Discostup: The Desert, Luxembourg, and the Coat Rack of Death

Given Gwen's recent departure, I have definitely been slacking off on my posting of late. Hopefully that will change in the coming weeks. Regardless, here's an attempt to catch up on "stuff" of all varieties.

The Latest From the Desert

Well, Gwen is in Kuwait, and is (as predicted) fairly miserable. But hanging in there. She has started updating her blog again (link to the right --->), so check it out and enjoy the absolute madness that deploying with the army can be. If you know her as well as I do, you may begin to slowly gather (and really only through micro-examination of text and subtext) that there is an oh-so-slight bitterness to Gwen's current mental and emotional state that comes through in the tone of her posts. It's subtle, but it's there. (Just trust me on this.)

She heads to Iraq and her actual duty-station-to-be sometime in the next week. I'm not sure if things will be better or worse (vs. Kuwait) once she gets there. We'll see.

I have been fortunate in that I have been able to talk to Gwen twice since she was deployed and we have been emailing most days as well (excluding her 3-day camping trip). So communication is pretty good. (Gwen's first email to me was entitled "This is terrible". The second was so-named "And it gets worse". Poor, poor Gwendolyn). I've talked to Big Pete as well who is also hanging ou there. Despite pointing out the every day is basically "Groundhog's Day", his most telling comment was, "Dude, it's gonna be a long year."

And there is news regarding MY potential deployment as well. Big news, in fact. It looks as if I will be joining Pete in Kuwait at the end of March. Its not 100% yet, but I'd say its about 75%. Everyone probably remembers how I was slated to go to Iraq back in the summer WITH Pete. Well, the higher ups tried to force me into the slot for another doc but it was blocked by the even-higher ups at the US Army Europe Command level. As it now stands, though, that original doc (who is in Kuwait with Pete) is due to get out of the military (his obligation is up in a few months). So, they need a replacement - and guess who's number one on the list? That's right. Me.

Now, nothing the army tells me shocks me anymore. So I am both ready to go and ready to stay, and await only official orders. (What a dutiful soldier I've become).

Because Pete's entire unit (1st Armor Division, Second Brigage....Huah!) doesn't really have a mission at this time other than being "ready reserve" in Kuwait, there are several scenarios. First, I may never go. Second, I may leave in March only to come back at the end of April. Third, I may leave in March and stay all the way until November 2006 (the original plan). Fourth, I may leave in March, come back in April, and then go BACK down for a 3-4 month span at some point over the next 12 months. So it's all up in the air. But I have a PSP, a laptop, and a long reading list, so bring it on Army.

I sort of semi-volunteered for this spot because it gets me on deployment cycle with Gwen. Our hope is to be gone (if we have to be gone) at the same time, rather than the obviously worse scenario of you go one year, I go the next year, and so forth.

The Army never ceases to amaze me. If Gwen, Pete and I were truly smart, we would gather all our experiences in writing, collobarate and write about them. Then we could publish this beast (after getting out of the service) and have it be heralded as the second coming of Catch 22. Something to think about.

I will say this - the army can be a very scary place for educated people.

And so it is. Stay tuned.

Luxembourg

Through an odd turn of events that I won't go into here (it involves yet another deployment story), I found myself in the small country of Luxembourg this past Saturday night. Luxembourg, a small country nestled in between Germany and France, is about an hour and a half drive (when you drive like a maniac, aka me on the autobahn) away from my apartment. I was with a visiting Madigan resident (here to do a 1-month ICU rotation) named Trish. We had met up with her on-his-Germany-layover-while-deploying-to-Iraq-from-the-US boyfriend earlier in the day (long story), and afterwards were already pretty close and thus decided to roll into phat Luxembourg city and get some dinner.

We ate a small French place where the waiters spoke horrible English. In classic Mick fashion, I made about five faux pas during dinner which made the night even more entertaining. Most of said faux pas came from the cultural gap between myself and the wait staff and the fact that we could barely communicate. The most entertaining touch came when I went to get my own coat off the coat rack at the end of the meal. The various staff, who'd already had enough of us by this point, (damn French snobby jerks) nearly flipped their lids when I had the gaul to attempt to take my own jacket off of the finely-honed organizational system that was the restaurant coat rack. As I walked over and reached for the jacket, I heard no less than three anguished cries of "Misseur!!" go up behind me. I turned to look as they stormed over to me. Apparently, they didn't want me touching the coats. At all. One waiter escorted me back to my seat (by my arm!) while the others rushed wide-eyed to the rack to make sure everything was OK. It was pretty hilarious. Everyone seemed to break out in a cold sweat as if the simple act of getting my coat was like trying to defuse a bomb and potentially cutting the wrong (blue) wire. Good stuff. Trish and I were laughing and shaking our heads. The wait staff...was not amused.

Before and after dinner we walked around the main little plaza of Luxembourg City. Overall, it is a cool little place - unfortunately, we arrived too late (already dark) to get good pics, but here's a small sampling with some nice blurriness on some shots for effect: