleball shower and church, I hacked apart a total of nine T-shirts I had set to take back for a quilt. I have plenty more– I think I counted 12, and I am pretty sure I brought some home already – but figured why not lighten my load? This also means I’m committing to the quilt.

Now I am trying to buckle down and get everything done in this under-60-day period. My R&Rs are over and the next thing to look forward to is a really crappy flight, but at least it’s a nonstop really crappy flight. 

I will miss R&Rs from here. The normal time we take is something like a solid three weeks off, and that is not my usual travel method. It’s nice to be forced to do so. This last one was centered around Iceland and that was wonderful, but since my flight stopped in Vienna, I took a couple days there and went to Bratislava, then spent one day in Vienna before returning. Unfortunately for the Vienna part, I had a nasty cold by that time, but I took a walk and found a cool amusement park and took a bunch of pictures. Enjoy.  

If there’s a long hallway, I’m at the end of it

Greetings from Iceland, which is a bit cooler than The Sandbox, for sure! However, panicking led to overpacking for my eight-day tour around the island. I brought my Minsk overpants for a “glacier hike” that was maybe five minutes and my heavy parka, which has served for excellent filler space in the giant roller bag that  I loaded up. No real regrets on the latter, though, because I couldn’t fit everything in the carry-on anyway and would have still had to take the larger bag.

The “hike” was a bit of a letdown; he only other glacier hikes I’ve done, I’ve gone in from the top and been left by a helicopter. This one was from the bottom, and the longest part of the hike was the trek from the bus to the bottom of the glacier. We then walked by a well-beaten trail of glacier, but the kind of glacier that’s completely brown and looks like cold dirt rather than snow that’s buried in dirt. When we got to the white part – or at least the part with way more snow than dirt – we were only there maybe 5-10 minutes and never took any trails or anything before doubling back. I wasn’t disappointed, per say, but others in my tour group were. Today I discovered the tour company refunded us $30 for the hike, which was nice of them.

Overall, the tour was excellent, but I knew going in it was a “highlight hitter” tour and wouldn’t be anything in-depth. Every place we stopped, I could have spent six hours just getting lost. The landscape is so harsh, different and beautiful that I wanted to just hike and wander. There are lush fields and acres upon acres of barren wasteland that run into each other. At one point, we looked like we were on the surface of Mars and five minutes later saw sheep grazing on green grass.

The lava fields were beautiful to me, all covered in moss with tiny flowers. So were the craters of the volcanos. At one point, we drove through the crater of an extinct volcano and found gorgeous lakes. Oh, and waterfalls – they are everywhere, and each one is just phenomenal. I could watch a waterfall all day.

But if you ask me the name of any particular one I saw, I have not a clue. Icelandic is a tough language to grasp and most of the names are extremely long. My takeaways were that “Vik” is the shortest city name in Iceland and “—foss” means waterfall. So it might have been Snellenfoss or something similar, mostly with letters that do not appear in English.

The black sand beaches were fantastic. One had black powdery sand and another had sand plus “diamonds” – huge chunks of glacier ice that pooled in a lake that, from the air, looked like ice cube soup. (I saw drone footage.) Occasionally, a chunk would calve off and float to the Atlantic, where it would then get washed up on the shore, getting beaten regularly by waves in the most mesmerizing fashion.

The fire and ice contrast is stark. I’ve seen glaciers and I’ve seen steam spewing out of the earth, along with boiling hot water and liquid clay. It’s pretty powerful.

So far, the vacation’s been quite nice, but this leg of it is almost over. Tonight I head out to my next destination. Since the flight I had to take coming here stopped in Vienna, I figured I’d stop there on the way back, too. Honestly, as enjoyable as Iceland has been, being in a different lodging every night has gotten old and I am ready to park it at an AirBnB for a couple consecutive days and do laundry.

Somehow on the tour I got a private room. I signed up to share, so this was a pleasant surprise. There was another single woman on the tour – half my age – but I guess she must have paid double occupancy, because I did not.

The rooms have definitely varied, but there’s been one consistent for me. If there’s a long hallway, my room is the furthest one down it. Oh man, it puts the “lug” in luggage – to be that far and still have to trek down one last road before pulling in for the evening.

Losing track of time

My time in The 100-Acre Sandbox is winding down, not that I’m able to keep track of it.

There’s a new set of bosses in, which means longer days initially, but it doesn’t feel like they’re long. Recently, I was in the hallway, headed to the bathroom and ran into someone locking up. I said something like, “Wow, you’re leaving early,” and she pointed out that it was almost 6:30 p.m.! I had thought it was around 4 p.m.

The weather rarely changes; it goes from hot to hotter. It was 120 yesterday, which is not unusual. Fortunately, it’s not unusual. Everywhere else is having the same kind of weather but it is unusual. But yeah, three-digit dry heat with not a cloud in the sky. Our shade is from buildings and you can see people walk in the shadows of the building to make the two-block trek to the cafeteria.

Currently, I am on my last R&R and when I return I should only have about two months remaining in my tour. It seems surreal based on my last trek to The Sandbox, when I’d signed up for two years and my position was eliminated after one and then due to external issues had to leave after 11 months. It honestly never occurred to me that this tour would last two full years, but I’m on track to do so.

The R&R, though – very welcome. Not timed well because my new No. 1 arrived the day after I left, but I had little choice. For whatever reason, my visa expired on August 10. I got a new one, but I had to leave before August 10. I’m currently in Iceland and honestly cannot tell you my itinerary. Once I decided on Iceland, I went to Tour Radar and stuck in approximate dates and times and just picked a tour. They all sounded wonderful and there have been no disappointments.

The landscape of this country – my No. 90 – changes constantly. After getting out at a tundra formed by large volcanic rocks and viewing a powerful waterfall a 10-minute walk into what we theorized looked like the surface of the moon, we drove five more minutes and were in the middle of a lush countryside. I blinked and missed the transition. Last night, we stayed at a place that looked and felt like the ranch I worked at in Colorado. Mountains on both sides, a river running through it (no Adian Quinn, Henry Elliott or Brad Pitt), sheep, horses and – a 3-kilometer walk away – an Indiana Jones-like bridge with a little cage that you cranked across with a winch.

That was just one photo op for our group, which is about 15 people. We have a Spanish couple who lives in England; a niece (around my age) and her aunt from Oregon and California; a Chinese woman and her Iranian-born husband, who have been married over 30 years and have lived in Sydney that long; a gay male Mexican couple who retired extremely young somehow; New York transplants who live in Miami and brought along their 20-year-old nephew, who is studying to be a marine ship captain; a retired gay male couple from California who are still jetlagged because their flight was so late they had to catch up with the tour; a 25-year-old Chinese girl from the same province Guangzhou is in; and me. We have a WhatsApp group and are sharing photos.

Beyond lots of waterfalls and changing landscapes, other highlights so far include geysers, gurgling clay spewing from the ground, seeing the tectonic plates where North America and Europe meet, hot springs (plus a couple dips into the freezing cold water next the hot pool), a glacier hike, the pulley bridge and ice on beaches with black sand. It’s really been phenomenal so far, and we still have whale watching and ponies to go.

The hotels have been a nice surprise, but not because I was expecting anything much in hotels. I had signed up to share a room and somehow both I and the girl from China have gotten our own rooms; I had figured they’d put us together.

After this tour, I have a couple more days in Iceland and then head to Vienna/Bratislava. My flight came through there so I went ahead and gave myself a four-day layover..

Ask and receive; believe and it will be yours (again)

Here’s documented evidence that no prayer is too small. It’s also circumstantial evidence that God has a sense of humor, but we pretty much confirmed that with so many funny-looking people walking around.

While in Key West, I decided to buy something chicken. This is, of course, because there are feral chickens everywhere. They’re ubiquitous to KW and, even for sober people like me, it never gets old seeing them strutting around.

Last year, I bought a Mile Marker Zero magnet with a chicken, so I had a little something but, when I popped into a Life is Good store and found the perfect pair of socks, I plunked down however much they wanted and walked out. I’ve started buying a lot of fun socks lately – they pack easier than rugs, I’ve discovered – and these were black/gray, so they’d match my wardrobe. They have a chicken wearing sunglasses; he’s in a crosswalk and the words “Don’t Ask” are emblazoned across the top. They’re perfect.

They sat in my drawer for a couple weeks before I finally wore them, and I showed them off for a couple days before deeming them ready for the laundry. My weekends are busy, so most of the time I dump the laundry on the bed early and sort it later; I do it on Saturday mornings – our Sunday – and that’s the day I pick up the church guests in the morning.

Point being that I didn’t go through it quickly, and that morning, I also had a command performance breakfast meeting, so it took awhile for me to get back to it. But before I did, I remember loaning a swimsuit to a visiting colleague in the hopes she’d join me for water aerobics on Saturday night. We’d both had to attend the breakfast thing, lucky us. (I did take home a lot of bacon. So much better than the regular cafeteria!)

When I got around to folding, I couldn’t find one of the socks. Anywhere. We have a communal laundry room and I made the walk down there, figuring whoever used the dryer next would have left it out; most people are pretty good that way.  No dice. I looked under, beside and behind both the washer and the dryer. I even checked the lint-catching thingie, although I knew that was impossible.

At that point, I was convinced, even though I really hadn’t had that much laundry, that I’d accidentally thrown it in with the rest of the socks, the underwear or something else. I went through everything, including the sheets, even though I hadn’t washed them.

All the time, I didn’t panic. It was annoying that of all the socks I own, one of the brand-new (and really cute) pair had gone missing. But I knew it had to be somewhere because it couldn’t have just disappeared. We have some new people on our floor, but I couldn’t imagine anyone finding and throwing away anything, let alone the cutest sock from all Key West.

I put a note on the dryer I’d used: “Did you find a sock with a chicken on this dryer? Don’t ask.” I figured whoever had found it just hadn’t folded up his/her laundry and would laugh when they made the connection between the note and the sock itself and fully expected to see the sock the next time I checked.

But I didn’t. And I didn’t the next time, either. Or the time after that. I stopped checking the laundry room every time I walked by, but my faith didn’t flag. I scrounged through my room again – seriously, it’s a one-room apartment, how many places could there be? I looked under the bed, the dresser and in the little area where I keep the laundry basket.

The following Saturday marked a week, and my hope still overflowed; it seemed likely that the person who had used the dryer after me maybe didn’t empty everything and would run across it the next laundry day. But alas, no sock appeared.

Over the Fourth, I washed my own sheets. It was off-cycle but also a free day, so why not take advantage. But as much as I wished the chicken sock to materialize, it didn’t.

And as trivial as it seems, I prayed about it. I mean, I totally confessed to God that it was stupid (like He didn’t know, right?), but I also said that I trusted the sock would turn up and asked Him to reveal it to me. And like Mark 11:24 says, I believed that I would receive the sock back to me. As silly as it was.

This week, my counterpart over at the airport facility called and said she was swinging by to return my swimsuit. She wound up standing me up for the water aerobics class and then got up super early to get back to work on Sunday, so she hadn’t had a chance to return it. She’d taken it with her, then dispatched it back with someone else, who forgot to give it to me. (Good thing I didn’t need the swimsuit!)

She brought it back, unused. I ran it home at lunch along with some laundry soap that a departing person left me. It was fried chicken Wednesday, so I basically just dropped the bags and ate. But after work, I started putting stuff up and when I dumped out the swimsuit bag, my sock fell out!

It’s just so silly, but it brought me joy. I really did have faith that it would find its way home and it did. I sure don’t know how I managed to toss it in there, but it fell right out. I did not doubt that it would turn up, but I didn’t expect it to turn up there.

Ask and ye shall receive.

Waffle Wednesdays and soft serve

Now that I’m back from my second R&R, it’s almost down to the wire. I still have another – looking at Iceland in August – but for now, it’s just the regular routine. And routine it is. With rare exception, such as today – Juneteenth – it’s the same old thing.

Nowhere is that more evident than the cafeteria. Bless those who work there; they bust their butts and I really do appreciate them, but the menu doesn’t exactly vary. Even though today’s a holiday, the snack bar closest to my office still has Reuben sandwiches. There’s no special snack bar menu for the holiday.

Sometimes, though, there is a special menu for holidays – Thanksgiving and Christmas are awesome. We also occasionally have a cake for one reason or another. This past week, there was an Army birthday cake as well as a Father’s Day cake. So while it changes it up a little bit, that’s mostly for the dessert. And the two snack bar menus are pretty much stagnant.

Tuesday nights for me are pretty brutal. We do the whole Taco Tuesday, which begins at my close snack bar with quesadillas and then the taco thing at the main cafeteria. The larger snack bar always has a chicken tortilla soup and then the non-soup option is a Buffalo drumstick. Not TexMex, but still not my favorite. (Wings would be different, but Wing Night is another time.) Essentially, I don’t look forward to Tuesday meals.

Except.

Alongside the drumsticks, there are raw carrot and celery sticks. While we have a salad bar with shaved options, this, at least so far as I know, is the only time to get straight-up carrot and celery sticks, and I love them. It’s really the only time I can get a veggie that’s not steamed to death. It probably doesn’t sound like much of a meal, but honestly, it works, especially when I also get a cornbread, which is something we always have.

And, since it’s healthy, I allow myself to get a soft-serve ice cream. Our larger snack bar has a machine, which is quite popular. On Tuesdays, since I do a light dinner, I allow myself soft serve. And, since I am trying to cut out sweet treats (of which there are so, so many always available), I look forward to it.

This week, tragedy struck when the machine broke. I have no idea what happened, but I’m clearly not the only one to miss it, because they’ve had to put a sign up outside the snack bar, announcing it’s out of service. It heads people off at the pass, because there are so many who only come in for their cold treat. It’s been dejecting. Hopefully it won’t be long, but man, I really wanted some soft serve after my carrot and celery sticks the other day.

The only redeeming factor after that dejecting Tuesday evening was the comfort of knowing Waffle Wednesday followed. This is an extracurricular day, when, outside of the cafeteria, one of the offices in my building makes waffles for whoever wants them. I have no idea when or how it started, but one day a week I can take the stairs down a floor and be overwhelmed with the smell of waffles at around 9 a.m.

At first, I thought this was an inter-office thing but eventually I realized that it’s open to anyone hungry who passes by. And these are not just plain waffles, or they don’t have to be. The waffle team prides itself on stuffed waffles, and they stuff those things with things it never occurred to me went with waffles. (Note: I don’t even think chicken goes with waffles, though that’s not an option since it’s breakfast. But, for the record, Chicken and Waffle Night is every other Saturday.) These guys – and they are all guys who serve them up – have all kinds of stuff available. It’s just too much and grosses me out. I can handle a chocolate chip, but oh man, they have everything from gummy bears to Twinkies and M&Ms. The guys take orders and make them up special.

It's really a morale boost for those who partake, I normally don’t, but the other day, one of the guys from church was the one cooking them in honor of his departure and I caved. I went light and only got a chocolate chip one but was absolutely astounded at the possibilities. Oreo-stuffed pancakes, really?   

Now, Oreos crushed up in soft serve, that I could handle.

I am nothing but a common thief. Or maybe a caloric one. Definitely a cinnamon one.

A couple months ago – time is flying! – Baghdad opened a Cinnabon store. At the time, I was temporarily working in a different office and, as a result that’s too complicated to explain, wound up at a little, private cinnamon roll party here in The Sandbox. They are as fabulous as I remember them, and now they come in different flavors, like caramel. We had some little ones, not the big giant ones, and it was a lovely treat.

For me, that’s pretty much the end of it, since it’s not like I can pop in a car and head to the mall and visit Cinnabon. Not, I guess, that I know it’s in a mall – it’s just somewhere in Baghdad. Our cafeteria does cinnamon rolls here and they’re incredibly tasty, though I try not to get them because … well, because they’re so tasty. And big. Huge. Like cinnabons.

However, last week or so, I noticed a Cinnabon bag crammed in the fridge on the office floor. Our building is configured to where there are multiple offices on a floor and there are 1-2 kitchens on each floor. Lots of people use the fridge, and, just like any other business on the face of the earth, people cram stuff randomly in office fridges. Some stuff just sits there, some gets eaten and some turn into science projects.

Ours has a bunch of milks and juice, like way too much considering there’s a little “grab and go” right downstairs if you really want something. Most stuff originated from there or the cafeteria, so I have, from time to time, helped myself to an OJ or chocolate milk and just brought one in a bit later. Once in a while, something sits there for months and months and you realize it’s likely homeless. I adopted a water bottle for myself and re-homed an unopened bottle of some kind of wine that had been sitting around for over a year.

When a bag from Cinnabon appeared, my heart leapt, but I figured it would be gone by the next afternoon. Really, unless I snooped, I couldn’t even be sure what was in the bag. Every morning it was there when I put my tea in the fridge, though. And every afternoon it was there, too, tucked behind a liter of Sprite.

After a solid week, I considered it abandoned calories. It’s bread, after all. How good could bread be after a week in the fridge? Was it even full of cinnabons at all, or was someone just camouflaging their lunch in a bag with convenient handles and a tantalizing logo? I decided to go for it, so I peeked in the bag and discovered a box built for four cinnabons and containing three of them – the big ones, too! Instead of going for broke, I liberated one. I figured I’d give the rightful owner another chance to reclaim the other two, hoping that if it happened, s/he wouldn’t remember if there had been two or three left.

When I got home, I discovered how good a week-old flavored bread could be – utterly fantastic, at least after being heated up in a microwave. So good that, when the box was still there over the weekend, I took home a second one. I ate that one super slowly, to savor it, assuming that there’d be no way the third roll would go unclaimed or, in the event that it was, still be edible.

And lo, no one removed it from the fridge or even left a nasty note. The box was still there the following work week. At this point, I figured time was running out and went for it. Yesterday, I had half a cinnabon for lunch and half for dinner. Although I could definitely tell they had been in the fridge too long, I have no regrets. And, as of the morning, there have been no “who stole my cinnabon?!” notes on the fridge. I hope whoever abandoned them comes to terms with the fact if you put

The bottle of Sprite is still sitting there, no longer providing cover for the tasty treats. Gosh, they were good.

I cannot recall the last time I ate a Cinnabon in America. My assumption is there’s still one in the Governor’s Square Mall, but I have no idea. We had one in Minsk, but I don’t recall ever splurging on one. In my travels, though, I ran across one in Yerevan and I do remember enjoying a giant gooey treat there. Maybe that’s why I liked Yerevan so much.