A Good Day: Any Day I Drive a Golf Cart

Traditionally, embassies’ biggest party of the year (for guests, not for staff) is a Fourth of July celebration. At these, we invite a bunch of local contacts and fellow diplomats to come over and partake in some red, white and blue fun. There’s always food and alcohol involved and the event is the more important “representational” event of the year. Since it’s ridiculously hot in The Sandbox in July, though, we do our event early. Like March early.

They require a bunch of planning, and when I was in Istanbul, I was THE planner. Before that, I coordinated all the volunteers. Even here The Sandbox before, I wound up doing something or another. Blessedly, we didn’t do one in Minsk because of COVID, but even last year – which we ultimately canceled due to a COVID resurgence – I was on the “food committee.”

Somehow, this year, I escaped. I knew nothing about the planning, which is usually done over months. I had it on my calendar but forgot about it until I got an email asking for game-night volunteers. Figuring what the heck, I threw my hat in. When the sign-up list came around for specific jobs, I saw “golf cart driver” on there and couldn’t reply fast enough.

OF COURSE I would drive a golf cart. Any day you can drive a golf cart, it’s a great day.

My office has one. It’s a four-seater and I use it to go pick up guests at the far gate, which we call “Disney.” (Remember, The Sandbox is about the size of the Vatican.) I tend to ask them if they’ve been to the compound before and if not, I usually offer to show them around a little – just to extend the drive.

Lumped in there with “other duties as assigned,” driving the golf cart is so much fun. The normal prelude is a stop by the car wash, where I get to power-wash (and suds) the thing, always risking shorting it out. Since I hose out the inside as well as the outside (“Sand”box, remember), I’m never sure if somehow I leak water into the dash or something and won’t be able to start it, but so far I’ve been lucky.

Speed bumps are tricky – especially when I wind up getting an 8-seater and have it loaded down – and the blinkers don’t seem to work but it’s totally my jam. On that lovely Independence Day Party night, I fantasized that driving a golf cart could be my retirement job. I love it.

Way back when in Detroit, I remember working the McCarty Cancer Foundation golf tournament. I was Beer Girl. Who doesn’t welcome free beer out of a golf cart? Still the best volunteer gig ever.

Independence Day night was a blast. I drove people back and forth for 4-5 hours. Fortunately, there was only one speed bump for people leaving and none for people on their way in. The way out was more fun because I got to ask all the guests their favorite part of the evening.

Mine was the band. Granted, I did not set foot in the venue, but it was outdoors and I was right outside so I could hear everything. We had an Air Force band and holy cow, they were incredible. They’d played another social event a few nights before so I knew they were good, but hello. The lead singer was awesome (and a heck of a pickleball player) and shifted seamlessly from Adele to Metallica to Charlie Daniels to Journey. Hanging around outside, I think I scared a local staff colleague by knowing ALL the words to “Devil Went Down to Georgia.”

All in all, the evening was fabulous. We had good music and great weather. I mean, I have no idea what happened inside the walls, but everyone seemed happy.

This week, too, I got to drive another of the 8-seaters for a smaller event. This one was for guests of my section, and they’re a little more laid back and were a little less dressed up. As I was driving from the gate to the venue, one remarked, “Now I know why you call it the Disney gate.”

Yep, I might have to stick in my application in a few years. It would make every day at work a great one.

Causing confusion on the way to the Seventh Continent

I’m no cheater. I play fair, even in silly marshmallow games.

By Day Five of my cruise, the natives were restless and, had we been any ordinary sea folk, probably would have mutinied. But bad weather is bad weather and, recognizing we couldn’t do squat to fix it, we went along with anything the crew offered, which included elementary school-type competitions.

I’m happy to report that my team won the paper airplane competition and tied for first in the overall competition. And that I am not a cheater – and there’s video to prove it.

My second polar circle crossing.

Yes, we had a competition involving marshmallows. This is when you take a miniature spoon and, relay style, dip into a cup of mini-marshmallows, put as many as you can on the little spoon and run down the lounge area of a boat that’s tossing and turning (I mean, we were doing this because the weather was too bad to get off the boat, after all) and dump it into your designated cup before passing the tiny spoon off to the next person on your team to lather, rinse and repeat.

Our team did crappy, in part because our first player dumped his in the wrong cup. Probably, had we cheated, we would have fared better. But we didn’t. I learned there was proof of this the evening after the games, just before the nightly wrap-up presentation.

 As people file into the little auditorium, the expedition team plays a short video file – maybe a minute. As I sat down, I realized it was the start of the silly marshmallow game. Mortified, I saw myself on the screen, hair braided and wearing an Iraq sweatshirt, in a progression that includes me:

• Running across the table with the cups, because I realized I needed to be in place to grab the spoon from the first guy and our cup was on the opposite end of the room.
• Frantically waving at the first guy to signal him to the right cup, which he didn’t notice. (It was loud; he was concentrating. Fortunately there was no sound on the video. I was yelling and waving all around.)
• Disappearing offscreen as I ran down a different aisle the bar to grab the marshmallows. I managed four.
• Running up to the cup as I hold a spoon containing a single marshmallow. You can also see three marshmallows in my hand; they’d jumped ship as I maneuvered people and a rocking ship.

Protocol dictates kissing a fish following a 
successful circle crossing. I don't know why.

Mortified, I saw this over and over because the video was on a loop. People were laughing at it because the whole thing was ridiculous; we had maybe five teams and everyone was an adult, so we looked pretty silly. (Being at sea for five days does this to you.) Gradually, though, I realized that most people’s laughter was directed to a different person on the video, my roommate.

Roommate was a fun one and we got along great, but boy, she cheated! While my on-screen likeness shows me taking great pains not to cheat, hers – over and over – displayed her also holding fallen baby marshmallows in her hand, and as soon as she arrived at the table, she dumped them in her cup. Because of the camera angle, you can’t see who pointed out that wasn’t allowed, but you seen her arguing and pleading her case – over and over. It was kind of an interesting character study.

We had a lot of characters on the cruise. There were about 120 guests and 80 or so crew. So far as I could tell, everyone got along. We had a decent amount of backpackers who had booked the trip late and just as many who had been waiting for 2-3 years to take the cruise. It was fun getting to chat with them.

Kurdagonia, not Patagonia
at the LeMaire Crossing

On of my unintended icebreakers was my Iraqi sweatshirt. It’s a pun on the brand Patagonia, but I didn’t bring it because I left from Patagonia; I brought it because I only have three sweatshirts with me now. But since we were so close to Patagonia, I had so many people ask what it meant. It says “Kurdagonia” and came from Erbil. I probably explained it to 10 people during the course of the cruise. One person even pretty much figured it out, saying he’d heard of both Kurdistan and Patagonia, but not Kurdagonia. I was like, yes, that’s it.

Now I am re-acclimating to Iraq; different desert in a different part of the world. Travel back was shorter but just as exhausting as it was on the way there. I left for the airport at 8 p.m. on Tuesday night and crawled into my apartment at 2 p.m. on Thursday. I can’t prove Wednesday existed.

But it’s back to reality now and things are looking up. Based on my email, it sounds like I’m in for a windfall. Discovered in my inbox, an unfortunate soul in Ukraine died, leaving $58m big ones.

“He had no next of kin based on the fact that his nominated was also killed during the Russian air strike but he has the same First name with you hence  I am contacting you today because you can inherit this fortune through some legal  means that I will advise because you share the same last name and with the help of the deceased personal lawyer he will prepare all necessary legal binding documents that will enable this finance firm release the mentioned amount to you if you accept this offer.”

Honestly, it is unbelievable that someone would buy that. Seriously? I share the same first name, so somehow I’m an heir? Bizarre.

Bad weather, amazing adventure

There’s no such thing as a cyclone party. They’re not a lot of fun, especially on a ship. But once you make it through, boy, making it to your destination is a lot of fun.

My second try to Antarctica got me to land. My first try, back in 2020, was on a big cruise ship that was more of a drive through than anything else. From there, I’d planned a disembarkation, but it got “weathered” out. This time, despite the weather, I set foot on the continent. You’re told to take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints so I don’t have a rock, but I did leave my voice there.

But the weather … oh my. First of all, I was sick as a dog the entire first day. “The Drake Shake” – when you go through the Drake Passage with bad waves – didn’t help, but looking back, a lot of it was just fatigue. Going out, I changed one flight to cut down my Amman layover from about 15 hours to about 7, but it was still a 7-hour layover. The next flight was 2.5 hours, followed by a 4-hour layover. In Istanbul, I got on the long flight, which was to Buenos Aires, but it first stopped in Sao Paulo for almost 2 hours, and then, following a brutal 6-hour layover in the Buenos Aires check-in area (because I was leaving international and going domestic; I couldn’t hang out in the lounge and had to sit in a chair), I got on my final flight to Ushuaia. That’s when I realized my flight to Ushuaia wasn’t direct; we had a 1.5-hour stop in some other city. Seriously, I spent three mornings in airports. I left Baghdad on Thursday morning and I arrived on … gosh, I don’t even know. I think it was Saturday around lunch. I checked into the hotel, met my roommate and tried to sleep but didn’t have much luck.

So although I had a rough first morning on The Drake, I honestly think I was more tired than anything. The ship was rocking and rolling but I mostly just crashed in bed. The first night, I didn’t eat anything until the 4:30 p.m. tea; I just had zero appetite. That pretty much went for the whole cruise. The food was amazing, but I didn’t indulge, with the exception of ice cream at lunch. The scoops were tiny, though!

The weather for the first 5-6 days was awful. Horizontal rain, snow, sleet, massive (but not rogue) waves. My point-and-shoot as the photos and the cord I brought on the trip doesn’t work, so I can’t get the photos uploaded yet, but it was brutal. We had been expecting to do an excursion out on the Zodiacs on the evening of the third day and that was out of the question. The next morning, the captain tried in vain to find some reasonably sheltered place to let us off the boat, but it didn’t work. Same for the next afternoon, and the following day.

The expedition team was amazing. We had lectures – incredibly scientific – several times a day, but before the weather cleared, they were having to invent things to keep us from mutinying. Think airplane races and games with marshmallows. Everyone was still good natured about it – I mean, what can you do? – but everyone wanted us off the boat.

One night, the poor captain had a brutal time trying to find shelter. The winds were absolutely awful and, TBH, I wondered if there was a chance we might capsize. The boat, the World Explorer, was fairly new and had safety features so I really wasn’t worried but I did wonder. My roommate, however, worried. The morning after what we later learned were Cat 4-level winds rocked us, I discovered she’d slept right next to her life jacket.

With that, though, the weather kind of broke. We got out the next morning on super choppy waves. I landed in a less-crowded Zodiac and was sitting at the front, meaning I got super crushed by waves. The scenery was fantastic and I was soaked through to my underwear, despite my Minsk “waterproof” snow pants. Icebergs closer up are even more beautiful than they are from a distance, like wandering through a floating sculpture gallery. It’s never boring, but it can be cold and wet.

Seriously, it snowed. That just doesn’t happen. People built a little snowman! It was just strange weather. We had a deck covered in snow – big, fat flakes.

After the first excursion, though, the weather got better. My three layers of pants never got soaked through again, and I met penguins, whales and all kinds of seals. We visited Port Lockroy and, although I didn’t mail any postcards, I did get my passport stamped and bought a magnet. Coincidentally, I have a new tourist passport and the Port Lockroy stamp – which includes a penguin – is the first stamp in the new passport.

This was the trip I wanted to Antarctica. Although I was happy with my previous trip, the whole point had been to set foot on the continent and see critters up close, and I finally got to do that.

More later. At the moment, I am on my second trip and I am headed to see Iguazu Falls, the largest waterfall in the world. 

I am getting around

The boat leaves from Ushuaia tomorrow on the first R&R of my second tour. I’m on my third day of travel and am finally at the hotel where the cruise passengers say the day before embarkation. I didn’t think I needed an R&R before, but after getting here I am ready for break.

Although I got lucky and took the second flight out to Amman on the first day – there isn’t always a second one – this is still the third morning I’ve been traveling. I am utterly exhausted. The first day, I blissfully didn’t sleep late but woke up at the regular time and hit the gym and breakfast before catching a 9 a.m. shuttle to the help pad. The flight left at 2 p.m. and was right on time because the ambassador was also departing on the same flight. It’s still a slow plane, though, and I finally transited to Amman around 5 p.m.

Since my original plan had been to arrive there around 9 a.m. and face a day layover, I was giddy with the thought of a shorter one and canceled the hotel reservation before realizing that seven hours isn’t exactly a short layover. Then, in the first real disappointment, learned you cannot check into the airport lounge until four hours before a flight so I had basically six hours before I could get into the lounge. Fortunately, I just hunt out with some guy who works at the embassy. It made me feel bad because we’d been in the transfer line and I’d invited him to the lounge (I can always take guests but never do so I offered) and then I failed him. But we chatted until his flight left, which was around 8 p.m., after which I finished a book and then snacked on some Froot Loops before finally getting into the lounge, where I set a timer and dozed in and out for two hours before grabbing some food and getting on the flight to Istanbul.

That flight was only two and a half hours and the layover there was four, but that lounge is huge and super nice. They had showers, which was an unexpected surprise, and then I locked myself in what looked like one of those little rooms they have at the library with a reading table and a lamp. After whipping out an eye mask and yanking off my shoes, I curled up in the chair and dozed as I caught up with my morning podcasts and then had a decent breakfast before getting on the long leg, the flight over the Atlantic.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the 18 hours-plus it was billed as. Well, in all it was, but we did the first 12 hours to Sao Paulo before holding there for close to two as the plane was cleaned and 80 percent of the people deplaned. Holy cow, it had been a super full flight. The person in the window seat in my row complained because her seat wouldn’t recline, but they wound up having no empty spots to move her to, so tough luck for her.  Her husband tried to get them to re-seat her, but I never figured out why if it mattered so much to him that he just didn’t swap with her.

When we finally arrived in Buenos Aires, I utterly had no idea what day and time it was in any time zone. My body was so confused, but I knew I had six hours there. It initially didn’t sound bad because they also had an airport lounge, but I hadn’t realized I’d have to reclaim my bag and get booted out of the international terminal since the next flight was domestic. I was crushed, because that had been my dinner plan. Instead, I had three Whoppers and a mini-pack of M&Ms and regretted eating the Froot Loops in Amman. At least the airport had WiFi, though, and I downloaded some more books to read on the cruise.  I tried to doze off, but that just didn’t work.

My flight left this morning at 4:40, so around 2 a.m. I ran to Starbucks for a muffin and then went to the Buenos Aires domestic terminal, which is tiny and crowded. That’s why I stayed over in the international side for the evening – there was literally no place to sit. Even past security the next morning, it was just a bunch of people and few chairs.

Relieved, I started on the last leg when I realized that this flight, too, had a stop on the way. This travel has just been incredible. Most of the flights were absolutely fine, but I’m just so tired and I can feel my body still thinking it’s in motion.

Finally the flight arrived and I met the Quark ground people, who took the passengers to the hotels. And of course, I was the last to be dropped off at my hotel, the only one off that flight who is staying at this one.

My roommate got here yesterday and it seems positive. She is also from Florida and has lived extensively abroad. She was initially super talkative – understandable – and I hope I was coherent in my responses. At that point, I just needed a shower and a nap to feel human again.

She went to a museum, I think she said, and we may meet for dinner but I also may crash early. I tried to sleep and managed a 40-minute nap. Now I am just trying to get all photos and such off my phone so I can fill it up again.

The hotel is near the Hard Rock and I don’t know if it’s that or not, but I can hear music out the window. They just wrapped up “Eye of the Tiger” and now it’s “I Get Around.”

Tomorrow we have to be at the boat-leaves-from place around 3 p.m. and then we’ll set off! Second time doing this, but this time I’m doing the one I had hoped to do before, so I hope all goes well.

Bon voyage.

Snippets of an OMS life

Taken from a Reddit post regarding my job:

You run to a weekly meeting early to set up the video. You have a standing reservation with ISC to set up this meeting, but the only person who will do it has been on leave and, even though everyone in your section knows how to place the call, no one will do it. You don’t normally do this (it’ll be the second time in a year and a half you’ve done) because you have to make sure your boss gets to the meeting on time. However, last week made it clear that no one else will do it, so it falls to you. Your boss is late to the meeting.

Back at your desk, you missed an IM from HR. They want a list of your section’s entry-level officers. It would seem they know this, but you track it down anyway. You later discover this request was originally directed to HR from the ambassador's office.

You’re finally looped in on a staffing thing. You did this for the entire first year you were here, but when the new bosses arrived, they ignored all your experience and instead asked the new staff assistant for his opinion. Today, your section is asked to agree or disagree with DC’s decisions on new positions. You look at the spreadsheet and realize your section has been approved for the one position you really needed plus one more. You were been turned down for five, too, but between March, when your section was asked for its “dream staffing situation” and August, when your section was asked to trim the list, those came off the list anyway. The staff assistant has written some formal dissent-type thing, indicating your section does not agree with the decision. You are confused because it does. In the end, the boss realizes you are right and sends up the spreadsheet. You sent the draft with your comments but when you review at what he’s sent, you realize not only that the comments not included, he didn’t say “concur” in the line marked as such. You point this out, dig up the email chain with the proposed comments and resend. What you could have done in 38 seconds has now taken hours.

You ask HR for an employee’s position number. It is a personal service contractor position, not a direct hire, so you can’t just look it up in GEMS, like you can do for others. The HR employee doesn't know. An hour later, a different HR employee asks you for the same employee’s position number.

Our section’s timekeeper sends back an officer’s incorrect leave form. The officer asks the remote timekeeper how to do it, giving information that is not relevant. You offer to help the officer fix it, walking him through the process.

Another employee sends you his earnings and leave statement to prove he didn’t get OT for a recent pay period. You can’t help but notice his salary is more than double yours. You are not the timekeeper but have access. You send screen shots assuring him (for the second pay period in a row) it was entered correctly and send him the link to the payroll portal, which you found on the intranet.

You attend a local staffer lunch, which starts a bit late. You notice a VIP guest, the DCM, waiting awkwardly for the food to arrive, and thankfully your boss steps in and starts chatting him up. A flurry of activity indicates the food is arriving downstairs. You go with the LE staff to help bring it in and set up. You’re the only American who pitches in. The DCM asks for the status of your State Magazine submission. It has been with him for a week; he wanted the ambassador to read it before clearing it.

Just before the lunch ends, you’re cornered about the Federal Women’s Program, of which you are a coordinator. The local staff are excited about being included in the proposed self-defense class, but remind you that this must be done during office hours. Oh, and can they please go to the gun range and shoot?

When you remind your boss that you need his GEMS proxy to create evaluation forms, he says his is broken and can you get it fixed? You mention this may due to a certain reason and he says no, get it fixed. You pull strings and get the one person in DC who can fix this. He asks the problem; you try to describe it. He confirms exactly what you thought: it’s due to that certain reason. You explain this again to your boss, adding that’s exactly what DC says. You still don’t have his GEMS proxy.

He asks you to “put in a ticket” to fix his printer, which “is broken.” You suggest maybe you have a look at it. He says there’s “a weird jam.” You open the printer and clear the jam. This is the easiest job of the day.

HR asks you to verify position numbers again. You do so, using information you got months ago – from HR.

The AMB OMS messages you, clearly upset. The AMB had her arrange a “diplo dogs” event at the embassy, and six ambassadors, three DCMs and a political leader from outside embassies are attending with their canines, along with a handful of dog owners in your mission. The AMB’s dog is in the office, which, since, the OMS is allergic to dogs, is bad enough, but it also took a dump on the expensive rug. The protocol staffer called in sick and the house manager is out of town attending his sister’s funeral, so the OMS had to bring in and hold court for all the guests, who of course started arriving just after the dog’s dump. The AMB yelled at her to just call the FM, but he was out today, so she called the GSO to escort the cleaners. Since the GSO already thinks the AMB OMS is snooty because she pushed back on yet another a poorly written and badly formatted AM last week, this wasn’t well-received. She sighs and wonders if the DCM OMS would have gotten the same response, but, alas, he’s on parental leave and she’s covering both principals.

Near the end day, you realize that the executive office is still waiting on one “welcome home” note for the ambassador. You were only cc:ed, as was your boss, but you recognize that no one has responded to this urgent tasker. You ask you boss if your section is responsible for the note. He says he thought XYZ section would be responsible. It’s at a different location, so you email the XYZ contact, who was listed first on the executive office's email “to.” You also message the executive office staff assistant to let her know your section will not be sending the note, that your boss said it’s XYZ’s and you are contacting XYZ. She thanks you for tracking it down, saying she just needs it in the next few minutes, because the ambassador requires it before stepping on a plane in the next hour. Luckily, XYZ responds, but says, oh, I thought ABC section was doing that. You call a friend in ABC, who, as it’s now after 5, luckily answers the phone. He knows nothing of the subject but directs you to someone else. You have never met the someone else, but call him and let him know that the ambassador needs the bullet and that XYZ implied it was ABC’s to do. ABC agrees to provide the point, and, after thanking him, you notify the executive office that the tasker will be completed.

You contact the DC office and again implore moving ahead what is essentially a rubber-stamp paperwork shuffle, but DC doesn’t respond.

Before you leave, you stop by HR to, for the fourth consecutive week, offer to help audit/rectify your section’s position numbers; somehow, this is a different tasker than the previous one. This is the added assurance that DC thinks it needs to move forward the rubber-stamp issue. Although DC really doesn’t need it, the person you’re dealing with is insisting on it, and the HRO won’t give it to you without auditing the numbers. You did the thorough audit with the previous HRO two months before the current HRO arrived, but that no longer counts. You are again rebuffed and told HR will get to it when it gets to it.

You then pop into a small RPCV gathering, where an argumentative and drunk section head starts railing about OMSes. She mentions “her” OMS, and you politely point out that the person is a contractor, not an OMS and that she is assigned to the section, not a personal assistant. In a drunken rage, the section head explodes to you that she will call her whatever she wants, and as long as the contractor does what she wants, she doesn’t care what she is. You know this poor contractor is forced to do such things as buy wine and check mail for the section head and work late setting up her personal parties, things no OMS should do. The contractor is a great person and very good at her administrative role; you suggested she apply as an OMS, but she said she did and didn’t pass the QEP.

You finally give up and head home, where your day winds down by coordinating a reunion for your mom’s work colleagues, some 7000 miles away from your assignment. Somehow, this fell to you, but you don’t mind because, well, so does everything else.

Merry Christmas (cow)

For some reason, the cows come out at Christmas. No one understands, but we all go with it.

No, not real cows. It’s still the 100 Acre Sandbox. But someone, a long time ago and perhaps in a galaxy far, far away, someone (or someones) thought it would be funny to build plywood cows and place them strategically across out the Sandbox. This happened last time I was here, too, so, although I have no idea how long they’ve been here, it’s been at least 3-4 years.

I’m not positive how many they are because they get separated quickly. There are at least three: a live-size grayish one, and a black and white one about the same size and one smaller one that looks like it might be a calf. One’s grazing. There may be more, but I can definitely think of three.

They appear, as if they’ve migrated, around Thanksgiving and last through the holidays. (Until this year anyway – more on that soon.) Since we get bored here and create our own entertainment, there are people (or possibly gremlins) who relocate the cows when no one’s watching.

I’ll write it off as testosterone, a thing that I don’t understand, because I just don’t get it, but people seem to enjoy moving the cows from one pasture from another. Of course, we don’t have pastures, so people make do. They wind up all over the place: on the one field we have, the tennis course, on a bunker somewhere and then in a bunker somewhere else.

It becomes a thing, and people try to get cute. Although I missed it this year, someone put one on a roof; the fire department had to pull it down because they were worried it might topple over and hurt someone. I heard one appeared way up on a tower that very few people have access to and some have been sneaked into people’s beds while they were away. Last year, one somehow got into the ambassador’s office.

They make me hungry. Dating back to the last time I was posted to the Sandbox, every time I saw the spotted cows, it made me hanker for Chick-Fil-A. Man, I miss Chick. We have lots of chicken, but it’s not the same. And oh, my kingdom for some waffle fries or mac and cheese.

Finally, I decided to make a Chick sign for a cow, which was a lot harder than it sounds. I sacrificed a shipping box and rigged up a rope made from plastic bags. I had to get the proper cow spelling and etch it out, but the hardest part was finding the darn cow.

One particular group of people commandeered two cows. Another cow, a smaller one, somehow was rendered headless. It was found on the volleyball court. I noticed it, but didn’t immediately realize it didn’t have a head; it was lying on its side and I just figured people had started cow tipping. Yes, we have some Wisconsin residents in our midst.

The one group of people swore they hadn’t beheaded the one cow, but they were guilty of some shenanigans with the other two, hiding them (or so I heard) in their areas and putting them in each other’s beds. (Testosterone, I’m telling you.) No one else had access to them for awhile, and the silly sign sat on my desk for a couple of days before someone dropped a hint where I might could find one.

Finally, I was able to baptize one of the cows as a Chick-Fil-A cow. I’d hoped for the black-and-white one, but even though I was able to find both that and the gray, the black-and-white one was in a grazing position and its head was waaaaaay too big for the rope I’d made.

Somehow, I was – I think – able to get the sign on without being seen, and I surreptitiously slipped away. But then, I didn’t see the cow for a couple more days.

It appeared in a parade! We do a little Christmas parade with our little golf carts, which was last weekend. As an aside, holy cow, what an insane weekend that was. We did our party for one of the larger teams that works in 12-hour shifts. It’s one party, two shifts – an AM and a PM. I worked both, doing organization, serving food, setting up, taking down. It was seven solid hours in my feet – three starting at 7 a.m. and four starting at 4 p.m. and I managed to get in 16k steps without even going to the gym.

The parade was after that, and even though it meant standing for another hour, I wanted to see it and boy, was I totally taken aback to see my sign around the neck of a cow one of the offices had tied to the top of a golf cart! They were drafting off my wind – taking credit for my sign. (Which I, of course, ripped off from Chick.) One of the guys with the “float” was a friend so I ribbed him a little about it. It was just kinda funny.

Now we’ve had a couple of days with rain and the sign is falling apart, but I managed to sneak a photo of it. I didn’t think about how weird it would look straight on. The cows are pieces of slotted plywood that slide together and the horns are one piece and the face another. If I can get another photo, I’ll add, but if not, just trust that the cow does have a head.

Thankful for free stuff and accommodating mules

The 50-Acre Sandbox scores

Happy Thanksgiving from the 100-Acre Sandbox! We have a continual revolving door of people here, and there’s a limited amount of stuff we can take with us. As a result, when people leave, they tend to unload stuff. Many of the people come who come in with a whole bunch of food and stuff never wind up eating it because the cafeteria has so much. Since we’re not allowed to pack out food, a lot of it winds up on the free table. There’s one of those on each floor of each apartment building.

The free table’s not limited to food, but anything a person might want to unload. Beyond food, the most common items are books and cleaning supplies. I scored three bottles of Clorox bathroom cleaner and a couple James Patterson books recently. I’ve also scored a cooler, a couple big storage bins and an amazing drying rack. The latter’s been an awesome find and I really hope I can take it with me when I leave, but I suspect the reason it was left on the free table was that it doesn’t fit in the shipping containers.

One of my teammates left a couple weeks ago and I grabbed a bag of stuffing and French’s Onion Crisps  to put on top of green bean casserole. I knew Thanksgiving was coming up and for whatever warped reason, I thought I might use them. That was stupid because our cafeteria makes an awesome Thanksgiving meal. Fortunately, I recognized a couple days ago that I wasn’t going to use the stuff. I figured I’d give it away.

On Tuesday, I was at work and sent a note to a friend in our 50-Acre Sandbox a little farther north. They don’t have a cafeteria there and put on a potluck instead. During my first tour, I spent Christmas up there and made mashed potatoes, so I figured they’d be doing something fun. In messaging my friend, I mentioned that I’d thought about cooking and even had the crispy onions that go on top of the green bean casserole. She responded that she’s been shopping and had been unable to find them and their potluck was going to be crispy onion-less.

Well, we can’t have that! We have a regular flight between the sandboxes, and I know where to get the list of people taking that flight. I didn’t know any of them, but we’re all colleagues, so I picked one (there weren’t many!) and sent a note asking if I could send a little package through him. All I can say is we have awesome people here because he agreed. My friend had showed me a list of things they couldn’t find up there, and cranberry sauce was on it. Before I dropped off the package to the nice mule, I ran by the store and grabbed two cans of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce.

The community potluck in the 50-Acre Sandbox is no doubt thankful for their windfall, just as I am every time I find fun stuff on the free table.

I’m also thankful that I had an amazing Thanksgiving meal and didn’t have to cook or clean up. The cafeteria here, which seems to have its own supply from French’s and Ocean Spray, puts on quite an amazing spread. My Turkey Day lunch was salmon, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and, of course, turkey. So much that I didn’t even bother with the desserts, which, as I understand it, involved chocolate-covered strawberries. I’m debating going back for round two for dinner, but unless I get ravenously hungry in the next two hours, it’s not going to happen.

The only downside of having an amazing cafeteria to cook and serve food to you and then clean up is that there are no leftovers. Friday is the day for turkey sandwiches, but that doesn’t happen here. It’s a small price to pay, though, for all the good stuff we have.