Sunday, August 31, 2008

Almost R&R #1

While here in Baghdad on a one year tour, we receive 3 R&R trips, each 22 days long. That is a whole lot of leave, which sounds like a whole lot of fun. In reality though, the act of scheduling 3 R&Rs in a single year, and the act of making the plans to travel 3 times in and out of this place is a nightmare of planning. I depart on my first R&R next week, and now I am in the flurry of final desk clearing, project pushing and plan-making. Whew.

Today is an early Labor Day for us. It made it a three day weekend, with the holiday on Sunday for us. I decided to celebrate "No Labor on Labor Day" with a soiree of friends. We watched Mad Money, a traditional chick flick, and chit chatted about men and drinking. The drinking topic came from the wonderful sangria and margaritas that we created in our happy kitchen. The movie was enjoyed by all. The topic of men included much revelry and bawdiness. To celebrate having a party, Norma and I completed the decorating of the walls of our apartment. We took photos and hung them on photo wires around he living room. It looks very homey, and the smiling faces of our family and friends and pets make us both very happy.

The past few weeks have been mainly a time of work. My boss was away for part of it on her R&R, so I had a "stand in" boss. He was a lot of fun, and we were still able to accomplish a lot. It continues to amaze me how many things we achieve every single week. Countless memos, policies, notices, info papers, etc, each of them helping the mission to become a better place, or so I hope.

Toastmasters continues to be one of my biggest treats of the week. This week I gave a speech from an advanced manual. It was the first speech I have prepared from scratch in quite some time, and I conquered my normal reading of my speech by completely adlibbing the whole thing using the competent leader's manual as my guide. The speech went well, but I should have done some more preparation to give it the extra sparkle that would have made it great.

I hope everyone is great.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Time flies when having...fun?

The past few weeks have flown by. Each time I have attempted to sit down and update my blog I have been foiled by lack of internet connectivity, overabundance of work or lack of inspiration. Tonight, I hope to overcome all of these issues and finally do some more documentation of this adventure.

Our apartments have internet connectivity! Last weekend the buildings started to come online, with fits and starts. I was pretty excited the first time I connected my wireless modem and was able to download emails. My excitement died quickly when the connection was both slow and inconsistent. My disappointment was not long lived though, as our internet gurus stabilized things. So, we are now all very happy to be back online. The one thing I will miss about the pre-wired days is the camaraderie of the gang that met in the internet cafe on a regular basis to get our internet fixes. It was a fun group.

Overabundance of work is my next excuse. The pace of activity is something I have not experienced in a long time. I am not complaining- there is a lot to be done and a short time to get it done- but it does get a bit overwhelming. I could easily work 20 hours each day, seven days each week, and still not feel like I am getting ahead of the piles of work to do. Some of it is clerical in nature- processing requests for entry-exit for USG contractors, processing country clearances for people who are assigned here or coming on TDY visits and assisting people who are here in renewing or extending their life support privileges. These are the tasks that I would be more than happy to offload to someone else, but there are only so many people here and we all have to take our share of the non-glamorous tasks.

Some of the rest of my time is spent writing information and decision memos to the Ambassador and Deputy Chief of Mission on behalf of my bosses in the Management Section. I have, so far, gotten to write about scintillating topics like Appropriate Behavior and Hiring Household Staff, only to name a few. My writing skills are getting a strong workout on other topics of a more substantive nature, but I can’t write about those things. I will admit to being thrilled last week when I got to pull out my seldom used Excel skills to do some cost-benefit analysis on a project. I guess I get excited about silly things.

Another busy component of my job has become meeting facilitation. I am running meetings on a variety of topics, including the Management Section’s establishment of a mission statement and strategic goals for this year. I must admit that this work is some of my favorite. I love to watch a group move in a direction and get excited by the ideas that are flowing. While we have a lot of day-to-day activity going on, the effort put into these sessions are different enough to engage the creative sides of our brains and get people thinking of each other as part of a team. That is the only way we will survive and thrive in this crazy pace, and I like being a part of it all coming together. But, it does keep me busy…

Lack of inspiration is harder to overcome. There are many times when I wonder if anyone will care about the info I am writing in my blog. Thanks to those who write me notes or letters saying that they find my blog interesting.

To wind down, which is something that has to be done, even when your body is exhausted from the long work days, I have started watching TV series programs on DVD. The store across the street sells DVDs of a not entirely legitimate nature. I bought the entire 10 seasons of JAG, and watched most of season 1 and part of season 2 before there was a defective DVD that interrupted the flow of the shows. That series was put together by someone taping it from network TV and then digitizing the show. So for many of the episodes there was a USA TV network emblem in the corner of the screen. Some of the older ones were taped from the History Channel and other sources. I never watched the show originally in the early seasons, and cannot say I was ever a dedicated viewer, but I have really grown to like it. I must admit though, the first season was very sexist and sexually charged, and reflected a lot of the attitudes and fear that was going through the military at the time about having women in combat and a co-ed military. The stereotypes in the show are almost comical, except that one knows that they are probably very close to the truth of those days. I am curious to see how the show changed as the times changed and the military became more comfortable in its co-ed body.

Once that one JAG DVD went defective I shifted to CSI Miami. This is a show I watched quite a bit of in my last few years, but I did not see many of the earlier episodes and did not know the history of the characters. Horatio overacts, and is sort of “sunglasses ridiculous” but the science component and detail orientation of the show keeps my attention.

Perhaps my biggest wind down pleasure here in Baghdad is my Toastmasters Group. We had a charter celebration last weekend, that was attended by one of the top general guys (someday I may care enough about military rank to actually pay attention and learn it, but so far that has not happened. I just know that I am almost always surrounded by Lt Colonels and Colonels, and that my job is the rank of a Lt. Colonel.) It was an excellent celebration, full of motivating speakers. Our group is a mix of Iraqis, US military, US civilians and international military and civilians. Many of the non-Iraqi members have been Toastmasters back in the “real world”. But it is our Iraqi members who are the real treasure of the group. Their speeches about hope and the future, the past and the losses are inspirational in ways I cannot begin to describe. I feel honored to have the chance to get to know their strengths, hopes and dreams for the future of their country.

Tht will have to be all for tonight...my eyes are drooping and another work week begins tomorrow. Until next time...In Sha'a Allah.