The many faces of generosity

I walked into Loretta and Matt's new apartment this evening, and I am speechless.

It is amazing!

The apartment is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath unit in Glendora, where Loretta lived for 25 years before moving to Maryland last year to live with us. The complex is very lush and green, which hopefully will suit Loretta and her green thumb very well. The apartment itself is newly-renovated, with new flooring and paint. It has a large living room area, a smaller breakfast nook, and a moderate kitchen. There is also a plethora of storage space both within the apartment and near the assigned carport.

I had been dreading arriving here and getting moved into the apartment. After all, I feel like I have spent a good portion of my adult life in the process of moving: I moved at least twice per year in college, then moved three times in medical school and residency, and finally moved to El Paso last summer. In the past 12 years, I have lived in three major cities and 12 different apartments/homes. Frankly, I'm tired of moving and wasn't looking forward to the mountain of boxes and shopping lists this move would require.

When I walked into this apartment, all of my doubts and fears vanished. It was completely cleaned, unpacked, furnished, and stocked with food, linens, toiletries, pots & pans, and toys. I knew that my mom and all of her friends and co-workers had worked very hard this week to get the apartment ready, but seeing the place for myself confirmed their generosity. They thought of everything, from a small office pack (with letters, stamps, stapler, post-its, etc) to hangers in both of the bedrooms to a garlic press in the kitchen to food for all of our pets. The best part was Matt's room: she decorated it with dinosaurs of all types - stuffed dinos, dino lamps, dino puppets, dino wall hangings - and it was completely ready for him, from a collection of books, to diapers, to his name in block letters on his chest of drawers. In fact, the room was so perfect that Matt had his bath, read books, and went to sleep without a problem - which is unusual for any 13-month-old in a brand new place. The sight of his room literally took my breath away.

The generosity of everyone involved in this move has been astounding. I could never have imagined a few months ago that so many people would band together to help me, James, Matt, and Loretta in our time of need. All of your hours of toil have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. To all of those who have contributed in some big or small way to making our lives easier and happier over the past month, I truly thank you. Your thoughtful and selfless personal sacrifice will allow me to enjoy the next few weeks and create the memories with my family and friends that will sustain me during my tour in Afghanistan.

In a hotel room with 3 babies

The good news: I made it safely to Tucson, the first stop in my trip from El Paso to Glendora, and symbolically the first stop on my way to Afghanistan.

The bad news: I'm stuck in a hotel room with a 13-month old human baby, and two 4-year old babies. ('Babies' is the affectionate term James and I use to refer to our two cats, Sushi and Sake.) And none of them wants to sleep!!!

Although it's way past his bedtime, Matthew is currently playing with my running shoes, which I inadvertently left on the floor. Sushi is exploring every nook and cranny in the hotel room, to include behind the frig, where she got stuck earlier and required rescue. (I nearly fainted when I walked in from dinner and couldn't find the babies - I really panicked!) Sake is .... well, being Sake. She's the queen kitty who is laying on the floor in the corner, sphinx-like.

Today was a difficult day in some respects, but it was full of relief in others. Getting out of the house this morning was frustrating, to put it lightly. I had no idea it would take 3 adults and 1 child four hours to get the 3 animals and ourselves into the cars. By the time we left El Paso, Matt was screaming, the cats were meowing, and I was feeling quite stressed. (A friend even called this morning in the middle of the packing debacle; all I said was, "Hello?" and she immediately answered with, "Autumn, what's wrong?")

At the same time, my deployment adventure finally started today! It was a relief to stop planning and start doing something. Leaving El Paso signaled the commencement of a chapter in my life that I will never forget, a chapter which will likely include laughter, tears, loneliness, personal satisfaction, gratitude, sorrow, and every emotion in between. Let's get on with it!!

Mail Voodoo

Mail. Getting and sending it is one of those inalienable rights we have as soldiers, and one of the things I definitely took for granted before I got deployed. I'm not a big mail guy, but there's nothing like getting a letter in the mail when you're stuck somewhere not even the people who send junk mail can find you!

Mail is a strange beast out here. The Army runs its own post office branches ("APO" in the address where the city normally goes means "Army Post Office"), and soldiers go through mail handling courses to be certified to collect, distribute, and account for mail. We pick it up out of the same office that does all of our administrative stuff (the Headquarters Company), and they will take your small stuff to the post office. The big stuff has to go directly to the post office or FedEx - yes, FedEx has offices here! Mail under 13 ounces going to US domestic addresses is also free - kind of a shocker, but I'm not complaining.

I started this post right after I got 7 letters and postcards from my nieces, Ashley and Kaitlin, and my sister-in-law, Tonya. I'm sure Tonya accumulated a couple things before sending them out, but mail tends to accumulate through the delivery chain anyway, so by the time it gets here, if you mailed it within a week of something else, it may have caught up to it by virtue of the first one being delayed. The girls didn't write so much as prepare works of art for me - Kate did her impression of an Army Base, and Ash went the abstract route and gave me a cornucopia of mixed colors. I know it's cheesy for me to like mail like that, and I could have gotten a scan of each masterpiece through email, but would it really have been the same?

(Nice work, girls!!)

My inspiration

Well, well, well. James has decided to join the fun! I have been telling him that I was going to start this blog since I learned about my deployment about a month ago. My inspiration was the doctor in Bagram who I'll be replacing; she and her husband (who is non-military but is quite busy with their three children while she's gone) have a 'joint' blog which I found interesting and enlightening. Her family has benefitted greatly from the information posted there, and she says that it has helped make 7,000 miles seem much shorter. And I'll do anything that makes 7650 or 1425 miles seem shorter!!! :-)

She has also been a great help to me in preparing for my deployment. My unit (602nd ASMC out of Ft. Bragg) is already in Bagram, and so I am technically a replacement doc. This means that rather than deploying with my unit, I am joining them in theater, and I do not have the luxury of preparing at the same time as the rest of the unit. (Of course, the grand advantage of being a replacement doc is that the tour is only 6 months, rather than 12.) That being said, I am garnering as much information as possible from as many people as possible in order to prepare myself as completely as possible.

And not only am I packing for Afghanistan, but I am also packing for California. For everyone. So I'm packing myself, James, and Matt for the trip to California; James and I will be staying for several weeks, and Matt will be there for 6 months. Packing for a 6-month trip for a 1-year-old has been quite a challenge! I'm managing, though, and slowly but surely the luggage is piling up in my room ....

.... and I am beginning to get quite excited about the events of the next 3 weeks!!! Our calendar looks like this:

- Thursday, January 29th: Leave El Paso
- Friday, January 30th: Arrive Los Angeles
- Saturday, January 31st: James leaves Baghdad
- Sunday, February 1st: Move into Matt and Loretta's apartment in Glendora
- Tuesday, February 3rd: James expected to arrive in Glendora
- Thursday, February 12th: Operation Love Reunited photo session (www.oplove.org)
- Tuesday, February 17th: James leaves Glendora to return to Baghdad
- Thursday, February 19th: Autumn leaves Glendora to return to El Paso
- Saturday, February 21st: Autumn reports to Ft. Benning for pre-deployment processing

Sounds exciting, doesn't it?? I can't wait for James, Matt, and me to all be in the same place for a few weeks. I'm not exactly sure what else is on the agenda, but I'm pretty sure we'll be headed to Disneyland (who, by the way, has some great 2009 deals for military members) and also to Tolteca (every day if James gets to choose!). I'll be sure to keep you updated on the fun .....

One-way conversations

Well, another frustrating day of trying to use the Internet here. A lot of stuff works just fine, but the stuff that does not work utterly does not work - in this case, I need to post something for school and can't. Then there are the endless reply-all emails we all know and love, one of which I was sucked into a couple days ago and which is still gaining momentum. I know I can send email successfully, but the message is just not getting through. It's a day of one-way conversations ...

The first one-way conversation I had today was on this reply-all email. It's really not kosher to divulge the content of the email, but suffice to say I explained some technical details about the network we're monitoring over here to some people with a complaint, and they responded saying that they agreed with me but continued with the complaint like I had not said anything at all. If you agree with my explanation, they why would you continue to complain that no one knows why your problem exists? I know why their problem exists, and I can tell you it's not technical ...

I also tried to access my grad school's online learning system - basically a modern day incarnation of a bulletin board where people post long threads of discussion, readings, assignments, and Byzantine grading systems that take into account whether you responded to something within a certain amount of time or not, how long your response was, and most insidiously, what the quality of your response was. I think before we reduce quality to such a trivial role, we might take a lesson or two from Robert Pirsig about how this website is leading us to our goals of enlightenment. I said I tried to access it because I was only partially able to access it - apparently I can read but not write from the recreational network we have access to in our housing units. That's just great, now I get to work on school from the building where I am on shift!

There's really no good way to get Internet access out here - you can spend the money on your own personal satellite dish and access plan ($thousands, but good), buy the commercial ISP-provided stuff ($tens, but see above for how satisfying it is), walk 20 minutes and use the education center's Navy-run separate network ($free, just very inconvenient and often maxed out), or if you are lucky enough to have it at work, just use that ($free but monitored, and you get drive-by taskings since you're still at work when you use it). All of these options are riding satellite links that are the best we can do, but really not all that good. I guess that should make me thankful I have the last couple options, right? Some guys out here don't even have that; their network access consists of a couple hardened plastic cases and a wire to whatever radio gets the signal to a larger radio and more plastic cases.

At least I have the ability to post to the blog!

"Get on the Truck" 5k

Runners from the 261st Signal Brigade, from left to right:
Me, 1LT Michael Olsen, MAJ Steven Willey, SPC Nathan Siebach

Well, the 5k went alright this morning, with 4 runners from my unit all placing in the top 250 people. Yes, you read that right, the top 250 people. Why would I care about such a mediocre performance as that? It's simple: only the top 250 people got the free T-shirt!

While it may sound a little cynical, I am not so concerned with my place in the race as I am with the T-shirt. If you ask Autumn, she'll tell you I accumulate free T-shirts, use about 30% of them, then complain when they wear out or she tries to get rid of them to make room for the influx of newer T-shirts. It's not just T-shirts that I accumulate, it's anything that reminds me of the moment, like the program from a ceremony or a receipt for a snack at a convenience store. That's what I really complain about Autumn throwing away, and with respect to the T-shirt for the 5k, it's not so much that I need another T-shirt but that I want another memory. The bulk of my T-shirts right now are from a brewery in Maryland called DuClaw (www.duclaw.com), which they give out on nights that they "release" a new beer. Sometimes it's a pint glass, and we have enough of those that we didn't buy real glasses for daily use!! With our move to El Paso, and now Glendora, I guess I'll have to find a new brewery, and with 5k races every other weekend here, I'm going to need a bin for the garage to keep all the memories ... er ... T-Shirts.

The "Get on the Truck" 5k was put on by the 57th Transportation Company - great job guys! "Get on the Truck" seemed to be their motto, and we found it a little strange for a footrace to have the same motto - isn't getting on the truck during a footrace for quitters and the wounded?

Here at the third vertex

Well, this was quite a surprise. I got an email from Autumn saying "how do you find the angles on an Isosceles triangle?", about which I thought "what could she possibly want that for?" I guess I didn't really think of how far away we were, but Glendora is basically halfway around the world from here. After brushing off the crumbs from tonight's rations of the tens of dozens of cookies I've gotten from Autumn and her mom in the last week, I thought I would join the experiment. I have a 5k run in about 6 hours, so I'm going to rack out, but here's to 7 months of blogging from the Middle East! For now, Vertex 3 out.

The birth of a blog

Lots and lots and lots of people have blogs nowadays. So what makes a good blog, one that I want to come back to day after day and read faithfully? Well, as I thought about starting a blog I realized that a good blog starts with a good name.

I brainstormed for a week to find the 'perfect' name for our blog. I came up with a long list, mostly from song lyrics such as 'These Are Days' and 'Don't Blink' and 'Learning How to Bend'. None was perfect, though. I wanted something quirky, maybe a little nerdy, something military- or deployment-related, and something original. Developing the perfect name turned into quite a challenge.

A few days ago, I prepared custom cards to send to my family and friends with my husband's deployment address in Baghdad, my deployment address in Afghanistan, and our son's new address in California. I wanted to include the distances of our separation in the card, and in doing so, I found that the distance from Bagram, Afghanistan, to Glendora, California was within several miles of the distance from Baghdad, Iraq, to Glendora, California. Hmmmm. My 10th grade geometry class came flashing back to me like strobe lights at a disco, and I somehow conjured up the term 'Isosceles Triangle'. (I then googled the term to make sure that my memory wasn't failing; turns out that it wasn't.)

My husband, son, and I will be like a very large isosceles triangle in 2009. James and I will be separated by 1425 miles, and Matthew and I by ~7650. It seems like a humongous distance at this point, but I hope that the internet, skype, video and digital cameras, and email will make the distance more bearable. By Christmas of 2009, we will still form an isosceles triangle, only at that point the sides of the triangle will be several feet rather than the length of half the planet. :-)