"It's Groundhog's Day....Again."

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

Deployment Day 32

Baghdad, Iraq

"STRIKE UP THE MUSIC, WE'LL HAVE LOTS OF FUN..(bum-bum-bum-bum) - A PENN-SYL-VANIA POL-KA!"

Before I ever arrived here at the "cradle of civilization", I had heard many times about how deployment is a lot like the movie, "Groundhog's Day". Its the same day, over and over again, with only minor differences here and there that all blur together anyway when one looks back over any significant span of time. I would say that this outlook is mostly true, though with the caveat (at least in my own case), that a sort of Groundhog's week seems like a more appropriate expression. The weekdays all blend together, for sure. But the weekends have enough of a difference to make them markers of progress, or at least markers of difference. Allow me, kind people, to break down my week for you.

[Side Note: I'm going to be purposely a little vague here. On the one hand I don't want to invite the ire of the Orwellian higher-ups who may or may not be scanning this thing from time to time. (Click on the "Rinard" link on the side if you want to know what I mean.) And more importantly, I honestly don't want to give away any information which some insurgent could potentially use to find a good time or place to mortar us. So specific times, locales, and other details are going to be deliberately vague (or even false) on purpose. Further, I know many of you probably want me to "go off" on the Army and the situation a little more than I'm probably doing. I'm holding back on that front for many reasons. One is my constantly evolving and shifting opinion of this whole thing. Another is the whole Orwellian thing as above. And there are other issues. But rest assured, there will be a time and a place for all those things, and it may or may not be on this blog.]

Monday Thru Friday

Most of the weekdays are prettty similar. My typical day goes a little something like this. (*strums guitar*). I wake up fairly early (but not too early). Go to breakfast and eat oatmeal and get coffee. Then I roll over to sick call and end up spending the bulk of my day at the aid station. There is a 1-2 hour lunch break in there to break up the day. When I first got here, sick call was seeing about 1-3 people on average per day. So that's not very many at all. More recently, our numbers have jumped, and we see like 5-6 per day. That's still not many. Jeff, my PA, is also there, so we're really splitting the "workload" between two people. And technically, only one provider (i.e Jeff or I) is required to be there, so one of us will occasionally take a morning off to sleep in, or an afternoon off to run errands or something.

When its dead in sick call (and it often is), I spend my time either reading, drinking coffee and shooting the breeze, emailing, or playing a mindless-but-fun puzzle game called "Zuma" on the aid station computer. We also find time every day to get the "Stars and Stripes", which is the daily (and totally unbiased!) military newspaper. So I read through that and about the wonderful job we're doing over here, and then do the jumble, crossword, sudoku, and cryptic. At times someone will bring DVDs in, and I've certainly gotten through many sick calls watching episodes of South Park with my medics.

After sick call, I usually head back to the room and chill out a bit. Nap, read, email, whatever. The government computers at the aid station are good for email and work stuff but little else. So any power surfing needs to be done back in my room. Its kind of nice because they have a wireless service here at the FOB, which is called FUBI, and unnervingly stands for "For Us By Iraqis". The service works OK, and costs me about 2 bucks an hour to be logged in. But as we all know, sweet internet is worth just about any price. Apparently there is a huge dish here on the FOB which beams out the signal, and the company is actually French run. That said, I still don't do any online billing on it. (I can actually do that stuff on the government computer, which I'm betting is far more secure.)

After work and before dinner I'm just about always at the gym for an hour or two. This is my favorite part of deployment, thus far. That is, the ability to get back in really good shape. I've been in Iraq for about 28 days now, and I'm proud to say that I've missed going to the gym on only 3 of those days. (Oh, I'm toning up baby, and everyone out there better be READY for when I get back!) All the exercise is definitely good for body and mind, and I seriously haven't been working out like this since my senior year of college on the track team. I'm already seeing results - its kind of interesting what you can do in this arena if you have the time. In fact, between the constancy of diet and the regularity of exercise out here, there are many potential physiologic experiments to be performed.

After working out, its time to hit the showers (insert one of infinitely possible homo-erotic jokes here). Actually, the showers here are pretty damn nasty, and don't really lend themselves to any sort of erotic encounter. I have to wear flip flops (aka "shower shoes") the entire time. There is dirt and mud on the floor of the showers and on the floor of the general shower area. There is no where to sit, and so transitioning from toweled near-nudity to wearing underwear requires delicate balance and a precisely-timed, bastardized hop-step version of a Daniel Larusso crane kick, lest one's underwear touches ones still-dirty foot upon donning the garment. (I keep having visions of myself losing my balance at the critical moment of this process, and then taking a horrifically unceremonious spill onto the ground, rolling face first in Iraqi mud and bathroom muck, and then going fetal for about a week until they MEDEVAC me to the Landstuhl psych floor...but I digress.)

After the shower, its dinner time. I usually meet up and eat with Jeff and some of the other providers. The meals at the DFAC are pretty repetitive, with the exception of the aforementioned Friday "Surf and Turf". More on the generalized insidiousness of the DFAC in a later post. After dinner its strictly down time for the most part. Unlike some other providers at other locations, Jeff and I aren't really supposed to be going to any military meetings or the like, and thank heavens. (Poor Gwen is stuck doing this.) So upon getting back to the room, I have to make a decision about emailing, surfing, reading, playing on Jeff's X-box, listening to Jeff play on his X-box (For Nordoc!), playing the PSP, or watching DVDs. More on "the room" and our diversions there in a later post as well. Also, there is a movie night once a week over at the TMC for the providers as well. That's where we saw "The Beating of the Christ".

The Weekend

Everybody's working for it, and Friday night begins the transition to said weekend. Saturday is somewhat similar to other days - there is still sick call all day with lunch etc., exactly like the other days. Sunday is a nice break because there is no morning sick call, and thus its the only day in which I'm guaranteed to be able to sleep in. There is a short two hour afternoon sick call which is usually painless. Poker night occurs on the weekend (not saying which night, or what time, or where we play - got that mortar-happy insurgent jerks?), and that is my favorite part of the week. Its a providers-only game, usually including some docs, some PA's, our physical therapist, our psychologist, and our dentist. Sometimes less people, but never more than 12. We play Hold Em. Remember, we're Not Gambling (we're just pointing). Its kind of a tournament style set up. We theoretically (but again, only in theory) "buy in". Then everyone gets the same number of red, blue, white, and black chips. The blinds increase every twenty minutes and we play until there is one winner. Theoretical winnings (which again, don't actually exist) go to first and second place. I have no particular love of poker, but I don't dislike it either, and the game and the aura of the night itself are fun. We all sit around, open up a little, listen to music, drink near-beer, and smoke a stogie or two. (Or if you're Jeff, my roommate, you smoke about 4 stogies.)

And that's basically an average week. There is overnight call at the TMC, which all the providers (docs and PAs) split, and it comes up once every 6-9 days or so, depending on the schedule. Jeff and I have it worked out so that if either of us is on call, then the other gets a break for sick call on the before and after days, and it all works out pretty well.

And there it is - the average routine. All I need is a little daily Sonny and Cher on my wake up alarm...

This Past Week - Highlights

Poker

So I won at poker this last week, which rocked. A day or so before the game, I got a package which included some absolutely SICK cigars from the one and only Papa Roston. And there I was, sitting back at poker night, going to town on this retardedly high-quality and expensive cigar, and I'm just getting dealt hand after hand of solid cards. It had to be the PPR mojo, I'm telling you. It came down to me and my roommate for first and second, and he went "all in" on the turn card. I thought he might have a full house (there were two fours on the flop, and he went all in after a five came out on the turn), but I thought he might be bluffing too. I had a four in my hand (giving me three of a kind), and after an agonizing five minutes of debate, I called his "all in". He had two pair, but could have beaten me on the river with a jack, which would have given him said full house, but he didn't get it and I won. Greatest poker moment of my life. (Though admittedly there's not many to choose from) Anyway, I got a bunch of pats on the back and it wasn't too bad a night. And damn that cigar was mighty good.

Mortar Attack

We got mortared this past week. Or possibly it was a rocket attack. Can't say where it hit, but I can say that I was about a two minute walk from the place at the time. So not that far. Jeff and I were playing the X-box in the room, and there was this huge BOOM. Oh shit, we thought. (In a weird aside, we were playing this co-op Tom Clancy first person shooter at the time, and only a moment before we had been killed in the game by a sudden RPG ambush, which actually startled me with its suddeness. So when the real boom went off, though it was much louder and I felt in in my chest and shit in our room actually bounced a little, for a split second I thought it was the game again. But just for an instant.) So we turned the game off, and went outside. To be honest, at first we didn't know WHAT it was - for all we knew it could have been another controlled detonation of a discovered IED, which happens all the time. But when we got outside, we saw some people running around in "full battle rattle" and thus we sped off to the TMC to await casualties. Thankfully, there were absolutely NO casualties. But it shook us up a little all the same. Just another day in Iraq, I guess.

Orange Storm

There is something nutty and almost biblical about some of the various rainstorms here. A few days ago, we had a sudden thunder-storm, which lasted only an hour or so, but which drenched everything. I'm told that when these things start out here, there is a dust storm several hundred feet up in the air prior to the rain. The sky looks overcast, but its different, very hazy. And then everything goes completely ORANGE. Its very strange, like a movie set, where everything appears almost backlit by orange. This orange starts to intensify to a fiery reddish orange, surpassing even sunset orange, (and this will happen in the very middle of the day) to the point where I felt like this place was transforming itself into a portal to the very gaping maw of Hell. And then boom, the rain starts coming down with a vengeance. And its not just rain - each drop has particular sand and dust in it - forming a sort of mini sand hail so that you can see bounce off the turf as it hits. Its very, very strange. I took a few pictures of the build up, though they don't do it justice.

(PS - In the next post I'll update about the dogs - right now I have to go wail on my pecs...)



"Orange Death", prior to the storm




Immediately after, same camera settings




About a half hour after, same camera settings...