i am ashamed…

…that i accidentally posted a picture of Clyde Drexler yesterday, when i meant to honor Buck Williams, his (slightly less) famous teammate…

so thanks to the walking/lumbering encyclopedia of arcane and useless sports information – also known as my roommate, kevin – i can now correct this error. 

it’s time for you to come out from Clyde’s shadow, Buck…although those glowing white spandex would be visible in or out of shadow…

and to my former roommates in georgia, DD1 and DD2 (troy and alex), i’m more than a little disappointed that all those weekends spent watching sports and hearing you two argue back and forth about which backup center for the arizona cardinals had a better college career have yielded NO suggestions for the countdown.  it’s truly a sad day when troy and alex have forgotten who played shooting guard for the 1988 denver nuggets, and where he went to college, and what he majored in, and who he was traded for in a three-team deal in 1991…(all events described in that last sentence are fictional, any resemblance to actual players and/or trades that troy and alex argued about while playing John Madden Football on hung-over saturday mornings is purely coincidental, or the product of the amount of random sports knowledge that has been stuffed between my ears, to the exclusion of important and worthwhile information, after living with DD1 and DD2).

bandidas

tonight’s channel 12 offering is “Bandidas”, starring penelope cruz and salma hayek. 

and co-starring their corsets and tight pants.  because if i can say nothing else about this movie, it is historically accurate, and comes complete with training-to-be-bank-robbers montage, a scene where they practice their kissing on steve zahn, and dwight yoakam as the sage who trains the two in bank robbing.  i would write more about it, but i’m completely engrossed in the heartfelt we-used-to-hate-each-other-but-now-we’ve-come-to-respect-each-other scene between cruz and hayek.  seriously, i’m tearing up.

and i apologize for my reckless over-hyphenation in the last paragraph…and i promise to be more careful in the not-too-distant-future.  damn. 

but seriously, how many of you didn’t see that coming?

in baghdad news, our replacements are starting to roll in, and drinking from the fire hose.  it is an interesting crew, and makes me wonder how we looked to the group that we replaced.  we showed up with a bunch of Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) Captains, many of whom had been out of the army for (what i thought was) a long time, maybe 3,4,5 years or so.  Enter the newest group of IRR officers, Majors this time, who have been out of the army, on average, 14-16 years, having left the army in 1992 or so.

i’m sure they’ll be able to help the team, but how deep are we digging when the folks we’re bringing in haven’t put on an army uniform since the Minnesota Twins won the world series?   

i guess this is as good a time as any to admit that i am a Twins fan, although when Dan Gladden’s mullet left, and took Dan Gladden with it, the magic went out of the team for me.  Steve Lombardozzi, anyone?  Dad?

so anyways, we’ll see how it goes with the new crew, and it’s hard for me not to selfishly be happy for their arrival, because it portends my departure.  portend might have a darker connotation than i was shooting for, given that i’ve been looking forward to leaving since i got here, bt i’ll allow it, because it’s my blog, and it gave me the opportunity to write this (i think) witty sentence).

i have to end with a caveat, about our countdown to leaving…as we will not know exactly when we’re leaving, and couldn’t share that information even if we had it, our countdown is more of a ballpark figure than an exact number to calculate our date of departure. (plus, even if we had a date, the odds of us doing the math properly in our over-caffeinated and over-power-pointed state is dubious).  so those of you planning to fly out and meet me when i land, to express your appreciation for my repeated attempts to amuse myself in a public forum, may have to revise your plans…

having said that, today is 52 – Buck Williams of the Portland Trail Blazers (from the eary 90’s).

cheers.

the grind

my theory was flawed.  i’ll admit it up front, and add a hope that i will never get a chance to test alternate 12-month deployment theories.

we are supposed to take our mid-tour leave somwhere in the middle four months of our tour.  go figure.  so, being the clever, system-out-smarting kind of guy that i believe i am (some evidence to the contrary, as you will soon discover) i pushed my leave to the very end of that period.  the logic was simple – if i could get to 8 months, and then return from leave around the 9-month mark, i would be coasting to re-deployment. 

flawed.  flawed.  flawed.

i came back from leave 3 weeks ago, and i have to say, it’s been the longest 3 weeks EVER. 

part of the problem is that about 3/4 of the people we arrived with will be leaving somewhere between 3 and 6 weeks before me and kevin. 

please step up and receive your complimentary kick in the face.  now go back to your desk and make another slide.

so as some of our friends are getting their bags packed, we are looking at 8 more weeks.  and i thought the army was always fair…

but, as my mom always says, this too shall pass.  and the weather is starting to warm up a bit (not that it was ever that cold, but i’m looking for something to be positive about, work with me…) so it could be worse.  we could be on a 15-month active duty tour, we could still be living in the roof-tar closet room, we could be in the air force.  just kidding about that last one.  but not really.

anyways, the countdown rolls on, although we wish we were in soccer midfielder territory instead of offensive linemen.

yesterday was 64 – Jim Burt of the New York Giants.  who wore cute little elbow pads to go with his 3-sizes-too-small jersey.  he said it was to keep defensive linemen from getting a hold of him.  i have my own theories.

cheers.

nose hair

yes, someone with more delicate sensibilities would have used some sort of creative euphemism for the hair in your nose.  haha.

for those of you not put off by the title, today’s discussion, which actually became rather heated this morning between myself and the rhino in our room, deals with the difficulties inherent in keeping your nose free from stray, visible, (and therefore offensive to all) nose hairs.

from the disturbingly in-depth conversation which nearly made me late for breakfast, i have gleaned the following Things To Know and Share With Your Friends About Nose Hair:

1) any sort of visible nose hair, no matter how little it protrudes, is highly offensive.

2) the darker the hair, the more offense will be taken.

3) if you can’t tell where your nose hair ends and your mustache begins, you’re wrong.

4) trimming of nose hair is a precision operation – clumsy trimming may lead to matting of nose hair, which in turn could cause a rogue hair to appear in a previously cleared area of the nose.

5) having in-depth conversations about nose hair right before meals is an effective dieting technique.

this was the most stimulating conversation i’ve had in quite some time, which is not as sad as it sounds, because it really was a lively one…

in current events, how horrible of a mother do you have to be for kevin federline to be considered a more fit parent than you are? 

and just for the record, the phillies have been on a tear ever since i posted the picture of the phillie phanatic above my desk. 

maybe if i post a picture of the government of iraq, they’ll pick up the pace…

cheers.

phillie phanatic

OK, seriously…am i the only person to ever become a phillies fan based solely on their mascot?  somehow i doubt it.  there’s just something about the phanatic that makes me happy.  i’ve never been to philadelphia, but just the chance of seeing the phanatic would be enough to motivate me.

  how can you not love that?  in fact, i love it so much that it is now posted above my desk for inspiration. 

 see top right…and to the right of the phillie phanatic is the aforementioned clipboard with the Status of Pants, which continues to hinder our efforts to rebuild Iraqi society.

so this is what my world looks like most of the day.  for a change, i will sometimes stand up and walk to the edge of our world…

 my desk would be on the left.

for those of you who think the army is glamorous…you’re right.  if you’re dilbert.

i’m afraid there’s not much to ramble about today, sorry to disappoint.

thanks to everyone for the birthday well-wishes.  i am working on a list of the top ten “realizations of a 28-year-old”, hopefully for the next post.   

rusty, good to hear from you, tell the men’s team good luck, i like bragging that i once sat the bench for SCU…

cheers.

the daily grind

if you want to get anything done in this world, you need a general on your side.  it’s true.  you can battle, cajole, persuade, demand, plead, and even get naked, but at the end of the day, if nobody with a star on his shirt buys into it, you’re in big trouble.  (and not just because you got naked)

there.  that’s my frustrated soap box for the day.  i will climb down from said soap box now. 

on the “learning arabic” front, today i learned how to say “bathroom” and “alcohol”.  happily, the two words were already inextricably linked through cause and effect in my mind, which should make them easy to remember.

in other news, kevin is away from home, which means i can now turn around in my room without any sort of homoerotic contact. 

glen is still making lots of powerpoint slides, and is still asian.  i promise to report any changes in his job related duties, or his ethnicity.

otherwise, things are the same, should start cooling down a bit soon.  oh, and a big shout-out to Muqtada Al-Sadr, for deciding not to have his minions kill any completely innocent people for 6 months.  good work, fellas, you’re back on the christmas card list. 

enough political bitterness, i am going home to enjoy one more night of having enough space to do my needlepoint.  just kidding.  but not really.

cheers.

baby steps

so it’s been more than a month, and that means i can’t just jump back into the banter i prefer to fill these pages with.  so this post will be picture heavy, and wit light.  just like the diet cokes over here, which are called coca-cola light.  somehow seems less emasculating to grab a “light” drink than a “diet” drink.  go figure.

 i have been promising pictures of the room for some time, and these pictures come part in parcel with a short discussion of the paradox that is our trailer.  the following are pictures of kevin and my room.

                                                                   

the first picture is from the doorway, looking at kevin’s bunk bed.  the second is one step inside the doorway, looking at my bed.  the third is from the doorway, looking at my locker, with the view partially blocked by kevin’s locker. 

 while the quarters are somewhat cramped (think : all the chinese people in the boat in lethal weapon 4) the furniture is normal-sized, the beds almost long enough, and the wall locker can almost hold 1/4 of the gear i brought with me.  given furniture for normal-sized people in the room, the innocent reader of this blog could be forgiven for assuming that the rest of the trailer would be conducive to life as a normal-sized human being.  the innocent reader of this blog would be wrong, as the following pictures illustrate:

picture standing in the bathroom. mirror is only useful for shaving if i am a) a hobbit or b) shaving my chest. and fixtures for short people could even be forgiven, if only there were some consistency. alas, it is not to be:

picture of shower fixture (ladder needed to reach shower fixture not shown).

end result of location of mirror = my back hurts after shaving, and i cut myself frequently. 

end result of location of shower head = faceful of water and near-drowning incident the first time, and only slightly less dramatic goings-on since.

at the end of the day, we do have a roof over our heads, and running water, so i can’t complain too much. 

next time: top ten things i’ve learned in the first 4 months here. 

 cheers.

helmet fires

access to the blog continues to be sporadic; fortunately i am opportunistic and never at a loss for witty commentary.   fortunately for whom, i am not sure…

today’s topic is helmet fires.  before i continue, i would like you all to take a moment to let your imagination run wild, and enjoy the visual. 

for the dyslexic among us, i did not say fire helmet…

  

“…an expression for a mental state characterized by unnaturally high stress and task saturation and loss of situational awareness” is the Wikipedia definition of a helmet fire.  yeah, i know, i didn’t think it had a real definition either.

although “task saturation” is definitely a term that should be used more often around here.  as in, “sir, i cannot complete that slide show, because i am saturated with tasks.  i am dripping with tasks.  my pores are oozing tasks, and making a little task puddle on the floor.”  you get the idea. 

hmmm…”task puddle”…good name for a band.  although i feel like i’m cheating a little bit, because “puddle” is just a funny word, and would enhance the name of just about anything.

 i was going to ramble about puddles for a bit, but it turned out to be not quite as funny as i had hoped.  oh well.

not much else to say tonight, except that i am “saturated” with packages full of goodies, and now have an entire drawer full of beef jerky and various nut mixes.  thank you to all who have sent me this wonderful cornucopia of treats.  i have, in two months, surprassed the volume of care packages received in 7 months last time here. 

and mom, for the gi-normous book of crossword puzzles, thank you, and you are now my favorite person named Geraldine Smith.

noodle, the movie selection reflects your impeccable taste.  and by impeccable i mean childish and immature.  and by childish and immature i mean right up my alley…

i am trying to put together a worthy Top Ten for the weekend, but you can’t rush these kinds of things.  anyone with suggestions for Top Tens they would like to see, please do not hesitate to submit.  let’s make this an interactive blog.  bloggeractive.  nope, not a good word.  i’ll work on it.

good night to all.

cheers.