Passing the Torch

About a week ago, I took this picture of the miniature T-wall outside the building where we've worked for 10 months (T-walls are normally 12-foot tall blast walls). This thing has been standing here since we got to Iraq, but I took the picture to commemorate a recent change: there is an end date painted on it!


Yes, our replacements are here, and they are here in force. We have been showing them our jobs, giving up our desks, introducing them to the revolving door of temporary colleagues they will be working with while in theater, as our predecessors did before us, and as they will do for someone else.

I normally don't post about the goings-on of my unit itself, and while I realize those are the juicy details that sell papers, they're also the kind that the Army doesn't like posted in blogs and, incidentally, the papers. Well, the secret of our redeployment is already out, and it wasn't posted here on OIT first (it was posted here ...), so I think I'm ok. If I end up with the guys in black coats and generic government cars, you all know what happened ... (they didn't get their free T-shirt from the last run we sponsored).

As the article says, we're waiting for movement back to the US to do a mountain of paperwork, and to get released. As such, we have a lot of time to think about the last year, even if all anyone talks about is what they're going to do when we get home. I know of a couple of motorcycles, a bunch of new computers, drinking too much beer, and a whole lot of romantic dinners (mine and Autumn's included!!) that are frequently mentioned plans. I'm also afraid that things won't be ok, and I have no idea what to do to prepare for it except to meet it head on as the last trial of the deployment.

The ironic part about that is that even the unknown over here had an air of finality to it - I took the baton from someone working on a problem, carried it all I could (due to time or the limits of my knowledge/ability/authority/etc), then passed it to the next appropriate person. The next step was always clear here, where the environment is so volatile and complicated, and I know it won't be so simple at home where the environment is presumably peaceful and uncomplicated.

Oh well, once more into the breach ...

Bon Voyage 4-miler

A week ago, I got up at 4:30 AM, worked for half an hour, then ran 4 miles. What could possibly have compelled me to get up that early on a Sunday, when we don't have a hard shift change and I can be a few minutes later than normal? Yes, you guessed it: a free T-shirt!

1LT Michael Olsen organized the "Bon Voyage 4-miler" footrace as a last hurrah for our unit in the Camp Victory footrace sub-culture. It was a surprisingly well planned and well run race - not surprising because I expected any less of Michael, but because everything seemed to work behind the scenes and it all seemed effortless for him to execute and organize it. He and his crew of 30 volunteers (me among them) pulled it off and kept our flag from being dragged from the flagpole in front of our building by a disgruntled mob of hungry/thirsty/T-shirtless/etc runners. The T-shirts were also quite well done, sporting a simple design and a good background color. I won't mind wearing this one around!

My time was a few seconds over 27 minutes, which puts me in the 6:45/mile range - not too bad, but considering all the time I had to improve my run times, I should be running like 5 minute miles by now. I guess I should just accept it and embrace my inner Cinnabon.

Without further ado, the pictures:

Yep, that's me in the picture, running the last footrace we will get to run in Iraq!


... and this is me with my roommate Bob, the proud owners of free T-shirts. Bob didn't have to run to get his, he just volunteered to register people before the race and hand out XL T-shirts at the end. I realized too late that all this time I could have been volunteering to help for the races and still getting the T-shirts!! Oh well, at least I burned off some Cinnabon.


Here's the newest addition to the collection, front and back:

Zagat's Guide to Camp Liberty

"Wow, that's like 6 miles ..."

Those are the words that have been indelibly etched into my mind since (Marine) CWO5 Ed Lawson replied with them to a co-worker offering him a piece of cake from the monthly birthday cake we had at the office. At my civilian job, we would gather once a month to pay homage to the office birthdays, and everyone usually has a slice of cake, however small. Ed was apparently very health-conscious and had no desire to run more just to burn off a token slice of cake. Ooh-rah!

Imagine now over a year later, this last Thursday, I am invited by my boss to a Cinnabon run to the Camp Liberty Food Court. The couple of trailers that serve as the fast food escape for the base are located right next to the Post Exchange (military department store), and though I didn't plan on having more than coffee, I came along to pick up a sewing kit (the damage to my clothing is another post altogether ...). I discovered that a basic sewing kit is $7, and opted to just bug my friends and borrow one. I got my coffee (blended mocha) and sat down to a seat where there was half a classic Cinnabon waiting for me. Kim, the generous giver of cinnamon goodness and calories, says:

"If we're eating these things, you've got to have a bite!"

To which I replied, of course:

"Dude, that's like 6 miles ..."

Here's me eating the 6 miles

... and washing it down with another 2 miles!

Brian, with his fat pill

Will, my boss - setting the healthy example for me

Kim, the mastermind, and Tim the wheelman

Salsa Fairy?

A couple months ago, I got a package containing Tolteca salsa from my sister-in-law, Tonya. As she and the rest of the family know, I am obsessed with the chips and salsa from a small restaurant in Azusa, CA called Tolteca - actually, there are very few things on their menu I do not like. The salsa was an awesome birthday present, and I still have a couple jars left (which are still good).

So, when I got a package in the mail with more chips and salsa a couple days ago with the name "Brent Cornelius" on it, I had to raise an eyebrow:


It is a gift basket from a place in Phoenix, AZ - "Coyote Kitchen".

The guys back in Engineering said "what are we waiting for?" and wanted to tear into it immediately, but given that I had no idea who the sender, "Brent Cornelius" is, nor who would have sent me more salsa, or even who would know that I like salsa (hmm, ok that's probably a lot of people at this point), I thought we should do a little investigation first. We took the above picture, and set to researching Coyote Kitchen.

It turns out they specialize in more than just salsa; from their website:

"In 2007 Desert Rose Foods, Inc., a 30 yr old Phoenix, Arizona based salsa and southwest condiment manufacturer, merged with Coyote Kitchen, a 13 year old private label food manufacturer of shelf stable and refrigerated acidified food products. Coyote Kitchen, Inc. the parent company operates out of a 27,000+ sq ft FDA approved facility that offering both branded and private label products to the retail and foodservice trade.


The combined company, currently offers 7 brands with over 90 items ranging from salsa, salad dressings, condiments, organic fruit spreads, flavoured lemonade drinks, Asian finishing sauces, Kosher and Kosher for Passover products, soups, and more. Our Chefs promise to bring you new and exciting items on a continual basis. Currently in development; Indian specialty sauces."

Wow. That's a lot of stuff. Then we looked for "Brent Cornelius" - apparently, he is the CEO! I am also fairly sure he personally sent the package; it was his name on the customs form and the USPS doesn't let other people mail stuff in your name ...

The package has three jars of Desert Rose salsa (it is still sitting on my desk, so I'm not 100% sure on that, but that's how it looks from the picture), and I'm guessing they made the chips too. The general consensus was that the package was not an attempt to poison us or reduce our morale with gastrointestinal problems in an effort to end the US presence in Iraq sooner (and you can take that analysis to the bank - it was from Army Signal Corps "experts" ... it's not like we only run networks and know nothing about food except how to eat it, right?). We went with the simpler guess that Coyote Kitchen's CEO saw the earlier OIT posts I made on salsa and sent this as a gift.

So, if you're reading this, Mr. Cornelius - thanks for sending the package, personally to boot! You have four grateful network engineers and a happy salsa fan!

Raise the Roof

I read an email earlier this week with a little dismay - my friend Dan, a Network Technician from one of our subordinate battalions, said that a radio link they were trying to put in wasn't going to work from where it currently stood. Radios like the ones they were trying to put up are aptly called "Line of Sight" because, of course, they need a direct line of sight between antennas to work. Normally, this isn't a problem until you hit the curvature of the Earth in a flat place like this, but we are in enough of a built-up area that we have to deal with buildings, parapets, man-made hills, trees, and even other people's antennas!

Dan pointed out that we have an antenna to another site on top of the Al Faw Palace (the one in the news when people visit Victory) - why not add another one? After a slew of emails probing for how much trouble we would get into for asking, we discovered that no one really cares what is up there, as long as it doesn't conflict with other stuff already there - wow. That led to a site recon :)

To get to the roof, you have to go to the third floor of the palace, then find the secluded utility access stairs:


I should have taken a picture of the ventilation level of the palace - it is a labyrinth of air ducts, air conditioning equipment, leaking pipes, shadowy movement (rats? lizards? dogs?), and lots of unmarked doors.

We made it outside after a while to something OSHA would have a field day with:


It may be hard to see, but that ladder is at an angle, and the steps are all painted metal. Nothing but the best for the palace!

We wove through antenna after antenna - not just dishes, but all kinds, a lot of which I could not identify on sight (not that I am an expert in antennas; still, some of those looked alien!).


Finally, we reached the "spot":


The flat thing pointing off in the distance is exactly what we needed to see, along with a lot of unused real estate. This is perfect for as many new ones as we have!

Of course, what's a trip to the top of a 25-30 meter tall building without a picture of the view?

Low-tech Blogging

If you're reading this, I'm confident you think as I do about OIT (Operation Isosceles Triangle): it's a good place to get your weekly dose of the Fantastic Four's (Matt, Zach, Ash and Kate's) adventures with moms, aunts, and grandparents. Once in a while you also get an update from Afghanistan and Iraq, much like the Voyager spacecraft send telemetry when they encounter something interesting (but just send "I'm here" otherwise).

Before I left, I tried to assemble some pictures to tape to the wall to remind me, laptop or not, what home looks like. I asked for pictures in some cases, drew from the thousands we have on hard drives at home, and Autumn was nice enough to get some posters printed of collages. The result was a wall of pictures in my room, and assorted pictures that I cycle through at work.

When Kate and Ash discovered they could mail things to me, I started getting short notes expressing their various musings (like "this is a cat", written on an abstract reimagining of a cat) and their art masterpieces. Tonya advised me to enjoy the art briefly, then not worry about preserving it because there would be another wave in the mail in a couple days - good lord was she right about the production capability of the girls! I have actually managed to keep most of it, and I post the best ones on my ceiling and one of the wall panels next to the pictures Autumn sent:


My iPhone camera is kind of crappy, so there's not too much of a wide angle on it, but you get the idea. Anyway, I thought I would chronicle what happens each time I get Kinderart, since to the girls it must seem like Uncle James always says "wow, you guys did a great job on the last batch" but I never show them where their stuff ends up. Here you go, Kate and Ash!

Step 1: Select the best of the batch and prepare the duct tape.

Sorry, girls, there's not enough duct tape in theater to put up everything you've sent me. However, the best of it makes it to this stage, where I figure out what wall/ceiling panel it goes on:


Step 2: Roll duct tape and affix to perimeter of Kinderart.

Yes, everything you need to know about wallpapering a steel storage container that was converted into housing, you will learn in Kindergarten ...




Step 3: Press Kinderart onto wall.

Duct tape is amazing; it sticks even with dust covering the wall!


... and that's it! One "Ashley is Cool" sign on my ceiling just above where I look up when I sleep (thanks, Ash!).

Getting Chased by Wild Geese

What a last couple of weeks for me! I lapsed into a typical period of malaise where I seldom write, call, or communicate in any way - mostly to stay afloat amidst the many plates I had spinning. Sorry for the lean posting, but here's what has happened to me recently:

• 3 big projects at work, with 3 different sets of people. It's the old high school/college situation of all your professors assigning you huge assignments all at once because they don't know the other is doing it. For the last month, my three-man section was down to two people (one went on his two week vacation, which turns into 3+ weeks with travel), and for the last week it was down to one: me (The other guy went on vacation too). I inherited their projects :)

• I was studying for the CISSP exam (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) - it is a certification that helps both in the civilian world and in the military, as it is an industry standard Information Security certification. Unfortunately, the test is fairly comprehensive, though reasonably deep that you can attempt it with a fair shot of studying.

• I am applying to stay on Active Duty with the Army, stationed with Autumn. I have been debating doing this for years, but our situation in Maryland with my contracting job, house, etc was better than I would have gotten in the area with the Army. In El Paso, it's a different story - I'm not sure I can find a job when I get back! Besides that, I have other reasons which could make a post of their own, the most important of which is that with a civilian job I will be split three ways (job, Army, home - four if you count school). I am stuck in the Army no matter what for three more years, minimum, which is the amount of time they require you to serve if you apply for Active Duty like I am. I'm not leaving my wife, son, and Tita for some job or the Army, so the job's pretty much the only thing that can go. Anyway, the application process is insane - I had to get a physical, take a Physical Fitness Test in 110 degree heat, produce every shred of documentation on myself in the Army, and I had to do it all ASAP! Bastards.

• I've been harassed by semi-domesticated geese on the way to work. Actually, this wasn't that bad ...
  

Yeah, so the title wasn't for nothing; I saved the best for last:



These guys are seasonal guests of the lakes that surround the Al Faw Palace and its satellite buildings, in one of which I work. They were here for a couple weeks when I first arrived, along with some other fowl, but they left when it got cold. It more than warmed up by the time they came back.

On my way into work from the chow hall, I pass by the path in the pictures, and the geese demand their "toll". That many geese usually chow down three or four pieces of bread or a couple croissants in only a few seconds, and they are pretty aggressive about collecting; I wonder if the Port Authority of NY & NJ knows about this technique. When one spots you coming, it makes a distinct sound that alerts the others to get up and surround you. Once you are surrounded, they cock their heads to the side a little, mainly to get a good view from the eyes on the sides of their heads, and the caucauphony of honks begins. If you cough up enough bread, they leave you alone on their own, but if you don't have anything, prepare to wade through the mass of geese ... and don't fall down!

Skypefeast!

I got to Skype with Matt today!!

At last, the stars aligned, and I was able to get my dad, Loretta, and Matt over to Loretta and Matt's place for a somewhat choppy Skype session. We resolved to meet around noon their time, 10 PM my time, and though it connected, it was pretty much unusable. We postponed for a couple hours, and at 2 PM their time, midnight my time, it worked considerably better. It is still not very good quality, but even video that updates once every couple of seconds is fine with me. I can also hear them just fine, but apparently my voice isn't getting through, so I resorted to typing what I wanted to say, and just listening the other way around. Not perfect, but it's a start!

I also got a headset for the XBox in the mail from my brother, and we were able to talk via XBox Live, which is really intended to set up gamers with each other to play games. It just so happens that being able to talk to each other was a valuable enough feature that it is included, and my roommate has an XBox 360 he barely uses now that he's beaten the only 2 games he brought with him.

When It Rains, It Pours

I posted a couple months ago about how mail works over here in Iraq, which is really a "best effort" extension of how it works back home; the military post offices here collect mail from us and inject it into the mail system at home, and from there we wait the requisite time for delivery. Priority Mail, for instance, takes 2-3 days normally, so if we use it over here, it is however long it takes to get to the US, plus that 2 or 3 days. Getting mail from the US to here works the same way, only in reverse, with mail addressed to my ZIP first getting delivered to the Army, then flown here by them or a contractor on a best effort basis.

I mention all of this because I got four packages today, some of which have postmarks from two weeks ago!!

So, without further ado, the first package I got was:


Shoelaces. I opened this one on the spot at our supply office, since I got an email that an order came in. Yes, I really got a plastic envelope with two sets of shoelaces in them (bootlaces to be more precise). The Army set up this system to replace uniform-related stuff in country that wears out and ... (ok, I think no one cares about the shoe/boot laces).

I took the laces and went back to my housing unit, where I discovered my roommate, Bob, had picked up my mail for me - the other three packages, which I did not know were waiting for me at this point. He reminded me as I gleefully started cutting them open that he recently carried a large metal pole for some distance, which was currently providing us Internet (I knew I would not live that one down for a while ...). I assured him that if these were what I thought they were, I could repay him in spades!

So, the second package was:




SALSA!!! Yes, like the "precious" One Ring from Tolkien's classic, I knew it immediately when I saw the lids of the iconic jars Tonya picked in which to "can" them. I spent a few minutes telling Bob the importance of what I held in my hand, the history behind Tolteca, and how I could not get this salsa even when I was in Maryland. I guess if you are outside of driving distance from Tolteca, you might as well be on the moon if you are trying to get salsa there. Yet, here was a jar, in my hand.




The verdict: it was still good! Obviously, I did not have a reference dish of salsa to do a more scientific comparison, but really, it tasted great. I guess I don't necessarily want to know if there's supposed to be a difference when you perform the canning process if I can't tell as I'm devouring it. Still not convinced himself, Bob took a taste:


... and score another one with the broad side of the chalk for Tonya and Tolteca (but I'm still not forgiven for the metal pole incident). In all, she sent 12 of the jars, which hold a reasonable sitting's worth of salsa (probably about 2 dishes in the restaurant), and rationing it out I go through about a half-jar at a time.

The third package was another bag of chips from Tonya, pictured to the left in the next photo. That brings my stock to three bags, which each supposedly have around 220 chips.

The fourth package was yet another huge surprise ... a birthday party kit from Kathy!


Yes, that is a cake in the middle of the box, and the jar to the lower left is frosting. There are a couple of containers of "drizzle" in there too, which I guess is supposed to go on top of the frosting from what I read of the instructions. There are plates, candles, and little confetti, all emphasizing that it will be the "Big 3-0" for me in a couple of days. I'm leaving it as sealed as I can until Friday, when I will decorate a little, borrow a lighter from the smokers next door, and do a field-expedient birthday celebration!

One of the best parts of the kit was the DVD with pictures of Kathy and Matt making the cake - there are a few pictures of John feeding Matt lunch and getting him ready for the hard afternoon of quality testing (what other expertise does a guy with cheeks like that have?), then the lunacy of baking a cake with a 17-month old is chronicled in a series of pictures of Kathy and Matt working at the island in her kitchen. There were about a dozen prints, which I taped to the wall by some of the other pictures.

There were also Kathy's classic baked goodies in with the kit, which did not make it quite as unscathed as the cake and the salsa:


The Oatmeal Carmelitas on the top shelf and the Poppy Seed Bread on the bottom right didn't get mushed, they got baked more! It has been around 105-110 here for the past week or so, and the postmarks on the boxes indicate they've spent at least two in transit. I didn't see anything wrong with the OCs or the bread, so I put them in the fridge to firm up a bit. Bob thinks that aside from sticking to the bag a bit, they're going to make good midnight snacks (we are flush with things like microwave popcorn and small candies, but these are a meal!). The Pumpkin Bread on the lower left made it just fine, albeit a bit warm, so it's going in the fridge for a bit too.

Whew! What a great birthday I'm going to have in a few days!! Thanks Tonya and Kathy!

P.S. By the way, thanks for making the runs to the Post Office, John ... I noticed the customs forms mostly seem to have your name on them!

Chasing the Jackal

I can Skype.

I've actually waited about four months to say that! I finally got an antenna rig for the one ISP on Camp Victory, "Jackal", that allows you to use programs like Skype, BitTorrent, online gaming, and some other less savory yet high-demand online services. The one that I had been using, "Magic Island" or "MIT" (Magic Island Technologies), worked much like you might use a hotspot in a Starbucks - they have wireless access points all over the place, and if you are close enough to one, you connect, pay, and surf. The trouble is, MIT is in bed with the military, and it polices what you do on the network. In the case of the less savory things you can do online, it is to be expected, but they also cut off Skype, gaming, and other fairly benign things in the name of security and conservation of bandwidth. Despite this odious policy, since you don't need a crazy antenna to get their service, they get a lot of users who aren't willing to go on an epic quest to connect.

The antennas are available as they come into country, and you have to sign up with Jackal before they will order one. For $150 ($75 deposit, $75 for the antenna to keep as long as you need), you get on a waiting list that is at least a month long. When it comes in, you have to find some kind of mast, pole, or long piece of wood to mount it on, then set it up to point to one of several Jackal motherships. I was able to get one secondhand for $100 (but it's not eligible to be returned for its deposit ...), complete with a sturdy metal mast and a fairly long cable. I thought the guy who sold it to me lived only a couple housing units down from mine, so I asked my roommate Bob to pick it up for me on his day off - the guy selling it was trying to get out of Dodge quick (no pun intended - I live in a housing area called "Dodge City North"). It turned out he lived more like 20 housing units away. It'll take a few more weeks to live that one down.

Hopefully I can start getting into the weekly Skype routine everyone has been running for several months now!

Of course, pictures always help ... here are some of the install:

This is the antenna itself, known as a "Subscriber Unit" (it's WiMax technology). The guy who sold it to me gave me the metal pipe it is attached to as well.

We set it up to lean against the 12-foot concrete walls that surround our housing unit (bottom right). I used nylon cord to attach it to the concrete wall; there are a couple of rebar loops built into the wall to allow forklifts to manipulate it.

There wasn't much room between the wall and the housing unit for me, let alone the ladder ... oh well, war is hell.

Bob, watching me risk my life on the ladder from the ground, still not amused about having to carry the immense metal pole a quarter mile (or more)!

That's it! We ran the cord from the wall (in the background) to our window, and we got unrestricted Internet!

The Message Bean

I got some good news about a week ago - from a bean plant:

The bean plant

"A what?" you ask? Yes, I didn't type that incorrectly. It was somehow written on the side of a bean seed, so when the bean sprouted, it exposed the text. I started watering it about three weeks ago, and it took around a week for the sprout to break ground, then a day or two for the husk to show with the message. Here's me with my new bean plant (it still brightens up the Engineering area even after it's delivered its message):


So this blog entry has actually been about 4 months in the making. Tita, Autumn and Matt sent me this bean plant back in December, when it was pretty cold out here, so I left the plant in the shipping materials (a can with a removable top) for a warmer time. After I had been back from leave for about a month, I stumbled on it, and eventually made it into work carrying it in my cargo pocket. It did really well under the fluorescent lights and the indoor air, which is a bit warm now despite the air conditioning. It's only the beginning of the heat - it's rumored to reach 120 degrees out here, which is basically like Palm Springs if it were on another planet.

The bean plant has garnered quite a following in the office, being the only real plant there. There are people (of course), rats, roaches, and various insects, but this is really the only plant. The first encounter with someone usually involves the bean's backstory, and I get a rash of daily status seekers, all looking it over to see if it has been attacked by insects, burned by the nearby copier, or even some who wonder if it is still there (I think they're plotting its doom). In any case, I'm sure going to miss it when it's gone. I guess I know how Tom Hanks felt about that volleyball in "Castaway" ...

Oh yeah, the message. Tita, Autumn and Matt wanted to let me know: "I love you"!

Hometown Hero 5k

Everyone, meet the next F-R-E-E T-shirt:


Last Saturday, my unit put on a 5k "fun run" called the Hometown Hero 5k. The race was held the same day in both Iraq and back in Delaware, and the times are being compiled together to determine the winners, wherever they ran. It's almost like the 15k that the 146th Signal Battalion from Florida put on a few weeks ago, except that one was a HUGE race in the US, and this one was pretty much a local event. The Delaware National Guard hosts a series of runs each year, and this one counted as one of the series.

It wasn't a particularly good run for me - I've had a couple of fairly busy weeks, and going to the gym has declined from a 4-day a week affair to a 2 or 3 days a week, even reaching a low of one day last week. Getting back into the swing of things is painful, but I only declined 16 seconds on 3.1 miles, so I guess it's not that bad. It was a lot harder to run this one though, and it was slower!

Here's me crossing the finish line:



Yes, I'm actually wearing the T-shirt for the race, which may be another reason I didn't run so fast - I already had my prize at the start of the race!!

The obligatory group photo. I'm not even going to try with the names; the people in the photo are from my unit (261st Signal Brigade). The one gentleman I would like to point out is Captain Linden Boyer, the guy on the far left, who put most of this thing together (and who I can thank for ... yes, the T-shirt :)

"Your mom sends me care packages"

This must be "funny vignette day"; here's what made me laugh today ...

Some background: We live in two-man rooms here on Camp Victory, and no matter how you try, if you have a roommate, you have to resort to skills you learned when you were in Kindergarten. Fortunately, my roommate, Bob Anuszewski (a.k.a. "Ski"), and I get along just fine, so we set up our room as an open area with the beds and closets along opposite walls, giving us a living room of sorts when we aren't occupying a bed. Throw in opposite shifts, and we basically have 2/3 of the room whenever we are in it.

Along with the fortunate living situation came some conveniences we developed. For instance, since it is easier for me to drop off laundry on the way to work than for Ski (I'm on day shift) and easier for him to pick it up on the way back from shift, that's how we handle laundry. I take two bags, and he picks two up a day or two later.

We can also pick up each other's mail, which leads me to the point of the story: Ski is traveling in the North of Iraq right now, and I'm picking up all his mail. His mom unfortunately sent a lode of cookies after he found out he was leaving, and they had not arrived by the time he left. I have been photographing and emailing him the mailing labels, and when this one came in:


he told me to open it, eat my fill of cookies, save him half a box, and distribute the rest. The cookies are excellent (thanks Mrs. Anuszewski!!), and along with the other wonderful packages everyone has sent, I am running more and more on the treadmill to burn it all off.

I told the other soldiers in our section about all of this, and we decided we had to somehow poke fun at Ski because he missed the care package, leaving us here eating cookies his mom baked for "all of us" (but we all know they were really for him, she just knows better than to include only enough for him to eat ...). One guy came up with this patch from the custom patch shop:


Patches on your right sleeve are a big deal to some people out here, for various reasons. Some patches signify you served under a storied unit during a conflict (i.e. "I was in 'Nam, man!"), having many patches means you went to war many times (i.e. "This is nothing ... you should have seen it in '03!"), and having certain other ones indicates you have some special skill (i.e. "Special Forces", "Ranger", etc) - these unofficial "custom" patches are meant to poke fun at the patch-worshipers, and have a good laugh in the process.

So, after much ado, I'm going to send a thank-you note to Mrs. Anuszewski with the picture below printed out and enclosed ... and email a copy to Ski to let him know the cookies made it!

Dodge City North

Quick quiz: What is "Dodge City North"?

A) The name of a town from the Wild West where a famous shootout occurred.

B) The title of a second-rate action movie starring Arnold Schwartzenegger.

C) A Chrysler plant that makes the new Dodge Ram 1500 pickup.

D) The aptly named living area in Iraq where James currently lives.

E) This is an April Fool's joke; why would anyone name something Dodge City North?

If you guessed "E", then you are probably thinking the same thing the people who lived in this place thought when it was officially called something else, but affectionately called Dodge City. So the story goes, this used to be the living area that got hit the hardest and most often by mortars and over-the-wall attacks. It's not particularly close to the wall anymore (the wall has been moved out over the years), and there have been almost no attacks since I arrived. At some point, though, it was bad enough that the residents nicknamed it, and the military let the name stick.

Despite the relative calm, the living areas are pretty heavily fortified with concrete barriers, and it is a lot like cabin camping in a post-apocalyptic wasteland:

Bottled water is available everywhere - you just help yourself to however many bottles you want. Of course, you are encouraged to conserve, but not at the expense of hydration. Even in the winter and spring, I usually go through two or three of the 1-liter bottles a day. All the water is purified out of the Tigris River, which is diverted to Victory Base Complex via canal, and the bottles are produced, filled, and distributed from the Oasis Bottling Plant about a 20 minute walk from my room.

This is one of the massive generators that provide power to the living areas. All of the power here is generated using fuel that is trucked in. All of the water and raw materials used on base are trucked in, and the wastewater and trash are trucked out. It's almost like we are living on the moon.

The tall concrete walls are known as "T-walls", since they roughly form the shape of an upside-down T. They are everywhere. In the beginning, there were sandbags, but as our presence grew more permanent, they were replaced by the Jersey barriers (like on the freeway), then 5-foot tall barriers, then a year or two ago, these 12-foot T-walls. As going-away gifts, units will often get miniature replicas of the T-walls and engrave something in them or mount a coin in them. The signature mark of the company that makes the T-walls is the number "77" at the top - it is even on the miniature ones they make!

Dodge City just goes on and on ... and it's one of several living areas on Camp Victory (one of 6 camps that make up Victory Base Complex)!

The structure to the right of this picture is a bunker. These are not as frequently occurring as I would think for a place called Dodge City, but they are close enough to you if you are between T-walls that you can dive into one in a pinch.