Adventures in Afghanistan

Time to say goodbye

2005-07-23T02:22:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I guess this is it. I'm not sure I completely believe it myself, but this year has finally come to an end. Wow. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to finally be going back home. Before I get into the rest of what I have to say, let me pause for a quick second to answer a question that's been on everyone's mind (well, on Laura's mind at least) as my time here has drawn to a close. Yes, I do plan to continue blogging. It's funny -- last summer I barely knew what a "blog" was, let alone how much a part of my life this one was destined to become. I was simply looking for a way to effectively keep in touch with my friends and family back home, and it boiled down to either sending a mass email to everyone on my contacts list once a month or so, or doing this. I figured this was a little bit less intrusive and a little bit more user-friendly, so I went with it. Along the way I've discovered that not only do I enjoy it for my own sake, but it turns out that my readers have enjoyed it, too. I've done what I set out to do -- keep in touch with family and friends -- and I've even managed to strengthen some of those relationships. I've also managed to pick up a few "strangers" along the way -- people who've stumbled across the blog one way or another and enjoyed what they read. To me, that's just icing on the cake. The new blog will function to serve much the same purpose that this one has, namely keeping in touch. I've been surprised at the number of "long lost friends" that I've reconnected with through this website (some going as far back as seventh grade!), and I'd love to try and keep those connections strong. If writing a story or two every week or so about my life will allow me to stay in touch with those friends then I'm all for it. Plus, all of my family and relatives that are scattered all over the country will be able to stay a little bit more current on my life. You can find the new blog over at http://dltbgyd.blogs.com/. There's not much there yet, just a short (and hopefully educational) post about the title of the web page. Give me a week or so to get back to the States and get settled, and then you can expect some regular updates. With that out of the way, let's get on to the rest of this post. I'll start by answering a question that was posed by Jen, one of the aforementioned "strangers" who came across this site and then kept coming back for more. She asks, and I quote, "Are you glad that you made the decision to spend a year of your life in Afghanistan? Do you have any regrets?" I have two answers for those two questions: YES, and NO, respectively. I am glad that I made the decision to spend a year out here, and I have no regrets at all. None. Now the question that's not asked directly, but is most definitely implied, is "why?" To properly answer that, let me give you just a little bit of background. (my apologies to the family and friends that have heard this all before...but you know what? This is my last post, which means it's supposed to be something of a summary. In order to properly summarize, sometimes you have to rehash material that's already been discussed. So deal with it). A little over one year ago, I was struggling. More specifically, I was struggling financially. Don't get me wrong -- I had a job and my needs were met, so things weren't desperate. But things weren't exactly wonderful, either. I found myself a couple years deep in the "real world" (a term that I despise, by the way), and I was growing more and more cynical by the day. See, there's this thing you have to deal with in the "real world" called financial responsibility, and I wasn't very good at it. My bills were getting paid, but I was growing increasingly frustrated with how little of my paycheck I got to keep for myself. Not surprisingly, it was during this time that I discovered and began to appreciate the Libertarian Party, but I digress... It wasn't just the government that was taking my money, in fact they weren't even taking the biggest chunk of it. I was also losing money each month to three different credit cards (my own stupid fault, I know), three different student loans, an auto loan, and a company that was supposed to be helping me consolidate all this debt and pay it off faster. After everyone took their share, I discovered that I had less than half of my monthly income left over. I used that remainder to write checks for rent, car insurance, a cell phone, food, and gas, and when it was all said and done I usually had less than $100 left over each month for myself. I realize I'm being fairly candid here, but I just want to paint an accurate picture for you. One tank of gas to get myself to the mountains and back for a weekend of snowboarding, and I'd blown a third of my disposable income for the month. $100 or less each month that I could spend on clothes, CDs, movies, beer, snowboarding, and general entertainment, and that's if I didn't save a dime of it. You can see why I wasn't doing a whole lot of dating at the time ("how 'bout some Ramen at my place?" wasn't exactly bringing the ladies running). When I finally decided to tighten the belt and start saving money, I had even less disposable cash, and even then it took me six months to save up less than four hundred dollars. At the rate I was going, it would take me two years to afford a decent, one week vacation. It wasn't a pretty picture, and I wasn't happy with it. At all. That's when I discovered the opportunity to spend one year of my life in Afghanistan. It sounded crazy at first, but I then noticed how much they pay. Suddenly it was a very, very tempting idea. In return for one year of my life, I was promised enough money to pay off ALL of my debt, with a chunk of change left over. It didn't take long for me to sign on the dotted line and get on a plane. In the one year that I've been here, I've seen and experienced more than I could ever hope to condense into one short essay. I've visited a side of the planet that I never thought I'd see. I've seen how the people of the country of Afghanistan live, both in the big city of Kabul and in the small village of Jegdalek. I've observed a little bit of what it is that our government and our military are trying to accomplish over here. I've met people from more countries than I can name, and forged some friendships that I hope will last a lifetime. I've taken a vacation to Europe, a lifelong dream, and I did it a lot sooner than I ever could have hoped, given my situation back in the States. I've fallen in love with the idea of travel, with the prospect of seeing as much as I can possibly see on this vast Earth. I've endured a lot, but I've learned a lot, too. Most importantly, after one year in Afghanistan, I've accomplished the very goals that I set out to achieve. I can now proudly say that I am 100% debt free. On top of that, I have a significant sum of money saved up. I'm not "rich" by conventional standards, but the feeling I get from being financially secure says I might as well be. If you'll allow me to gloat just a little bit, I'll tell you a story that would have been nothing more than a daydream before I left the States. When I get home, I plan to take two months off. That's two months with no job, and no income, and it doesn't stress me out at all. My calendar for the next two months is already full of trips and social outings that I'm eagerly looking forward to. As soon as I get home, I'll be on a plane to Washington state to visit some family and friends for a few days. I've even talked half of my cousins and an aunt and uncle into coming along with me to the Reel Big Fish/Catch 22 show in Spokane. As soon as I get back home to Colorado, I'll be treating several friends to three amazing ska and punk shows (including the two bands I've just mentioned) in Denver, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins. On the 10th of August, the day after the third show, I'll be hopping in a car with my brother and heading out to Las Vegas for three or four days of the kind of fun that only Vegas can provide. When we get back from that trip, I'll be looking forward to the arrival of an old high school friend who will be in town around the 18th or 20th. On the 23rd, I've got plans to see another great show in Denver with a new friend of mine. I'll spend the very next weekend canoeing down the Colorado River and into Moab, Utah with my immediate family. A few days later I'll be hopping in the car with my sister and road-tripping across the Midwest to visit a whole different set of cousins/aunts/uncles and a grandma. We'll return just in time for my sister's wedding, and then a few days later I'll celebrate my birthday. When it's finally all said and done, and I've recovered from whatever is to become of my birthday party, I might finally start to think about getting a job. Maybe. It's going to be two months of relaxation, fun, vacations, socializing, and just plain bliss. It's a break that I never would have been able to take had I not spent a year in Afghanistan, and I can't wait. It's not just the "break" that I'm looking forward to -- it's the fact that I'll be able to do some things financially that I'd never dreamed possible. I'll be able to buy a car, in cash. I'll also be able to re-accumulate some of the material possessions that I sold before coming out here -- I plan to buy myself a new snowboard and maybe a new computer. Who knows, maybe I'll even start dating again. I'm trying not to be entirely short sighted with my hard earned cash, so I'm sure a significant amount will get set aside for retirement and other savings. The point is that I am now experiencing a level of financial freedom that I never dreamed of before. I've endured a year of separation from my family and friends, a year of working a job that I don't enjoy, a year of dealing with meager living conditions, but it has all been worth it. Am I glad that I made the decision to spend a year of my life in Afghanistan? Yes. Do I have any regrets? No. Wholeheartedly. Emphatically. No. Thanks to everyone for reading this website for the past several months, for being a part of my journey. In a matter of days I'll be able to say that to you face to face, to see your smile and give you a hug. Cheers to that.

Am I really leaving so soon?

2005-07-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the few days between posts there -- I haven't really been feeling my best lately. I ate something on Saturday night that didn't sit well with me, and I've been doing a lot of 'rest and recover' since then. Since you're not here to read the details of my intestinal functions, I'll go ahead and get to something a little bit more pleasant... I'm leaving here in 5 days! How's that for pleasant? That news qualifies as downright righteous, if you ask me. It's been a weird few days since I got back from Kabul (upset stomach aside). I don't think it's really sunk in yet that I'm leaving this place. For good. On some level it probably has, but on another it just feels like "life as always." I remember when I made the decision last summer to come out here in the first place, and it felt like such a huge, life-altering thing. I'm moving to Afghanistan. For a whole year. I remember the weeks which followed that decision -- weeks that were filled with moving, packing, selling, paperwork, and tying up all the loose ends to ensure a smooth departure from the USA. Those weeks were a bit of a blur, but I distinctly remember a feeling of nervous excitement that permeated every single thought and action during that time. Life was a bit surreal then. "Am I really about to move to Afghanistan?" was a question I asked myself over and over again in those weeks. Sure enough it was real, and I did it, and now it's almost over. I've received two different emails from two different family members in the last few days, both expressing the same sentiment. The emails say things like "[it's] pretty unbelievable that your year is up" and "I can hardly believe that the year is coming to an end. I just think it is so great that you were able to do this whole thing." When I read things like that, I have to force myself to stop and realize that this year really is over. I guess that is pretty unbelievable. In the weeks leading up to these final days, I would occasionally feel a twinge of that same nervous excitement that I felt last summer. I fully expected the feeling to increase in both frequency and intensity as I drew closer to the end, but now here I am, a mere five days away from leaving, and I'm not sure I'm really there yet. "Am I really leaving in just a matter of days?" is the new question that I've been asking myself. I'm not going to expand on this too much, or try to figure out what it "means," if anything, that I'm not feeling terribly nervous or excited about leaving here. It's simply something I've observed. I assumed that by this point I'd be much more emotional (not that I've ever been one who's terribly emotional), when in fact life has continued to feel quite normal. I'll let you know how it feels when I actually step on that plane. In lighter and not so "deep" news, going to work lately has been GREAT. If you've ever quit a job before, you know what it feels like to show up for work every day knowing that you're on your way out the door. It's a fantastic feeling. When you can nonchalantly utter the phrase "what are they gonna do, fire me?" and mean it, it's impossible not to smile. Life is good. We'll see how I feel about that when I'm back home and jobless, but right now, for a few more days, life is good. Yesterday at work, I got comfortable in my chair and took a nap. I slept for a good 1/2 hour, right there at my desk, and no one seemed to care. I love that nobody expects anything from me anymore, as if the fact that I'm leaving soon frees me from all responsibility whatsoever. Today I don't think I was even at work for more than a couple hours. I showed up at 10, left at 11, and didn't come back until around 1 p.m. I left again at a little past 2 and didn't come back until almost 5. I even ran into the boss today and he asked "when are you leaving?" "Monday," I answered. His next question was "are you going to be at work this week?" as if he really didn't care and it was genuinely up to me. In that case, maybe not! Yes sir, life is good. I may not be terribly nervous, but I suppose there is a little bit of excitement there. Every time I receive an email from someone back home, or read a quick update on their blog, I can't help but think "I'll be seeing you soon. Face to face, in real life." It's hard not to be just a little bit excited about that.

All you naysayers can stop worrying about me now

2005-07-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

I made it back from Kabul safe and sound. I arrived here at Bagram at around 1430 today after a much more pleasant drive up than I had on the way down. I give the credit to the driver, who was much better than the last one I had. I guess I'll give you a quick rundown of the rest of my little vacation to Kabul. I think I left off on Thursday, which was a pretty quiet day for me. It got much livelier that night, when my good friend Jeremy who lives/works down there took me out to a Croatian restaurant near the safehouse. The interior and atmosphere of the restaurant were much higher quality than I expected, and the food was also outstanding. One quick story about our dinner there: we walked in the door and the host asked us right away if we had a reservation. We gave him a confused look to indicate that we didn't know we needed a reservation, and the host decided to accommodate us anyway. He took us to an empty table at the corner of his empty restaurant -- a restaurant that remained empty the entire time we were there. It struck me as odd that the guy was so quick to ask us if we had a reservation when it looked to me like the reservation book was completely empty for the night. Oh, one other unique thing about this particular restaurant is that it's located just outside of the US safehouse and is geared towards foreign nationals. They have armed guards at the door and no local Afghans are allowed inside as a safety precaution for the Westerners who like to eat there. Interesting. We spent the rest of the evening at a nightclub, another "no locals allowed" kind of place, although I wouldn't imagine that too many Muslims are into the whole nightclub scene anyway. We had a good time, and got to hang out with a wide variety of foreign transplants from the US, Europe, and Asia. It was a cool place, and I never would have thought that such a venue existed anywhere in Afghanistan (see people? This is why it's important to get off the base and into the cities every once in a while). One interesting note about the nightclub -- I met the owner, and I learned that his mom graduated from Colorado State University. What a small world. Friday was another down day for me. I didn't get into the city to visit an orphanage or shelter like I'd hoped, but I definitely enjoyed another relaxing day off. This little trip to Kabul was as much of a mini-vacation as it was anything else. On Friday night my buddy Jeremy was working, so I went out with two other acquaintances to a German restaurant in town. I ate veal schnitzel, and once again the food was very impressive. I don't know if it was really that good or if I've just been eating Army food for too long, but I definitely ate every last morsel on my plate. The guys I was with were telling me that this German restaurant is a training ground for the locals to learn the skills of serving and bartending, with the goal of eventually moving up to bigger and better establishments. I don't know if that's true or not, but it makes a good story. After dinner we hung out at the bar and definitely had our share of Kostriker, a (really good) dark German beer. One of the guys I was with even bought me a Kostriker stein, which is an awesome souvenir. I don't know anybody else who's got a German beer stein that was purchased at a restaurant in Kabul, Afghanistan. This morning (Saturday) I got out of bed in time to head over to the base with Jeremy and get some breakfast, after which we left to play 18 holes of golf. Okay, so it was only video golf on the Xbox in his room at the safehouse, but we got a kick out of saying that we'd played 18 in Kabul. After the video games it was time for Jeremy to call it a "night" (he works nights, so 1230 is way past his bedtime) and time for me to pack up and meet my ride. I said goodbye to Jeremy, which was a little bit weird because I just saw him a few weeks ago, but it was just hitting me that I might not see him again for quite some time. Plus it's still just a little bit weird to be saying goodbye to a good friend when we're both in Afghanistan. We've got tentative plans to meet up in Europe over Christmas, but if that doesn't work out I probably won't see him again until March when he comes back to the States on vacation. Of course, that assumes that I won't be back out in this part of the world by then, which is still kind of up in the air... (it's a long story folks -- don't ask. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it). So here I am back at Bagram, with only 9 days left before I start making my way home. I'm not sure that's really sunk in yet, either. I've still got a fair bit of packing and shipping to do, so I should probably wrap this up for now. I'll leave you with a couple of pictures, although I'll warn you that my photos didn't turn out as great as I would have liked. The shots I did get aren't terrible, I just didn't end up with enough shots of the "life" of the city of Kabul. At any rate, here's a quick sample: This is the UNO office in Kabul that I mentioned in my last post: These are two small deer that are kept as pets at UNO Kabul: Some apartments (and the front half of a cab) in Kabul: The ISAF dining area (see last post): Storefronts (and traffic) in Kabul: A UN vehicle on the roads of Kabul: The US safehouse I stayed in (view from the roof): A hillside neighborhood of Kabul: Some tents (for farmers, maybe? or shepherds?) in the middle of nowhere between Bagram and Kabul: This pic is from the little town of Bagram that sits just outside of Bagram The Army Base. I was trying to snap the photo out the window of a fast moving vehicle, so it's not a great shot. I was trying to get a good photo of two little girls, and I barely caught them in the lower right side of the shot:

Greetings from Kabul

2005-07-14T07:05:00.000-07:00

Some of you were a bit wary about me making a trip down to Kabul, but I did it anyway. This has been a goal of mine for months now, and I'm excited to have finally done it. Let me give you a quick background as to why I was so anxious to get down here: Bagram is entirely self-contained and isolated from the rest of the world. One of the most frustrating things about having spent a year in Afghanistan is that I haven't really spent a year in Afghanistan. I've been cooped up inside a US military compound. All I see are US soldiers, US military vehicles, US planes and helicopters, eat US food, watch US television via satellite, and on and on it goes. Now, that's not entirely a bad thing, but the point is that you could take Bagram, move it to South America, then tell me it's Afghanistan and I'd never know the difference. I never see the locals, never visit the towns, never experience life outside of these fortified walls. Sure, I took a day trip to the village of Jegdalek on Christmas eve, and that was truly an amazing visit, but it lasted all of about six hours. I've been here in this country for over 7200 hours, and I've spent a grand total of 6 of those outside of the base. That's pathetic, and it's exactly why I wanted to see Kabul so badly before I left the country. Now that I've (hopefully) justified myself, let's get on with the story... I left Bagram Wednesday morning at roughly 0800. I had managed to track down some military guys who drive down to Kabul and back twice a week, and they had room for me on this particular convoy. I showed up at the meeting point at 0730, and 1/2 hour later we were off. The drive was quite an adventure. It was a two-vehicle convoy, and we were in the rear. All the stories I'd heard about these convoys driving like maniacs were true. We never got going terribly fast -- we stayed below 100 kph (62 mph) -- but it was a whole lot faster than I'd traveled in a vehicle in months. On top of that, the road between Bagram and Kabul is terrible. Potholes and randomly placed speed bumps are common throughout the 70-mile trek. The convoy drivers are taught to go as fast as they can as often as then can, but they're constantly slowing down to dodge holes in the road or negotiate traffic. It's not uncommon to be going 95-100 kph, then abruptly hit the brakes to dodge an obstacle, then immediately speed back up again. Our driver hit the brakes so suddenly at one point that we were literally skidding on the asphalt. The bad road also makes for a really bumpy ride -- I eventually lost count of how many times my head hit the roof of the vehicle. I'm surprised we still had a suspension when we got down to Kabul. The great part of the ride was getting to see all the activity along the way. We drove through the small town of Bagram which sits just outside the military base, and it was wild to see all the shops and storefronts along that main road. I took a few pictures, and I'm hoping to take plenty more on the way back. I also saw several farms and shepherds in the fields along the road, and even a few camels walking around. We also passed several brick-makers, who were easy to spot by the long rows of bricks that were neatly laid out in the sun to dry. Once we reached the city, our first stop was UNO. I had no idea was UNO stood for when the driver announced it as our first stop, but I figured it had something to do with the United Nations. Imagine my surprise when we pulled up to the building and I read the sign: "University of Nebraska at Omaha Education Press." Sure enough, the University of Nebraska at Omaha has a press office in Kabul, Afghanistan. I looked it up on the web later (read it here), and UNO claims it as the largest and most successful printing enterprise in Afghanistan. The website lists the US base at Bagram as one of its customers and I can vouch for that, because there we were picking up some magazines that had been ordered from Bagram. After taking some pictures and helping load the magazines in our SUV, we were all invited inside for some tea and cookies. The people were unbelievably hospitable, and the tea and cookies were great. After we'd relaxed for about 20 minutes, the Army guys decided it was time to head out. Next stop was Camp Eggers, the main base in Kabul and my destination. On our way there we passed through the busier part of town -- I guess you can think of it as "downtown" Kabul. The city is larger and livelier than I expected, and the highlight was negotiating a rather large traffic circle on our way to the base. This particular traffic circle wasn't quite as large as the one around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but it definitely beat the heck out of anything I've seen in Colorado. The best part was that, much like the circle in Paris, there seemed to be no rules or protocols whatsoever for getting around the circle and onto the road you needed (come to think of it, there doesn't seem to be any rules for driving anywhere in this country). It was every car for itself in there, and since I wasn't driving I got to sit back and enjoy the fun without stressing it. We finally made it to the base, where I thanked the soldiers for the ride and then proceeded to track down my Help Desk counterparts. I found Roger and Casey, two guys I know fairly well. Roger is the HD Lead in Kabul, and he and I had met back in January at a HD Lead meeting in K-2. Casey worked with me at the Bagram HD for a few weeks before heading down to Kabul, and we discovered that we also used to work together at the Microsoft Help Desk back in the States. We didn't know each other back then, probably because he worked on a different team and always on night shift. Anyway, the first two guys I ran into at the base in Kabul were Roger and Casey, and they were on their way out. They offered to take me by the "Casino House" to drop of my gear, so I took them up on it. The Casino House is a safehouse just outside of the base, and it's where all the ITT civilians live. Roger and Casey showed me the room where my buddy Jeremy lives, so I walked in to drop off my gear. Jeremy and I said hi, but we didn't talk long because he was on his way to bed. It was roughly 1100 at that point, and Jeremy works nights. Since he was about to crash for the "night" I decided to tag along with Roger and Casey, who were headed out to (what else?) fix some computer issues. Our first stop was the American Embassy, which of course was awesome to see. We weren't inside for long, but at least I can say that I've seen the inside of the place. Our next stop was ISAF, the compound where the ISAF troops live. ISAF stands for International Security Assistance Forces, and they're a branch of NATO. We have a few ISAF troops at Bagram -- mostly Romanian and Polish troops -- but not nearly the presence they have in Kabul. We ate lunch at the ISAF compound, which was awesome. In addition to the good food, it was cool to see such a diverse gathering of international troops. We ate outside on a large patio, and as we passed a table of German soldiers I heard one of them make a comment, in English, about my Colorado Avalanche hat. I got a huge kick out of that because I've had countless American soldiers ask me what the "A" logo on hat is all about, and yet this German soldier in Afghanistan knows exactly what it is. God bless the Europeans for being hockey fans. We went back to the base after lunch, and Roger proceeded to give me a tour of the place. It's a much smaller compound than Bagram, but it was cool to see. I got to say hi to Robby and Becky, who I've mentioned on this blog before. Both were excited to see me make it down -- apparently a lot of people talk about visiting Kabul but never actually follow through. Becky said she'd try to get me hooked up on a trip into the community (i.e. to visit an orphanage or shelter) on Friday (tomorrow), although I haven't heard from her yet so I'm not sure if that will happen. During Roger's tour of the base we also had the unpleasant fortune of bumping into Mike, Dave, Herb, and Jim. These four guys are varying levels of bosses, from the Kabul Site Lead all the way up to the Project Manager, who is the guy that oversees all of the company's government contract work in this region. The PM is the kind of super big boss that works directly under a VP and gets treated like royalty. We're all supposed to love him and respect him and bend over backwards for him, but I'm too close to leaving to really care about any of that. Anyway, there we were making excruciating work-related small talk with all these big bosses, when one of them decides to invite us to join them for dinner. Roger and I kind of looked at each other, but since neither of us could come up with a valid excuse on the spot, we accepted. I'm not so sure we really had a choice, anyway. The cool part of going out to dinner was that it was an excuse to get off of the base and see some of the city again. The restaurant was called The Great Country, and was conveniently located right across from the Mustafa Hotel where all the big bosses were staying (they couldn't get housing on base). I sat in the back as we drove out to the restaurant, and as usual I was completely mesmerized as we drove into town. It's just unbelievable to see a different culture, especially one so vastly different from my own. The dinner was bearable, considering the fact that it was a boring, work-related, "executive dinner" type of thing. The food itself was really good though, and made up for the lack of any social atmosphere. It was a Chinese place, and I mean real, authentic, Chinese food. FYI - when the Chinese dice a chicken, the dice the whole chicken, bones and all. Just something to be aware of if you ever decide to go out for Chinese food in Asia. After dinner we bid farewell to the bigwigs, and the rest of us decided to head out for a nightcap. This is where it got really fun, and I'm not even talking about the bar. It was the drive to the bar that was an adventure. Roger was driving, but Mike (the Site Lead, and Roger's boss) is a terrible backseat driver. Roger reluctantly followed Mike's directions, and before long we were extremely lost. We somehow found ourselves on a very narrow road made of uneven dirt and rock, nowhere near the city lights and paved streets that we should have been on. We drove through alleyway after alleyway, trying desperately to find our way back to the main part of town. In doing so we traversed several roads that should not have passed for roads (it's a good thing we were in an SUV -- we never would have made it down those streets in a car) and saw several parts of town that I'm sure no one in the car had seen before. We passed marketplaces, neighborhoods, huge houses, and much smaller dwellings. We even drove past two separate burned out tanks that I assume have been left abandoned since the USSR invasion of Afghanistan back in the 80s. The houses and shops and neighborhoods just sprung up around them. It was an unplanned but awesome little diversion because I knew that I had gotten to see a taste of what Kabul is really like. We eventually found our way back out to the main part of town, and not long after that we arrived at the Happiness Restaurant. We walked in and discovered that were the only patrons of the Happiness, a small Chinese place that was staffed by a Chinese woman and her daughter. We were all still full from dinner, but we ordered a round of Heinekens to get us started. Mike invited Shalin (I have no idea how her name is spelled, but it sounds like "shah-lynn"), the Chinese girl, to join us. She spoke enough English to get by, and we had fun trying to teach her more English while she taught us some Chinese. We proceeded to hang out for a while and order a few more rounds of beers, and at one point we were served a tray of watermelon slices. I just thought that was worth mentioning because watermelon isn't exactly the kind of "bar food" I'm used to getting in the US. We had a great time at the bar, and although I forgot my camera, I did leave the place with a "souvenir" in the form of a handwritten Chinese phrasebook courtesy of Shalin. We made it back to the Casino house at a little after midnight -- a long and eventful day that for me had begun at 0630 in Bagram. I was exhausted, and after a short phone call to touch base with Jeremy (what was at work back on the base at this point) I crashed. I woke up initially at around 0800, although I fell back asleep and didn't get out of bed until around 1100. I haven't done much of anything today, just relaxed and enjoyed a day of vacation and recovery from the very full day I had yesterday. I'm sitting at the Casino house right now, and Jeremy is finally waking up. He's got the night off tonight, so we'll probably go hit another restaurant this evening, in addition to whatever else we decide to do. I plan to be here for another couple of days -- ideally I'll head back to Bagram on Saturday if I can find a ride. I'll keep you posted, and I'll try to throw up a few pictures of Kabul as soon as I have a chance.

I can't eat, I can't shower...but they still give me internet access

2005-07-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

So I’ve had quite the eventful day, although originally I wasn’t going to tell you about it. That happens sometimes out here –- things go down that are most definitely blog-worthy, but that aren’t necessarily supposed to become public knowledge. Such has been the case today. As usual I went to bed fairly late last night, although it could have been worse –- I killed the light at a little past 0130. I was soundly sleeping, far off in dreamland somewhere, when I was suddenly startled by three or four loud thuds on the wall of my room. It took a second before I was roused to full consciousness -– at first I thought I may have been dreaming. That’s when the door to my room opened and I saw “The Captain” standing there in full battle gear. “Josh, get up!” he said. “We’ve got an Alert and need you outside for accountability.” I rolled over and looked at the clock. 0530. Awesome. I hadn’t been up that early since God-knows-when, and certainly hadn’t been awoken that abruptly in much, much longer. I drug myself out of bed, and as I was putting on my shoes and “battle rattle” gear I kept wondering to myself why I had to go outside. “They know I’m here,” I kept thinking. “The Captain just saw me. Doesn’t that suffice for accountability?” I walked outside and joined all the other poor souls who’d been drug out of bed at “oh-dark-thirty” –- interestingly the first thing I noticed was that it’s actually surprisingly light out at 0530. So we’re all standing there, rubbing the sleep out of our eyes -- no one’s talking because no one’s in a great mood. I’m fairly sure half of us would have been content to lie down and go back to sleep right there on the ground. About ½ hour later they finally decided that we’d all been accounted for, and we were allowed to return to our rooms. The catch was that we weren’t allowed to leave our little compound under any circumstances. Thank God I have a coffee maker in my hut. I decided not to go back to sleep, and instead started some coffee and booted up the computer. I wrote a couple emails and fooled around on the web for roughly an hour before I headed back outside and bumped into my boss. “Are we allowed to go eat breakfast?” I asked him. “No,” he said, “We can’t go anywhere until they give the All Clear.” Sweet, now we’re not even allowed to eat. I went back to my room and started rummaging through boxes of months old junk food, when the boss came in and rescued me. “I was wrong,” he said, “We’re allowed to go eat, but only at the small DFAC right outside of our compound.” Thank God. I checked out with our compound’s “gate guard” (a new position that was hastily thrown together due to this alert), headed to the DFAC, and ate the first breakfast meal I’ve had in a months (I usually oversleep breakfast). It was actually really good. I left the DFAC and walked back into the compound, where I proceeded to check back in. I told the gate guard that she might as well leave me marked down as absent, because I was just going to grab my things and then head out to the shower. “Nope,” was the gate guard’s response, “you can’t leave to shower. Only to eat.” You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. “Can I go to work?” I asked her. She thought about it for a sec, and replied that I probably could but would need to get approval from The Captain first. I tracked down The Captain, and much to my relief he approved the 30-yard walk from our compound to the building I work in. I showed up at work at 0830, where I’ve now been stuck all day. We’re on total lockdown here –- I’ve been outside a few times to use the bathroom, but that’s it. The DFACs have been closed, and as a result I didn’t have much for lunch. Our military representatives were authorized to leave the compound to pick up box lunches for us, which consisted of stale sandwiches and chips. It wasn’t great, but it was food so I ate it. I figured a good meal at dinner would make up for it. No such luck however -– the email just came in as I am writing this to inform us that the DFACs will remain closed for dinner and midnight chow tonight. Looks like it’s MREs or another enticing box lunch for dinner. The DFACs are tentatively scheduled to re-open for breakfast tomorrow. It remains to be seen whether I’ll be allowed to shower tonight. So what’s the cause of all this fuss? Well, that’s the part I wasn’t sure I was supposed to tell you. I’m still not sure it’s something that the military wanted to get out, but I have no qualms telling you now because it appears it’s already been leaked to the press (for the record, it wasn’t me that leaked it). I saw the story here first. You can read another version here. All I’ve got to say is, I really hope they catch these guys.

Guest Post: “The Stroke And Stride”

2005-07-08T11:06:00.000-07:00

I didn’t write this story, but I did edit it for clarity/spelling/grammar. It comes to us courtesy of my brother, an inspiring young man whose middle name is “Adventure.” Seriously, that really is his middle name -- he had it legally changed and everything. Unlike his older counterpart, my brother is relentlessly athletic. He recently ran his first marathon, crossing the finish line at almost exactly 4 hours, which is an extremely impressive time considering he didn’t even train for the thing. That’s my brother -- the kind of kid who’ll just up and run 26 miles without thinking twice about it. It’s completely insane and completely inspiring at the same time. His latest quest has been to delve into the world of the Triathlon. In order to further this goal, he recently competed in a “stroke and stride” -- basically a Triathlon minus the biking. He wrote me an email to tell me the story, and I thought it was quite entertaining. I’ve obtained his permission to retell the story here, and I’m doing so because I think you all might get a kick out of it. Let the fun begin... So in an attempt to keep up my athletic ways, I headed out tonight to do my first “Stroke & Stride,” which is supposed to give me a good taste of this whole triathlete thing. Most of you do not realize the extent of the subculture that these triathlete people have created. I try to look like I know what I am doing -- I start by laying out my towel and shoes in the “transition area” because that is what everyone else is doing. I walk around for a little while trying to look like I am getting into the “mental zone,” when really I am just keeping an eye on what everyone else is doing in an attempt to mesh with this subculture. Next comes slipping into the wet suit, which is harder than it sounds, not to mention I am using a borrowed wet suit that I have never tried on before this day. Turns out it was way too big -- try to picture a baggy wet suit. So I'm chillin’ in my too-big wet suit when everyone starts heading to the water. I figure I should follow, right? Well, come to find out they are just doing warm-up laps, but I figure, why not? I guess I could warm-up too. What my warm-up laps taught me is that swimming in a wet suit is pretty different from swimming in a bathing suit, but I can’t back out now so what the heck. I get to the start line and remember a buddy once told me that a good strategy would be to start on the outside where it is not as crowded and angle toward the turnaround point. This would have worked out well had I not started in the front where everyone was faster than me. Try to picture 700 people in this lake, and as they are all trying to pass you, you get kicked a lot. After about 500 yards I was sure I was going to drown. I looked up at the buoy and there was just no way I was going to make it alive...but what were my options? So I pressed on. The swim course is basically 750 meters out and back, so to do the required 1500 meters (that’s just under a mile for the non-metric Americans), you have to do two laps. I figure I did over a mile given that I seemed to have trouble staying on course, but whatever. I was ready to give up altogether after 750, given the “I think I might drown” feeling I was having. But I tell myself that if I look back and I am not the last one, then I will go ahead and finish this thing out. Sure enough I was not the last, which was pretty surprising and frankly a little disappointing. I think the second lap ended up being faster -- go figure -- and I really don’t know why. I guess I just got into a rhythm or something. So I pop out of the water, dreading the idea of having to take the wet suit off. This task did not disappoint -- again, harder then it looks, especially when you are trying to do it in a hurry. Finally I managed to get out of the transition area and I am feeling pretty good at this point -- on to my area of expertise, a 5k run (3.2 miles for you non-metric). The first 500 yards in this go well, when all of a sudden I realize I have a pretty bad side cramp -- got to hate that. So I am just kind of jogging along, pressing on my side, hoping to release the pain. It gets better around mile one, when a middle-aged woman passes me. This is not acceptable at all -- middle-aged women do not need to be beating me. With this in mind I get a bit of an energy burst and finish the run pretty well, passing several middle aged women along the way. It would have been nice to pass a 26-year-old guy in full triathlete gear, but all those guys were drinking Gatorade and hugging their girlfriends at that point. All in all, I finish the thing in 57 minutes. The run took me a disappointing 23:40, which means the swim must have been about 31 minutes (with a couple minutes added in there for the taking off of the wet suit). Hey, that’s a personal record!! Guess I better go get a hug from my imaginary girlfriend and drink some Gatorade -- that seems to be what everyone else is doing.

Three Weeks!

2005-07-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

It’s getting late my time, but I felt like a post was overdue and I wanted to throw one up before I call it a night. It also occurred to me just now that this is a good day to commemorate -- I will be back home in Colorado Springs exactly three weeks from today! (that is, assuming I count today as Thursday, which I do. I suppose it’s officially Friday now, but I still maintain that changing the date at midnight is completely stupid. It’s still Thursday night. Granted, it’s late on Thursday night, but it’s still Thursday night). Yep, it’s official now, I've got the itinerary and everything. It looks like it’s my job to get myself on a military flight to Germany, and from there the company takes over and flies me home on their dime. They’ve got me booked to leave Frankfurt on the 27th, and thanks to a time change that works in my favor I’ll get to Columbus, GA that same afternoon. I’ll only be in Columbus for 24 hours, so hopefully the rumors are true that all I have to do there is turn in my two duffel bags of Army gear, because that’s about all I’ll have time to do. I leave Columbus on the afternoon of the 28th and arrive in Colorado Springs later that night -- exactly three weeks from today! My travel weary soul won’t get any rest, though. Apparently my family is planning a vacation to visit some aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents in Washington state that weekend, and my step-dad can get me a plane ticket for free through his company (“free” for him at least, I guess the company’s still got to pay for it), so I’ll be in the Springs for a mere 24 hours or less before I board yet another plane, this time destined for eastern Washington. I’ll hang out there and visit family for a few days, arriving back in the Springs on the 3rd of August -- just in time for the weekend of shows that I’ve dubbed the “Welcome Home Josh Awesome Ska Party.” I can’t wait for Reel Big Fish and Catch 22, and apparently neither can several of my friends, because the responses to my “I’ll buy your ticket” invitation have started to pour in. Way to go people, I’m stoked to have so many of you along for the ride. It’s all about the Rock! And speaking of the rock, my huge order of CDs has started to arrive, so I’ve been busy ripping CDs onto my iPod for the last couple of days. I’ve got way too many CDs sitting in my room right now to give each one the devoted “first listen” that they all deserve, but I’m doing my best. I can tell you that Suburban Legends are an amazing band, and I definitely should have jumped on that bandwagon a long time ago. The same goes for None More Black -- those guys prove that there are still bands out there who know how to scream out a great punk rock tune. I’m also fairly impressed with the new MxPx album -- I’ve only given it one listen so far, but it lives up to all the punk rock message board hype that I’ve been reading on the internet. It’s definitely better than their last release, which was, to put it lightly, not so good (and this coming from a guy who has the band’s logo tattooed on his shoulder). I don’t think we’ll ever get anything from these guys as awesome as their first three releases, but the latest effort is definitely impressive. Right now I'm listening to the newest Aquabats album, and let me just say that it is AWESOME! Granted, these guys have slowly evolved past their ska roots into a sort of Devo-esque punk band, but this lasest CD is hands down the best one since “The Fury Of The Aquabats” -- possibly their best effort ever. The song “Hot Summer Nights” literally made me laugh out loud, something only The Aquabats are capable of. I can't wait to see these guys live. Oh, and I also can’t wait to bust open The Toasters’ DVD that arrived today. I have no idea when I’ll actually be going to bed tonight, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be any time soon. Otherwise, things are coming together nicely. I have the day off tomorrow, and I plan to devote several hours to another round of packing and shipping. I’m getting close to being all packed up and ready to go, so that’s good. I’ve got tentative plans to get down to Kabul next week, so that trip is still a go. I could tell you all about how terrible things continue to be at work, but I’ll spare you. It would take too much time and be too boring, so I’ll save the details for a face-to-face story some other time. Suffice it to say that I’m getting out of here just in time. Also, for those that may be desiring/expecting it, I don’t necessarily have plans for a big, long, “last hurrah” post that eloquently sums up my year in Afghanistan and leaves you with inspiring morsels of wisdom. I’m sure you’ll know when my last post is (this is definitely not it), but I can’t guarantee how great it will be. I just wanted to get that out of the way now. With that said -- thanks for reading. It’s truly been a pleasure to use this blog as a means of keeping in touch with my family and friends over the many long months that I’ve been out here, and I’ve even managed to pick up a few new friends along the way, which is more than I could have asked for. I appreciate all the time you’ve spent catching up on my life and posting comments about yours. Just think, in three more weeks we’ll be able to share even more over a cup of coffee or a beer. I can’t wait!

Happy Fourth

2005-07-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

My holiday didn’t start out as wonderfully as it could have, but it turned into a pretty decent day. I began by oversleeping -- a bad habit that’s becoming harder to fight. Given that I’m leaving in roughly three weeks, it’s hard to motivate myself to be diligent at work. It doesn’t help that I didn’t even turn off the light until 0300 last night, and probably didn’t fall asleep until at least ½ hour later. I slept in later than I wanted to, but I didn’t stress it too much because, like I said, I just don’t really care any more. I strolled into work at a little past 1030, and my coworkers promptly informed me that Lieutenant Colonel So-And-So had shown up looking for me about an hour earlier. Apparently he wasn’t happy that I was absent at our pre-arranged meeting time. Whoops. I had totally spaced the fact that just yesterday I told this particular LTC to meet me at the Help Desk at 0930 so that I could help him solve a printer problem. Again, I didn’t stress it -- I’m too concerned with leaving at this point to give a crap about anyone’s printer problems, Lieutenant Colonels or not. I ended up calling the guy and smoothing things over, so it worked out fine in the end anyway. I managed to hang around the office for all of about fifteen minutes before I headed out on my errand for the day -- obtaining a new ID card. I was braced for a long line and lots of waiting at the ID card office, but to my surprise there were only two guys in front of me when I showed up. I still had to wait for a solid 25 minutes before I was called in, but hey, it could have been a lot worse. I turned in my paperwork, answered the lady’s questions regarding my personal information, and then sat down for the photo. She snapped the picture, and about two minutes later she handed me the card and told me to look it over and verify the accuracy of the information on it (name spelled right, correct DOB, etc). It took me a minute to finish the task she gave me, because the first and most obvious thing that I noticed about the ID was the photo. I almost laughed out loud. “Is that seriously what I look like?” I thought to myself. I'm the kind of guy who will tell you that I don’t worry too much about appearances and how I look, and to some degree that’s true. It’s definitely become truer since I’ve landed out here. I’ve sort of “let myself go” over the past year, and especially the past month or so, and I think that seeing the ID photo was the first time in several weeks that I’d actually taken a good hard look at myself. And it cracked me up. It was entertaining enough that I’ve decided to share it with you. Pictured below are two photos of me sitting side by side -- the photo on the left is from my (now expired) Colorado drivers license, which was taken on 22 June 2004, roughly a month before I left for Afghanistan. The photo on the right is from my Army ID, taken this morning. Enjoy: Man, that still makes me laugh. Crazy what a year will do to you. I sat the two IDs side by side for one of my coworkers to look at, and she told me it looks like I’ve spent the year in jail, not in Afghanistan. Sometimes I’m not sure there’s much difference. Anyway, I got a huge kick out of that photo, so I thought I’d share. It was getting close to lunchtime when I left the ID card office, and I wasn’t in the mood to go straight back to work, so I didn’t. I headed over to the DSST Compound, which is where I live. Our little group of contractors, along with the military folks that are in charge of us, had decided to throw a Fourth of July party. I went and hung out for a bit, which was a good time. The grills were already fired up and in full swing, so I took advantage. I enjoyed some ribs, BBQ chicken, hot dogs, and even one of these: Someone had the crazy idea of setting up a Karaoke machine at the party, and I stayed long enough to watch one of the System Administrators do a hilarious rendition of Billie Jean before I headed back to work. The last highlight of the holiday was at mail call. I showed up in case some of my CDs had arrived, but honestly I didn’t expect anything to be here this quickly. Sure enough two of the six shipments showed up today, which was awesome. I ducked out of work early to rip the new music to my iPod, and right now I’m rocking out to an album called Rump Shaker by the Suburban Legends, who as of this evening are my new favorite band. These guys rule.

I Can't Think Of A Title

2005-07-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, I’m back to normal now, or at least as close to normal as one gets when they’re three weeks away from what I’d call a “major life change.” I’ve made it over the initial euphoria that led to the overuse of exclamation points in my last post. I’m still excited though, in a weird “constantly energized” sort of way. It’s actually a good thing -- this feeling in my gut of excited nervousness or nervous excitement or whatever you’d call it -- because it can be very invigorating and motivating. It has also served to keep me up late at night, which isn’t necessarily a good thing, but I’m trying not to sweat it. I generally try and go to bed at roughly midnight or 0100, but I haven’t managed to fall asleep until after 0300 for these past few nights. Maybe that will fade, maybe not -- at this point I don’t really care. I have gotten a lot done in the last 72 hours though, so I’m happy about that. So far: I’ve given my company the official letter of resignation, and I’ve also filled out four separate forms that are needed for HR to properly process my departure. I’ve packed an entire trunk full of stuff to ship home, only to find out that it was well over the weight limit for the US Postal Service to ship (70 lbs). I unpacked it, repacked half the contents into smaller and lighter boxes, and shipped all of them today. I sold my TV to one of the new guys, and another new guy has already got dibs on my coffee maker (he can’t have it until the day I head out though -- there’s no way I’ll survive these next three weeks without a readily available supply of caffeine). I’ve made headway on the last big “project” that’s hanging over my head at work -- the project is due Tuesday so hopefully I’ll finish that up tomorrow and get that weight off my chest. Then it’s back to packing -- the trunk still needs to be filled with clothes and other lightweight items and then shipped. I’ve still got to ensure that I can pare my room down to the bare essentials, just the stuff that will fit into my two-duffel-bags-and-one-backpack plan. I’ve still got to get some paperwork in order, including obtaining a new ID card (now that I’m leaving earlier than planned I don’t really need the ID card, but I still want it). I’ve got to get clarification on the procedure for traveling home. At first it looked like I was supposed to fly military to Germany, where the company would take over and get me home on commercial planes. Now it’s looking like I’ve got to fly all the way back to D.C. on military jets, and the company will take over from there. Either way, I was at least able to confirm that since I’m staying until my official “end of contract” date, I am still entitled to all of my end-of-contract bonuses, so that’s good news. Turns out the company will also continue to pay me during my travel time home, which is an extra plus. I’m hoping to God that my boxes of CDs show up before I leave here. I’ve already confirmed that all of them have shipped, but you never know how long it’ll take for stuff to get here. If they get here soon, they’ll be ripped to the iPod before they get sent on home. If they don’t get here until right before I leave, they may have to be forwarded home unopened. If they don’t get here at all before I leave...well, I’d prefer not to think about that scenario. Oh, and in addition to all the planning/packing/CD-ripping that still needs to get done, I’m also committed to making my trip down to Kabul a reality. I’ll make that phone call tomorrow. Moving on...The Concerts. I’ve got two friends confirmed for the Reel Big Fish show, so props to them. Those tickets will be purchased later tonight. I’ve got another friend confirmed for at least one unnamed show -- details to follow after she figures some things out at work. I’ve got a brother who’s committed to all three shows, assuming he can get the weekend off from work. Good news so far, but definitely keep the confirmations rolling in if you can make it to the shows. I’m telling you people, it’s going to rule. Here’s a little story that ought to get you motivated: a cousin of mine posted a comment to this blog expressing her interest in coming to the shows, despite the fact that she lives in Kansas City, and the fact that her parents are against it. She’s fighting the good fight to make it happen, and not letting anything stand in her way. Not even the fact that she’s only six weeks old (You tell ‘em Caroline! Your parents are lame. Cry until they cave -- at your age it’s totally okay to play the “immaturity card”). So what’s your excuse people? If my six-week-old cousin has the drive to make it happen, so should you. It’s fun and it’s free, so I want to hear some more “yes” votes soon. That’s all I got for now -- time for me to go hit the showers and then maybe get this trunk packed up before I call it a night. Three more weeks, people...I’m home free in three more weeks. Rock!

Rocking Out Take Two - For Real This Time!!

2005-06-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

Kids, I have the most wonderful news ever. Do you remember, a mere fortnight ago, when I told you that I would be leaving here on 7 August at the earliest? Well I lied! Isn’t that great!?! I’m so excited that I don’t know where to begin! I discovered today, thanks to the wonderful people over at punknews.org, that Catch 22 has been added to the already-in-progress Coast To Coast Roast tour starring Reel Big Fish. Do you know awesome that is!? It’s better-than-winning-a-new-car awesome. I read Aaron Barrett’s online journal (he’s the Reel Big Fish frontman, but I’ll just pretend that you already knew that) and the way he describes the new drummer and John The Trumpet God and the band playing really tight and sounding great and feeling so “tonight’s the night”...I have to see this show! And now Catch 22 is on the tour!! Words don’t do justice to the awesomeness so I have to resort to overusing exclamation points!!! Here’s the kicker people...the Coast To Coast Roast Tour, the very one that I just mentioned and that now includes Reel Big Fish and Catch 22, will be landing in Denver on 5 August!! I can’t contain it any longer, so here’s the most wonderful news I’ve ever had the pleasure of sharing on this blog: I WILL BE AT THAT SHOW!! You heard me right folks, I will be back in Denver by 5 August, and I will spend that night rocking out in the purest sense, in front of two of the most amazing bands to ever grace my ears with their sonic power! And it gets better! You’re all invited!! And you’re going to come to the show with me!! That’s right folks, I want you to come to this show. I’m going to quit with the exclamation points for a second, because I’ve already used way too many, plus I want to convey the fact that I am totally serious about this. If you know me well at all, or if you’ve just been reading this blog for long enough, you already know that I live and die by good shows. Hell, I rearranged my recent Europe vacation, pushing it back by an entire month, for the sole reason of catching a few good shows. I will be leaving Afghanistan on 25 July and I will be joining all of you at the Coast To Coast Roast show in Denver on 5 August. Here’s how deadly serious I am about this -- I will buy a ticket to the show for anyone and everyone who wants to go. If you’re reading this, I will buy your ticket! All of you! I know there are some of you reading this (and here I’m thinking of people like the Schierholz sisters or Adam K in C/S or Adrian down in Canon City or Amelia in Boulder -- there are others) who are thinking “Oh, he doesn’t mean me, he’s only talking about his tight group of friends.” NO! I mean everyone!! I will buy your ticket, and all you have to do is tell me that you want to go!! Here’s the thing people -- in the back of my mind I was tentatively planning to throw a big party when I got back, a “welcome home” gig for anyone and everyone (regardless of how well I know you, or whether I even know you at all) to show up to, socialize, drink some beer, and celebrate the fact that I’m back home. Well, this is it! This is the big party!! We’ll be hanging out, drinking some beers (or non-alcoholic beverages of your choice -- I’m not passing judgment here), socializing, and rocking out to some great ska at the same time!! You’re all invited, and it’s all on me!! If that’s not enough to get you totally, completely, and unbelievably excited, there’s more! Three and four days later, on 8 and 9 August, I’m inviting you all to rounds two and three of the “Welcome Home Josh Awesome Ska Party!” It turns out that not only will I be home in time for the Coast To Coast Roast Tour, but also the Son Of The Teenage Pajamas From Outer Space Tour!! To my utter amazement and unquantifiable excitement, those wacky ska superheroes known as The Aquabats have resurrected themselves from oblivion and joined forces with sexy punk rockers The Eyeliners, and both bands, along with The Phenomenauts and Time Again, will be in Colorado on the 8th and 9th of August!! The cities are Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, and I guarantee I will be at both shows. And you’re all invited to come back again, to one or both of the shows, for another night(s) of ska/punk awesomeness on my bill!! I’ll buy your ticket to those shows, too!! By now I’m sure you all think I’ve gone insane, but let me assure you that I have not. Let me also assure you that the Son Of The Teenage Pajamas From Outer Space Tour will be the single best thing that ever happened to you in your entire life -- ever. That warm August night will provide you with countless hours of inspiring stories of friendship (and pure rock goodness) that you’ll be telling to your grandchildren in the year 2046. Seriously people, I was genuinely afraid that I’d missed the chance to ever see The Aquabats live on stage again, and the news of their upcoming tour, coupled with the addition of Catch 22 to the Coast To Coast Roast tour, has almost single-handedly made this entire year worthwhile. Please, if you do anything at all this summer, join me for one (or better yet all!) of these shows. I promise you won’t regret it. So here’s the lowdown: three amazing shows, and I’ll be at every one. You can be there too (free of charge!) if you simply tell me that you want to go. I won’t discriminate based on who you are or where you live...if you’re willing to be in Denver/Colorado Springs/Fort Collins on the aforementioned dates, your ticket is on me. So what are you waiting for!? You know you want to go to these shows, or at the very least you want to hang out with me upon my impending (and sooner than planned!) return. And just in case that’s not enough, the first one to respond, by either emailing me or posting a comment on this blog, will also get a CD of your choice by Reel Big Fish/Catch 22/The Aquabats/The Eyeliners or any of the other amazing bands at these shows, purchased by me. So what are you waiting for!? Ready...Go!

Four Days Feels Like Forever

2005-06-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

Wow. Has it really been four days since my last post? I guess that's not terrible, although I would really like to be posting more often than that. Here's the best excuse I can muster... I used to spend my time at work not actually working. It was a pretty sweet deal, really. Despite my complaints about life out here, it wasn't so bad there for a while. I'd come into work, but I'd spend the majority of the day writing blog posts, sending and returning emails, and surfing the web. Lately though, work has been too busy for me to indulge myself with "personal stuff." I actually have to get some work done now. As a result, six days out of the week look a lot like this: wake up, start the coffee, throw some clothes on, get ready for work. Go to work and spend 10-12 hours doing repetitive, annoying, and sometimes stressful work. Leave work, go back to the hut, make up for lost time by surfing all the news/webcomics/blogs/techie-sites that I didn't have time to surf at work. Look at the clock, realize it's bedtime. Go to bed, get up the next day and do it all again. It's a very boring life, and it doesn't leave a whole lot of time for writing blog posts. I think the problem is that when I get home from work, I tend to use the internet in much the same way as I used the TV back home. I'd instinctively turn it on, and then proceed to "zone out" for a while. Usually "a while" would turn into hours, and before I knew it the evening was wasted. I can justify using the internet in this way to some extent, in that it's more interesting and educational than almost anything I ever used to watch on TV, but still...it's not really a great way to spend my time. I'd rather be interacting and engaging with people, which is probably why I'm so anxious to get back home. It'd be nice to at least have someone to say hi to and make small talk with when I get "home." In the meantime, however, this blog is my best way to "engage" others, so I guess I need to be more diligent with it while I'm still here. I'll work on that, I promise. So now that we're "engaging," what is there to say? Not a whole lot, really. I just described to you above, in a whopping three or four incomplete sentences, the extent of 90% of my life. Boring, ain't it? At least it won't be too much longer until I can get home and (hopefully) add a little bit more excitement to my existence. I'm anxiously tracking the status of the CDs I ordered, which I guess is kind of fun. I placed various orders at various websites, and it breaks down into six different shipments, three of which have already been dropped in the mail. It's kind of a guessing game with the mail out here -- I've received some packages as quickly as six days while others have taken three weeks. There's really no rhyme or reason to it, and since we can only receive US Postal Service mail out here, it isn't track-able like UPS or FedEx. It makes going to the daily mail call fun because you never know if your stuff's going to be there. I guess it's a good sign that I can still find joy in the little things like waiting for the mail -- at least I know I haven't become hopelessly jaded by the monotony. I'm also looking forward to an upcoming trip to Kabul, although I suppose I should probably get off my butt and plan the trip before I get too excited about it. The "planning" really only consists of making a phone call or two to find out when I can get on a convoy down there, but I still haven't managed to do that yet. I have gotten permission from my boss to head down there, so that's a start. He told me I could take a "day or two" to go down there, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him. If I get down there and then feed him a line about how I can't get back because they don't have any convoys to Bagram scheduled, what's he going to do? I'm thinking I'll be down there for at least three days, maybe more. He'll get over it. Speaking of bosses, I also sat down with the Country Manager recently (he's like the Supreme Boss of Everything) and we talked about my status. I came clean and told him I was planning to leave in August, and he was surprisingly cool with it. He even hooked me up with a new set of orders which state I'll be staying until May 2006, which is sweet because now I can renew my Army ID card. I'll be home in August, but I'll have an "Army Contractor" ID card that lasts until next May. Guaranteed I'll be flashing that sucker anywhere and everywhere a military discount is offered -- might as well milk this thing for all it's worth. I could probably even use the orders to get a free military flight to Europe and back, although that might be pushing it. Anyway, the one thing that Supreme Boss told me was that he wants me to start "coaching" a replacement for the Team Lead position, and I've already got someone picked out for that. I talked to her today and she's on board with it, so hopefully soon I can start slowly but surely pawning my work duties off onto her until I slip out of the picture entirely. Ideally she'll have taken over the Team Lead role entirely by the end of July, enabling me to sit back and idly collect one last paycheck before I get on a plane. That'd be pretty cool. Well, I guess that's about all I got for now, and the clock is telling me that it's definitely pushing bedtime. If I haven't returned your email it's only because I've been busy daydreaming about actually seeing you face-to-face soon. I'll write back soon, and in the meantime I'll be counting the days and probably still procrastinating on the packing. Some things never change.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

2005-06-25T11:13:00.000-07:00

Today, Saturday, which is winding down for me but is just getting started for all of you back home, marks exactly 11 months that I’ve been on this contract. I’m a mere one month away from my ‘end of contract’ date, and roughly six weeks away from actually leaving this place. What an unbelievable feeling. I’ve been looking forward to the end pretty much since I got here, and I’m completely stoked that I’m now so close. I’ve been on a high all day. I cannot wait until I get home. Excitement aside, here’s the latest news, and the reason for this post’s title. I finally started to make some progress on “The Project,” although it’s really not much. I had the day off yesterday, and I used the free time to meander on over to the PX where I bought myself a rather large crate. It’s basically a big plastic box -- the Army calls it a “foot locker,” but I just call it a trunk (thanks to the wonders of American marketing I still associate the words “foot locker” with athletic shoes and referee shirts). I’m optimistically hoping that everything I need to ship home will fit into this one trunk, but that may be a bit of wishful thinking. I have yet to actually put anything into the trunk, but I figure the purchase of it is one small step in the right direction. The only downside is that I currently have no space in my tiny little room for anything, let alone a huge trunk. As a result, the trunk has been making its way from the bed, to the floor, then back again -- incidentally, that’s how I often kept my room clean back home. Too much crap on the floor? Throw it all on the bed! At night I just dumped it all back on the floor to make room for myself to sleep, and then in the morning it all went back on the bed. That’s what the trunk’s been doing so far. One of these days I’ll get around to doing some actual organizing in here and maybe (gasp!) even start packing the trunk. So if buying the trunk is “one step forward,” what are the “two steps back?” I’m reluctant to tell you. More specifically I’m reluctant to tell my brother, because when he reads this he’s likely to disown me. I spent the better part of the day yesterday shopping for CDs. It’s been a long time since I’ve purchased any CDs, which is uncommon for me, so I spent most of my free time yesterday making up for it. Without going off on too much of a tangent (really, I’ll try my best not to), let’s just say I’m a huge fan of CDs. My CD collection, as a whole, is hands down the single most valuable item that I own -- both in terms of sentimental value, as well as sheer monetary cost (granted, I don’t currently own a car, but there was a time when the total cost of all the CDs I own was more than the cost of my car. Sad but true). Let me just say, for the record (and to clarify for all the folks that don’t understand how one man can spend that much money on CDs) that I’ve always been a fan of purchasing music. I remember when Napster (the original one) was all the rage back in college, but I never used it for much outside of obtaining hard to find tracks that were never sold in a traditional format (like the theme song to Duck Tales, for instance). Kazaa, BitTorrent, and all the other peer to peer file swapping services don’t appeal to me in the slightest. I’m a big fan of supporting the bands whose music I enjoy, and in the interest of not going off on an unrelated music piracy rant, I’ll just leave it at that. I will say this also -- I haven’t quite warmed up to the legitimate ways of buying digital music either. I’ve had the Apple iTunes software running on my computer since December, but it wasn’t until recently that I could finally access the iTunes Music Store. The Army, in their ongoing quest to maintain network security (or their overzealous authoritarianism, depending on your perspective), has decided to block access to that online store. Roughly a week ago I finally figured out how to circumvent their network security, which means not only can I now access the iTunes Music Store, but I can also use my chat software and access a myriad of web sites that were previously blocked. The best part is that I can do all of this without getting caught (I swear, working with the Army has turned me into a little wanna-be hacker). The point is that I’ve recently spent time browsing the iTunes store, and while I will say that it’s pretty darn cool, it’s still not something that I prefer over CDs (not yet anyway). It’s pretty neat to be able to find the bands that I’m in to and download an entire album for $10 and a mouse click, but somehow the idea of owning actual CDs still appeals to me. It could be that $10 isn’t much less (and is sometimes more) than what I’d pay for the CD itself anyway, or it could be that my internet connection is so slow out here that downloading a 60 MB album could easily take me 6 hours, or it could be that CDs don’t have the “DRM” restrictions that most legitimately purchased digital files do...but I think it’s more than that. There’s something about paying for a CD and then holding it in my hands -- about reading through the liner notes while I’m giving the disc its first listen -- that just makes the whole music buying experience worth it to me. So yesterday I embarked on what promises to be my final round of CD shopping from Afghanistan, and I found a lot of good stuff that I “need” to buy. The big question though, and this is where the whole story ties together, was whether I should have the CDs shipped to me out here (giving me limited time to receive them, rip them, and then ship them home myself) or just have them shipped directly home. If you know me at all, then you already know how I answered that question -- I had them all shipped to me out here. I realize that probably doesn’t sound like the brightest idea I’ve ever had, and I’ll admit that I had a bit of a hard time justifying it to myself. In the end I decided that some of the music is just too good, and that it can’t wait until I get home. I must have it, and I must have it now. How am I supposed to survive the impending hours-upon-hours of flights and layovers knowing that so much good music is sitting idly in a box at home, when I could be listening to it right now? The answer is I’m not, and that’s why the CDs are on their way. So here I sit, with a giant empty plastic trunk and a roomful of stuff to cram into it. But I couldn’t leave well enough alone; no, I went and bought a few boxes worth of extra stuff to cram into it. If this is good news for anybody, it’s good news for the US Postal Service. With all the music I’m having shipped out here, only to turn around and ship it all right back home (after it’s ripped to the iPod, of course), I just may single-handedly keep the USPS alive for the next few weeks. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.

It's A Small World After All

2005-06-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at work today, procrastinating all the things I should have been working on and counting the days until I leave here, when a customer walked in. The first thing he asked was “Is there a Josh that works here?” That question always indicates one of two things: 1) I spoke with someone on the phone, and I directed them to ask for me specifically when they came into the office. I didn’t recall having done that in the last few days. That left indication 2) The customer is upset, they know I’m the Lead, so they’re here asking for me by name in order to complain. Great, I thought, just great. I don’t need this today. I took a deep breath and answered “Yeah, I’m Josh. What can I do for you?” He smiled, pointed to the name-tape on his uniform, and said “My cousin told me that you wouldn’t believe there was a Schierholz out here, so I’m stopping by to prove it.” (the guy’s last name is Schierholz, in case anyone needed clarification). I smiled back as I recalled an IM conversation I had with a buddy of mine the other day... My good friend Ryan and I chat on IM fairly regularly -- usually it’s as I’m getting ready to call it a night and he’s just showing up at work. A few days ago we were chatting and he mentioned that he’d been meaning to tell me something for a long time but kept spacing it. He said that he has a cousin who’s out here, right here on this base, and that this cousin shares his unique last name. Apparently one of Ryan’s sisters had told this cousin to stop by and say hi because they knew I’d get a kick out of it. Ryan also mentioned during out little chat that this cousin is scheduled to redeploy soon (“redeploy” is Army-speak for “go back home”), so I figured that I’d probably missed my chance to meet this cousin. I didn’t think much of it, and sure enough by today I had forgotten all about. Thanks to the efforts of “Ryan and Sisters,” who hadn’t forgotten about it, I was pleasantly surprised when Lieutenant Schierholz walked into my office today. My conversation with the LT was short, but it was really fun to meet him and chat for a bit. We stayed on the typical “I-don’t-really-know-you-but-I-know-people-that-you-know” small talk, and I was able to reminisce just a little bit. I told him that Ryan and I have been friends for years, that we went to school together and were college (and post-college) roommates -- he mentioned Elizabeth’s name and I told him that I knew Ryan’s sisters and mom fairly well and that I’d actually lived in Elizabeth’s house back in Colorado Springs for a while. It was the second “small world” meeting that I’ve had since arriving here, the first of which was several months ago when I met a Sergeant from Omaha who knows my aunt and uncle. It’s always fun to run into people like that because it really does help to shrink this great big planet just a bit. It’s comforting to know that despite the thousands of miles that separate me from my family and friends, our worlds can still be brought together through mutual relationships. Mostly the conversation just made me wish I was in LT Schierholz’s shoes, and that I was mere days away from heading home to actually see those family and friends. I won’t be too far behind him though, and in the meantime it’s fun to meet someone who is connected to the very people that I’m anxious to get home and hang out with.

The Project

2005-06-18T10:50:00.000-07:00

So that last post made things sound a little bit more depressing than it needed to. Life’s really not that bad here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still no fun at all, it’s just not as bad as it once was. There was a time -- probably late January and into February -- when I really couldn’t stand it out here. There were many days and nights back then that I gave some serious thought to packing it up and calling it quits. I’m not at that low point anymore, largely because I know I will be packing it up and heading home very soon. Every time work starts to stress me out, or I start to get annoyed by something-or-other, I just look at a calendar and try to smile. It won’t be long now. I’m still counting the days until the end of my contract (37 to go), although I’ll probably be out here a few weeks beyond that. I finally got some of my questions answered, and I now know for sure that I’m free to leave any time after 25 July. I haven’t set a hard date yet, but I have narrowed it down: I’ll be out of here on 7 August at the earliest, and no later than 21 August. Sometime between now and then I’ll narrow that down to a more specific date. The more pressing issue, however, is what I’ve not-so-creatively dubbed “The Project.” “The Project” is the name that I’ve assigned to the task of getting ready to get on a plane and head home. It consists largely of packing and shipping -- something I’m not particularly looking forward to. You wouldn’t think that a guy who’s entire life is housed in a 9’ x 10’ room would be able to accumulate very much stuff, but you’d be wrong. I’ve got a trunk full of books, CDs, DVDs, and paperwork that all needs to be shipped home before I leave here -- not to mention the clothes and souvenirs that I’d rather not lug home with me on a plane. I’ve also got a few things that I’m sure I’ll be leaving behind -- the coffee maker and the TV definitely won’t be going back with me. Those, along with a few other random items, will be either sold to a newcomer or else donated to whoever inherits my room. After I get everything sorted out and a large portion of it mailed home, the next task will be the packing. The idea behind the packing is to make the journey home as painless as possible. In contrast, here’s how my journey went on the way out here: I left Colorado with a backpack, a computer bag, and a huge duffel bag (think hockey bag and you’ll have the idea) that were all packed completely full. The duffel bag alone weighed close to 70 lbs (I know this because I just barely missed having to pay an “overweight baggage charge” to the airline). As if that wasn’t enough to travel with, I stopped at Fort Benning, GA on my way out here, where the Army outfitted me with three more cargo bags. I managed to cram all the Army gear into two bags, but it still wasn’t exactly fun carrying two Army cargo bags (each of which also weighed in at just under 70 lbs), my huge duffel bag, a backpack, and a computer bag in and out of airports all the way from Georgia to Afghanistan. I’m hoping to avoid a repeat on the way home. With any luck I’ll manage to re-pack all the Army gear in such a way that it fits into just two cargo bags again, and almost everything else will be shipped home. The remaining personal items, just enough for the trip home, will fit into my recently acquired travel pack. That’s the goal anyway; two cargo bags and one backpack. The rest of this room will be mailed home or else it’s staying here. The only part of “The Project” that I’ve managed to complete so far is the planning, which I’ve basically outlined above. I still haven’t found the motivation to get started on the actual Project itself yet. It’ll happen soon enough. I’ve given myself a target date of 1 August to complete “The Project” -- by that date I don’t plan to own anything that doesn’t fit inside the two Army bags and my backpack. As I glance around at all the junk in my room it looks almost impossible. Wish me luck.

I'm Officially On The Home Stretch Now

2005-06-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time. Try as I might to fight it, I’ve been here long enough to know that this place will inevitably suck the life right out of you. Life slowly spirals downward into a monotonous routine of little else besides work-sleep-work-sleep-work-sleep. I knew it would happen. It’s been just under one month since I returned from vacation, and it appears to have finally hit bottom. Two weeks ago I had no problem coming up with fun, entertaining, interesting stories for this here blog. Now I can’t think of even one story that’s worth your time. I go to work, then I go to sleep, then I wake up and do it all again. Today I picked up some clean laundry and put it away. That was the highlight of my day. I’m not joking, it really was the highlight. I put my headphones in, hit “play” on the old iPod, and started putting away laundry. Ten minutes later it was over. I look forward to doing that again in five days. Even something like doing laundry in this place operates on a very strict schedule, which is why I’m able to tell you exactly how many days it will be until I put laundry away again. Yep, it’s quite a fabulous life that I live. Work, sleep, work, sleep, work. My Help Desk is shorthanded again for the first time since I arrived back from vacation, which essentially means that my free-wheelin’ days of playing the boss role are over. No more sitting at the big desk in the back, pretending to be busy when I’m actually just surfing the web. Now I’m up front again, answering the phone and talking with the customers, returning their stupid emails and fielding their stupid questions. I knew this was coming -- you see, the Help Desk staffer that is now gone was scheduled to leave on vacation next week anyway. I knew that my return to the “front lines” was inevitable; I just figured that I still had another eight days or so to get ready for it. Then I woke up this morning, and I learned otherwise. Allow me to give you a little bit of background, because I have nothing else remotely interesting to say. My staffer, we’ll call him D, was scheduled to leave on vacation next Thursday. This meant that I would have to make my return to the “front lines” next week in order to cover the vacancy (it’s somewhat unfair to use that term given the fact that there are soldiers out here who actually do work on the “front lines,” whereas I just sit in an office and provide tech support. My apologies to the real fighters). I found out when I woke up this morning, around 1100, that D had received the dreaded call from the Red Cross late last night. The Red Cross only calls for one reason, and that’s to tell you that you’ve been granted Emergency Leave. You only get Emergency Leave when something very distressing has happened, so it’s never good news when the Red Cross calls. D learned last night that his uncle had passed away, and thus he was being sent home on Emergency Leave. He was on a plane early this morning. The one good thing about Emergency Leave is that no one can stand in its way. Once the Red Cross has verified a legitimate reason for Emergency Leave, you can guarantee that you’ll be on the next flight home. No one can stop the Red Cross once they’ve gotten involved, and to my knowledge no one’s ever tried (I should hope not anyway). If the Red Cross says you’re going home, then by God you’re going home. One week is the standard duration for Emergency Leave, but we all know D will be gone for much longer. His one week would put him back on this base next Wednesday, and he was leaving on vacation next Thursday. The big boss (my boss) has already told him to just stay home until his vacation is over, which is not until mid-July. We won’t see D again for a while, if we see him again at all. D was a hard one to read -- every time he left on vacation he swore he wouldn’t be coming back, although he always did. This time, he just might not. I guess we’ll find out next month. The point is that he’s gone now, so I’m back to the “front lines” to fill in. I’m not very excited about it. To top it off, I know it’s only going to get worse. It’s not just that D’s gone; it’s also that work has really started to get to me again lately. Right after I returned from my break, things were okay -- work was busy, but we were keeping up. I was thoroughly enjoying playing the “boss role” by sitting in the back office and “supervising,” which is boss code for doing absolutely nothing at all. I came into work whenever I wanted, left when I wanted, and didn’t necessarily have to do very much actual work if I didn’t really want to. It was fun for a couple of weeks (although in retrospect I spent way too much time on the internet), but it was bound to end. I’ve been mentally done with this job for a while now, but it seems that my boss is still very much into it. He still wants to see results, to see that things are getting done and that they’re getting done right. So much for my little vacation -- it’s back to the real world now. This past week has been nothing but “action plans” and “training goals” and meetings and charts and graphs full of numbers and matrixes that I could frankly care less about. The big boss cares though, and I care about not getting fired just yet. So yeah, welcome back to the real world. I suppose the good in all this is that it’s likely to strengthen my confidence that the decision to come home at the end of this summer was the right one. I’ve been having my share of second thoughts about that lately, although I’m not really sure why. It probably stems from the fact that I don’t really have any kind of a plan for when I get home. I’ve got a million ideas in my head but no real “plan,” and I’ll be honest, I’m a little concerned about that. My future after Afghanistan is so wide open that it’s sometimes scary; scary enough, it turns out, that I’ve found myself wondering if coming home is really the right thing to do. I may not love life out here, but for a little while there it wasn’t terrible, and at least it was...well, something. I think that being shorthanded for a while, and forcing myself to deal with the “front lines” of tech support again, will help me remember just exactly why I wanted to come home in the first place. I’ll be straight with you, this return to the “real world,” to doing actual work, is going to suck. I’m not looking forward to it at all. There will be no more late nights, no more sleeping in, and no more strolling into work at 1100 or noon or whenever I can drag my lazy butt out of bed. There will be no more sitting in the back and surfing the web, trying to pretend I’m doing something productive. Starting tomorrow, I’m officially back to the daily grind that made me grow to hate this place so many months ago. Back to the busyness, the stress, and the idiot customers with their idiot questions. I know what some of you are thinking, so to be fair I’m not trying to plead for your sympathy. God forbid I should actually have to do some real work for the insane salary that I get paid. All I’m saying is, as much as I’m not looking forward to the next couple of months of work, in a way it will be just what I need. It’s not going to be a whole lot of fun, but I know that when I board that plane roughly 60 days from now (maybe less -- we’ll see how things go), I’ll be so excited to get the heck out of this place that I won’t know what to do with myself. And that, my friends, is something to look forward to.

2005-06-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

2005-06-12T06:39:00.000-07:00

See that picture above? That means it’s been hot lately. Actually, it was much hotter a week or so ago – it’s been cooler and rainy for these last two days. I use Firefox as my internet browser, because it rules, and I run a Firefox extension called “ForecastFox.” ForecastFox is basically a small applet that sits in the upper left corner of my browser and keeps me updated on the weather here at Bagram. It’s an awesome extension, and it’s highly customizable, so if you’re a Firefox user I highly recommend you install it. Anyway, I opened my browser last week and saw the same thing that you see above. That little “steaming thermometer” icon was new to me, so I was kind of taken aback. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “I guess it’s going to be pretty hot then, considering the little thermometer is boiling.” The really odd thing is that the high temperature indicated by that icon was a mere 34°C (I’m getting used to using the Celsius scale, but for the rest of you that works out to roughly 95°F). That’s hot, but it’s not quite “steaming thermometer” hot. So yeah, I got a kick out of that the other day. I'm so entertained by a weather icon that I consider it worth posting on my blog. Yep, my life’s pretty boring out here. In other news, Robby and Becky were at Bagram the other day and stopped in for a visit. Robby and Becky are fellow contractors, and I met them back in August when they first showed up here. Robby and Becky are married, but no one knew that last fall when we met them. They were both looking for contractor jobs, but they knew that the company was unlikely to hire a married couple, as most big companies are. They invented a clever little scheme in which Becky used her maiden name and they used separate addresses and phone numbers. The both got hired, they showed up here, and the company decided to send Robby down to Kabul while Becky remained here. Needless to say they weren’t stoked about being apart for a year, so that’s when they finally came clean. Becky spent roughly a month here at Bagram before the company relented and agreed to move her down to Kabul to be with her husband, and of that month she spent just over two weeks at the Help Desk. I got to know her a little bit while we worked together, and she’s awesome: laid-back, fun, easy to get along with –- just an all-around solid girl. From what I know of Robby, he’s the exact same way (only he’s a solid guy, just in case I needed to clarify that). I’ve done a mediocre job of keeping in touch with them through email, but I haven’t seen them in forever. The last time I saw Becky was probably in September, and the last time I saw Robby was in January when he happened to be passing through Bagram and popped his head into the Help Desk to say hi. Earlier this week they were both in Bagram to get their ID cards renewed, and they decided to stop by the Help Desk to say hello. Given the amount of time since we’ve seen each other face to face, Robby and Becky were both a little surprised with what they saw. I walked up to the front from my little hideout of an office in the back, and Becky’s eyes got wide as she said “Whoa! Look at your hair!” Robby smiled and said “Dude, you look like a hippie.” I got a kick out of that comment and had to agree that I do, in fact, look like a hippie. I’ve got close to 11 months worth of hair on my head and another month’s worth on my face, and looking in the mirror I do get a distinct hippie vibe. I kind of like it. One of my favorite things to do when I get comments about my hair is to show people my ID card or passport photo, both of which were taken last summer when I kept my head shaved bald. I guess I do look pretty different to those that haven’t seen me in a while. By the way, I’ve got a new goal now...originally it was to grow my hair out until it looked like Shawn White’s, which would still be cool, but now I’m also tempted to go for the white-boy dreads. That’d be pretty sweet. Anyway, I digress... I chatted with Robby and Becky for a few minutes, which was great. I got caught up on life in Kabul, mentioned that I’m tentatively planning on coming down there for a visit before I leave, and they both said I definitely should. They were bummed to find out that I wouldn’t be sticking around any longer than my obligatory one year, but they understood. Our conversation didn’t last long, but it was really good to talk to them for a few minutes. Robby and Becky are two of the coolest people that I’ve met out here, and they have the uncanny ability to lift your spirits by just talking to you. They’re what I’d simply call “good people.” They really seem to have life figured out, focusing on the things that actually matter in this world. I don’t know exactly how to describe these two other than to say that I get the impression that if I were to hang out with them for a few months or a year I’d probably end up a better person for it. They’re truly inspirational, for a variety of reasons. They travel relentlessly –- they’ve spent time in 71 countries individually, over 50 of those as a couple, and are constantly making plans to see more. They wasted no time getting involved in humanitarian projects down in Kabul, and have solicited donations from their family and friends all over the world. I won’t go on and on about them, but suffice it to say that they’re two of the neatest people I’ve met over the course of this year. You can read more about them and their travel here, and this page gives a short bio of each of them and also contains a really neat poem that they truly embody. Despite the title of my blog, I’m not so convinced that I’m having very many “adventures” lately, at least not compared to these two. I think if I can manage to lead half the life they’ve already lived then I’ll die a very happy man.

Working Out...Rocking Out...It's All The Same

2005-06-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

I wrote this post back on Sunday or Monday, and I went back and forth about putting it up on the site. It’s basically a more vivid re-hash of a past-time of mine that I’ve mentioned before. Since nothing else exciting has happened in the last few days I’m going to go ahead and post it. Before I do though, I’d like to thank my friend Ryan, a contractor in Iraq who used to work in the cube right next to me back in Colorado Springs. His comment on my last post helps to explain why I'm not supposed to wear a hat in a military DFAC (although I have yet to find out where the more general “don’t wear a hat at the dinner table” tradition comes from), and it also makes me feel like a jerk for wanting to keep mine on. So thanks for that Ryan ;-) He also referenced another blogging contractor in Iraq, a guy who apparently just recently landed “in country,” and who has a funny post up about wearing hats in the DFAC. In case you missed Ryan's comment, you can read the other contractor's blog here, and the “no hats” post here. I guess I shouldn’t complain -- at least I don’t have to be “checked-in” by a soldier donning full battle gear every time I want to eat or stop in for a cup of coffee. Anyway, on to the story... It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything that could qualify as a real workout. I have yet to visit the gym since I've been back from vacation, although I've thought about it several times. It’s funny how these things work -- the desire to work out seems inversely proportional to the number of days remaining before I return home. And it’s not just me -- I think that as the days get shorter it becomes everyone’s goal to try and cram a year’s worth of good intentions into one or two months of intense physical activity. No one wants to return home after a year away as the same (choose your poison: weak and skinny OR slightly chubby) person they were when they left. We all want to come home looking like we diligently spent our time in Afghanistan improving our physical condition. Well folks, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not looking good. I think it’s about time I abandon my dreams of returning home as a sculpted specimen of human perfection -- it’s just not going to happen. Anyway, the reason I’m on this topic is that while I haven’t done anything resembling an official workout in way too long, I did manage to work myself into a sweat on my most recent day off (Sunday). One of my favorite past-times back home is an activity that I affectionately refer to as “rocking out.” Here’s how it’s done: first, you throw a few of your favorite discs in the stereo. Make sure it’s high-energy music that really makes you want to rock. Next, crank up the volume and press play. It’s important that every 60-90 seconds you stop to realize that the music isn’t quite loud enough, and make your way back to the stereo to turn it up just a little bit more. You’ll do this several more times, and eventually you’ll approach the volume knob one more time, only to realize that it’s now so loud that you cringe being so close to the speakers. That’s how you know it’s finally loud enough (this perpetual raising of the volume can be dangerous if your stereo happens to have a remote control. I recommend abandoning the remote and opting for the manual method of volume manipulation). Now that the volume’s at a sufficient level, you’re free to begin the transformation from being yourself into being a full-blown rock star. Pretend you’re the one belting out the songs from the stage -- jump around, dance, bang your head, mosh with imaginary crowd that surrounds you; don’t hold back, and don’t forget to sing every word to every song (go ahead and sing loudly, too. The stereo is up so high at this point that there’s no way for you to really hear yourself anyway). It’s also important to play an instrument: air guitar or air drums will do, or you can grab a random household item that resembles a microphone and use it as such. Don’t be afraid to mix and match the instruments, because when you’re “rocking out” you are the band -- you sing every word and play every instrument all at the same time. You rule. Due to its potential for embarrassment, I would usually reserve my rocking out for times when I knew my roommates were out and I had the place to myself. This didn’t always work out as well as planned... I remember last summer, shortly before I left to come out here, when a room-cleaning/packing session slowly transformed into a full-blown rocking out session. It was cool because I was the only one home, so I cranked the stereo and went absolutely nuts, but in my absent-mindedness I left my bedroom door wide open. My roommate came home, walked past my bedroom door on the way to his, and in addition to the ridiculously loud music that greeted him, he was also treated to a shot of me jumping around on my bed, passionately screaming/singing, totally oblivious to his presence, lost in my own little “rocking out” world. Oh, I should probably also mention that I had a snowboard deck in my hands, and I was playing it like a guitar. I can’t really explain that -- sometimes when you’re rocking out and the mood is right, your old snowboard deck might start to look distinctly like a guitar. Just go with it. Although before you do, you might want to make sure your bedroom door is closed. Learn from my mistakes people -- there’s no need to make your own. Suffice it to say that rocking out is a great way to relieve some stress, wind down after a day at work, pass the time between concerts, and it truly is one of my favorite “hobbies.” Rocking out in Afghanistan, however, isn’t quite as easy as it is back home. You see, I live in a wooden hut, a small abode that houses not just me but seven other guys, too. My little “room” is just that -- little -- and after you account for the small bed, desk, and shelves, it barely has enough room for two people to stand up comfortably. It’s not exactly prime space for rocking out. Regardless, I am not about to go a full year, especially a year with no concerts, without an occasional dose of the rocking. I had Sunday off, and I spent most of the day relaxing, surfing the web, and writing that really long entry I recently posted regarding my plans (or lack thereof) for when I come home. In the late afternoon I got a bit restless, and I knew that what I needed was some good rocking out. I picked up my iPod and threw together an impromptu “on-the-go playlist” of some ska-core songs that I knew would do the trick. The playlist I devised consisted of my entire Mad Caddies collection (6 albums plus some random songs from compilations), Catch 22’s fairly recent live album (aptly titled “Live”), my entire Mighty Mighty Bosstones collection (7 more albums, and of course some more random songs gathered from comps), and a Less Than Jake set played live in Minneapolis that was never pressed to CD, but that was offered via mp3 download from their website. I threw those 210 songs into a playlist, shuffled it up, spun the iPod wheel until it was at full volume, then put the earphones in and commenced with the rocking out, Afghanistan style. When you live in a wooded hut with seven other guys who all work various shifts, it’s important to keep the noise down. This makes the rocking out a bit more challenging. Dancing is still possible, but it turns into a very light-footed, careful, quiet sort of dancing where one foot must remain on the floor at all times (jumping is a no-go -- it would shake the whole hut and make too much noise). Not quite the same as at home, but do-able. It’s also important to refrain from actually singing any of the lyrics, especially considering the fact that the only musical accompaniment is playing directly into your own ears. No one wants to hear the guy in the next room belting out ska-punk songs a cappella. Therefore, lip-synching is key.* The air-playing can proceed uninhibited, which is good. One advantage of ska music is that it increases your choice of air instruments to rock out with. Ever played air trumpet or air trombone? You should try it, it’s a great time. Especially the trombone, you can really get into sliding that slidey-thing (what’s that thing called, anyway?) all over the place. I spent Sunday afternoon engaged in this “Afghan-style rocking out,” and fifteen or so songs and an hour later I had worked myself into a pretty good sweat. Not exactly a traditional workout but hey, I figure it’s got to count for something. *Interesting note about the lip-synching: there was one night in particular that I was fully engaged in some good “rocking out” action, and apparently I wasn’t quite lip-synching the lyrics. It appears, and of course I didn’t find this out until after the fact, that I was so intensely focused on the rocking out that despite my valiant attempts, I was not being entirely silent -- I was uttering a sort of breathy whispering sound, and I was apparently doing it at a loud enough volume that the guy in the next room could hear me. I was blissfully unaware of this at the time, largely because my headphone volume was up waaaaay too loud for me to hear anything else. The guy next door who heard this happens to work with me, so the next day at work he asked me what I had been up to the night before. Not wanting to go into the intimate details of the rocking out session, I simply answered him “not much, just listening to music.” He then asked, “but what was all that noise you were making?” I was still fairly sure at this point that I had succeeded in remaining silent during the rocking out, so I asked him “what noise?” He said “you were making noises for over half an hour last night. It sounded like ‘whisper chanting’ -- I thought maybe you were involved in some sort of religious séance or something.” That’s when it hit me that my “lip-synching” wasn’t quite as silent as I had hoped. When I realized that what he had heard was actually my “silent” lip-synching I just started laughing. Whoops, better keep that down next time. I thought about explaining to him that what he had really heard was the rocking out, but ultimately I decided against it. I’m not sure it would have done a whole lot to normalize my image in his eyes, so why even bother. He hasn’t brought it up since then, so for all I know he still believes that I’m a “whisper-chanting” religious zealot.

Winning The War On Terror One Clean Hand At A Time

2005-06-07T03:02:00.000-07:00

I said recently that life can be fairly boring out here, and that the monotonous existence I live can make it hard to come up with blog posts. I was only partially right. Don’t get me wrong -- life is usually fairly drab -- but I forgot to take into account the fact that I live on a US Army base. If you’ve got a good sense of humor, and I’d like to think I do, then the Army can provide an endless supply of comic relief. Here’s an example: The Army, in my experience, has never been an organization that shies away from rules. They have protocols and guidelines for everything, and they do their best to adhere to them strictly. I learned today that the dining facility (or DFAC, in Army-speak) is no exception. When you enter the DFAC at mealtime, the first thing you see is the civilian employee, clicker in hand, whose sole job is to keep an accurate count of the number of diners who enter for that particular meal. Directly beyond that individual are several hand-washing stations -- a short row of sinks, hand soap, and paper towels. Everyone, of course, is encouraged to wash their hands before entering the serving line. After the hand-washing stations comes the serving line, a cafeteria style operation that is designed to get food onto as many plates as possible as efficiently as possible. Around the corner from the serving line you find the dining area -- neat rows of tables as well as the various “extras.” The “extras” I’m referring to are things like condiments, desserts, beverages, and the like. A wide variety of beverages are offered, including a large tub of (reasonably) fresh and hot coffee at every meal. Most of you know by now that I’m an avid coffee drinker, so the ample supply that’s provided by the DFAC is a nice little treat. The building that I work in sits directly across from the DFAC, and it’s not uncommon for me to take a non-meal-time trip or two over to the DFAC during the day in order to refill my mug with some much-needed caffeine. Just yesterday, in fact, I found myself just a bit mentally fatigued and decided that a good cup-o-joe was just what I needed. I grabbed my mug and headed out the door. I walked into the DFAC, past the number-keeper and the hand-washing station, past the cafeteria line, and was just about to turn the corner into the dining room when I was approached by Sergeant Sanitation (I didn’t catch his real name, so SGT Sanitation will have to do). “Sir,” he said to me, “did you wash your hands?” Let’s pause right here to make sure we all fully grasp the situation. This gentleman, whom I’ve taken to calling SGT Sanitation, was not just another soldier in line to get some dinner. Nor was he an employee of the DFAC -- all DFAC employees are civilians. No, this gentleman was quite obviously on Hand-Washing Patrol. He was standing in a place which gave him full view of both entrances to the DFAC, and his solemn duty was to ensure that no one passed into the serving line or into the dining room unless he’d personally seen them make a stop at the hand-washing station. I can only imagine the training he’s gone through to attain such a prestigious post: he was likely educated in the ways of the Freedom-Hating Bacteria, and equipped with strategies for combating the Jihadist Microbe that seeks to upset the stomachs of the Infidel. The enemy will take many forms in this War On Terror, and we must never let our guard down. The Cause Of Freedom will be hard-won by using every available tool we have in our arsenal -- everything and the kitchen sink. I paused for a second or two before I attempted to explain to SGT Sanitation that I was merely passing through to refill my coffee mug. The Sergeant, much to my dismay, was vigilantly committed to his duty, and he was having none of it. “You must wash your hands if you’re going to be near the food,” he demanded. I slyly asked him if hand-washing was a requirement for those only planning to be near the beverages, and in his resolve he firmly stated that yes, it was. When I realized that this soldier was not going to be defeated by my brave attempts at sarcasm, I finally threw up the white flag and retreated to the hand-washing station. Touché, SGT Sanitation. I commend you for a job well done. Two and a half hours later I ventured back into the DFAC, this time to sit down for a meal. Of course, I made sure to wash my hands, and SGT Sanitation gave me a reassuring nod in recognition of my efforts. No need to thank me folks, I’m just doing my part to help win the War On Terror. All jokes aside, “SGT Sanitation” has been an unwelcome presence in the DFAC for about a week now. For over ten months I’ve been free to make my own decision regarding the washing of my hands, but it appears that this unwritten rule now has an enforcer who is here to stay. The role of SGT Sanitation is played by a different soldier at each meal, and I only mention him now because this was my first official run-in with this new position of authority. In all seriousness, is this the best use of our uniformed personnel? Isn’t this the stuff of elementary school, when the teacher would dutifully lead a line of young second-graders past the bathrooms on the way to the cafeteria? Do we really need to expend valuable man-hours enforcing mealtime cleanliness? I suppose my aversion to the Hand-Washing Patrol is a manifestation of my greater tendency to resist authority in any form -- offer me a sink and a sign with a friendly reminder and I’m likely to wash my hands every time, but post a guard inside the building who verbally demands it and I’ll go out of my way to be defiant. This is exactly why I didn’t make it through ROTC, and why I could never survive in the military. I’ve got no problem washing my hands before I eat, and honestly I’ve been extremely diligent about it since arriving here, but my little encounter yesterday really makes me wonder who’s responsible for the establishment of the Hand-Washing Guard. I don’t have any personal problem with the soldier who stopped me earlier today -- after all, he’s just doing his job -- but I’ve got to think that there are better things we could be spending our time on. I keep hearing about how thinly stretched our military is, about how short-handed we are in this time of war, but yet somewhere along the line a commanding officer deemed it important to make sure that no one on this base gets served their dinner with unclean hands. Sometimes I just shake my head in wonder...thankfully I’m (usually) able to laugh. (Sidebar Of Truth: Okay, I can’t let this post go up without a small disclaimer in the name of accuracy. Also, I have a question for my readers. My second run-in with SGT Sanitation didn’t go exactly as described above. I did go back to the DFAC a few hours later for dinner, and I did make sure to wash my hands, but there was no “reassuring nod” from the Sergeant. I just threw that in for effect. It was still the same guy playing “SGT Sanitation” that I’d had my earlier run-in with, and I don’t think he was too fond of me due to that first encounter. He walked over to me, politely asked if I’d washed my hands, to which I replied yes, and he then asked me to remove my hat. Okay, hold on: I’ve been eating in this same DFAC for over ten months, and I’ve worn a baseball cap EVERY DAY since I’ve been on this base. It has NEVER been a rule that civilians must remove their hat inside. Two co-workers of mine, folks who also wear hats all-day-every-day, had just come from the DFAC, and I confirmed with them later that they were not asked to remove theirs. I knew this guy was just messing with me to be a jerk, but in the name of civility I decided to comply without putting up much of a fight. I removed my hat, ate my food, and left. Here’s the reason I bring this up though: it occurred to me during dinner that I have no idea where this tradition of removing headgear at the table comes from. Presumably it’s an American or Western thing -- the female Egyptian soldiers eat every meal in the same DFAC and they keep their heads covered with scarves the whole time. I have yet to meet an orthodox Jew out here, but I can guarantee that if one were to walk into the DFAC wearing a yarmulke he would not be asked to remove it. You’d be hard-pressed to catch a glimpse of one of the local Afghan men without some type of headdress on. What is the big deal with wearing a baseball cap while you eat? Especially as a long-haired guy, it seems to me that it would be more sanitary to keep the hat on, and not have my hair falling all over my face while I’m trying to enjoy my food. The military obsession with removing your hat indoors, and especially while eating, is a small pet peeve of mine. I don’t want to turn this post into a rant against that tradition, but honestly, does anyone know where that comes from? Part of me is genuinely curious...)

Want to know what I'll be doing when I get home? Me too.

2005-06-05T08:44:00.000-07:00

To those of you that have emailed me and have not yet heard a response, rest assured that I haven't forgotten about you. I've been a slacker about returning emails lately and have instead relied on this blog to disseminate information, so hopefully you're reading this. I'll get back to all of you individually at some point, I promise. I've noticed that lately a lot of you emailers out there have asked the same question; namely, "what are you going to do when you come home?" That's a good question, and while I don't really have a solid answer, I figure it's a good topic to spend a blog post on. If nothing else, it'll save me some time spelling out the same thing to several of you in several different emails. My contract with my employer officially ends exactly 50 days from today, on 25 July, so I'm free to leave this place anytime after that. I've gone back and forth trying to decide exactly when I'd like to head home, and I still haven't come up with a specific date. I do know that I'd like to be back in Colorado by roughly 28 or 29 August. My mom, step-dad, and various siblings will be spending Labor Day weekend canoeing down the Colorado River into Moab (Utah), and I've been invited to join them. I would love to be a part of that family outing for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it will give me some good quality time with the family that I haven't seen face to face since 2004. I also think that a late summer canoe trip, coupled with a night or two of sleeping out under the stars, would be a perfect way to say "welcome home to the Rocky Mountains." If I can make it back by the weekend of 28 August, I'll have just enough time to settle in and recover from jet lag before we all head out to the river. I have yet to figure out all the details, but my assumption is that making it home around 28 August will mean leaving Afghanistan roughly two weeks before that, around the weekend of the 14th. By the time I fly all the way back to the States, then spend a few days in Fort Benning (GA) returning all the gear that the Army outfitted me with last summer, then fly myself home to Colorado, I can easily see a week or two going by between my last day in Afghanistan and my first one in Colorado. That's the general timeline I've got in my head right now - leave here in the middle of August to arrive home at the end of that same month. Like I said though, there are still many details to be worked out. First, I've got to figure out how far the military will fly me before it becomes my company's responsibility to get me the rest of the way home. Depending on the answer to that question it might be possible to leave here at the end of July, spend another week or two vacationing in Europe, and still be home in Colorado by my target date of 28 August. Suffice it to say that while I'm almost positive that I'll be back in Colorado by Labor Day weekend, it's still very much up in the air at this point just exactly how I'll get there. So that takes care of when I'll be home, but it doesn't do much to answer the real question, which is "what will I be doing when I get home?" That's a much harder question to answer. At this point, the best response I can offer you is: I really don't know. I have decided that I'd like to take some time off when I first get home; in fact, I can pretty much guarantee that I'll spend the whole month of September not working. Ideally, September will look something like this: I'll spend Labor Day weekend canoeing and camping with my family in Colorado/Utah. Upon returning from that outing, I'll spend two or three weeks on a road trip around the Midwest visiting my grandma and various cousins, aunts, uncles, etc; there's even a new baby that I have yet to meet. It's possible that my little sister will be joining me for that trip, and if all goes according to plan we'll be passing through Omaha, Kansas City, Fayetteville (AK) and ending our journey at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, where my little sister's fiance will be graduating from Air Force Officer Training School on the 23rd of September. Somehow all three of us and the car will manage to get back to Colorado in time for my sister's wedding on the 25th of September (I'm not sure yet how this is going to happen - like I said, there are still many details to be worked out). A mere three days after the wedding marks my 26th birthday, a day that will be celebrated with a huge party and lots of friends, assuming I manage to get off my lazy butt and plan something by then. So that takes care of my "fun month" of September, but what to do after that? This is where I cease to have any answers. I imagine that I'll make my return to the "working world" around the 1st of October, but at this point I have no idea what I'll be doing, or for that matter where I'll be doing it. For the first time in my life I'll be financially stable enough that I won't have to take "just any job" solely for the sake of having some sort of income, which I imagine will be wonderful. I don't, however, plan on squandering my new-found economic freedom by spending months searching for "the perfect job" or whittling away at my savings while I blindly pursue a dream career only to find out the hard way that quite often "living the dream" doesn't pay the bills. Realistically, I see myself landing a halfway-decent computer job; something that pays the rent and is bearable. I have a couple of dreams that I do plan on pursuing, but like I said, the idea is not to go broke chasing those dreams. With any luck one of them just might come true. The truth is that if I had any motivation at all I could be working right now towards making one of those dreams come true, but as it turns out I'm more of a slacker than I thought. It is for this reason that I plan to keep the money flowing with a "real job" - I'll make the decision to change careers and pursue one of my "dream jobs" if and when I discover that they can actually produce an income. Not very romantic, I know, but I guess I'm just kind of a realist that way. So we now have an idea of when I'm likely to be home, and a vague notion of just what it is that I may be doing, so the only remaining questions is: "Where?" I don't have an answer for this question just yet either, but I do have a few ideas in mind. My first stop when I return to the States will be the place I've called home for the last dozen or so years, the current home of my nuclear family, and a state that I absolutely love: Colorado. The few boxes of worldly possessions that I abandoned last year are sitting in my mom's basement in Colorado Springs, so I'll want to stop by at least long enough to retrieve those, not to mention that my mom has graciously offered me her guest room (my childhood bedroom was remodeled years ago) as a temporary place to live while I figure out my next move. I just might stay in Colorado Springs for a while; I enjoy living close to my family, and I've got a good friend or two in that city, so it would be a decent place to hang my hat for a while. If I don't land in Colorado Springs, I've got two other really appealing destinations in Boulder and Fort Collins. Boulder is a beautiful city nestled right up in the foothills of the Rockies, and while it's slightly on the expensive side, it's also where my brother currently resides. I'm really tempted to capitalize on the opportunity to share a city with my brother before he graduates and ends up out east somewhere (for reasons I cannot explain, he has in the past expressed the desire to live in North Carolina. I cannot come up with a single good reason to move to North Carolina, and if he follows through on that plan I can pretty much guarantee that I won't be joining him out there). I fell in love with the town of Fort Collins during the four years that I lived there and attended school, and the town still holds an almost mystical attraction - I can't necessarily explain it except to say that Fort Collins is just cool. I've got a couple of good friends living there right now, and should they still be there this fall, I can definitely see making Fort Collins home for a while. I've also still got it in the back of my mind to explore the western half of Colorado; if I could find a way to live in one of the many mountain towns again (and here I'm wide open: Steamboat Springs, Aspen, Vail Valley, Summit County, Telluride, Durango...the list could go on), I would definitely jump at the chance. "But Josh," you may be thinking to yourself, "would you consider moving somewhere outside of Colorado?" Well that's a very good question, and the answer is "Yes, I would." I've had a fascination with the Pacific Northwest for several years, although I've never spent any significant time there so I can't exactly explain where this fascination comes from. I could, however, see myself spending some time living in the Portland/Seattle/Vancouver area. This will probably sound pretty silly, but Oregon appeals to me simply because it feels like a sort of "sister state" to Colorado. It's got plenty of good snowboarding, and if you find the right town it seems to have the same kind of laid-back, pro-environment, we-love-the-outdoors attitude that you often find in Colorado. Colorado and Oregon are constantly fighting to be the state with the most microbreweries per capita, and depending on whose propaganda you read, they both currently hold the record. Either way, I could move to Oregon without giving up my affinity for good local beer. I'm pretty sure that my attraction to Seattle began in high school when I discovered that my then-favorite punk band hails from the Seattle suburb of Bremerton, and ever since then the city has never lost its appeal. One of my friends from college is currently living there, and she is convinced that Seattle is "the most wonderful place on Earth," so I guess that would be hard to pass up. Vancouver, and pretty much all of British Columbia for that matter, appeals to me in the same way that Colorado and Oregon do. In spite of the fact that I've never been there, it seems to be a city that I'd "just like," although I have no hard facts at all to back up that assumption. This doesn't have a whole lot to do with anything, but here's a quick story about how British Columbia scored a few more "cred points" in my book. Some of you may recall the post from back in March where I described my Guinness screensaver, which I lost when I recently re-formatted my computer. I searched the Guinness website in an effort to re-download the screensaver, but to no avail. I gave up and Googled "skiing snowboarding screensavers," and it was then that I discovered Baldface Lodge in Nelson, British Columbia. Not only does their website offer two different screensavers full of gorgeous photos, but Baldface has now been added to the ever-growing list of mountains that I must snowboard. I'll get there soon, trust me. Nelson isn't all that close to Vancouver (it's more of a straight shot north of Spokane in eastern Washington which, oddly enough, is home to some of my extended family), but it makes BC that much cooler. Not that BC needed any additional boost - I decided years ago that Canada as a whole is awesome. Again, I have no real explanation for this, I just like ice hockey and snowboarding and, well, Canada. Here I sit, an American in Afghanistan, and the only flag I have on display in my room is a Canadian one (unless you count the Toasters poster hanging on my wall, which is basically a UK flag with the band's logo on it. I have nothing overtly American on display, and I'm okay with that). Okay, so I'm waaaaay off topic now, but the point is that I might try to live in Canada. Trust me, it'll be cool. While I'm rambling about what I might or might not end up doing when I get home, why not explore one more option? What, is this post too long for you already? Too bad, I'm not done yet. I recently discovered that America - though this should come as no surprise to me and just goes to show how naive I can sometimes be - has for some time now held onto their military presence in the Balkan region (a.k.a. southeastern Europe: Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, northwest Turkey, and the surrounding areas). It appears that some of the American bases in this region may soon be outsourcing certain jobs to civilians, and the company I work for is currently bidding for one of those contracts. While I'm not entirely thrilled at the idea of continuing to do contract work alongside the Army, I haven't completely ruled out this European option. As much as I complain about things out here, I will say this: one distinct advantage of working as a government contractor is that in addition to the rather generous salary I earn, I don't pay a single bill. Accommodations, food, water, electricity, internet access - they're all provided to me free of charge. Presumably the civilians in southeastern Europe wouldn't make quite as much money as they do in Afghanistan, but the "free living" benefit of contract work is a huge one. I can see myself returning to the States for a short time, only to discover that I miss this "free living" benefit of contract work, and subsequently vying for a civilian position in Europe. It's not a very likely scenario at this point, but you just never know. It would give me an opportunity to see parts of Europe that I have yet to visit. Okay, it's about time to wrap this post up; it's already been too long, and if I continue with this train of thought I might just decide to stay in Afghanistan. I think we've already established that as something that nobody wants.

How To Not-So-Subtly Change Topics

2005-06-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I was afraid this might happen. After a couple of fun and entertaining posts, the daily grind has slowly made its way back to the forefront. As I've alluded to before, life as a contractor in Afghanistan is utterly boring most of the time, which can make it hard to come up with posts that will keep my readership interested and coming back for more. This blog was originally intended as a way to keep in touch with family and friends back home, and for a long time I'm pretty sure that's all it was. Lately though, for whatever reason, I seem to have attracted at least a few "strangers" to my join my audience, which I think is awesome. I had a lot of fun with my last few blog posts, and I particularly enjoyed watching my inbox fill up with all the comments that they generated. The highlight was hearing strangers tell me that I'm a good writer. I've heard that before, but mostly from friends and family, and while I don't want to discount their opinions, it's hard not to wonder if they're just a little bit biased. The fact that people who don't know me, and have no incentive to lie to me, enjoy my writing is encouraging. I still haven't come up with a way to make any sort of significant income from writing (or any income at all, for that matter), but if nothing else it helps to validate a hobby that I enjoy. Moving on...I actually do have a small story to share, although it's not much. Here goes: Shortly after rolling out of bed yesterday morning, I fired up my computer as usual. I run two different instant messaging programs, and they both start automatically as soon as I log onto my computer. I do most of my IM chatting at night, simply because the time difference between here and the States seems to work out better that way. By the time I wake up in the "morning" (it's usually sometime between 10 and 11 when I roll out of bed) it's late into the night back home. It's rare that anyone is around to chat with when it's mid-morning my time, but to my surprise I got a got a pop-up yesterday morning from an old college friend I hadn't talked to in years. In fact, we hadn't talked in so long that I took her name off of my contacts list long ago, so I was genuinely surprised when the little IM box popped up on my screen. It said: "josh! what's new with you?" It took me a second to remember who this person was -- I recognized her screen name, but I just couldn't come up with her real name. Finally it came to me (it's Amanda, if you're curious), and I chatted with her for a few minutes, which was kind of random and fun. I honestly can't remember the last time we talked, but it's been at least a year (maybe more), and even then I'm pretty sure it was an IM conversation. It's easily been two or maybe three years since we've talked face to face. Needless to say we're not exactly super close, so most of our conversation was surface-level small talk. She learned that I'm now in Afghanistan, and no, I'm not in the military; and I learned that she's still in New York, but is now living in Queens and working at a children's hospital in the Bronx...you get the idea. Our dialogue stayed on that very shallow level for a few minutes until, out of nowhere, she shell-shocked me with a bomb of a question. The conversation went something like this: Me: "So, how's New York treating you?" Her: "I really like it. The cost of living sucks sometimes, but I enjoy the diversity out here." Me: "I can see that. Colorado's not exactly a cultural melting pot." Her: "No, not really. Are you married?" Whoa! Where in the hell did that come from?!? Is this now an acceptable method for determining marital status in the electronic age? Since the covert "check for a wedding ring" option isn't available over the internet, is it now standard protocol to just throw the question out there like that? If so, no one told me about it, and it definitely took me by surprise. I didn't have a clue how to respond; I mean, I knew the answer to her question, but seriously! Why was she asking such a blatant question out of the clear blue? Is it because she wanted to steer the conversation in a flirtatious direction but would feel bad doing so with a married man? Does she have an immigrant friend who's in danger of being deported unless she marries an American citizen, and she wanted to know if I was available to help out? Who asks that of an acquaintance that you haven't spoken to, must less seen, in years?!? The whole thing just threw me off. When I finally came to my senses after that conversational blow, I decide to respond with "heavens no, I don't even have girlfriend at the moment." (you can tell I was thrown off because my answer included the phrase "heavens no." I would never, in my right mind, utter the words "heavens no"). I figured that was a solid answer: truthful, not too suggestive, and it subtly alludes to the fact that I rarely, if ever, even think about getting to that stage of life. As it turns out she was just curious; she didn't seem interested in flirting or in hooking me up with any resident-alien friends. Like many in our peer group, she's at the stage of life where several of her friends are either currently married, or have plans to be married in the near future, and she was genuinely curious where I was at. We stayed on that topic for a bit, which was comforting because she and I are in the same boat. We both have quite a few friends who are married, but neither of us are anywhere remotely close to joining their ranks anytime soon. I told her that my little sister is getting married soon, which is still a little bit surreal, and she agreed that it would be. I was also reminded, although I didn't mention this to her, of an email I recently received from my old high-school locker partner, telling me that he and his wife are expecting their first baby. I met this guy at an age when we weren't allowed to go on a field trip without signed permission slips from our parents, and now he's about to become a parent. I still can't believe people my age are having kids. After I got over the "are you married?" question that came out of nowhere, I enjoyed my short little chat with Amanda. As a guy who's now officially over halfway through his twenties, it's nice to know I'm not the only one out there who doesn't quite feel like a grown up yet. It used to really freak me out to hear that my peers were getting married and/or having kids, and much of the time it still does, but I'm slowly beginning to see it as more of a normal occurrence at this stage of life. Despite the fact that it may be common for people my age, it still doesn't feel very 'normal' to me personally, which is why it's nice to bump into an 'Amanda' every now and again. At least I know I'm not the only one my age who qualifies as "single and not even looking."

Vacation Pictures...kind of

2005-05-31T07:33:00.000-07:00

Okay folks, so here's the deal. I know some of you really want to see the pics from my recent Europe vacation, but you're going to have to wait. Sorry. In my defense, I did at least make an effort at getting the pics up on the web, but then I got lazy and never followed through. Here's how the story goes: I snagged another blogspot address for the sole purpose of hosting my vacation pictures for you all to see. So far, so good. Yesterday, I finally got around to posting some of my vacation pics up on that site -- but it's probably not exactly what you're looking for. Let me tell you about an aspect of my vacation that never quite made it on this blog; until now. You all remember 21deadmonkeys.com, right? The ska webcomic that I discovered and subsequently fell in love with last fall? Well, I'm still a big fan and regular reader of that comic. Last fall I sent away for a bunch of 21deadmonkeys stickers, most of which I haven't done anything with. I saw them sitting on my desk as I was packing to leave for Europe, and on a whim I threw them in my backpack. When I got to Europe, it occurred to me that it might be cool to take pictures of a 21deadmonkeys sticker in front of some tourist attractions. I figured if nothing else, I could email the photos to the comic's author and maybe she'd get a kick out of them. Every so often, when I was looking at something that I figured was photo-worthy, I'd pull out a 21dm sticker, hold it out in front of the camera, and take the shot. If I had to come up with an up-side to traveling alone, that would be it -- I could do things like take a picture of my outstretched hand holding a sticker with a tourist attraction in the background, and there was no one around to ask me what the heck I was doing. At least, no one that I knew; and thankfully I didn't come across any strangers bold enough to pose a query about my odd little habit. So anyway, I ended up with a few pics of a 21dm sticker traveling around Europe with me. The plan was to email the pics to the author of 21deadmonkeys.com in hopes that she might get a kick out them. I tried to send them all in one message, but the email was too large and it wouldn't go through. That's when I remembered that I still had a second blogspot address which, at the time, was not being used. I decided to post the pictures there, send her an email with the URL, and that would be that. So I did that last night. Today I came into work, started surfing the web (I'm already short-timing it; I'm pretty happy with myself for just showing up to work, regardless of whether or not any actual work gets done), and of course I opened 21deadmonkeys.com. I found a new comic up on the page that really highlights the awesomeness of a Less Than Jake show (how awesome you ask? So awesome that zoo animals are bound to show up!) I also saw that below the comic, she threw up a link to my blogspot page with the pics of 21dm stickers traveling around Europe with me. Because of the aforementioned link, I feel like I should leave my photo site as is for the time being, on the off-chance that someone actually ends up there via 21deadmonkeys. So for all of you who've been waiting to see vacation photos, if in fact anyone has been waiting for vacation pics, that will have to hold you over. Trust me, the rest of them pretty much look just like that but without the 21dm sticker. Since I was traveling alone, pretty much all of my pics are of buildings, not of people. Buildings are not necessarily very exciting to look at, and the pics are a lot more fun when I can tell the stories that go along with them. So you'll all just have to wait until I get back home and can show you all of the pics in person. Think of it this way: now I have a valid excuse to actually come and visit everyone, as opposed to just giving you a call or something. So really it works out better for everyone this way. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the few pics that are up. Here's where you can find them.

My Face on a Stick

2005-05-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

One of the many down-sides of being out here is that I’ve missed out on a few family gatherings. One of the recent events that I missed is my cousin Caleb’s graduation from high school. He attended high school in Arvada, Colorado (a suburb of Denver), which is only about an hour’s drive from where I used to live, so I almost surely would have been at the ceremony if I hadn’t been out here (congratulations to Caleb by the way!). As I’ve said before, I was blessed with a really awesome family. I’m the oldest of at least four kids (more when you count the various step-siblings), and I’m happy to say that we all get along really well. Sure, we had our rough patches growing up, but thankfully we became really close as we grew older. Every so often when I’m hanging out with one of my siblings, and we’re both in the right mood, we can be really funny. If nothing else, we manage to crack each other up. I had just such an experience with my little sister several weeks ago. We were chatting online, which is my main mode of communication with my family while I'm out here, and we were discussing our cousin Caleb’s upcoming high school graduation (trust me, this will all tie together in a minute). I was telling Emily (my sister) that I was bummed because I wouldn’t be able to attend the graduation. Suddenly one of us – I honestly don’t remember who – devised a plan. We decided that while I wouldn’t be able to attend the ceremony physically, I could still be there in a pseudo kind of way. The idea we came up with was for my sister to take a picture of my face, blow it up to life size, and attach it to a stick. She would then carry “me” to the graduation ceremony so that I could celebrate with everyone. It was a brilliant and hilarious idea, and the best part is that we were both totally serious about it. It became my job to send my sister a recent picture of myself that she could use, but life got busy and I completely spaced it. My sister though, being the really cool girl that she is, didn’t let the plan die...she took the initiative to bring our plan to life without me. She pulled out a picture of me that she had lying around, took it to Kinko’s to have it blown up (she went a little overboard on the ‘life size’ part of the plan, which is great because it just makes it that much funnier), and attached it to a stick exactly as we planned. She took it to the ceremony where, from what she tells me, it was a huge hit. Apparently my graduating cousin was not informed that “I” would be present at his ceremony. My sister held the photo high as he walked across the stage, and when he caught a glimpse of it he busted up laughing. I can only imagine what the uninformed strangers at the graduation thought of my family carrying around a stick with a huge photo of some guy’s face attached to it. My sister sent me the pictures earlier today, and when I saw them I literally laughed out loud. It was the highlight of my day -- major props to her for bringing the plan to life and capturing it on film. I don’t know if anyone else will see the humor in this or if you all just thing we’re a couple of weirdos, but I don’t really care. I think the point here is that we think we’re funny.

2005-05-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

"Me" and my cousin. You can tell by the huge smile on my face just how happy and proud I am.

2005-05-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

Me and the extended family. To the left of my face is my awesome sister Emily who made sure I could be there, and in the back is the graduate. The girl in the greenish top to the right of him is his girlfriend. The rest are various siblings, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

Saved By The Devil Himself

2005-05-28T03:27:00.000-07:00

One of the perks of my position as Team Lead is that I don’t necessarily have to work on the “front lines” with the customers very often anymore. I can sit in the back, fix computers, and pop my head out front just often enough to take credit on the rare occasion when things go right. The downside of this little scheme of mine is that when I do deal with the customers, it’s usually when I’m acting in my “supervisory” role. When a customer is upset and wants to talk to the boss, I get called in to diffuse the situation. I dealt will just such a scene earlier this week... Ireland (not her real name), who is one of my better techs and is great with customer service, came back to tell me that a gentleman up front wanted to talk to the “supervisor.” Ireland’s inability to calm him down didn’t bode well for me -- as I said, she’s normally really good. I put on my best non-threatening, “I’m here to serve you” demeanor and headed up front. Standing before me was an older gentlemen with a nasty look on his face. Glancing at his uniform I noticed two things right away: he’s an Army Lieutenant Colonel and he’s a Chaplain. I began “Hello sir, can I help you?” He gave me an icy glare for a good two or three seconds, then shot back “Are you the supervisor?” “Yes sir, I run this Help Desk. Is there something I can help you with?” “I think I’m going to need to speak with your supervisor,” he snapped. Okay, that’s not cool. With that one condescending comment this guy just managed to piss me off. It took this high-ranking officer three seconds and one question to decide that I was incapable of solving his problems. Here is all the criteria that he possibly could have used to reach that sudden conclusion: I’m a young guy; 25 years old, but I’ve been told that I look younger. I have a mop of long hair on my head that sprawls out haphazardly in all directions under the cap that I wear daily at work. I’m currently sporting a patchy, scraggly-looking attempt at a beard (it’s pretty gnarly, quite honestly: a coworker told me it looks like I smeared glue on my face and fell on a cat). My earlobes are adorned with silver eyelets that are shaped like hollow bolts, and they’re stretched enough to easily slide a pencil through. I’m dressed in all black. I have a visible tattoo on my left elbow. I’m not exactly clean-cut, “soldier” material, and I like it that way. Unfortunately, in my experience, high-ranking officers in the US Army tend to make snap judgments based on first impressions. This guy wasn’t the first one to do it, and I’m sure he won’t be the last. It’s common, but that doesn’t make it right. It shouldn’t matter what I look like – I should get the same respect now as I assume he would’ve given me if I was a few years older, had a short haircut, a clean-shaven face, and an arm free of tattoos. I don’t know if it was a case of ageism or if this guy just didn’t like the way I looked, but he had already made up his mind about me. Like I said, that’s just not cool. My customer service instincts took over, and I quickly decided that I was going to be the bigger man in this situation (despite the fact that this guy was easily twice my age). The plan was to “kill him with kindness,” as they say. I remained calm and followed his condescending jab with: “Sir, let’s see if I can resolve your issue. If I can’t, I’ll be glad to put you in touch with my supervisor.” He angrily fired off his two issues, making sure to pepper his sentences with a few insults about the level of service he’d received thus far from my Help Desk (at this point he seemed more interested in being a jerk than actually getting his computer problems resolved). I didn’t take the bait, but instead kept a straight face and calmly coaxed out of him as much detail as I could about his issues. The first problem, when I finally managed to get the details of it, was an easy fix (it was a classic case of user error, but I wasn’t about to tell him that). I invited him to step around to my side of the desk, sit down in front of the computer, and in about five minutes Issue #1 was resolved. Thankfully, at this point, his face and demeanor started to change from “you’re an incompetent punk, and I don’t like you” to “I still don’t like you, but you did just fix the website that I need to access.” Before I could take comfort in the fact that I was now 1 for 1 in under 10 minutes, he launched right into a description of Issue #2. Issue #2 was also looking like it could be an easy fix, but with a catch. In order to fix this one I would need to physically sit down at his computer, which was back in his office. Now, as a general rule, our Help Desk doesn’t do house calls. We just don’t have the staff to make it feasible. If you want it fixed, you bring it to us. In my better judgment I decided not to explain that policy, but instead to stick with the plan of “killing him with kindness.” I told him that I’d need to get on his computer, and I offered to follow him to his office. Here’s where it gets a little bit funny. I got to his office, where he offered me a chair and showed me the machine in question. I knew that in order to resolve the problem, I was going to need to install a small piece of software -- a console snap-in that I keep stored on our Help Desk server. I sat down, logged onto Windows, and typed the path to access the server: “\\Lucifer”. It didn’t occur to me until I began to type the word, but suddenly I was keenly aware of exactly where I was. Allow me to break from the story for some much-needed background information: I have no say whatsoever when it comes to assigning server names. That function is handled exclusively by our System Administrators. For the most part all of our servers have astrological and/or mythological names; i.e. Hermes, Aphrodite, Phoenix, Sirius, Orion, Dragon, Taurus, Libra, Scorpio, Cancer, Mercury, etc. Months ago, when I asked the Sys Admins if they wouldn’t mind setting up a server for the Help Desk, the Lead Sys Admin at the time reluctantly obliged. A few days later I was informed that the Help Desk had control of a server named Lucifer. I had nothing to do with this name, although I’ll admit I didn’t protest. It was so named in the spirit of a mutual, good-natured, sort-of playful rivalry that exists between the Help Desk and the System Administrators, and honestly I thought it was kind of funny. For months the Help Desk has used this “Lucifer” server, and the name of the computer that hosted our applications and data hadn’t been an issue...until now. Here I sit, at the computer of a high-ranking Army Chaplain who is not in a good mood, and the first thing I do is log in and type the word “Lucifer.” When the irony of the situation hit me, it was all I could do to keep from busting up laughing. I managed to refrain, however, because I knew that this particular Chaplain would not find it as humorous as I did. To my surprise and great relief, he made no comment about the name of our server. Roughly 20 minutes later I had finished the task; Issue #2 was now resolved. The Chaplain, who had calmed himself down by this point, was kind enough to thank me for my time and attention. He also asked for my full name -- I’d like to think it was so that he can call up my boss and compliment my service, but with my luck it was probably so that he can ask for me by name every time something trivial goes wrong with his computer. I left his office with a pretty big smile on my face. I was happy that his problems had been resolved and that he’d been calmed down without the need to get my boss involved, but I was even more satisfied at my ability to contradict his judgmental first impression of me in under an hour’s time. I hope that he won’t make the same mistake again, but that’s probably wishful thinking. The best part though, to me at least, was that I had fixed the Chaplain’s computer by invoking the name of Lucifer. Please tell me I’m not the only one who finds that just a little bit funny.

The Post You've All Been Waiting For...

2005-05-25T05:55:00.000-07:00

I'll get right to the "big news." As most of you know I've been struggling for months now with what I call the "should I stay or should I go" decision (if you're unfamiliar with this struggle, see every single freaking post between January and April). In all honesty I reached my decision a few weeks ago, but I was going to wait to tell you all in order to drag out the suspense and make it more dramatic. Then I realized that it probably isn't all that suspenseful or dramatic for anyone but me. Besides, I've dropped enough hints and let the secret slip enough times that half of you already know my decision. So, without further ado... I'M COMING HOME. Now, let's talk a little bit about how I've reached this decision, because I know you're all dying to know (just humor me). It basically boils down to this: I have no life here. I mean, I'm alive, but I don't have anything that would qualify as a life. You know the people that are totally lame and boring and you want to tell them to "get a life"? Yeah, that's me. I don't think things were so bad at the beginning of this little journey, but even so it wouldn't have mattered a whole lot. Truth is I wasn't exactly loving life back home either... I had lost my driver's license, which in the States means a huge loss of freedom. I was also struggling under the burden of debt. I didn't owe a ridiculous amount of money, but it was significant enough to make me feel trapped and steal another bit of freedom. There's a song by the ska-core band Less Than Jake (a favorite of mine) called "National Anthem" which talks about being burdened by debt, and I adopted it as my own personal theme song last summer. Here's a reprint of the lyrics, which ought to give you a little bit of insight into my feelings at the time: "Does being in debt feel just like a long lost friend? Well just wait around 'cause the desperation's kicking in. And it's already starting to mix with one of my best pieces of fiction: it's called "I'll be getting by, and I'll make ends meet." Does the 40 hour week have you bent at the knees? And you can't even see that everything's kept just out of reach? Ever get that funny feeling that your future's not gonna be bought cheap? And the "for sale" sign that's hanging on your neck might as well spell defeat. My American dream is to have it a little bit better than my parents ever had it. My American dream is to have it a little bit better than...it's just a force of habit." So that's how I was feeling last summer. When this opportunity came along, I felt like I had no choice but to take it. I was desperate to get out of debt, and this job was the perfect way to do just that. I took the job, sold most of my worldly possessions, packed the rest up, and boarded a plane for Afghanistan. A funny thing happened after I'd been here about four or five months; that is, I started to contemplate staying longer. This though never would have occurred to me before I left Colorado, but for some reason it now seemed like a pretty good idea. It might have been that it's a popular thing for contractors to do out here (lots of them stay for longer than one year). It might have been that I'd watched my debt slowly disappear and suddenly the prospect of having money became very, very tempting. Whatever the reason (really it boiled down to money, but I'll get to that in a sec), I gave some serious consideration to sticking around for a while. In January I got promoted, which was great (more money!), but that was also when I started to hate my job. Despite the fact that I wasn't having much fun, I continued to give some serious thought to sticking around. Never mind the fact that I'd already done what I set out to do: I was completely debt free, and I was saving money like I'd never done before. I'd "done my time," accomplished my goals, and if I could just finish out the rest of my one-year contract, I'd come home to a completely new kind of freedom than I'd never known before. Despite all that, I was blinded by all the dollar signs that were dancing around in my head, and even though life kind of sucked, I wanted more money. This all started to change in early April... I think deep down, somewhere in my subconscious, I knew that the money wasn't worth the drudgery of life out here. It was a well timed email from a cousin of mine that first brought this realization to my conscious mind, and shortly afterwards I left on a vacation that worked wonders in helping to clear my head. I realized, after reading that email and spending some time traveling, that I don't really have a life in Afghanistan. I have an existence, but not a life. To explain that a little bit, let me give you a quick rundown of what I enjoy doing in life: Concerts: I love them. There's nothing better than getting sweaty on the dance floor to the sound of a great ska/punk/rock band playing their hearts out right in front of you. The thing about concerts is, they don't happen very often out here. Which is to say they don't happen at all. Needless to say Afghanistan has never really been a popular place to tour, and as a result I've missed a lot of shows. I used to subscribe to email lists that would keep me up to date on who was coming to town and when, but I eventually had to cancel those subscriptions because I couldn't take it anymore. I had missed something like 40 concerts by the time I decided to stop counting. Snowboarding: I'm obsessed with the season of winter, and snow, and cold weather, and winter sports, and the best part of it all is the snowboarding. Folks, I'm about to give you some very sad news. I learned to ski in 1986, when I was 7 years old. I have never missed a winter since; I've been on the mountain, skiing or snowboarding, every single season since then. That's the good news. Here's the sad part: that streak ended this winter, the season of 2004-2005, which I've come to know as "The Black Winter." My 18 year streak (18 years!) is officially over. It's so terrible that I cringe to even think about it. I don't ever want to miss another winter again. Ever. Community: I've been blessed with a great family, and I miss them. I know that sounds sappy, but it's the truth. I miss my family and my friends -- a lot. Out here I have no one. No one to talk to, confide in, hang out with, or enjoy the company of. I have a few acquaintances at work, but no one that I would consider a real friend. Jeremy's out here now but he's down in Kabul. Our opportunities to see each other, to hang out and talk, will be few and far between. If I didn't have access to the internet, I'd probably be on the verge of insanity right now. The point is, I really don't have a life out here. I wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again. Sometimes I work out (although not nearly as often as I wish I did), sometimes I watch a DVD, and I also spend a lot of time reading and listening to music. And that's all. That's pretty much my life in a nutshell out here. It's really, really boring. I rarely, if ever, do anything fun, and my opportunities to do the things I truly enjoy are just as infrequent. I spend most of my conscious hours working, and I think I've already been clear on how I feel about that. The next logical question is, given all of the above, why was I even considering staying at all? There is no better answer for this question than: The Money. As much as I hate to admit it, I was swayed for a time by the prospect of getting "rich." It sometimes surprises me how the mind works when it comes to greed... As I've already said, I decided a few weeks ago that I wouldn't be staying. I knew I was ready to come home despite the financial incentives for staying. Then I got back from vacation, and the day I arrived at Bagram I learned of ITT's new bonus structure. I was told that they would double my bonus money if I would stick around until May 2006. I won't lie to you people, it was tempting, and I considered it. That's a lot of money. But in the end, it's not enough. I'd rather spend my short time on this Earth really living. I've got enough money as it is, and by the time I leave here I'll have that many more paychecks in the bank. I'm debt free, and I've got more cash right now than I've ever had in my life. It's time to go home, back to the relationships and activities that really make life worth living. I was going to fill you in on all the details of my return (dates, etc), but I'll save that for later. For now, I'll end with an excerpt of another ska song, this one called "Just One More" courtesy of the Mad Caddies. I absolutely love this band, and I had the pleasure of hearing them play this song live twice while I was in Europe. It's a great song, and just like LTJ's "National Anthem" did last summer, this song really sums up the way I'm feeling right now: "The fine life is a beautiful thing. The caviar, and the diamond rings, the bright lights of a big soiree, the satin glows, and the tango sways... As for me I like a dark smoky bar, a shot of whiskey and a cheap cigar. Another quarter and the jukebox cries. I love the sound as the record sighs. Another drink and we'll all be fine. A little music and we start to shine. No necesito la vida rica, estoy contento contigo...'cause in the end we all go the same place, and I'll be happy with what I know." See you soon.

A Friend Comes to Town

2005-05-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

I was at work on Saturday night, sitting in the back office and avoiding the phone (i.e. the customers) as I've grown accustomed to doing, when one of my "front line" staff, a fairly new guy, hollered at me and prompted me to come up front to see what was going on. He held the phone away from his ear, his hand over the mouthpiece, and said "phone's for you. Says his name is Jeremy." I stared back at him blankly for a second, trying to place the name inside the mental Rolex of customers that lives in my head, when suddenly it hit me... "Jeremy!" I exclaimed. I yanked the phone out of his hand and said hello, and when I heard the voice on the other end it took me a second to figure out that this wasn't a dream. Jeremy and I go back almost four years now -- he was one of my roommates in the infamous "Leesdale house" in Fort Collins while I was going to school. Jeremy and I were complete strangers when he moved into that place, and over the years we grew to become really good friends. I've tried my best to keep in touch with a lot of friends over the years, but Jeremy is one of the few that has stood the test of time even as everyone inevitably split up and went their own ways after those wonderful college years. He was calling to tell me that after several days of travel he'd finally made it to K-2 in Uzbekistan. He told me that ITT was sending him on to Kabul as his permanent station, but that he'd be passing through Bagram the next day (Sunday) on his way. We talked for a bit and I caught up on all of his travel and some of his CRC stories, and when I hung up the phone my mood had done a complete one-eighty. My attitude had changed immediately from "another boring day at work" to "Jeremy's at K-2! And he'll be at Bagram tomorrow!" At roughly 0845 on Sunday morning I stumbled out of my b-hut, trusty (but empty) coffee mug in hand, and I started towards the DFAC for some breakfast and my much needed cup-o-joe. I hadn't made it more that thirty yards out of my hut when who should step out from behind a building in the distance but Jeremy! Now, before I go on, you should understand that Jeremy and I have been friends for several years; we lived together off-and-on for almost two of those years, and I had just seen him in December when I was home on vacation. Seeing him again now should be no big deal, right? On the contrary; to see him standing there in front of me was hands down the most surreal moment I've experienced on this entire journey -- possibly in my entire life. I can't even begin to explain what it's like to see one of your good friends walk up to you, say hi, shake your hand and give you a hug, all when you're 7,300 miles from home. The experience was completely surreal and utterly wonderful at the same time. I was supposed to be working on Sunday, but in a 10 hour shift I probably spent a grand total of 3 hours inside the Help Desk building, and even those weren't really spent working. I spent the whole day hanging out with Jeremy, showing him around Bagram and catching up. I showed him my humble abode inside b-hut #10, which Jeremy dubbed the Bat Cave. I don't know why I never made that comparison before, but my hut is one of the few that stays dark 24/7, and walking out of the bright mid-day sunlight and into my hut does feel just like stepping into the Bat Cave. We caught up on all of his travel stories, stories from home, stories from here, and shared pictures for hours. He'll probably think that I'm going overboard and that this is a ridiculous thing to say if/when he reads this, but it was quite possibly the best day I've had at Bagram since I landed here 292 days ago. When you've gone that long without a true friend close by, without someone that you can really talk to and relate to, it becomes a true delight when that person walks back into your life, even if it's just for a day or so. Jeremy left Bagram around mid-day today to head down to Kabul, where he'll spend the next year (or more?) living a life that I've grown all-too-familiar with. It's funny to me to think back... I remember visiting Fort Collins last summer, shortly after I made the decision to take this job. I went up there twice for a couple of "last hurrah" party nights with Jeremy and some other old friends. When I explained to Jeremy and Mark (another great friend and ex-roomie from the Leesdale house) what my plans were they were both skeptical, to say the least. I kept hitting on the financial aspects of my decision... My protests like "just think of all the money I'll make!" were answered with jabs such as "yeah, just enough to pay for your funeral" and "money loses its value when you're not alive." Ten months later Jeremy has come full circle. He's realized that Afghanistan is a perfectly safe place to be, and even more importantly he's come to understand that a year's worth of living the contractor's life is a small price to pay for the rewards of financial freedom. Over the months I had finally convinced him to take the plunge, and now he’s actually here. I'm sure I'll get the chance to see Jeremy again before too long. I've been meaning to make it down to Kabul ever since I got here, but now I have a valid excuse and a source of motivation to actually make it happen. Jeremy, I wish you all the best buddy, and I can't wait to hang out again... For anyone who might be interested in reading another "life in Afghanistan" blog, Jeremy’s been a blogger for longer than I have. I expect that he’ll keep his blog running during his stay in this country, and I’m sure it will be a great read. He’s already got a couple of great posts up about his reasons for taking this job in the first place, his struggle with ITT to get all the paperwork done and get a date to leave Colorado, his last day of work at HP, his departure day from home, and even a bit about his travel. You can find all of this fascinating reading, and the plenty more to come, here.

2005-05-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

Jeremy and me in b-hut #11, the "transient hut," where Jeremy spent a night sleeping on a cot as his official welcome into Bagram.

Warning: Technical Rant (May Not Be Interesting/Comprehensible To All)

2005-05-21T04:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve been meaning to post for a while now, and I’ve actually got a couple of posts written that are just waiting to get up on the web. They probably won’t get posted any time soon though. Any guesses why? My computer crashed, and I’ve lost them. It’s pretty funny when you think about it. Mr Tech Support Guy, the Windows guru who’s tasked with leading a team of support techs to fix any and all computer issues that may arise here in Army-land, managed to crash his own machine. Go ahead and laugh. It really is kind of funny. Here’s what else is funny, but not really when you think about it. I’m not the expert to end all experts, but I know quite a bit about the Windows operating system. I can fix pretty much anything that’s wrong with a Windows computer. As such, I know how to be proactive and keep my system running healthy and smooth. Here’s the kicker: despite my extensive knowledge, I back up all of my important files and settings at least twice a week (but of course, I didn’t back up the blog posts I had written). Why do I do this? I do it because I know that no matter how diligent I am in keeping my system maintained, it’s going to crash. Such is the nature of Windows. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. What’s really sad is, pretty much every tech support person I know behaves the same way. We all know that at some point Windows is going to stop working properly, and the only really good fix will be to reload the box and start over. I was chatting with a buddy of mine just the other day (he’s also a tech support guy back in the States) and I was telling him of my Windows woes. I told him that I was going to reformat the machine because it was 'about that time,' and his reply was "yeah, it’s a good thing to do once or twice a year." I agreed. Wait just a minute here...?!? Why are we so nonchalant about the fact that it’s good 'preventative maintenance' to reload our machines twice a year? Is it so far-fetched to think that an operating system might be stable enough to last one full year? How about two years? I realize that in the tech world two whole years is an eternity, but really, how hard is it to build an operating system that can stand the test of time? (although, the longer Microsoft keeps building shoddy software, the longer I have a job...) I’ve heard a lot of rumor and hype that claims other operating systems offer superior stability. A coworker of mine used to support UNIX, and she’s got a lot of good things to say. I have a copy of the Linux Red Hat desktop OS, but I have yet to load it up and play around with it, so I really can’t offer an honest review of that. I used some type of GUI Linux OS (I think it was Knoppix) at an internet café in Munich, and it worked great. In fairness though, I didn’t do much with it except open a browser and use the web, and I did notice that the time between logging on and the 'desktop' loading wasn’t significantly different than Windows, and may have actually been slower. I’ve also heard that the Apple operating systems, which to my knowledge are built on top of a UNIX kernel, offer much better stability than we’ve all come to expect from our friends at Microsoft. I first got interested in Macs while I was doing mp3 player research – the more I fell in love with the iPod, the more I found myself attracted to Apple computers as well. A lot of the hype surrounding Macs is that they’re much more secure than Windows, which may be true, but that’s not really my concern. I know enough about my Windows machine to keep it from falling victim to spy-ware and viruses. What I’m really looking for in an OS is stability. I’d like to think that I can load an OS, put some serious use into it, and still be able to rely on it a year or two down the road. I don’t think that’s asking too much. So anyway, I do have a lot to post, but most of it will have to be rewritten now, thanks to this latest Windows crash. You’ll hear from me again as soon as I’m back online with my own machine. Oh, and one other thing... when I get home, I’m getting a Mac.

You can stop worrying about me now, mom

2005-05-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

I finally made it to Bagram safe and sound. It was a fairly grueling few days with little sleep, so it's nice to finally be somewhere permanent. Not that I'm terribly excited to be back here per se, but at least I can unpack, take a shower, and relax a little bit. I arrived this morning, and I've had a pretty lazy day. I used the need for some recuperation time as an excuse to blow off work for the day, so that will be another adjustment when I show up tomorrow morning. I spent a fair amount of time today getting all the photos from my trip off of my camera and onto my computer, and I'm hoping to find a place on the web to store a whole bunch of them sometime soon for your viewing pleasure. I learned that I'm not the greatest vacation photo taker, so I apologize in advance for that. I took a million pictures of buildings, some of which I don't even recall. I also didn't distribute the photos very well...I took over 200 in Paris and only about 20 in Amsterdam, which sucks because in retrospect there was so much more I could have captured in that city. Maybe that just solidifies the fact that I'll have to go back there sooner than later :) I'll do my best to keep posting fairly often, although I can promise you that you won't get the kind of detail you were privileged to read while I was traveling. You wouldn't want that kind of detail from my life out here anyway; it's much too boring. Before I go back to the fairly mundane posts about life in the world of Army tech-support, I'll throw up a couple of vacation pictures. Very few of my pictures actually have me in them (the result of traveling alone), so I'll treat you to a couple of those. The first one is of me standing on top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and below that is me with a liter of beer at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich. After that is my attempt at a picture of the Mad Caddies on stage in Amsterdam - I had never brought my camera to a show before, but I thought some of the pics turned out alright. The next three have nothing to do with Europe but I'm putting them up anyway. Those shots were taken out the window of a C-130 on the flight from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan, and I'm posting them because after nine months I still can't get over how beautiful the mountains are around here. The last pic is the best of all, and I didn't even take it. I have a cousin living in Kansas City, and oddly enough during my time in Afghanistan I've come to know him and his wife probably better than I ever have before, which highlights the odd wonder of this global communications beast that we call the Internet. They just had their first child, a daughter named Caroline Pearl, and like the rest of the family I was beyond excited. She was born yesterday (15 May), and I've posted a picture of the new family below. I did so without their permission, so if they happen to be reading this please email me ASAP if you don't want your faces on the internet. Congratulations to the new parents!

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I'm Getting There...

2005-05-14T21:14:00.000-07:00

I've got time for another quick travel update, so here goes. I made Saturday's flight out of Ramstein, this time on a C-5. I haven't flown a C-5 since I was about 14 and caught a ride on one with my dad and brother from California to Hawaii, but I remember it well. Unlike other cargo planes, you don't sit along the walls inside the body of a C-5. They have a separate seating cabin above the very large cargo bay that has seats that come very close to being like commercial airline seats. It was a nice flight for that reason; more comfortable than I'm used to being on a military flight. I didn't sleep much though. For some reason I just wasn't tired and didn't feel like sleeping. After a somewhat tumultuous exit from the plane (we had to do an emergency ground evacuation due to a hydraulic leak in one of the engines which could have caused an explosion) I'm now on Manas Air Base. I grabbed a quick chow hall breakfast and then went to sign up for a flight to Bagram. My conversation with the Airman went something like this: Me: "I hear you have a pretty significant backlog of folks trying to get to Bagram." Him: "Yeah." Me: "So, realistically, if I sign up for a flight now, how long do you think it'll be before I'm actually on a plane? Are we talking a couple of days?" Him: "Some people have been here as long as a week." At this point I'm thinking "Hell no. I'm not sitting around this base for a week waiting for a flight out." I asked the Airman what my chances are of getting on a flight to K-2, an air base in Uzbekistan. He told me they have a flight leaving this afternoon with 30 seats and only 19 people currently signed up. Perfect, I'll take it. If I make this flight today I should land at K-2 this afternoon, and getting from there to Bagram should be a piece of cake. They have several flights a day to Bagram and passengers are easy to accommodate. Of course, with my luck it won't be that easy. Some of you may recall that last time I tried to fly from K-2 to Bagram the plane got diverted to Kuwait. I'm hoping to have better luck this time around. For those who'd like to follow along visually, I found a pretty decent map here. I'm currently just outside the city of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and assuming I make it to K-2 this afternoon I'll then be just outside of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. From there I'll fly the final leg back to Bagram which is just north east of Kabul. I'll let you know how it goes...

Um...I Lied

2005-05-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

Turns out that last post wasn't my final one from this continent, but hopefully this post will be. Yes folks, I'm still in Germany, sitting in an Air Force passenger terminal with plenty of time to kill so I figured I'd update you on my attempts to get back to Bagram thus far. As you know I made it to Frankfurt on Wednesday afternoon, but they had nothing flying until Thursday. Oh, I also learned on Wednesday that they no longer fly direct to Afghanistan from Germany any more, instead all passengers destined for the OEF AOR (Operation Enduring Freedom Area Of Responsibility) are required to process through the "hub" in Manas, Kyrgyzstan. So anyway, I found out on Wednesday that the next flight to Manas was leaving Thursday afternoon. I showed up for roll call on Thursday and discovered they only had 19 seats on that flight. My name was about 50 or so down on the 'space available' list so I stood little chance of getting on that plane. I waited around anyway just for kicks, but sure enough no luck. There were several of us trying to get to Manas that didn't make the flight, and after the roll call was over we were approached by an Army Major, the Afghanistan liaison, who told us that he could get us all on a flight to Manas on Friday. This was good news, because the Rhein Main terminal was claiming they didn't have another flight to Manas until Monday. The catch was that Friday's flight was leaving from Ramstein Air Base, about an hour and a half from Rhein Main. We were told to show up Friday morning where a bus would be waiting take us up to Ramstein where we could catch Friday's flight. By noon on Friday I had made it up to the Ramstein passenger terminal, which was even more crowded than Rhein Main had been. The flight was set to take off at 1530, roll call at 1230, and by 1400 I started to get worried because I still hadn't heard my name. At about 1430 they officially declared the flight "closed" which means I wasn't getting on. It seems that everyone and their mother is trying to get to Manas right now, and unfortunately civilian contractors are the lowest priority when it comes to getting space available seats. Despite the fact that Friday's flight had 65 available seats, I didn't get on. Wonderful. I caught a shuttle to the Ramstein Air Base billeting office only to find out that they were completely booked. The reception guy was helpful though, and he called a hotel just a few minutes off base and had them hold a room for me. I caught a cab to the Hotel Grune Laterne (translated: the Green Lantern Hotel) and checked in. Ramstein Air Base is just outside of Kaiserslautern Germany (or K-town as all the military guys call it) but this hotel was in a small suburb of Kaiserslautern called Landstuhl. I spent the evening wandering around Landstuhl and noticed that up on a hill there was the ruins of an old castle. Of course I didn't have my camera with me, but it was just wild to find a castle on a hill. Europe is crazy that way; I could spend years wandering around small towns in North America and I guarantee I won't stumble across any old castles. Anyway, I found an Irish Pub where I spent most of the evening. This morning before I left the hotel I managed to find CNN on TV in English, so I got caught up on world news. I guess authorities are claiming that the political demonstrations in Uzbekistan are "under control" now, but we're entering the fourth or fifth day of violent (I think I heard something like 15 are dead) anti-U.S. demonstrations in Afghanistan. Well that's just great. Nothing like flipping on the news only to find out that you're headed into the heart of a country that's not terribly friendly right now. So now it's Saturday, and I still haven't left Germany. I'm sitting in the Ramstein passenger terminal again, hoping that today will be my lucky day and I'll make a flight to Manas. Of course, from there the process starts all over again trying to get to Bagram, but that's another worry for another day. For now I'm just enjoying a little bit more time away from the stress of work. I'm supposed to back at work on Monday, but I'm not in a terrible rush to get there. So I guess that's the latest on me...still stranded in Germany, hoping to catch a flight only to end up stranded in Kyrgyzstan. One of these days I'll make it back to Afghanistan.

Last post from this wonderful continent

2005-05-10T10:20:00.000-07:00

Well everyone, I guess it's about that time. Time to wrap up this whirlwind of a trip and start making my way back to southwest Asia. Real quick, here's the latest (and unfortunately last) breakdown of what I've been up to on this journey:

I met up with Lisa at the Hofbrauhaus last night and we couldn't find anyone else so we just sat down and ordered two beers. The waitress dropped off the liters and then left. Just as she walked away, the rest of the group showed up (I'll introduce you to them in a minute) and there was no room for them at our table. Lisa and I got up to follow the rest of the crew to a different table, which is when it occurred to me that we hadn't paid for our round yet. I mentioned this to Lisa, but we decided to find a table, drop our stuff, then go back to find the waitress and settle the bill. We found a table that would fit the whole group and we hadn't been there 30 seconds when our waitress from the first table shows up and starts rambling in German. The look on her face communicated what we weren't getting from her words, and she wasn't happy. I played the dumb tourist and just kind of started blankly at her to indicate that I didn't have a clue what she had just said. She then proceeded to point at the beers in front of me and Lisa as she stammered in a sort of half-German/half-English that she had looked all over for us and that we needed to pay for our beers. Her face was growing redder with each word. I asked how much, she said 12 Euro, so I quickly handed her a 20. She gave me five back and stormed off in a huff. I didn't make a fuss over the 3 Euro tip that she took for herself because I've been the pissed off server before, and I'm sure it's frustrating to deal with tourists all the time, so in some small way I can sympathize. In all seriousness though, what did she think we were going to do? Sneak outside with full beer mugs that are bigger than our heads? Play "dodge the waitress" all night, drinking our beers on the run, all so we can get them for free? Surely this can't be the first time someone's moved to a different table. At any rate, it was an awkward way to start the night.
After the original waitresses' angry exit our new waitress came up and took beer orders from the rest of the group. After that I met everyone; let's see how good my memory is... We'll start with Lisa, whom you've already met, the girl from Kingston (Toronto area) who was on her way to live and work in France for a year. Then there was Jessica and (other) Josh, two more Canadians (I'm not sure where in Canada they're from) who are traveling on vacation. Jessica is a teacher and I can't remember what Josh does - he might still be in school. Next up is Jason, he's from Calgary and had been working in the UK for two months but got fired, so he's now bouncing around Europe and partying until he can figure out what to do next. Troy was also a Canadian, from a place called Red Deer in Alberta, although he's been living and working in the UK for the last three years. If I remember right he started in London and then moved to Cambridge. That was the original crew, me and five Canadians. I had a lot of fun hanging out with them because these are the first Canadians I've met who really do have the stereotypical Canadian accent, the whole "oot and aboot" for "out and about" sound. Great fun.
About 1/2 an hour later three more showed up, all Americans. They were all students, two guys and a girl, and I honestly don't remember their names. I do remember that one of the guys I talked to for a while is from Ohio but going to school in Wisconsin. So there we were, a table of nine North American strangers partying it up at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich. It was a complete blast. After all the acquaintances were made we talked about everything from traveling to ice hockey to politics, until the political discussion got a bit heated and Jason vehemently declared "there will be no more mixing of beer and politics!" I had a great time talking to everyone about where they'd been, where they're going, and I even got to spend some time talking with Troy about how hard it would be for an American kid like me to get a worker's Visa for the UK or Europe in general. He works at a staffing agency in the UK that specializes in immigrants (go figure) so he was actually really knowledgeable. No clue yet what I'll end up doing when this Afghan stint is over but I figure I'll keep as many options open as possible. We talked, laughed, swapped email addresses, drank a lot of beer, and just generally had an amazing time. I can't tell you how much I miss the kinship of sitting around with a few good friends and genuinely enjoying each other's company like that, and for that reason it was probably the highlight of this entire vacation. Time flew and before we knew it the clock was pushing midnight and we were being ushered out of there. A few of us weren't even close to being ready to go home so we found another pub and kept the party alive. Oddly enough our bartender, an older woman who looked/sounded distinctly German, heard us speaking English and asked where we were from. We answered and flipped the question around, and we were all shocked to find out she's from Alabama, of all places. She speaks fluent German and her English even has a bit of a German accent to it, which is explained by the fact that she moved to Germany 30 years ago. It continues to amaze me who I meet in all this traveling. Anyway, we continued to bar-hop and kept the party going late into the night, watched the sun come up (although not from a really great spot), and it was well into the morning before I finally got any sleep. Yesterday morning I knew no one here - this morning I went to bed after partying all night with nine new friends. It was an amazing night.
I managed to drag myself out of bed at around 1 pm today, and I used the day to just relax. (Stephanie - it's too bad I didn't get your comment until tonight; those were some great ideas. Next time around I'll know to ask those who know or at least bring a guidebook when I travel!) After getting some laundry done, I spent the afternoon and evening lazily wandering around the English Gardens and then later Olympic Park. I walked, relaxed, got some pictures, and generally enjoyed a very laid-back end to this trip. It was grand.

Tomorrow morning I have to be out of the hostel by 9:30 and then I hope a 10:30 train to Frankfurt where I'll begin the process of trying to get a flight back to Bagram. Getting out of Bagram is much easier than getting back in, so I could be in for a few days of cargo planes and military terminals before I finally get back "home." My deadline for getting back is Monday, and in all honestly it could easily take until the weekend. On the bright side I could end up with a lot of down time in the next few days (which I really could use, to be honest) which will give me the time to return some emails and that sort of thing (I'm a good three weeks behind on returning emails at the moment. Bear with me folks). I won't spend a ton of time here reminiscing and "wrapping up" the trip, I'll save that for a later post. Suffice it to say that it's been a wonderful time, and I hope it's only the first of what will be many more trips. Landing in Bagram is going to be a harsh wake-up call, but the good news is that I'm now on the home stretch. Seventy-five more days until the contract's end! Speaking of which, I think I may have finally come to a decision on the "should I stay or should I go" debate, but I'll keep you in suspense on that for now. And on that note, I'll bid you my final "auf wiedersehen." Thank you all for reading - it's been my pleasure taking you on this journey with me and I only hope that life back in Bagram proves interesting enough to keep you coming back. It means a lot to me to know that I have so many people out there who actually give a crap what I've been up to, and it really helps me to feel "connected" to everyone back home to know that you're reading. So seriously, THANK YOU. Until next time...

Lazy Days in Munich

2005-05-09T08:12:00.000-07:00

Well, let's get caught up, shall we? I got to Munich late Friday night, found my hostel, and went to bed. Interesting note about this hostel: for the first time since this trip got underway the room I'm in is virtually empty. It's a huge room too, 16 beds. Friday night there were two of us in there, Saturday night there were three, and last night I was the only one in the whole room. Crazy. On the one hand it's kind of nice, but on the other hand it makes it difficult to be social when there's no one to socialize with. Saturday:

I call this the lazy day, because that's exactly what it was. I managed to make it to breakfast right before they closed (9:30) but they shut down the coffee machine before I had consumed enough caffeine to really get me going. As a result I took my sweet time taking a shower, etc, and it was after 11 before I got out the door. My hostel is a short (5 min) subway ride from "Marienplatz" which is pretty much the center of town. I got off the subway in Marienplatz but as usual I had no guidebook, no plan, and no real idea what to do. I wandered around the square for a bit and then I started to see the throngs of tourists getting into position in front of the Glockenspiel. I looked at my watch and it was just before noon, so I deduced that the Glockenspiel was scheduled to "do its thing" at noon. I decided to hang out and watch which turned out to be quite entertaining. It wasn't the Glockenspiel itself that held my attention, it was the crowd of tourists. Everyone was lined up and looking up, cameras in the ready position to capture the "action." As soon as the Glockenspiel started its movement the large crowd ooohed and aaahed which was hilarious given the rather unimpressive Glockenspiel itself. Still, the Glockenspiel is one of those things that you "have to see" in Munich so at least I can say I've done it.
From there I wandered into Viktualienmarkt. Viktualienmarkt is a large open air market where local Germans do their grocery shopping. Vendors were selling everything from vegetables to meats to fish to spices, and of course there were plenty of folks hanging out at picnic tables enjoying their lunch. I was a bit hungry and decided to grab a pretzel and beer. I ordered the pretzel and the girl behind the counter just started at me like she didn't understand. I pointed to what I wanted which helped. She repeated the same word, "pretzel," but she said it with a thick German accent. I don't know if she genuinely didn't understand or if she was just giving me a hard time, but from here on out I'll try to pronounce "pretzel" with a little bit more German flair. She couldn't say the price in English so she just pointed to the display on the register and I paid. Another awkward but successful transaction to add to the list.
I left Viktualienmarkt and found an internet cafe where I hung out for about half an hour or so before I started nodding off at the computer. I decided to leave and start walking again but the fresh air and activity did little to perk me up. At about 1:30 I was really feeling like I could fall asleep right there on the sidewalk, so I decided maybe it was best to head back to the hostel and take a nap. I got back and read for a little bit before finally laying down at close to 3:00. My intentions of taking a short little "power nap" quickly fell by the wayside, and I didn't get out of bed until after 7:00. Lame, I know. But in my defense, I've been traveling for over two weeks without much of a down day, and I'm coming off three days of almost non-stop partying in Amsterdam. A friend told me before I left that I should make sure to schedule a "down day" every week or so, and I should have heeded that advice. Anyway, I spent most of my afternoon and evening on Saturday sleeping. I did manage to get back out of bed and go into town for dinner.
I walked through the Hofbrauhaus (bear in mind I was still fairly groggy at this point) and was totally awed. The place was packed wall to wall, the German "oompah" band was in full swing, and it was a rowdy scene. To be honest it was pretty overwhelming. I decided not to stay for two reasons (nobody freak out, I'll be back later): 1) I was hungry, and while I did see plenty of beer I did not see anyone eating, 2) I was still fairly out of it from my afternoon siesta, and I wasn't in the mood to just plop myself down next to a bunch of strangers (the tables in this place are all large, and it's not exactly geared to cater to the lone traveler). Anyway, ashamed as I am about it, I walked across the street and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe. It's a terrible thing to do, I know. If it makes anyone feel better I was subjected to some terrible music in there, including a Shakira song and Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy With It" (seriously people, isn't this supposed to be the Hard Rock Cafe?). That's what I get for eating in the American chain restaurant on my visit to Munich. After that I called it a night.

Sunday:

The plan was to make it to Marienplatz by 10:00 am for a guided tour called the "Third Reich" tour. Interestingly enough, and I didn't know this, Munich was the birthplace of Hitler's rise to power. In my habitual laziness however, I didn't manage to make it to town by 10. Since I needed something to do to occupy the morning I went back to the Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) to line up my train reservations to get back to Frankfurt. (sidebar: the original plan was to head to Stuttgart on Tuesday night to catch one last ska show, a band called Streetlight Manifesto, before putting an end to the vacation. I found out last week, however, that Streetlight Manifesto had changed their schedule and would not be coming through Stuttgart after all. Try as I might I could not find anyone else coming remotely close to Munich - Streetlight are hanging out in northern Germany, the Mad Caddies are in France and Spain, and the Toasters are playing a couple shows in Russia. Anyway, with no reason to go Stuttgart I decided to cancel that leg of the trip. I'll be going directly from Munich to Frankfurt on Wednesday morning, which officially marks the "beginning of the end.")
I did manage to show up on time for Sunday afternoon's tour of the Dachau Concentration Camp. As you can imagine, that was a pretty intense experience. It's very sobering and extremely sad to walk through those buildings, see the pictures, and let your imagination run wild with the atrocities that occurred there. It was interesting and educational, but an air of depression hangs over the entire place and makes for a bummer of an afternoon. Our tour group, which had been fairly talkative and social at the beginning, was nearly silent on the bus ride back to Munich. I won't dwell on this part of the trip except to say that I think memorials like this one are extremely important. It's too easy to forget the evil that humanity is capable of committing and also tolerating, and to try and whitewash it or "put it behind us and move on" is, I think, a great tragedy.
On a lighter note, I quickly became friends with Ann-Marie, a girl in the tour group. Oddly enough she's also, same as the girls I met in Amsterdam, an American on a European Tour after spending a semester studying abroad in Italy. Her friends had decided to spend the day relaxing in the hostel (and I thought I was lazy) and we were both excited to have some company so we spent the next hour or so together. We decided to head to the Hofbrauhaus for a beer. The scene is a little more laid back on a Sunday afternoon so we had no problem finding a table. We both ordered liters of beer, which are huge. While I'm fairly sure I've had that much beer in one sitting before, I've never had it served to me in one enormous glass mug. We shared a pretzel (and these are not your mall food court pretzels people, the pretzels in Germany are also all huge, bigger than your head), enjoyed our beers, and spent the time talking about the places we'd visited in Europe, our hometowns in the US, even a little bit of politics. Once again, having spent the last two weeks virtually alone, it was wonderful to enjoy the company of someone who speaks English and is at roughly the same age and place in life. She had to meet her friends at their hostel at 7:30, so after one liter of beer each (which is plenty when you've been away from the stuff for months) we parted ways.
I headed back to Marienplatz where I stumbled upon a real live political demonstration. I remembered the tour guide had mentioned this event on the ride to Dachau earlier that day. It was an amazing scene to behold. I was able to pick pieces of information from a few English-speaking spectators, and apparently a small faction of extreme right-wing neo-Nazi's had decided to demonstrate on the square. This of course led a much larger and more vocal group of Munich citizens to counter-demonstrate, making for quite the scene. Huddled somewhere in the middle of the square (it was so crowded that I couldn't actually see them) was this neo-Nazi group, and surrounding them were hundreds of citizens holding signs, chanting, and flipping off the neo-Nazi's. Cops were everywhere to make sure that things didn't get out of hand. It was a really cool scene to behold. You could feel the emotion and tension in the air, and half the fun was trying to distinguish what everything meant given that all the signs, stickers, and chants from the crowd were in German. I had talked for a bit with the tour guide earlier in the day after he warned us about that night's "event" at Marienplatz. He and I, and a few others, were discussing whether extremist groups like these should have the right to demonstrate. The tour guide, a German, made me laugh when he suggested that he thinks these groups should have the right to have their voices heard, but that he doesn't think the police should be obligated to protect them if they do so. I got a kick out of that. I can only imagine the chaos. After milling around the demonstration for a bit, I ate dinner at a pub downtown and called it a night.

Today:

Made it into town for the start of a Munich walking tour, which was very interesting. I realize I've largely done nothing but go on tours since I've been here, but since I failed to do any detailed planning ahead of time or even so much as bring a guidebook with me (a must for any future trips) the tours have been really helpful and informative. Plus, so far, they've been great at allowing me to meet some people. The Munich walking tour was no exception and I learned a ton. We learned a brief history of the city (it was founded in the late 1100s, so there was a lot of history) and visited plenty of notable building. Interestingly enough, a lot of the kings/rulers of Bavaria were really big on Italian art and architecture and as a result Munich has a bit of an Italian feel to it (apparently, in addition to being correctly called "the southern most city in Germany," Munich has sometimes been referred to as the "northern most city in Italy."). We walked around the English Garden and saw the famous "river surfers" in Munich which was quite a sight. Despite the fact that it was drizzling rain and freezing cold outside, there were still two guys who'd showed up in wetsuits to "surf" in Munich. It was cool to see. Oh, I almost forgot: the other really cool thing about the tour was that I learned where the phrase/song comes from that goes "whatever Lola wants, Lola gets." It's so cool to be able to tie some pop-culture references like that back to their historical context.
I met another girl on this morning's tour, Lisa, and once again we were both without any company so decided to spend the afternoon together. She's from Toronto, and unlike the poser Americans who claim Canada as their homeland to avoid being on the receiving end of political aggression, she's actually from Canada. She's got a French work visa and is planning to stay in France for roughly a year, but before settling in and finding a job she wanted to travel Europe a bit. Thus, she's in Munich. Anyway, we were both really cold from our previous two and half hours outside on the tour, so we found a museum and ducked inside. It turned out to be called, quite simply, the "Munich Residence." It's the former home of various kings and rulers of Germany's Bavarian region, and it was comparable to the castle at Versailles. It was interesting enough to walk through although not spectacular. After spending a couple hours in there we found an internet cafe, where I sit now. Lisa left a while ago, but I'm still here typing because that's how dedicated I am to keeping in touch with you all. Actually, Lisa and I are meeting up with some others from the tour at 8 tonight at the Hofbrauhaus. Speaking of which, it's 20 'til 8 right now, so I should get going. I'm definitely going to want to get some food in me before attacking another liter (dare I saw two?) of beer.

Auf Wiedersehen!

time flies when you're having fun (in Amsterdam)

2005-05-08T01:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, let me pick up where I left off:

Thursday morning I made it to the Anne Frank House by a few minutes after noon. The line moved surprisingly quickly and I was inside in about 20 minutes. The tour was really really cool, probably one of the highlights of this whole trip. Walking through that house really brings the story home, so to speak, and it's a really interesting story. The other neat thing on that tour was at the end. The organization that runs the Anne Frank House is big on staying involved with current issues of social justice, and at the end of the tour they have a room with a large TV screen and several "voting booths." On the screen they present scenarios that highlight the sometimes gray area between freedom of speech and freedom from discrimination, and at the end of each scenario the spectators get to vote. The on-screen presentation doesn't take sides, it just presents you with both points of view, lets the people vote, tells you how the voting came out, then moves on to the next scenario. I get into that kind of stuff, so it was fun to watch and vote for a few scenarios. It's too bad you weren't there Jesse, we easily could have talked for hours about some of the scenarios.
From the Anne Frank House I hung out for a few minutes on a corner where there was a small little "fair" set up - a stage for performers (none were on at the moment), games, food, that sort of thing. No doubt it was part of the Dutch independence day celebration. I decided to stop and get a quick bite to eat from one of the vendors at this fair and I added another weird experience with french fries to my list of cultural experiences. In England, where fries are called chips, the come completely plain. No salt or anything. I once asked for some salt to put on my "chips" and the guy looked at me like it was an extremely odd way to eat them. Anyway, so here I am in the Netherlands and I ordered a burger and fries from this little street stand. The guy asked if I wanted anything on my fries and then he proceeded to offer me the following four options: ketchup, mayo, curry sauce, or peanut butter. Mayo? Peanut butter? Someone needs to teach the Dutch how to eat french fries. At least they came with salt on them.
From there I headed to the departure point for the canal tour that was included in my hostel package. I timed it perfectly and got there at about five minutes before departure. The tour wasn't bad, and I got to see and learn some cool things that I otherwise wouldn't have. We went up into the harbor which was cool to see - it's easy to forget by hanging out in the center of town that Amsterdam is literally right on the water. I'm from a landlocked state and it's rare that I even see a decent size river or lake, so to a guy like me that harbor is huge. Also, I learned that back in the day the building/home owners of Amsterdam were taxed based on the width and/or footprint of their building which made for a lot of very narrow but tall homes and shops. As a result, most of the staircases are either of the spiral variety or they're very narrow and steep much like the staircases on a ship. All this to say that moving furniture in and out of a building like that becomes extremely difficult. The way it's done, even today, is that every building has a "furniture hook" reaching out from the ceiling which is used to hoist furniture up and move it in through the windows. Other than that, I don't remember a whole lot of the hour long canal tour. I was running on just a few hours sleep, and once I sat down and felt the gentle rocking of the boat I was pretty much nodding off the whole time.
The canal tour ended at 5:30 pm, giving me just enough time to run back to the hostel real quick before heading to the Leidseplein Theater, the current home of the Boom Chicago comedy show. Everyone I had talked to said that Boom Chicago was a must see. I showed up at 6:30 to eat dinner before the show began. The place was almost empty when I got there, so I was originally seated in the middle of this huge table all by myself. I only mention this because they eventually filled in the empty seats by seating a bachelorette party from St Croix on my left and a group of American college girls on my right. I was the only guy at a table full of women. Awesome. I quickly decided I'd enjoy the evening even if the comedy show sucked. I couldn't get the bachelorettes to bite on my attempts at conversation, but the college girls, all from Kansas as it turns out, were much more receptive. More on that in a minute.
Okay, the Boom Chicago show: first of all, the food there was amazing. I assumed this place was a comedy club first that served food as an afterthought, but they would do quite well as a restaurant alone. I had a salmon dish that was extraordinary and completely exceeded my expectations. Now, a bit of history about the show. Twelve years ago three Americans visited Amsterdam on a post-college European tour and decided it would be cool to move to Amsterdam and open an improv comedy club. Lo and behold it worked, and today it's one of the most popular and most fun events in Amsterdam. Everyone on stage is American so obviously all of the shows are in English. The show, which lasted about two hours, is a cross between Who's Line Is It Anyway and Saturday Night Live and it's absolutely hilarious. I don't think I stopped laughing for the entire two hours. They do a good mix of pre-written sketches and improv scenes, relying heavily on audience suggestions for the improv. It was awesome, and if I'd had another day in that city I'd have gone to the show again. After the show they invite anyone interested to stick around for an even more interactive show. They take volunteers from the audience, give them a short "introduction to improv" lesson, and then the audience members stay on stage to do scenes with the cast. It seemed like a lot of fun and I was planning to stick around, but that's when the Kansas girls invited me to hang out with them. Hmmm, tough call...watch more comedy by myself or hang out with four attractive college girls? I decided to go with the girls.
Jenna, Tiffany, Sarah, Kindall and I proceeded to basically bar-hop for a few hours which was a great time. I learned that two of them are from K-State and two from KU, and all four have just finished a semester abroad in Italy. They had met in Italy and were enjoying a little European tour of their own before they headed back to Kansas. After two weeks of vacationing alone it was wonderful to hang out with some Americans for a few hours, and of course the fact that they all happened to be attractive young women was icing on the cake.
Friday was a fairly uneventful day - I basically just woke up, checked out of the hostel, and headed to the train station for my journey to Munich. The time flew by in Amsterdam and I easily could have used a couple more days in that city. On the bright side, the brevity of my first visit just gives me an excuse to go back, which I will definitely do. That city is just too much fun. The train ride to Munich was very relaxing, and I was surprised at how quickly the eight hours passed. I pulled into Munich central station at about 10:30 pm on Friday night, and by 11:30 I had found my hostel, a five minute "U-bahn" ride outside the center of the city, and I pretty much just went straight to bed.

It's Sunday now, but before I go into my day yesterday (which really wasn't that exciting) I'm going to call it quits for now. I'm getting hungry and I've got 45 minutes to make it back to Marienplatz to head out on a tour of the Dachau concentration camp. I'll find some time in the next day or two to get you caught up on the final leg of this vacation.

Planet Amsterdam

2005-05-06T01:16:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry it's been a few days since I've posted but these past 65 hours or so have been a huge blur. This city is unreal - and when I say that I really mean unreal. To grow up in suburban America and visit Amsterdam is very much like stepping off of planet Earth and entering a whole new world. I don't even know where to begin...

Arrived at Central Station in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening and readjusted to a station full of signs that I can't read. I managed to buy myself a three day tram pass and I only boarded the wrong tram once (hey, it's confusing, okay?) before finally getting to the right place.
The hostel I stayed at is amazing. I had forgotten that when I booked this place on the web roughly a month ago I had purchased a package deal called the Amsterdam City Break. When I checked in I was given all the standard info, then I was handed my Hostelling International backpack (a free gift included in the package) which was packed with all the tickets and discount vouchers that were included in the package. Included in the deal were a tram pass (which I didn't end up using, more on that in a bit), a ticket to the Van Gogh Museum, a ticket for a canal tour, and countless discount vouchers for everything imaginable. It was both overwhelming and awesome. I spent that first night settling in, getting some laundry done, that type of thing. I also redeemed my voucher for a free meal and free beer at the hostel's own restaurant/bar (oh yeah, forgot to mention that was included in the package, too). While I was enjoying my three course dinner I signed the hostel's guestbook and then got caught up in flipping back the pages and skimming through it - reading entries from all over the world and in every imaginable language.
The other thing I did Tuesday night was try to get a rough plan together for what I'd be doing while I was here. Two more shows were on the itinerary in this city, and I was under the impression that I'd need to get to Haarlem on Wednesday for the Toasters and then I'd see the Mad Caddies on Thursday night in Amsterdam. After double checking my Mad Caddies ticket and doing a bit of internet research I realized I had quite a dilemma before me: the Toasters show in Haarlem had been cancelled, and both bands were scheduled to play in Amsterdam on Wednesday night. Decisions, decisions...of course I badly wanted to see both bands. Leave it to the city of Amsterdam to make it possible. More on that in a minute.
Wednesday morning I woke up without much of a plan for the day but quickly decided that morning that I'd rent a bicycle. Bicycles are the way to get around in this city. I even came across a "parking garage" for bikes - three huge parking lots stacked on top of each other and packed with nothing but bikes. It's wild. They have two sets of traffic signals at every intersection, one for cars and one for bikes. Imagine trying to coordinate trams, cars, bikes and pedestrians all along very narrow European roads. It's quite a sight. Anyway, the hostel had a decent discount on a bike rental with a nearby vendor so I figured "when in Rome" and got myself a bike. It was great fun, and despite the long time it's been since I've ridden a bike I only had one embarrassing fall.
First stop Wednesday morning was the Van Gogh museum. I already had a ticket from the hostel package so I got to walk right in. The museum was okay - maybe it's because after you've seen the Louvre all other museums pale in comparison or maybe I've just had enough art for one vacation, but I didn't stay long. I think I was there maybe an hour, long enough to walk the museum's "highlights" tour and also venture through a temporary exhibition featuring the paintings of Egon Schiele as well as the "live art" of some modern artists who, as one sign said, were "using live art to create a dialogue with the paintings of Schiele." Well, okay then. Good luck with that. It was pretty intriguing to watch though.
I left the Van Gogh Museum and headed to the Heineken Brewery for the tour they call the "Heineken Experience." That was a great time and believe it or not was actually my first ever brewery tour. I live in the number one microbrew state in the country (either that or we're second only to Oregon) and I've never been on a tour, but what better place than Amsterdam for a "first time." The tour was really cool and of course there was plenty of free Heineken, and I even got a free Heineken beer glass at the end of the tour.
After the brewery I had dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place before heading to the Melkweg, the venue for the Amsterdam stop on the Deconstruction Tour. I walked into the venue, realized I didn't have any cash, and walked back out again to find an ATM. It was on my way back to the Melkweg that the clock struck 8:00 pm (this was Wednesday, the 4th of May) and the entire city froze. The Netherlands celebrates their "independence day" on 5 May, but at exactly 8 pm on the fourth the entire country pauses for two minutes of silence in remembrance of those that gave their lives during WWII. It was quite a scene, or maybe I should say lack of a scene. I was walking through a city square and getting close to the Melkweg when all of a sudden everything went quiet - everyone stopped moving, the conversations all stopped - imagine standing in a city square in Amsterdam and being able to hear a pin drop. It's unreal. You could hear what I assume is the Dutch national anthem playing from the windows of all of the stores and restaurants, and for two minutes the entire city, and presumably the whole country, fell completely still. It was an unbelievable scene.
So anyway, I got in the Melkweg just a little after 8, which put me there in time to see two bands before the Mad Caddies took to the stage. I heard Strike Anywhere and Boysetsfire, and I think I was bit harsh on the Deconstruction bands in London. Strike Anywhere was actually quite good. Boysetsfire brought the heavy stuff - think Thrice with more screaming and less metal riffs. They weren't terrible, and if I ever feel the need to add another anger CD to my collection I might pick up a record by these guys. By 10:15 the Mad Caddies took to the stage and were as awesome as ever. This place was a lot smaller than the venue in London but that's a good thing. The mix was also a bit better than the one in London where they had the guitars way too loud and you had to strain to hear the horns. As always, the Caddies completely rocked the place. They closed out their set with Goleta again, and I just can't get over how amazing that song is. I loved the show and of course it was over way to quickly. By 11:30 I was out of the Melkweg and back on my trusty rental bike for the short (less than two minutes) bike ride to another club called Paradiso.
I was in line at Paradiso at 11:45 and inside at just shortly after midnight. Why Paradiso you ask? This is what I was alluding to earlier. Thanks partly to luck and partly to the fact that Amsterdam is a wonderful city that doesn't shut down at night, the Toasters were set to take the stage at the Paradiso at 1:00 am, meaning I got to see Mad Caddies and the Toasters on the same night. Two shows in one night is unprecedented in my concert-going career and like I said, leave it Amsterdam to make it possible. It was absolutely awesome. I was in the club by midnight and at that time they were in full dance club mode. The lights were low, the DJ was spinning techno and house music, the bar was packed and so was the dance floor. My friends are all laughing right now, because they all know what I do in just such a scene...hit the dance floor and make some new friends? Hardly. I bought a beer (Heineken of course, the stuff is like water here) and stood in the corner. I know, I'm a party animal. I managed to get through the hour and work my way to the front of the dance floor just as the DJ was winding down the dance music. The Toasters burned through an hour and fifteen minute set that was, of course, incredible. It was a great scene, too: you had a dance club full of folks who were obviously there for the club scene and had no clue who the Toasters were, and then you had maybe 20 or so of us (in a crowd of probably 300) that had come specifically to see the Toasters. We were all standing right up front and belting out all the lyrics, dancing our hearts out, oblivious to anyone else in the place. It only took about two songs for the crowd to realize that ska is very danceable music and get into it. It was an amazing set that included a five or six minute reggae breakdown in the middle of the song Ploughshares And Guns that they hadn't played in London. By the time they wrapped up with Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down, I could hardly stand. I was sweaty, exhausted, sore, and one-hundred percent satisfied. Two amazing ska bands, on the same night, back to back, in two different clubs, and all of it in Amsterdam. That's one for the history books my friends.
The Toasters left the stage about 2:30 and after a few minutes sitting down to recuperate I decided to hang out at the club for a little while. I got a bit more social as the night went on and ended up chatting with another ska fan from the UK who had also been at the London show, as well as Dutch girl who gave me the obligatory "I don't like America and here's why" speech. She was nice about it and didn't attack me personally, but she was not running short of things to say about my homeland. I silently endured it until I could make my escape, the whole time thinking "blah, blah, blah, heard it all before, I know you all hate us and our President." Next time anyone asks I'm Canadian. I stayed at the club until the place shut down at 4, and it was 5 before I made it back to the hostel and into bed.
Despite the late night I managed to get up, shower, and get out the door by 11:30 on Thursday. First stop: the Anne Frank House.

And this is where we'll take a bit of an intermission. I'd love to finish the post and tell you about my day Thursday, but I'm in a bit of a hurry to get to the train station in time to catch the ride down to Munich. I've got about 8 hours of train time in front of me, so I'll try to get the rest of this post down on paper and then finish posting it the first chance I get in Germany.

These last three days seriously have been a blur, and I would love to have some more time in this city. Three days was not even close to enough time to get the full Amsterdam experience, at least not when you factor in the time I spent at ska shows. I hate to say goodbye to this city already - it feels like I just got here - but this is a place I will definitely have to come back to. I'll finish filling you in on the wonderful world of Amsterdam as soon as I can.

And On I Go

2005-05-02T00:28:00.000-07:00

It's come time to say farewell to the great city of London but I have time for one last post from here before I move on. Here's what's been happening since I last updated:

I spent the early part of Sunday afternoon milling around the Westminster Abbey area. I saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, and I also got treated to a bit of a political display in that area of town. It wasn't really a protest or anything like that, just certain parts of the area were lined with people holding signs and touting their particular political point of view. England is on the verge of their nation elections - this week I think - so I've seen a fair bit of political proselytizing while I've been here.
Another interesting note along those lines: I don't know who else is in the running, but apparently both Paris and London are candidates to host the Olympic Games in 2012. Both cities have flyers and promotional material displayed all over town encouraging their citizens to support that city's bid to host the games.
After wandering the political capital of London for a couple of hours I finally made my way to the Astoria Theatre. I got to the "Deconstruction Tour" at roughly 4 p.m. which turned out to be plenty early. I don't know what it is, possibly my "old age," but I didn't quite feel as much at home as I have in the past at these big rock festivals. Maybe I just didn't know the bands and their music well enough, but I've been through my "anger music" phase and I'm over it. Every now and again I'll get in the mood for some good hardcore, but lately it's been all about the ska. I sat through a few too many "screamo" bands to get to the headliner, but it was well worth it. The Mad Caddies took the stage, I took to the floor, and thus commenced the rocking. They were as good as ever. A few months ago the Caddies' song "Wet Dog" replaced Less Than Jake's "National Anthem" as my favorite song, but unfortunately they didn't hit that one in the live set. They did however play "Just One More" off the new album, a couple of really good groove songs, and also enough of their old stuff to keep an old fan like me happy (including "Goleta" off their first album which is an amazing song and even better live). They played their wonderfully unique brand of ska/punk/circus music, and of course it wouldn't be a Mad Caddies show without the obligatory pirate song or two. It's been too long since I last saw them live and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing them again in Amsterdam.
First stop this morning was the London Dungeons, an attraction that I'd seen from the outside that appeared to be some sort of haunted house. After "queuing" in a line that looked a lot longer than it actually was I finally made it inside. It wasn't quite as scary as it could have been - I think they were trying a little too hard to make it scary yet still family-friendly (plenty of people had brought their small children). It was interesting, and like every attraction I've been to in this town it told the often gruesome history of this city - the wars, The Plague, the Great Fire, the torture and executions - and of course it also hit on Jack the Ripper. One interesting note: at one point in the tour they were talking about the ease with which they would sentence people to death back in the day. They had a list of all of the crimes from back then that could bring you to the noose. These "heinous" crimes included (I'm not making this up): shooting a rabbit, cutting down a fruit tree, and "appearing on the King's Highway with a sooty face." Let that be a warning to all you sooty-faced folk out there - there was a day when you could be put to death for your crime.
After the London Dungeons I walked across the London Bridge one last time and got some more pictures. I realize I haven't really hit a ton of the typical "touristy" attractions in this city, but despite that I was a bit tired of the tourist attraction scene by early this afternoon. I decided I'd give it a rest for a bit and hopefully be in the mood again by the time I make it to Amsterdam. Instead of cramming to fit in another attraction or two, I found a theater and caught a movie. Now, hear me out on this: first, I haven't seen a movie in the theater (or "cinema," the English make a distinction between theatres of the stage and cinemas on the screen) since last July. Second, there's a good chance that I won't be around a theater where I can catch a current movie, in English at least, for another three or four months. Third, I was just tired of all the walking I've been doing for the last week or so and sitting down for a few hours sounded great. So, I went to see a movie.
The cinema I found wasn't showing a huge selection of films so out of what they offered I chose "Closer" (more about the movie in a minute). The cinema I went to was this place right in the heart of London's Theatre District, so it wasn't the typical megaplex I'm used to back home. This place only had four theaters and they were stacked on top of each so that you had to go up a floor or two to get to your movie. When I bought the ticket the box office person asked me if I'd like the middle or the back, which I found odd, but I chose middle. It turns out this theater, which was surprising small, sells tickets by the actual seat. Instead of walking in and just taking what's open there is an usher in each theater who will look at your ticket and guide you to your seat - kind of neat. Anyway, I chose Closer because there wasn't a whole lot playing and because I liked the cast. As for the movie itself, it was...okay. It falls into the "screwed up, dysfunctional love story" category, and as far as I'm concerned Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind pretty much takes the cake in that category. While Closer wasn't wonderful I will say that it was captivating enough to keep my interest without a single slow moment throughout. Outside of the film itself it was great to sit and watch a movie. It's one of those small luxuries that you start to miss when you've been living in a hut for nine months.
The movie let out a little after 6 p.m. so I still had a few hours to kill before I'd be ready to call it a night. I wandered around the Theatre District for a bit and stumbled upon a huge crowd lined up on the streets for what I discovered is the London premier of the movie Kingdom of Heaven. They had the outside of a theater completely done-up in Kingdom of Heaven promotional material, and the street leading up to said theater was blocked off for the typical red carpet hoopla, which is what drew the huge crowd. I was way too far back in the crowd to see anything but I did hang out for a short while and every few minutes the crowd would start screaming, although I had no idea each time who/what they were screaming for. I did manage to see Orlando Bloom being interviewed by the press but I didn't see it live, I saw it from the screens inside a TV van that was parked off to the side of the madness, dutifully relaying the feed from whatever poor cameraman was stuck in the media circus. I didn't stay in that area long but it was a fun thing to just happen across on accident.
I decided that for my last official "tourist thing" in London I'd try to catch another show. My brother and I were briefly talking about musicals on the phone the other night and he mentioned that he saw Les Miserables on Broadway in NYC - I believe the words he used to describe the show were "life changing." I figured if he enjoyed it that much it must be decent, plus it just seems like 'Les Mis' is one of those shows that you just have to see like it's some kind of cultural rite of passage of something. So I bought a ticket.
I enjoyed the show, although I wasn't quite as into it as I was with Chicago. Obviously they are two very different types of shows, but even though this one had all the right ingredients of a good story - honor, justice, bravery, grief, true love, even a heart-warming young boy - I just didn't feel it the way you sometimes do with a really good tale. Still, it definitely wasn't bad and if nothing else I get to say that I saw Les Miserables at the Queens Theatre in London.

So now I'm out of the show and headed home, but I decided to stop here because this internet cafe is in the middle of the walk from the theater back to the hostel. London has been awesome and I'm kind of bummed that I'm leaving, although I can definitely say that I won't miss the prices here. I've got plenty more ahead of me though, and the best part is that I've still got nine days of vacation to go. I could pack it up now and feel satisfied, but I'm just a little over halfway done! As always thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you all again from the beautiful city of Amsterdam.

Dance the Night Away

2005-05-01T00:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've got time for another quick update so here goes. I've been a slacker about updating my journal these last couple days so this is completely off the top of my head. Off we go...

Thursday night: after walking around St Paul's Cathedral a good two or three times I finally found the hostel where the "haunted places of London" tour departed from. Met the tour guide, a guy named Stevie Dixon who was a bit shy and unassuming - not exactly what I'd consider prime tour guide qualities - but hey, it's a free tour, what are you gonna do.
Tour was really cool. Saw an alley called Dead Man's Walk and learned quite a bit about the old city of London (the original walled fortress). Visited the square where many public executions took place, including the famous execution of William Wallace, the Scotsman who refused to show allegiance to an English King (the story that is now most popularly known as the movie Braveheart). Saw the exact scale replica of Shakespeare's Globe and we stopped into a pub that is built where once stood (supposedly) a watering hole frequented by the playwright himself. Also visited a pub where Jack the Ripper was believed to have picked up most of his victims (his victims were all prostitutes), after which we visited the site where the fourth victim's body was found. To be honest the tour wasn't terribly creepy, but it was interesting and I learned a ton from the life-long Londoner that led it (despite his soft-spokenness).
Friday morning I slept in a bit and as usual I left the hostel with no real plan in mind. I made sure to ask the hostel reception staff where a good place was to buy theatre tickets as seeing a musical was amongst my ideas of things to do. I wandered the city for a bit and decided to stop into a pub for lunch. I enjoyed fish and chips and a pint of beer - I figured fish and chips on a Friday was quite an English meal to have. I wandered a bit more, got tired, and found a park where I laid on the grass and napped for a good hour. Not very touristy and exciting I know, but definitely a very nice "vacation perk." I don't ever get to nap at Bagram, and there's not a single blade of grass on that base so it was nice to relax and enjoy the park.
For the evening's festivities I ended up buying a ticket to see Chicago at the Adelphi Theatre in London's famous West End theatre district. Unbeknownst to me until I walked in and bought a program, the lead role of Roxie Hart was played by none other than Brooke Shields. The show was amazing. I had never seen Chicago before, on stage or the movie, so it was all new to me. I absolutely loved it. The music, the comedy, the dancing, it was all wonderful and just tons of fun. That's the best word I can use to describe it: fun. The whole thing was a really good time. I'm so glad I went and I have my cousin-in-law Christie to thank for the suggestion. I'm telling you, the more musicals I go to the more I love them. Also, just a quick sidebar, if you're ever wondering where you're favorite actor/actress is or why they haven't done any movies lately, chances are s/he is on stage somewhere. I continue to be surprised at how many big names you find on stage: when I was in NYC I saw a Broadway production of The Rocky Horror Show which starred Luke Perry as Brad and cast Ana Gasteyer (she was an SNL regular at the time) in a supporting role that showcased the amazing voice she never got to use on SNL. Matthew Broderick was on Broadway doing The Producers at the time, and if I'm not mistaken Tim Robbins is currently doing his show there. I come across the pond and am pleasantly surprised to find Brooke Shields playing the lead in Chicago, and in just wandering the streets and reading the ads I've discovered that Val Kilmer and Kevin Spacey are also here in London starring in shows. Amazing. Anyway, Chicago was really good, tons of fun, and I actually woke up Saturday morning with the song "Mr Cellophane" stuck in my head.
After the show on Friday night I did a bit more wandering until I got tired and decided to call it a night.
Woke up Saturday morning and headed for the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. The original plan was to just walk around the outside of the Tower and get some pictures, but after 20 minutes or so of that I gave in and bought a ticket to go inside. I'm so glad I did. I took one of the complimentary tours provided by the Yeoman Warders - high ranking British military men who have earned their way into the very competitive title. Their "ceremonial" job is to guard the Tower of London and provide security for Her Majesty the Queen, but a lot of what they do is take tourists around the place and show us around. The Yeoman Warder leading our tour, a guy named Mick, was awesome. He was an infantryman in the British Army and had worked his way up to the rank of Sergeant Major - all that to say he had a booming voice that commanded attention. He was very funny though and a wonderful guide. He's leading a two-hour Jack the Ripper tour tonight and depending on the schedule of bands at the Deconstruction Tour I'm tempted to try and go just because he's such a great guide. The Tower was great, and as usual with this sort of thing I learned a ton. The coolest part of the whole thing to me was the history of the structure - the original White Castle in the center of the Tower complex was built in 1066 A.D. 1066! Just think about that...that structure is close to 1000 years old. It's almost incomprehensible.
After the Tower I headed back to the hostel to rest up a bit before making my way to Camden Town for the "International Ska Festival 5." With apologies to those of you that aren't ska fans (which is, um, all of you) let me recap the show a bit (shameless ska promotion: if any of you happen to be interested in learning a bit about the genre that I love, a good place to start would be here. Listen to some of the actual music here). I walked in a bit late and caught the last song of Sadies Dolls' set, which was an awesome reggae groove that I really liked. Bucket (of the Toasters) later called Sadies Dolls his new favorite band which makes me wish I heard more. Next up was a group called The Scrub hailing from Bristol. They had a great sound, very danceable, and I was quite impressed by the guy who split time equally as vocalist, guitarist, and trombonist. Not only that, he was quite good at all three. Very cool band. They were followed by Fandangle, a ska-core outfit who's website says they hail from right here in London (although I could have sworn the guy said they were from Zurich on stage). They were full on ska-core and looked the part what with the mohawks and the lead singer's Anti-Flag t-shirt. They weren't bad - sounded equal parts Mad Caddies and Big D & The Kids Table - but I wasn't so much in the mood for the punk rock last night (that's what tonight's for). Their songs were good, they played a tight set, and I think in a different setting I would really get into these guys. Following Fandangle was a group from Norfolk calling themselves Rebelation. These guys played a truly authentic brand of ska with a rootsy reggae feel and it was truly amazing. They brought the true Jamaican spirit to the show, even infusing some spirituality with anthemic lyrics like "freedom isn't freedom until Babylon fall." Great band - I just wish they could have played longer. Plus their sax player was gorgeous. As is usually the case at a ska show I fell in love twice last night, once with a girl who obviously had a boyfriend and again with the sax player of Rebelation, who's name I still haven't figured out. Another name to throw on the ever-growing "fantasy crush" list. Anywho, after Rebelation came Zen Baseballbat, another UK group that has quite the following here. They play a very lighthearted and humorous brand of ska that has a two-tone feel at it's core but throws a lot on top to mix it up. They were easy to dance to and a lot of fun. The headliners, of course, were none other than the Toasters. I had talked to Jeff before the show (their sax player) while he was manning the merch booth and found out that "Lord Sledge" hadn't made it out for this tour. Jeff said he's missed the last few tours due to his job back in NYC. I can't imagine any job being able to keep you from playing with the legendary Toasters, but whatever. The horn section was just Jeff and Chris on trombone but I was pleasantly surprised. The two of them packed a powerful punch, and Chris plays one hell of a mean trombone. The guy is amazing. During the encore he walked off stage and just kept playing as he walked through the crowd and danced with us which was of course awesome. The band was also without Jack Ruby Jr for this show, but the bassist, a guy I don't remember from their past shows, took over the reggae vocals and did an outstanding job. It wasn't quite Jack Ruby, but you hardly noticed. The Toasters were rushed for time so they hardly said a word and just burned through their set hitting some of the greats like Run Rudy Run, Underground Town, Weekend in L.A., Running Right Through the World, Shocker, Decision at Midnight, 2-Tone Army, and in typical fashion they closed the place down with Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down. The show was just amazing, too good to put into words. Five hours of beautiful ska music - I couldn't have asked for a more perfect night. Hands down one of the best ska shows I've been to ever. Okay, no more in-depth ska reviews, I swear. I know most of you don't really care.
After the show I found a pay phone and talked to my brother and family for a bit which was great. It's nice to "connect" every so often out here. Don't get me wrong, it's been an awesome trip so far, but it does get a bit lonely doing it all myself.
So that brings us to this morning. I slept in a bit and didn't make it out of the hostel until almost 11. I first stopped here to write you this update, and from here I think I'll probably go check out the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, that sort of thing. The Deconstruction Tour starts at 2 p.m., which is only 2 hours away, but I'm in no rush to be there right at the beginning. It's one of those all day music events and I'm not terribly interested in a lot of the bands. Strung Out aren't too bad, and I've heard good things about Strike Anywhere and Only Crime, but really it's all about the Mad Caddies. They're headlining the show so I'm sure they won't play until late which means I'm in no particular rush to get there.

I guess that's all for now folks. Keep checking back and I'll do my best to get another update posted before I head to Amsterdam on Tuesday.

Finally I can speak English and not feel like a tool

2005-04-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

Hello from London. Here goes another bullet point list to get you caught up on the adventures so far, with stories of note inter-mixed:

After posting from the internet cafe in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris I got on the Metro (subway) and headed for the two small islands in the Seine. First thing I saw when I got to the islands was a place called the Conciergie and I checked my museum pass to see if it was covered. It was, so I walked inside.
Conciergie is an old prison from back in the day where prisoners would stay for a short time, usually right before they got executed. Kind of a creepy place, but oddly cool. The keeper of the prison was called the Concierge, which may be where we got the term that we use today.
Left that building and walked right into a rainstorm. Tried to brave it for a bit sans umbrella, but gave up and ducked into a cafe. Waited in the cafe and read for over an hour while the rain continued to pour. At that point I gave up and decided to call it a night - it was close to 8 p.m. - and head back to the hostel. Hung out at the hostel, got some laundry done and hit the sack.
Woke up Wednesday morning (yesterday...wow, it feels like so much longer ago) which was to be "museum day." The plan was to get up early and get a head start on the day, but I'm lazy. I made it to the Louvre by 10 a.m.
The Louvre is freaking huge. I didn't even know where to start so I just headed in the direction that seemed to have the least people. Bought an "audioguide" because I had learned at Versailles that those things are essential. A naive dude like me learns so much more when I've got somebody telling me what's going on.

I saw more sculptures than I know what to do with - one very interesting one of a character in mythology named Hermaphrodites (child of Hermes and Aphrodite). Now I know where the term hermaphrodite comes from.
Walked through an exhibit called Art of Islam. That was very interesting, especially considering the part of the world I've been living in for the last several months.
Amongst a million other paintings I did make sure to see the Mona Lisa which is quite unimpressive. It's in a huge room, the walls of which are covered with mammoth, larger-than-life painting, and there in the middle of the room is "the most famous painting in the world" - all three square feet of it. Yet still I sat there like the enchanted tourist that I was and took several pictures.

I spent over four hours in the Louvre without even trying, and I'm not really a big art guy. It's just that big.
After the Louvre I walked across the Seine to the Musee de Orsay. It's in a building that used to be a train station and as a result has a cool layout. I spent another two and a half hours in the Orsay and was impressed. It had a lot of cool stuff that I could get into despite my "not much of an art guy" status. Of course the audioguide was extremely helpful.
My next stop was to be the two islands in the Seine to once again try and see the Notre Dame and St Chapelle cathedrals (the weather was much better yesterday). Found the Notre Dame but a large crowd off to the side caught my attention. Walked over and saw what is quite possibly the coolest thing I saw in Paris:
Let me try and create a picture for you: a paved street was blocked off so that no traffic could drive it. Some young men had set up a ramp, probably 12-15 long, that started at street level and sloped up to about four feet. Just beyond the ramp was set up two poles with a crossbar - think high jump bar. The poles had notches so that the crossbar could be set anywhere from about five feet high to about 12 feet. Five or six young guys, guys my age, were on rollerblades and were basically tricking off this ramp and over the bar. It was awesome. Leave it to me to come to Paris and decided the coolest thing in the whole city was some "extreme rollerblading" street performers. These guys were amazing. They would start with the bar at about five feet, build up speed from forty feet back, then approach the ramp and jump off it. They would do tricks over the bar: flips, spins, everything, raising the height of the bar each time. They landed on the street and skated away like it was nothing. Totally sick. After frantically running the streets of Paris to find some more batteries for my camera (yes, of course they died right when I most wanted to use my camera, and of course I had left my spare batteries back at the hostel) I took plenty of pictures and even got some short video clips (and yes, I took plenty of pictures of the touristy stuff too, and I have plenty of memory left for more pictures, so nobody worry that I'll come back from Europe with nothing but a bunch of pictures of rollerbladers). The guys were totally cool and I ended up talking with one of them for a bit. We chatted about rollerblading (which is huge in Europe judging by the aforementioned scene plus what I saw in Germany), about skateboarding, video games, America, and Paris. It was sweet. The grand finale of their little "show" was when they removed the bar altogether, leaving only the ramp, and three of them rushed toward the ramp one right after the other. They hit the ramp all three in a row, the first guy skating backwards, and they proceed to each throw a flip, the first guy doing a backward flip (approaching and landing backwards), then a forward facing backflip and then a normal front flip. I'm telling you, these guys were awesome, and in some odd way the whole scene made me miss snowboarding all the more.
As if the rollerblading wasn't enough, there were also some really cool street musicians performing right across from them. Two guys who, judging from their accents and the fact that spoke and sang overwhelmingly in English, are/were Americans. One played an alto sax and the other had a stand-up bass. They provided the smooth jazz soundtrack for the rollerblading show, probably unintentionally, but they were very cool to watch also.
By the time I was finally ready to leave the rollerblading scene it was pushing 9 p.m. and getting dark and I was ready to call it a night. I found a supermarket and went in to buy a frozen pizza and a beer to take back to the hostel. That was great because the whole meal cost me €5,20 - way cheaper than the restaurant prices I'd been paying.
Woke up this morning and checked out of the hostel. I had breakfast with my roommate Stephane and we joined two girls who we came to discover are from the Czech Republic. They are in Paris because one of them is a sculptor (she said in her not-so-perfect English that she was a sculpture, so I gently corrected her) and is displaying a piece at an exhibition is Paris. Very cool. I've said it before but it bears repeating - hostels are awesome and I'm convinced they are the only way to travel.
My train for London left at 13:04 which gave me a few hours to kill before I had to check in at the train station. I hopped the subway back to the islands to try and finally get inside the Notre Dame and/or St Chapelle. I got off the subway and immediately got lost (go figure, I'd only been on these islands three times now). I wandered around for a good 1/2 hour before realizing that the entrance to the St Chapelle was a mere 50 meters or so from where I'd departed the subway. It was 11:30 at this point, and I was concerned about making my train, but I decided to go ahead and duck into the St Chapelle quickly. The upper chapel in that place is extremely impressive. The brochure I got said it has over 6000 square feet of stained glass. Amazing. After marveling inside there for a while I decided to finally say goodbye to Paris and head back to the train station.
Train ride was uneventful. I listened to my iPod for the entire three hour journey which got me very excited about the upcoming shows. Two days until the Toasters!
Bought a "Travelcard" - basically a subway pass for the duration of my stay (the subway, which was called the Metro in Paris, is called the Underground here and affectionately referred to as "the Tube"). I've already decided I love London simply because they speak English here and I can speak it to them without feeling the slightest bit self-conscious. Not only do they speak English, they speak it with an awesome accent that I can't get over. I've only been here three hours and I've already been called "mate" three times (and here I thought "mate" was strictly an Australian term. I was wrong). It's lovely I tell you, just lovely.
Checked into my hostel where my ticket to Sunday's "Deconstruction Tour" (Mad Caddies and others) was awaiting me. Dropped my bags in my room, explored the building, then headed to this here internet cafe. This place is right around the corner from my hostel and is surprisingly cheap so I'll probably be on the internet a lot for the next few days. The neighborhood I'm in is awesome - right in the heart of Soho, which is like "downtown" London where all the theaters and night-life are. This makes up for the time I went to New York City and wanted to stay on Manhattan but the others in my group voted for a cheaper hotel in New Jersey. This time I'm right in the middle of things, and I love it.

I had no plans for the evening, but a poster near the reception desk of my hostel convinced me to go on a free tour tonight of the "haunted places of London." The tour is free and I'm really not sure where we'll go, but according to the poster one of the sites is a supposed location where Jack the Ripper killed somebody. Should be fun. I've got an hour and a half to get there, so I'm off to get some food and then get to another hostel in another part of town where the tour departs. Cheers mate!

Bonjour

2005-04-26T03:22:00.000-07:00

Here's what's been going on since last time:

The train ride from Frankfurt to Paris went well. I was in a two-person sleeping car but I had the place to myself which was sweet. The little "room" was really cool and I slept well on the trip. Quick story of my first official culture faux pas: I ordered a beer from my train car "attendant" before calling it a night. When he brought the beer I attempted to thank him with a poorly pronounced "danke shöne" (I think that's how you spell that). The guy looked a bit annoyed and told me "you can just say 'merci.' I am French, not German." Oops, sorry man.
Woke up at the "Gare de l'Est" train station; found out the only luggage storage lockers were at the "Gare du Nord" station (a short walk away). Found Gare du Nord and stashed my pack.
I had previously decided that I would use this first day to go to Versailles; I can't remember exactly why now but it made sense when I formulated the plan so I went with it. Bought my Metro Pass, found the train to Versailles and hopped on.
I was about four or five stops in the wrong direction before I figured out I had boarded the wrong train. The C line train departs from Gare du Nord heading west but then it splits in two directions - the C7 train goes north into the suburbs of Paris, and the C5 train goes to Versailles. I had boarded the C7 by mistake. I got turned around with the help of a Metro employee who didn't speak much English, so our conversation consisted mostly of standing in front of a map and pointing.
Made it to Versailles. In my ignorance I wasn't even exactly sure what Versailles was, only that an American ex-pat now living in Paris said it would be well worth the trip. Turns out it's an amazing chateau/castle built in the time of King Louis XIV. I bought a one-day pass and proceeded to tour the place. The "audio tour" headphones were included in my pass, which was great because I learned a lot. I wandered all through the building for about two hours, and it is extraordinary. Words like magnificent and luxurious don't really do it justice.
After touring the chateau I headed out to the gardens. The most striking thing about the gardens are their sheer size. The "backyard" of this chateau is absolutely mammoth. I decided to rent a bike and ride around for a bit which was great because me feet were really begging for a break by that point.
I rode upon a small farmhouse complete with sheep and goats walking around out front. I came to find out that this little farm area was built under the direction of Marie-Antoinette for her farm hands to stay in. I guess she occasionally stayed in the house too. I walked around it for a bit, taking care to get off my rented bike and walk it due to the large sign depicting a bicycle with the typical red circle around it and diagonal line through it. Despite my best efforts to follow the rules I still got yelled at, in French, by a security guard type woman who was upset that I had a bike. I tried to point out, in English, that I was walking the bike, but I don't think she understood me because she kept pointing at the bike and yelling in French (literally yelling, even when she got close enough to talk at a normal volume she kept yelling). Apparently it's no problem to push a stroller or a wheelchair along the paths but walking a bicycle is strictly against the rules. I don't get it, but I left the little farmhouse area anyway to get this woman to stop yelling at me.
Got caught in a light rain as I was riding back to return the bike.
Decided to leave Versailles - I had been there for close to seven hours and was getting tired from all the walking I'd done. Got on the train headed back to Gare du Nord to pick up my pack and find my hostel. Met a nice British woman and her daughter on the train and we talked for a bit; I think we were both excited to find someone else who spoke English.
Found my hostel without too much trouble, and it's true I'm not in the best part of town. When I think "red light district" I think drugs and hookers and generally shady people, so I wouldn't really consider this the "red light district." It's just kind of a poor, run down section of town.
Settled into my room. The room had three beds and only one had stuff on it. I threw my bags on one of the others and decided to head out for some food. I asked the reception desk guy if there were any good pubs nearby (his English isn't the best and he didn't understand the word pub, but when I changed it to restaurant he got the idea). He told me there were none nearby and to head to the center of town so that's what I did. Ate dinner, had some wine, decided to call it a night.
Got back the hostel and the one other guy, my 'roommate' for a few days, was asleep. I quickly and quietly settled into my bed.
Woke up Monday morning at around 9, and the roommate was already up. No sooner had I sat up than he said "(something) Stephane." I didn't catch that first word, but I got the idea, so I asked him "your name is Stephane?" "Oh, you speak English?" he asked me. "Yes." We talked for a bit - turns out he's German but is currently attending university in France in a small town near the coast of the Atlantic. He's in Paris on holiday (vacation) and is enjoying it. He's a photography hobbyist and said he hates walking around with all his camera gear because he feels like such a tourist. I thought that was kind of funny. He also seemed genuinely impressed by the life of a big city - he told me "there's always traffic and noise and people walking around - even at 4:00 in the morning!". It was great to talk to him for a bit.
Enjoyed the hostel's free breakfast and ventured out.
Wandered for a bit with no real "plan" for the day. Stumbled across Invalides and walked around inside there for a while. It's a giant church/commune built by Napoleon for veterans of his wars. They had a neat exhibition inside on France's role in WWII which I really got in to.
Walked from there to the Eiffel Tower. Waited in line to ride to the top. The line wasn't too bad, less than an hour. Let me deviate from the script here for a sec to give you a quick personal story: heights kind of give me the heebie-jeebies. I'm not completely freaked out by them, but often something as simple as looking out a windows from the 20th floor will send a rush of adrenaline down my spine and into my toes. You can imagine how I felt on the ride up the tower. It was pretty intense - it actually felt like a thrill ride as the elevator went up. Seriously. I don't know if I'm just that anxious about heights or if it's been too long since I've been on a real thrill ride or what, but I could feel my heart beating faster on the way up, in a good way - an adrenaline rush kind of way. It was fun. Of course the view from up there is amazing and I took a million pictures.
Walked from there to the Arc de Triomphe. I was amazed before I even crossed over to the Arc or walked to the top. My cousin was right - watching the traffic around that place truly makes you marvel that they don't wreck. It's wild. I did go in and go to the top. I saw a small art exhibit inside that showed 'autochrome' (color) photos that were taken during WWI. Doesn't really have much to do with the Arc, but it was a really cool display.
From there I walked down the Champs Elysees and realized I was getting tired. Stopped in a pizza joint for a pizza, then hopped over to an English pub where they were showing an English soccer game on TV (in English, which was sweet), and I found myself really getting into the soccer game. Good times.
Called it a night. Woke up this morning and had breakfast with Stephane (he and I will both be at the hostel until Thursday). In the course of a 20 minute breakfast he spoke German to a table of German girls sitting near us, pulled out a French magazine, and while reading that carried on a conversation with me in English. Truly amazing, and it is quite humbling to watch someone with that kind of linguistic mastery.
Headed out at about 10 this morning and went to Sacre Coure in the Montmartre neighborhood. I walked up to the top of the dome of the Sacre Coure - another great view of the city (and another heebie-jeebie rush from being up that high). I then walked around the neighborhood for a bit, bought a sandwich and a Coke, and window shopped a lot of art. Oh, cool story: as I was milling around the Montmartre neighborhood I was stopped on the street by someone who asked me to please wait for a moment as they were filming a movie further down that street. I did as I was told, and after about three minutes or so someone squawked something in (presumably) French in his walkie-talkie, and I was allowed to proceed. I walked right past the cameras, the crew, and the two actors who were central to the scene. I have no idea what they were filming, but it was awesome to watch it happen. I stood off to the side and watched them film two or three takes of the very short scene, basically just a girl riding her bike down the street past a Policeman. It was awesome to watch, and I can see why they're filming in that part of town. Montmartre is a very picturesque neighborhood, and to me it had a particularly European vibe with the narrow brick and cobblestone streets winding up and down steep hills, the sidewalk cafes, the outdoor art market...just very very cool.
I came across this internet cafe in the Montmartre neighborhood and decided to stop in because it's the first internet cafe I've seen since I've been in Paris so I didn't want to pass it up.

That's all for now - this post has been super long already and I've spent too much time in here. There much more to see and do and I don't want to waste the day! Sorry if this post is sloppy - I wrote it really fast and didn't proofread as well as I could have. Hope you're all doing well... wish you could be here.

au revoir!

Bonus Days in Frankfurt

2005-04-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

I'm not really sure where to begin. I don't have any idea at the moment exactly what I'm going to say or how to organize it, so forgive me if I ramble a bit. First I'll shed a little bit more light on what exactly I did yesterday. The short answer is: a lot of walking. I left the "Hauptbahnhof" (Central Station) and just started walking; no itinerary and no plan. I didn't even have a map at the time. I had no idea where I was or where I was headed, but I was excited nonetheless. I wandered for a good four or five hours and never ran out of places to go. I walked through downtown Frankfurt, the "City Center" (for those who've been to Denver the City Center reminded me a lot of 16th Street Mall only a lot bigger) where I ate lunch (I had bratwurst - keep reading to find out why), and I spent ample time meandering up and down the riverwalk along the Main (that's apparently the name of the river - the Main). Eventually I stumbled across the hostel and decided I'd spend the night there. After settling into my room, I wandered out and found a small bar called The Anglo Irish and headed inside. I ran into a couple of the Army guys I'd flown over from Bagram with (what are the odds?) and we had a couple of great bartenders, Zach and Tim. Tim is Dutch and is heading back to the Netherlands next week for Queen's Day (30 April, I believe) and he was bummed when he found out I wouldn't be passing through until the 3rd of May. He kept telling me to change my schedule around so that I could make it for Queen's Day; apparently it's a big time holiday, and to hear Tim describe it it's basically one huge nationwide party. Oh well, maybe next time. I woke up early this morning to take advantage of the free breakfast included in the price of the hostel (a mere €16 - how cool is that?) and then checked out. I walked back up to the Hauptbahnhof and dropped my luggage in a storage locker. I venture back into town, this time equipped with a map. I decided to start by heading east along the Main again but this time I decided to cross the river and see it from the other side. I walked right into the middle of a giant outdoor market - the best way to describe it is a huge garage sale. The street along the river had been closed off and both sides were lined with vendors selling everything you can imagine: shoes, clothes, books, records, electronics, bikes, art...one vendor had a table completely covered with nothing but sink faucets. I slowly worked my way through the market which took over an hour due to the sheer size of the thing - it just wouldn't end. I stopped near the end to get myself a bratwurst as an early lunch. I had bratwurst for lunch yesterday too, and it's a good thing I like it. All the food carts I've eaten at list their menu in German and usually the only word I recongnize is bratwurst, so I've been eating a lot of that. I decided to spend the afternoon walking the "cityring," a giant circle of a park that stretches around a large part of the city. I would've loved to rent a bicycle for the trek, but the only bike store I could find didn't do rentals. I ended up walking it, which was awesome, although I'm feeling it in my feet and legs. I've done a lot of walking in the last two days. The weather's been perfect for it though, so I can't complain. I took me about three hours to walk through the whole park, although I did stop in the middle to nap in the sun. I love vacation. The Frankfurt Opera House happens to be along the cityring, so I got to see that. I also found something on the map called "Amerikahaus" and I went to check it out but I discovered when I got there that Amerikahaus was closed, whatever it is. I finally finished the walk around cityring and then started walking down the Main to get to this internet cafe. I passed a pretzel cart and decided to get a pretzel and a beer, because it just doesn't get much more German than that. I've now got roughly five hours before my train departs for Paris, although I'm shooting to be back at the Hauptbahnhof in more like three hours just to be on the safe side. I've got to eat dinner sometime between now and then, but outside of that I'm not entirely sure what I'll do. I'll probably find a spot in the park by the river and relax; read, write, or sleep. I'd love to explore the city a little bit more before I leave but my feet and legs are begging for a break, and I don't want to wear myself down before the vacation even starts. Speaking of which, these two days have been awesome, and the great thing is that in my head the vacation doesn't even start until tomorrow. I wasn't sure how much trouble I'd have getting from Bagram to Germany so I sort of mentally allocated Thurs-Sat as travel days. These last two days hanging out in Frankfurt have kind of been "bonus days" in my head, which is awesome. I've had a great time so far, and it hasn't even begun yet! The "real" trip begins tomorrow, and I'm starting to get really excited about Paris. I'll let you know in a day or two how it turns out.

There's so much more I could say

2005-04-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I have good news and bad news. The good news is: I'm here, I'm safe, and so far I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. The bad news is: I had a really long post written out detailing just how much I'm enjoying myself, but I lost it. Blogger is supposed to have a feature to recover posts when that happens, but it's not working. I thought about re-typing the entire thing for you (that's how dedicated I am to my readers - at least in thought), but I'm not going to. Sorry; it's Friday night in Frankfurt and as much as I love you all, I think I'd love a cold beer more. So...you get the short version: Flight from Manas was good. Landed in Frankfurt on Thursday night; crashed in a military hotel for free. Today: began exploring Frankfurt. Awesome city. Much bigger than I expected. I did tons of walking, and in between I sat in a park and read, wandered around the City Center where I had bratwurst for lunch, and passed by three museums that I didn't go into (maybe tomorrow). By sheer dumb luck as I was wondering around, stumbled upon the HI hostel in Frankfurt. Booked a room. Made the trek all the way back to the base to get my stuff and bring it to the hostel. Settled in, ate dinner, had some coffee. Walked around the corner and found this internet cafe. So far, having a great time. I know that's not a ton of info and isn't detailed at all, but that's all you get for today. If it makes you feel better I've been sitting here for an hour, but thanks to the wonders of technology the interesting, creative, and well-written post that I crafted in that hour is lost. As I said, I considered re-writing it, but when it's 10 pm on a Friday night and you're on vacation, an internet cafe is not the place you want to be. There's cold German beer calling my name. I'll write more next time, I promise.

Travel Update #2

2005-04-21T00:08:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the Kyrgyz Republic, otherwise known as Kyrgyzstan. I made it to the terminal at Bagram just before 330 am and thus began the process of waiting that is inevitably part of catching a military flight. The plane was in the air by 730, which is actually fairly impressive. I think they were shooting for 630, but being one hour late really isn’t too bad for a military flight. I’m sitting in an internet café at Manas Air Base, which is in Bishkek. If you’re so inclined you can look for me in Bishkek on this map. After 2.5 hours of air time it’s currently 1130 local time. Last time I flew to Germany for vacation we stopped at this same base for a quick re-fuel and we were back in the air in under an hour. This time they’re saying to check back in for re-boarding at 1430, giving me three hours to kill. Normally I wouldn’t be too thrilled, especially since I’m running on less than two hours of ‘cargo plane sleep’ (which doesn’t really count as real sleep), but the trade off is that this flight is supposed to be headed straight to Frankfurt. I was under the impression that we were bound for Ramstein, which isn’t bad, but that just means after we land I’d have to sit on a bus for another hour and a half to get to Frankfurt. Hopefully this next flight will get me directly there. It’s pretty hot here, hotter than I’d expect, which presents a problem… I have a little bit of tattoo work on my upper left shoulder, and a fairly new one on my left elbow. I’m ridiculously anal about always keeping my tattoos under a layer of sunscreen when my skin is exposed, in the vain attempt that they might still look halfway decent in another 50 years (I know, they won’t, but you can’t fault a guy for trying). Anyway, this normally wasn’t a big deal because my only tattoos were above the sleeve so I only had to be concerned when I was shirtless. That is, until I got the elbow tattoo. A short sleeve shirt doesn’t provide protection from the sun, so anytime I’m outside in a t-shirt I’ve got to keep sunscreen on the elbow. Since I got the tattoo in December and I live in the Northern Hemisphere, I haven’t really had to worry about being outside in a short sleeve shirt…until now. I was smart enough to pack some strong UV-defying sunscreen for this vacation, but without thinking I packed it in my checked bag. So now I’m hanging out in Bishkek in the middle of the day (a really hot day) and my only options are to: a) let the tattoo get some sun exposure, or b) wear my black sweatshirt when I’m outside. Of course, being the smart guy that I am, I opt for b. I only spent about ten minutes in the sun, ten minutes of walking around in the hot sun with a black sweatshirt on, and I think that was enough to learn my lesson. From here on out I’ll be packing the sunscreen in the carry on. Outside of that little annoyance, I’m doing good. I do have that weird feeling you get when you’ve been sitting down for too long and all the blood rushes to your feet and they feel too big for your shoes. That happens to me every time I fly – I don’t know if I’m the only one who experiences that, but it’s weird. So, outside of those two things, life is good. This base has improved since the last time I was here, which was last August. They have a Subway now, which will probably be my choice for lunch. Then it’s back on the plane for (hopefully) some more sleep on the way to Frankfurt. Cheers!

Travel Update #1

2005-04-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

Today, Wednesday, was my last day on the schedule at work. I have to be in Frankfurt, Germany by 10 pm on Saturday night to board a train to Paris. I went to the Air Force terminal after work at about 8 pm to see what they had for scheduled flight to Germany. Turns out there are two leaving late tonight. Roll call times for the two flights are 330 am and 5 am. At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay up all night and show up for those roll calls. My other option was to get a good night’s sleep and see what they had scheduled for later in the day on Thursday or Friday. I was conflicted about the decision; part of me wanted to just get the heck off this base, but another part of me wasn’t in the mood to stay up all night waiting for flights. By 9 pm I was back at work to finish up a few last-minute details, and while I was there I got a call from an acquaintance of mine who works at the terminal. He relayed to me the flight times that were scheduled: the two flights later tonight that I already knew about were the only scheduled flight to Germany for Thursday. The next scheduled flight was on Friday morning at 630. I was tempted to just wait for that Friday morning flight, but after talking with my terminal friend (as in airport terminal, not terminal like going to die soon) I decided to show up tonight. I figured it’s best to play it safe and make sure I get to Germany with time to spare, plus if I have a couple of days to kill I think I’d rather spend them in Germany than here. So I decided I’d get my bags packed and show up for roll calls later tonight. That means I’ve got roughly two hours to finish packing and get myself to the terminal – plenty of time. I’m pretty much completely packed already. All I’ve got left to do is maybe take a quick shower and shoot off a couple emails and then I’m ready to go. I don’t think the excitement has quite hit me yet, maybe because I know I’ve got 10 hours or so of uncomfortable cargo plane travel ahead of me. I think I’ll feel the joy when the plane touches down in Germany. If I do get on one of the flights later tonight, and according to my terminal friend there’s a really good chance of that, I should have a full 48 hours or so to kill in Frankfurt before I have to board the train to Paris. I had roughly the same layover in Frankfurt on my last vacation home and I really didn’t do anything with my time. I wandered around the air base in Frankfurt and hung out in the hotel for two days until I flew home. This time my goal is to be a little bit more active. If I do in fact get to Germany sometime on Thursday night I’d like to enjoy Frankfurt a little bit more than I did last time. Actually, now that I think about it, the excitement is starting to hit me. My goal is to keep posting as often as I can on this trip so keep checking back. I’m sure I’ll post again when I land in Germany, and from there I’ll try to get at least one post up from each city. Yeah, come to think of it, I am excited about this trip. This is going to be absolutely awesome. I’ve been looking forward to this trip for so long that I can’t quite believe it’s finally here, but it is! One last thing before I sign off to finish packing and depart (since it's still Wednesday for all of you back in the States): Happy Birthday to my brother Jesse! (man, I can’t believe you’re 24 already. I’m old)

Man. I really hate my job. OR: How many hyperlinks can I include in one post?

2005-04-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

I originally set up this blog as a way to keep in touch with my family and friends, all of whom are somewhere in the vicinity of 7000 miles away from here. It was a way to let them know how I'm doing and that I'm still alive. Somehow it transitioned from being an upbeat journal of my experiences as a civilian contractor in Afghanistan to a depressing rant about how much I hate being out here most of the time. I don’t so much hate being out here as I hate my job out here, but anyone who’s been reading this thing at all lately already knows that, so I’ll leave that topic alone for now. Those of you that know me well know that I’m a complete map geek – I love reading maps. It’s been something of a tradition for the last umpteen years that someone inevitably buys me the latest Rand McNally North American Road Atlas for Christmas. I get it every year, and I absolutely love it. My favorite part about road trips is breaking out the map. The reason I’m telling you all of this is that I recently discovered the new Google Maps page, which is absolutely awesome. I first found the Google Maps page a few weeks ago thanks to a friend of mine, and I was immediately in love. It puts anything by Mapquest or Multimap to shame (then again, I’m biased. I’m convinced that Google is an internet god – they can do no wrong in my book. But seriously, their map site is awesome). The beauty of the site, the part that’s truly revolutionary, is the ‘click and drag’ functionality that they’ve built into the map. Every other map page on the net will show you a snapshot of what you’re looking for, and of course you can zoom in and zoom out and all that good stuff. However, if you want to see what’s north or west of the snapshot you’re currently looking at, you have to click a link and wait for another image to load (which is really a drag when you’re stuck out in Afghanistan on a really slow internet connection). The Google Maps page lets you simply click and drag the map to see what’s outside the window you’re viewing. It sounds simple, but I’m telling you, it’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, in a “Guinness...brilliant!” kind of way. Yesterday I found something new on the site, which gave me reason to love Google and their maps page even more. Sometime late last year Google acquired a company called Keyhole that specializes in satellite imagery all over the globe. You’ll notice that there is now a small link on the upper right-hand side of the Google Maps page called Satellite. Google has incorporated the Keyhole satellite images into their maps page, which is unbelievably awesome. I’m telling you, these people at Google are geniuses. I mentioned in my last post that work was slow yesterday; what I did not mention was that I killed all kinds of time playing around with this new functionality on the Google Maps page. It is absolutely awesome, and tons of fun. I found my mom’s house, my old house in Colorado Springs, two of my old houses in Fort Collins, the CSU campus, ski resorts all over Colorado...it was great. I’m still excited about it today (I know, I really don’t get out enough); so excited that I thought it was worth sharing. The only downside of the page is that it currently only covers North America, but I’m sure Google is actively incorporating other parts of the planet. Trust me; if you have some time to kill, the page is definitely worth checking out.

a lot of words that don't really say anything

2005-04-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

I’ve had a weird feeling in my gut for most of the day today. I’m not sure how else to describe it other than nervousness – the so called “butterflies in my stomach.” I’m not quite sure why I’ve been feeling this way. It could be that things are getting weird at work, which they are. I won’t go into it now mostly because I don’t care. I’ve got three more work days before I leave on vacation, so I really don’t care about work any more, weirdness or not. Maybe it’s because I’m a little nervous about this upcoming trip, and to tell the truth I am. I was going to say that this trip to Europe is the first time I’ve ventured out on a solo trip of this nature, but then I remembered that I’m out here. I managed to board a plane bound for Afghanistan, leaving everyone I know behind, and of course now I think nothing of it. I guess I’m no stranger to solo journeys into faraway lands but somehow I’m still a bit nervous about Europe. I suppose that’s okay; I was, after all, nervous about leaving for Afghanistan which now seems utterly ridiculous. I left work early today because it was unbelievably slow and I was just sitting there surfing the web anyway. I think I’ve already said that at this point I’m just going through the motions at work. I left because it was slow, but also because of this restless nervousness that I was feeling. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that was making me feel this way, but I wanted to escape the world and somehow make it go away. I knew that TV wouldn’t do the trick because there’s never anything good on TV out here. I thought about watching a DVD but I couldn’t find one that piqued my interest. I got home and buried myself in the book I’m currently reading, Blue Like Jazz. It’s a very good book, but I’m not really in the mood to talk about it right now. I will tell you that I’ve been journaling about it a lot lately, and the whole process of reading and then writing down my thoughts is a wonderful hobby. I think it’s one of the benefits of being out here; it’s one of those things I always wanted to do more of but that I would never find time for back home in the States. TV, video games, and other distractions were much too plentiful to think about things like reading, much less writing. I’ve taken a liking to writing since I’ve been out here, and even though I’m not much good at it I do really enjoy keeping a journal. It’s funny though, I can’t write in my journal very long without hurting my hand. I guess that’s a testament to the technology I’ve grown so accustomed to; I can sit on a computer and type for hours without thinking about it, but 15 minutes with a pen and paper and my hand cramps up. I suppose I could keep an electronic journal, but that just doesn’t feel as authentic and cool. I leave in four days, and I’m very excited about that. I think I’ve romanticized this trip quite a bit in my head, so I hope it’s not a letdown. I can’t imagine it will be; just getting off of this base for a few weeks will be euphoric. I haven’t really done any packing or preparing yet, which is normal for me, as I tend to always leave such things until the last minute. I really don’t have much to pack – just some clothes, my camera, some books, and my journal. I think the hardest part will be getting all the paperwork together: train tickets, hostel reservations, passport, etc, etc. Everything I’ve read about preparing for a trip like this (which isn’t much, to be quite honest; I’m a slacker that way) says that I should make copies of my passport and all my important paperwork and keep them inside my suitcase. I’m sure that if I take the time to do all that I won’t need a bit of it, but of course if I don’t do it then something will inevitably get lost and/or stolen. That’s just how these things go. I don’t really have much to talk about but I decided to put a post up anyway, probably out of sheer boredom. I think I’m just looking for things to do to make Thursday get here faster. I’ve still got this weird nervous feeling that I can’t quite explain. I really don’t think it’s the upcoming trip that’s causing it, but I don’t know what is. It’s weird. I guess that's all for now.

Bombs Bursting In Air

2005-04-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

10:30 pm: I was standing outside listening to my iPod, debating whether or not to put up a post or just hit the shower and call it a night. The first explosion was low and thunderous and sounded far off – it sounded like one of the “controlled detonations” that I’ve grown accustomed to. The next one was a sharper blast and sounded closer, maybe fifty or a hundred yards to my left. Immediately following that came the third – this one had the distinct whistle and pop of a firecracker only much louder, loud enough that I could feel it, and this one sounded and felt much too close for comfort. My instinct told me something was wrong – these three explosions were too close, and too loud, and something just wasn’t right. I could see some US Army soldiers in the distance and I paid close attention to them to see if their movements would hint at what I feared I had just heard. I saw one soldier run into the shadows; a few seconds later I saw him run back under the streetlight, M-16 in hand. Two more soldiers came out of a building and began walking quickly down the road. I couldn’t make out all of their words, but I’m fairly sure I heard one of them say “rocket” somewhere in all that chatter. For a split second all was quiet and I couldn’t tell if all of this was real or not. I slowly walked around to the other side of the hut and that’s when it hit me that what I had just heard was in fact the explosions of incoming enemy fire. I saw a few other civilians standing outside, looking as confused as I was, and I also many soldiers, with helmets on and M-16s in hand, running in all directions. I knew an alert was coming, so I decided to be proactive. I grabbed my helmet and vest and made my way out to the bunker. It was right about that time that they called the Amber Alert, announcing that the base had come under direct attack. I’ve been involved in several Amber Alert procedures since I’ve been here, and usually they’re mundane and boring and quite honestly an annoying interruption to the normal routine. This one was different. For the first time I knew the alert was coming before it was announced. I knew because I heard the rockets – I heard them whistle through the air and I heard them explode – and from the sound of things they didn’t miss my humble little abode by more than a few hundred yards. I’m not exactly sure how to describe the feeling that washed over me when I heard those bombs explode. It was very sobering. One second I was standing outside listening to music, playing air guitar and daydreaming that I was a rock star – and then suddenly I was transported back to reality and was acutely aware of just exactly where I was. It’s two hours later now, and life is basically back to normal, at least for me. I have yet to find out exactly where those rockets hit and the extent of the damage. I’ll worry about that tomorrow. So, that was my night. If I was more motivated, or had more time, or wasn’t so tired, I’d go back and make this post sound really cool. I’d write it better and give you some more depth into how it feels to hear a rocket fall from the sky and a bomb explode close by while you’re standing outside minding your own business. Maybe I’ll do that later. I’m very tired, and I’m going to bed.

Crown Me King of Lazytown

2005-04-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but these last few weeks have been a monumental ode to laziness. It’s been getting progressively worse, and it all culminated yesterday when I did absolutely nothing. Literally. Nothing. It went something like this... I got out of bed at 1130. I vaguely remember hitting snooze at roughly 0830 or so, and the next thing I know it’s 1130. I marveled for a moment at my ability to sleep, which I must say is truly extraordinary. I may not have many skills, but I can sleep like a champion. Alarms mean nothing to me. Not to mention I live a stone’s throw away from an active runway where planes and helicopters are coming and going at all hours. They too don’t seem to faze me. If we ever come under serious attack, I hope it’s at night; I guarantee I’ll sleep through the whole thing. Anyway, I stumbled out of bed at 1130 and started the coffee. I wandered into work at around noon and the first thing I did was check my email; not my work email, the personal address. I had a message from a good buddy of mine back home with a link to a blog aptly titled ‘waiter rant.’ My buddy and I both used to wait tables in college, and although we worked at different restaurants we’d come home at night, crack open a few beers, and swap stories from our respective nights ‘on the floor.’ A few years later we had both moved to a different town where again we were roommates, and again we both worked as waiters (a lot of good college has done us). Anyway, this friend of mine had stumbled across the blog and he figured I’d get into it. The internet is not exactly hurting for more websites or message boards designed for service industry professionals to rant about their jobs. This wasn’t the first ‘waiter rant’ website I’d come across and I’m sure it won’t be the last. This one was different though. Not only is this guy a decent writer, he captures the essence of working in the industry brilliantly. I read his most recent post from this past Friday and was immediately hooked. It was a brief post, essentially about the tools of the trade, but in a few short words he had managed to say so much more. If you are currently, or ever have been, employed in the service industry (or if you just happen to have copious amounts of time to waste) I highly recommend checking out his site here. I proceeded to spend the rest of the day ignoring all of the work that was sitting in front of me while I read his blog. Over the course of the day I read the entire thing start to finish. As is typically the case when I’m reading a blog, I inevitably found a link to another interesting blog and spent a few hours reading posts from that one. Before I knew what had happened the clock said 2000 hours (that’s 8 pm for the civilians) – shift change time. I had done nothing but read this blog all day. Nothing. I hadn’t answered one email, touched one computer or one piece of paperwork. The night shift personnel came in asking what needed to be accomplished and I just sat there feeling guilty. Not willing to pawn off an entire day’s work on my night shift, I decided to stick around and play catch-up. I managed to cram the entire day’s work into a few frantic hours, and by 2330 I was about 80% done. Tired, I left the rest for night shift and went home. I can honestly say that at this point coming into work has become purely a formality. I genuinely don’t care anymore whether anything gets done or not; I just show up for the sake of showing up. I’m sure that part of the reason for this attitude is the fact that I’ll be leaving on vacation in a mere 11 days, but I think part of it is also due to the fact that I’m honestly fed up with this place. I’m eagerly anticipating a much needed break, but more than that I think I’m anticipating the end of this contract. Contrary to what I said two posts ago, I’m really looking forward to just coming home. I don’t think I really care anymore if I have a job to come home to or not, I just need to get out of here. Maybe this vacation will provide the break that I need and I’ll come back feeling refreshed and motivated. Maybe. If not, I look forward to seeing all of you in August.

They're finally showing something good on TV

2005-04-08T03:11:00.000-07:00

I was going to bore you with yet another post about the drab and mundane existence that is my life out here, but then something wonderful happened. Well, maybe not that wonderful, but I was stoked about it. Definitely brightened my day. I went next door to the dining hall for lunch, got my plate of food, and started looking for a place to sit. I usually sit in front of the TVs, because I almost always eat alone and, I don't know, I'm just lame like that. I've just got a bad habit of eating in front of the TV, and it's one of the few bad habits I get to indulge out here. So anyway, I'm looking for a place to sit. The room has two really big TVs on either end, and the first one I looked at had a Bishop on the screen, in full priest regalia to include the weird hat, no doubt blathering on about something Pope-related. My apologies to the Catholics and to the late Pontiff himself, but I'm just a bit Pope-ed out lately. I'm sorry, I'm a jerk. Anyway, I turned to the other TV at the other end of the room, and I saw the exact same thing. I decided to move on to the far dining room to see what was going on there. I walked in and glanced at that TV and immediately froze as my jaw-dropped. There was hockey on TV. At first I couldn't believe it, and it felt a bit like I was dreaming. I wasn't though, it was real; there really was hockey on TV. Awesome. I got closer and realized it was the NCAA playoffs, or the "Frozen Four," if you're into the knee-jerk marketing hype. Huge props to the Armed Forces Network for appeasing the rest of us. I'm not a huge sports guy, and quite frankly I couldn't care less about most of it. I have no idea who won the NCAA basketball tournament, I don't even know who played in the final game, and I'm entirely okay with that. I do enjoy my hockey, though. I found a prime seat right in front of the TV, and that's when my excitement ballooned out of control. The game on TV was a re-broadcast of the semi-final match-up between Colorado College and the University of Denver. Unreal. I felt like I was back home, sitting in Magness Arena, watching one of the greatest college hockey rivalries of all time. I had an honest to goodness flashback to this past December 3rd, sitting in the World Arena with my brother and a good friend, watching Colorado College take on the University of Minnesota (sidebar: I just found out that Minnesota's semi-final match-up against North Dakota is going to be re-broadcast on AFN in a mere twenty minutes. This is going to be a great day). Unfortunately, the game wasn't that good. I was joining the action well into the third period, and by that point it was already over. Colorado College didn't stand a chance. I'm looking forward to watching the Minnesota-North Dakota game though, and of course I'll have to pull for the home-state boys in the finals. AFN will be showing the championship game live, which airs at 0330 Sunday morning my time. I can't seem to find a scheduled replay, so I might just stay up all night and watch it live. That probably sounds a little crazy, but with no Stanley Cup this year, and with the way things are looking in the NHL, this could very well be the last hockey game I get to watch for a very long time. Go Denver!

I'm Not Dead

2005-04-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

Don’t worry, I’m okay. The news report I read today said that 3 of the 16 killed in yesterday’s helicopter crash were US government contractors, but thank God I wasn’t one of them. The crash was apparently caused by complications stemming from the strong winds, and today those winds made their way up from Ghazni to my neck of the woods. In the words of Winnie the Pooh, it’s been “a very blustery day.” (okay, so it’s probably not very tasteful to transition directly from “Helicopter Crash – 16 Dead” to “Winnie the Pooh and his silly made-up words.” Honestly though, is there really any ‘smooth’ way to open with a helicopter crash and then move on to something lighter? Should I just mention the crash and then end the post there?) I was reading some tech news on the web earlier today, as I often do, when something occurred to me. It's not uncommon, when you read tech news, to discover that the source of the latest breaking development is somebody’s blog. Just today I was reading on Neowin about a new patch/add-on/plug-in that’s being developed for Firefox (yeah, I know, it’s geeky, but I get into that sort of thing), and it turns out that the source of this information is the blog of one of Firefox’s developers. Here’s what occurred to me when I discovered that: this guy, the Firefox developer (Asa is his name), must really like his job. I’m serious. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that he spends most of his work day actually working, and thus blogs on his personal time. Who in their right mind would spend their personal time talking about their latest project at work? I mean, I’ve spent personal time talking about how much I hate work, but never discussing my latest developments there. Conclusion: Asa must really like his job. He seems to be genuinely interested in his chosen profession, to such a degree that he enjoys talking about it outside of work. That, to me, is utterly foreign. I hate my job. Yes, it’s true, I hate it. Computers are fun, and I’m sure to some extent they’ll always be a hobby for me, but I’m really sick of fixing them for other people. Really, really, really, really, really sick of it. Here’s where I’m going with all that. It won’t be long, maybe another month or so, until I’m offered a new contract and asked to stay here longer. I know that I keep saying I’ll put that decision off until the time comes, but the truth is that it’s been on my mind a lot lately. I pretty much came to the conclusion that I should stay, for one simple reason: I have nothing else to do. I don’t have a job to go home to, or even technically a ‘home’ to go home to. So why not stay? I figure that unless I’m absolutely, completely, utterly miserable out here I might as well stay, at least long enough to figure out what to do when I get home. There’s one problem with that plan though: I hate my job. Not so much that I’m absolutely, completely, utterly miserable, but enough that I know I do not want to work with computers any more. They’re just not that interesting, or that much fun. I have no desire whatsoever to talk about them when I’m not at work. This is the one problem, and it turns out it’s quite a big problem. Ever since I graduated from the ranks of ‘post-college bum’ to ‘working stiff with a real job,’ all I’ve ever done is work on computers. Before that, my career accomplishments consisted of things like pouring a few more shots for drunk college kids who’d already had enough (bartender), shoveling wet concrete from one pile to another (my official job title was ‘laborer’), and watching hundreds of people have fun while I stood still trying to keep my hands warm (ski area lift operator). While I’m not too thrilled about returning to any of those fields (well, maybe bartending...maybe), I’m also not too thrilled about staying in computers. I’m sure I could finish out this contract, and then continue to work here while shopping my resume around in the States, and eventually I’d land a halfway decent computer job, thus earning myself the right to pack it up and go home. That plan would be all well and good if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t want another computer job. I want a job that is for me what Asa’s job is for him; something I actually like, something so fun and exciting and interesting and invigoration that I enjoy talking about it on my own time. Problem is, I don’t exactly have a wealth of experience in any other field. So what’s a guy to do? Do I just finish this contract and then head home? Do I stay here and continue to rake in the cash while I figure it all out? That, my friends, is the real question; the one that I don’t have an answer for. Conventional wisdom tells me that I should continue to stay here until I have a ‘plan’ of some sort; something solid to sustain me once I’m home. Better to wrestle with the ‘what to do next’ question here, where I’m at least making money (and lots of it), than to wrestle with it at home, where I’d likely be living in my mom’s house and making nothing. So that’s probably what I’ll do. I’ll probably stay here until I get it all figured out, or at least until the possibility of sustaining myself by doing something else becomes somewhat realistic. That's my feeling at the moment anyway.

Up too late ... again

2005-04-03T13:29:00.000-07:00

It’s 1255 on Sunday night, and I probably should have been in bed at least an hour ago. I’ve fallen into the bad habit of staying up too late and subsequently sleeping in too long the next morning. Thanks in part to the alarm clocks that refuse to rouse me, I had a few too many late mornings this past week. I haven’t been able to determine if the alarm clocks (yes, that’s plural) are actually broken, or if I’ve just fallen victim yet again to my brain’s uncanny ability to subconsciously tune out that sound entirely. Either way, I’ve woken up way too late the last few mornings after hearing not a peep from the alarms. It’s lucky for me that the Team Lead gets to show up for work whenever he pleases, or else I’d be in a lot of trouble right now. I showed up at the office at 1100 on Thursday, did the same thing on Friday, and Saturday it was 1130 before I managed to get myself to work. I stayed at work until well after midnight last night to make up some of the time, but as a result I didn’t drag my butt out of bed to start that first pot of coffee until 1110 this morning. Part of me is not so keen on this new “show up late and stay late” work routine, although it did occur to me today that this is probably good preparation for my upcoming trip to Europe. All the places I’m visiting are either 3.5 or 4.5 hours behind my current time zone, so if I get used to getting out of bed at 1100 or noon local time, I should be right on schedule when I get to Europe. Speaking of Europe, I can finally say that I’ve gotten all of the (key) planning done. I spent way too much time agonizing over simple decisions like which hostel to stay in, but today I finally got fed up with my own over-thinking and I got the planning done. I’m waiting on one email to confirm my hostel booking in Amsterdam, and that should be the last of it. All the train tickets are booked (and one pass has already arrived), all the hostels are reserved, and I’ve even got some of the concert tickets paid for. The only thing left to do is print out maps and try to come up with rough “to-do” itineraries for each city, which should provide me with plenty of distraction and entertainment over the next eighteen days. In other news, I’ve discovered a new author worth mentioning, although I’m not quite sure how much to say considering I haven’t read any of his books yet. I’m also not sure how much I want to share on the internet, but since I have no close friends out here with which to discuss the “deeper” (in this case spiritual) side of life, I’m going to serve it up to my readers in blogger-land and hope that someone cares. The author’s name is Donald Miller, and I discovered him through another blogger who is also worth checking out. The Ready Room (blog) is written by a guy I’ve never met, but his wife is an old family friend, and her brother was my college roommate and is one of my best friends. Though I’ve never met the blog’s author, I get the impression that if we did meet we’d definitely get along, and probably end up friends. His writing is impressive, and I found myself lost in his blog for hours earlier this week. He’s recently written extensively about his travels to Africa, which is an entertaining read at the least. The entries on his blog that caught my eye, though, were the recent reviews and excerpts he’s posted from Donald Miller’s books. I first read his take on Blue Like Jazz, which immediately struck a chord with me. It’s been a long time since a book on the topic of Christian spirituality has excited me that way, but this one did the trick. I later read the entire chapter that he posted from Miller’s next book, Searching For God Knows What, and I was equally impressed. Amazon.com sent me the email today to confirm that both Blue Like Jazz and Searching For God Knows What are in the mail on their way to me, and my only hope is that they get here before I leave on this trip. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do with my train time than get to know more about this Don Miller guy. With no books to read (yet), I’ve instead spent some time on his website over the past couple days, and if you’ve got nothing better to do, I recommend stopping by. Of all the people I’ve never met, he seems like one I’d relate to really, really well.

2005-03-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

Apparently Laura Bush was here today. I didn’t see her, but that’s not surprising. For some reason I’m always the last to know these things. I guess I’m not important enough to get the scoop up front. I didn’t find out that Dick Cheney and Colin Powell were here until they had already left, and the same with John Elway, which sucks, because I would’ve loved to get a picture with Elway. Eight months and I have yet to see one VIP. I always wonder where they house the VIPs when they visit. Do they have to stay in wooden huts, too? Of course not. But where do they stay? And what do they do with those quarters where there are no VIPs to house? Just a few more questions amongst a myriad of things that I don’t know, and am probably not supposed to know, about what really goes on at this place. I started planning my Europe vacation (or at least planning to plan it, if that makes any sense) about two months before hand, so now that I’m a mere three weeks away it feels like it’s right around the corner. I’m still not quite done with the planning, so I should probably get on the ball and get the remaining stuff knocked out. I’ve already got all the train tickets booked, so that’s good. I’ve got a hostel reservation for Paris, but the rest of the cities still need to be booked. I had three hostels to choose from in Paris, and I spent way too much time overanalyzing them and trying to decide which one would be best. I finally decided on one, only to find out that it was already booked for the dates I needed. I went ahead and booked choice number two; not quite as centrally located as choice one, but not too bad. I then emailed the location to a contact I have in Paris (she’s an old family friend of the wife of a cousin of mine), and she tells me that the hostel I’ve chosen is apparently right in the middle of Paris’ red light district. Sweet. That’s what I get for spending too much time agonizing over different locations in a city that I’ve never been to. I still haven’t booked anything for London, and I’ve got seven hostels to choose from in that city, so wish me luck with that. Maybe I’ll just pick one out of a hat, or if I’m feeling particularly geeky that day I’ll number them 1 through 7 and have random.org pick one for me. I need to get something figured out, and hopefully soon; this thing feels like it’s happening tomorrow. So in other news, I haven’t posted any photos in a while, but I recently came up with an excuse to post a few. A lot of the military units we’ve been supporting are heading back home now that replacements have arrived. Some of them have stopped by to say thanks for all the months of computer support, and a few have even brought gifts. A group of Egyptian soldiers made a really cool Certificate of Appreciation (which I unfortunately don’t have a picture of, yet) which says “presented to Bagram Helpdesk for outstanding support and dedication you rendered to the EFH during the OEF, Afghanistan in order to achieve our sublime intention and peace prevails on this land.” Someone must have spent a fair amount of time with an Arabic-English dictionary to come up with that one (sublime? who says sublime?). Oh, and for the curious, the acronyms are Egyptian Field Hospital and Operation Enduring Freedom. Anyway, I took some pictures of other gifts I’ve received, and posted them below. The US military is really into coins and patches, so I’ve got a lot of those. Enjoy.

2005-03-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

This coin is from an Army unit, I honestly can't remember who, based out of Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I only remember they're from Fort Sill because the coin says so on the other side.

2005-03-30T11:39:00.000-08:00

This coin is from a Marine unit (HMH stands for Heavy Marine Helicopter) that went by the moniker Task Force Screw Crew. Typical Marines.

2005-03-30T11:38:00.000-08:00

This shot is actually of a small, fist-sized purse that I got from the Koreans. I know it doesn't look much like a purse in the picture, but I was trying to zoom in so you can see the Korean design on it. Below is a picture of what was inside the purse: A 1000 Won note (the currency of South Korea). Funny story: the soldier who brought me this watched with delight as I opened the purse and pulled out the money, and then he explained that in Korea, "is lots of money. Very lots of money." I wasn't sure if I should feel honored by that, or awkward because this soldier was in essence paying me for a job I was already well compensated for. Later I looked up the currency conversion on the web, and it turns out 1000 Won is less than a dollar. Either the guy was trying to be funny, or else a dollar must go a long way in South Korea.

2005-03-30T11:36:00.000-08:00

2005-03-30T11:35:00.000-08:00

This patch is from a group that worked in the same building I did; an Army Reserve unit from Utah that operated under the name Task Force Pirate. They're the ones that hooked me up with the helicopter ride to Jegdalek on Christmas Eve.

Let the Countdown Begin

2005-03-26T23:45:00.000-08:00

Well, so much for my goal of posting a little more often. I'm really going to work on that, I swear. The past several days have mostly been a blur. I’ve been trying to get over a cold that’s been plaguing me for the last week or so, but I think I’m finally on the downhill stretch. I woke up much less miserable today than any other day this past week. We had an Amber Alert earlier this week, our first real Alert in months. I actually missed the initial announcement because I was sitting in my room with headphones on and didn't hear it. No one thought to go knocking on doors or flashing lights or anything else that would've caught my attention, so I just sat there, pleasantly ignorant, until my DVD was over. As the sound faded for the closing credits, I heard the Giant Voice announcing Amber Alert, so I shut down my computer and dutifully went outside to the bunker. I was greeted with a whole lot of "about time you showed up;" apparently everyone else had been out there for a good 30-40 minutes. They had already covered for me, so I had been counted as present, which means I really could've stayed in my room and been fine. Instead I spent the next 45 minutes uncomfortably hunched over in a concrete bunker. Just another fun-filled evening in Afghanistan. We finally got a new guy at the Help Desk last week, which was great. Turns out he's from Colorado Springs, and actually worked the same job I did as a Microsoft Help Desk support tech. I'm fully convinced that that job is in a league all its own when it comes to gaining tech support knowledge. I had never done tech support before I took that job, and in just 1/2 a year of working there I went from zero to hero in terms of my computer support knowledge. Needless to say, I was stoked to have this former Microsoft guy on my team. Sure enough though, as my luck would have it, he didn't stay with me long. Apparently he has a buddy down in Kabul who helped get him the job, so he had worked out some kind of under-the-table drug deal with management in order to work down there with his friend. He was here less than a week before they sent him down to Kabul in trade for one of Kabul's techs, a guy who's not exactly the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. He's a perfect example of this company's hiring policy, at least when it comes to Help Desk. They seem to be convinced that any monkey with a pulse can provide computer support, and they hire accordingly. They only end up with a few knowledgeable folks by sheer dumb luck. Heck, they didn't even go so far as to verify that I was a real person before they offered me a job. I'm fairly sure that if I made up a fake resume, established an email address for this "person" and used it to submit the resume, it would only be a few days before the non-existent individual was offered a job. Not that I'm bitter. I love being the only guy at my job who has a clue what's going on. Enough about work. I'm on vacation in a mere 25 days anyway. Last night I decided to try and make some phone calls. I hadn't heard the voices of any of my family/friends in at least a month or six weeks; I've honestly lost count, but it had been too long. I hadn't told anyone ahead of time that I'd be calling, so I knew it would be hit or miss. I ended up on a hot streak and got through to almost everybody. I talked to my mom and step-dad, who happened to be visiting family in Washington state this weekend, so I also ended up saying hi to an Aunt, Grandma, and one of my little cousins (pictured below, a post or two ago) who talked my ear off about some movie he saw recently. He rambled on about it as only an excited five-year-old can, and from what I gathered it had something to do with whales and robots and saving the world. Kids are great. I also talked to my littlest brother and step-brother, as well as my sister and her fiancé, all of whom happened to be around. After all of that I called my other brother in Boulder, and I lucked out and got through to him too. I finally decided to call it a night at about 2am, feeling satisfied and in a much better mood after getting my "family fix." I didn't really go to bed until 3, which means I slept in too long today and it's not looking as though it's going to be as productive of a day off as I'd like it to be. Ideally, if I can keep the distractions to a minimum, I'll finish booking all of my hostels and some of the concert tickets today. Did I mention it's only 25 days until vacation? Awesome. Oh, and Happy Easter.

what day is it again?

2005-03-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

Hi. So I totally forgot that today is Tuesday and thus some of you might be expecting to read a post today. Here's the thing: I got approval to start working 6 days/week, so I was at work today and completely spaced the whole posting thing until just now. I haven't worked a Tuesday in months, so all day long I kept thinking it was Wednesday, and on top of that it was just a hectic day all around. I'm also coming down with some kind of sinus congestion/cough/headache thing, which is no fun at all. I'm not sick enough to keep me from working, but just sick enough that all I want to do with my time off is sleep. Which is what I'm going to do right now. Consider this the end of the Tuesday/Saturday posting schedule due to my new schedule at work. From now on I'll just post when I can, which hopefully will end up being more often than twice a week. No promises though.

this is what happens when you sleep in too long

2005-03-19T12:25:00.000-08:00

What a day. First off, let me wish everyone a belated Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. I was in a very festive mood on Thursday, and I wish I could have been home with friends to celebrate. The only thing I did out here to mark the holiday was install a Guinness screensaver on my computer, which turned out to be a bad idea. When my machine is idle, the screen is now transformed into a frighteningly realistic depiction of a cold pint of Guinness, complete with rising bubbles and condensation dripping down the side of the glass. The animated picture is so real that I can practically taste it, which of course just serves as a reminder that I’m living on a base where prohibition is in full effect, thousands of miles away from friends, pubs, and that oh-so-tempting pint of “poetry in a glass.” I hope those of you that went out drinking had a wonderful time; I only wish I could’ve been there. Sláinte from Afghanistan. In more uplifting news (for me anyway), I found out earlier this week that my good buddy Rocco from Fort Collins has decided to take a job out here. He’s in a very similar situation to the one I was in last summer, and roughly three weeks ago he emailed me to let me know that he’s been getting more and more interested in heading out in this direction and making some of the crazy money that we get paid out here. I started pushing to get him hired, and I’m proud to say that on Tuesday of this week he was offered a position as a Network Administrator. Based on my own experience several months ago, he should be on a plane to Fort Benning, GA in three to four weeks, and a week or two later he should be landing on this side of the planet. There’s no guarantee yet that he’ll end up on this base, but obviously that’s what I’m hoping for. Part of the difficulty of living out here is the isolation, the thousands of miles that separate me from my family and friends. I can’t even begin to describe how great it would be to have such a good friend so close by; in fact, the news of his job offer has literally been the highlight of my week, if not this whole year (and I’m sure it’s quite exciting for him, too). Other than that I don’t have much news for you. I’ve been sleeping less lately, mostly because the book I just finished was keeping me up much too late at night reading. The 12-hour days don’t help, but I’m thinking of trying to change that. Since I seem to inevitably get called in for something or other on my days off, I’m going to try and change my schedule to six 10-hour days. That will give me one less day off that someone can come knocking on my door, and hopefully it will also make the days that I do work just a little bit more manageable. I’d write more about my day, but once again I’m still awake way too late into the night, and I really need to get a little bit of sleep. Hopefully this new schedule will work out for me, and maybe even allow me the free time to post a little more often.

Escape of the Bored

2005-03-15T04:41:00.000-08:00

As I get close to the eight month mark, it’s becoming increasingly clear that I’ve definitely grown tired of this place. The ability to mentally escape is crucial to maintaining my sanity, and I’ve gotten pretty good at finding ways to distract myself from the fact that I live in a wooden box thousands of miles away from everything I’ve grown accustomed to. Making plans for the trip to Europe has provided me with a “project” of sorts and has been keeping me busy lately, and outside of that I spend most of my free time listening to music, watching DVDs, or reading. The iPod is on for at least an hour every night after work, and some of that time is spent lost in my own little ridiculous world of “dancing” around my four feet of floor space, playing air guitar or drums or bass or whatever I’m in the mood for, pretending I’m a rock star while being careful not to make a sound. I’m sure it would be a riot to watch, but I enjoy it. I recently finished watching season two of Monk and retired those DVDs to the box that contains the other movies I’ve already watched and the books I’ve already read. I’m currently working my way through the DVD collection of “Freaks and Geeks,” a short lived NBC show from the late nineties that was canceled after one season. It’s not the greatest show in the world, but it’s entertaining and a bit nostalgic, and it accomplishes the goal of taking my mind off this place temporarily. Saturday I broke out one of the few novels I own that I haven’t read yet, a John Grisham book called A Painted House. It’s one of the few Grisham books that aren’t law-themed, and so far it’s interesting. I can’t say that I love it yet, but it’s compelling enough to keep me reading. I think one of the interesting draws to the story is that the first-person protagonist is a seven year old boy. I sat down after work last night to read a little bit and I ended up getting completely lost in it – I finally put it down four hours and 175 pages later. I was hoping to work my way through it slowly to make it last longer, but at this rate I’ll be done with it before the week is out. I finally got around to decorating the walls of my room earlier this week, and it’s great to have something to look at besides plywood. Most of my walls are now covered in photographs that I brought with me last summer but that until now had been sitting in a box. Before last summer, when I bought a digital camera in anticipation of this trip, I had rarely owned a camera and almost never took pictures. As a result, it’s quite a hodgepodge collection of photos that I now have hanging on my wall. All of my recent photos are on my computer, and I haven’t taken the time to print them out, so most of what’s on my wall is from years ago. The pictures seem to come from two main sources: those that I shot myself and those that were given to me. Most of the ones I took myself are from significant “camera-worthy” events of my past, everything from my high-school ska band’s weekend in a recording studio, to college road trips, to my “last hurrah” night out with friends in Fort Collins before leaving on this journey. The ones that were given to me seem to be predominately shots of me with old girlfriends. In my experience girlfriends are notorious for taking way too many pictures and then given you half of them, which you are then obligated to hold onto and cherish “forever,” or at least for the duration of the relationship. Most of my pictures of this variety ended up in box that got buried in a drawer somewhere, and when I packed for this trip I just grabbed the whole box without much consideration for what was inside. As a result I now have a surprising number of photos on my wall depicting me and the girl I was dating at the time, which I suppose might be a little weird. I think of it as a scrapbook of sorts. I also have a fair share of family pictures, and these are some of my favorites. There’s one of my brother during his time in Iraq, and that one provides a bit of a reality-check when I get bummed about being out here. In the photo he’s leaning over the steering wheel of his Humvee, and he has a grin on his face that is truly inspiring. If he could muster that smile while he was in Iraq, where he had things much worse than I have them here, I really have no room to complain. I’ve also got a really good picture of me and my sister from a few years back when we used to hang out frequently. Apparently we don’t look very much alike, because we were often told that we made a really cute couple and had to explain that, in fact, we are brother/sister. One of my favorite family related photos, which I took a digital shot of so that I could post it below, is from sometime last spring or summer when my mom’s sister brought her family to visit us in Colorado Springs. Will and Sophie, my two uber-cute little cousins, are sitting on my lap, and my 12-going-on-20 year old little brother is behind us. I just love the faces of the two little ones: Will looking fairly serious with his tennis racket/guitar (and to top it all off he’s wearing a one-piece fire truck pajama suit - classic), and his little sister baring her teeth in a perfect “rock and roll” face. It’s great. It’s also a good reminder of what I looked like back when I had no hair – quite different than what I’m sporting now. Speaking of kids, it just occurred to me that I haven’t been face to face with any little kids since I was home on vacation in December. Kids have a way of keeping you honest, and they also seem to help you keep an innocent and optimistic outlook on life. I miss having them around. I think I was spoiled last summer living in the same town as my 12 year old brother and 10 year old step-brother. I had two guaranteed buddies to hang out with pretty much any time I wanted, and I miss that. I hope you guys are doing well (J & M) – just a few short months and we'll get to hang out again…maybe we’ll even play some “Mat Ball!”

2005-03-15T04:29:00.000-08:00

In My Head I'm Already There

2005-03-12T07:01:00.000-08:00

Hello again out there in reader-land, and welcome to another tale of life as a contractor. This past week or so I've been completely consumed with the planning of my upcoming Europe vacation. I'm happy to report that the planning is coming along nicely, and the more I think about it the more excited I get. Here's what I've got in my head so far: I leave here on 23 April bound for Frankfurt on a free military flight. Once in Frankfurt I'll hop an overnight train and arrive in Paris on the morning of the 24th, where I'll spend roughly four days exploring the city. The exact details of what I'll be doing each day have yet to be worked out, but I'm sure that brainstorming ideas will provide a pleasant distraction for the next few weeks. From Paris I'll hop a train to London, probably on 28 April. My first day or two in London are completely wide open, although I plan to take the advice of my cousin's wife and try to see a show on London's West End (apparently London's equivalent to Broadway). Starting 30 April I'll be spending three consecutive nights in London making up for all the concerts I've missed...bands I plan to see include The Toasters, the Mad Caddies, Rise Against, and Finch. After I'm good and rocked out I'll be moving on to Amsterdam, probably on 03 May. Among other things, I'll be seeing the Mad Caddies again in Amsterdam, and hopefully also The Toasters again in the nearby town of Haarlem. From what I can tell, the Toasters' show in Haarlem (which appears to be free, as an added bonus) is part of something called Bevrijdingsfestival, which according to Babel Fish means "release festival." It looks like it might be some sort of Dutch holiday that is celebrated with outdoor festivals around the country, almost like State Fairs or something. I was able to find this site, which does in fact confirm that the Toasters will take the stage at exactly 1:50 p.m. that day (followed by De La Soul, who I'm sure I'll stick around for). The rest of the site is a mystery, but I think it'll be a blast to just show up, find my way to Haarlem, and throw myself into Dutch culture by taking part in this Bevrijdingsfestival, whatever it turns out to be. I can't wait! Now I'm off topic, which gives you a little glimpse into how my day has gone today. A million tangents and very little productivity...but it's been fun. Anyway, I'll leave Amsterdam on 06 May bound for Munich, where I'll have a full weekend plus a day to take in some German culture and most definitely drink some German beer. On 10 May I'll leave Munich for Stuttgart, where I hope to catch one last ska show headlined by Streetlight Manifesto. The next day I'll make the journey back to Frankfurt, where I'll (unfortunately) have nothing left to do but get on a flight back here. That should be a fairly accurate time line, and I'll be ironing out the details as soon as I can. I've already bought my rail pass, and I'm also an official member of Hostelling International, which is an International Youth Hostelling Association whose hostels will be my home for the duration of the trip. I've also already purchased my ticket for the London International Ska Festival 5 (the Toasters' show in London), and I'd be able to go ahead and get my ticket for the Mad Caddies' show in Amsterdam if the whole site wasn't in Dutch. Ah well, I'll figure something out. This trip has been a blast to plan so far, and I cannot wait for the day when it becomes a reality. If nothing else it's been an awesome way to keep my mind off of work for the past several days, which in and of itself has been great. Speaking of work, I've got a couple updates on that front for those that are following along. After months of promises from my bosses it appears that I will finally have at least one new person at the Help Desk tomorrow, with a second to hopefully follow shortly. I can't wait to get them trained and comfortable with things, because that should free me up to relax a little bit and not stress about work constantly. What a nice change that would be. Also, and this just goes to show how fickle I can be on this topic, I've been feeling really good these last few days about the idea of just coming home when this contract is over. It remains to be seen what the company will offer me as an incentive to stay, but with re-contract time looming ever closer I've been giving it some thought lately. If the offer they give to me is anything similar to what other re-contractors have been presented with, you can bet I'll be out of here the day my current deal expires. I don't want to jump to conclusions though, I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens. I hope you're all doing well...Saturday Night Live reruns are on so I'm out.

Seeing the World Without Leaving Home

2005-03-08T02:50:00.000-08:00

I figured I'd go ahead and get this post up while I'm still in a pretty good mood. My last several posts have been way too depressing, and I don't want to leave anyone with the wrong impression. I have had some pretty rough days lately, but I've gotten through them all, and I'm sure a few more won't kill me. For the record, I won't be coming home anytime soon. I'm too close to my Europe vacation to give that up now. My plan is to have some of the plane/train/concert tickets and hostels booked by later today, which will all but force me to stay here long enough to enjoy that trip, which is really only 45 or so days away. By the time I get back from that trip I'll have a mere 70 days or so left in my contract, and I don't think I could live with myself if I gave up that close to the end. It looks like I'll be here to the end, and oddly enough I still haven't given up on the possibility of a longer stay. I can't really explain that, given how much I don't like this place, but for whatever reason it's still in the back of my head. I'll really try to keep the blog posts a little bit more upbeat from here on out. I think I've always known that I'm going to stick this thing out - the amount of time I've spent giving honest consideration to leaving early is probably less than 20 minutes. Knowing that I'm in this thing for the long haul, it helps to rant a little bit and get some frustration out on those bad days, and you all have been getting the brunt of that on the blog lately. I think you've put up with my nonsense long enough, so I'll work on keeping it a little bit more fun. As I've already mentioned, I went to an event on Saturday called "International Day - Meet the Coalition." It was pretty cool, but of course, like everything else out here, the theme of the event was geared towards the military. The event was held in and around a giant tent on base, and each Coalition country had some sort of a booth or table set up with various military and cultural items on display to show off their homeland. The Canadians had several tanks and armored vehicles on display, and one of the Canadian soldiers was dressed up in what looked a combination between some type of body armor and a chemical suit. He looked hilarious, like a big green marshmallow man, but I stupidly forgot to bring my camera to the event. The Germans deserved some type of award for having the most machine guns on display, including some type of rifle that was about 8 feet long. It was wild. They also had CDs of German military music that were free for the taking. The French, who are here as part of the NATO ISAF mission (ISAF is the International Security Assistance Force - many of the Coalition Forces are here as a part of ISAF), also had some armored vehicles on display, and their table was strewn with free stickers that were all written in French, so I don't have a clue what they said. The Korean booth was the least military oriented, offering a lot more in the way of cultural information. Some of the female Korean soldiers were dressed up in this traditional garb called a Hanbok, which is kind of like a dress, but not really. It's hard to describe. They also had a Korean board game on display, which involved throwing four small wooden sticks rather than rolling a die to determine your move. Some of the Koreans were playing a game that is very similar to American hacky-sack, but instead of using a normal footbag they were using this giant Koosh-ball looking thing. I guess that's how they do it in Korea. Three eastern European countries had booths set up: Romania, Slovakia, and Poland. None of them had much on display in the way of military might, but they were collectively the most talkative and outgoing group. The Slovaks had a bunch of photos of Slovak castles on display, some of which were awesome. I wont be able to get there on this upcoming trip, but I'll definitely have to make it to Slovakia at some point to see those castles in person. The UK booth was also relatively small, and I got really confused trying to understand the structure of their military. You've got the United Kingdom and Great Britain, which I'm pretty sure mean different things even though I tend to use them interchangeably, and then you've got each individual country (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) which apparently all have their own military, and then jointly they all form the Royal Armed Forces, or something like that. I didn't really get it. One of the soldiers manning that booth was a young woman with a great accent and beautiful eyes, so I spent a disproportionate amount of time hanging out there. Speaking of great accents, the Australians and New Zealanders, or Aussies and Kiwis (nicknames that I think they prefer), also had booths set up. The Aussie booth had a little pamphlet with a whole bunch of Australian slang terms which was pretty cool to thumb through. The New Zealand uniforms are unique in that they all wear a patch on their shoulders and on their hats that is just the silhouette a white bird against a black background. The bird is literally the kiwi bird, which is apparently a big deal in New Zealand and is presumably why they're so fond of calling themselves Kiwis. Most military uniforms include the soldier's rank and usually the nation's flag, but the Kiwis just wear a patch with a bird on it. I thought that was pretty neat. All the booths had a display showing the rank structure of that country's military, and some had comparisons to the rank structure of the US Army and Air Force. The only country that has a decent size force on this base that wasn't preset at all on International Day was Egypt. I'm not sure why they didn't show up for the festivities - it would've been cool to see a bit of Egyptian culture. I bump into soldiers from other countries every now and then, but most of them are part of ISAF and have small enough contingents that I wouldn't expect them to set up a booth. The Dutch and the Italians come to mind as a couple of the really small groups. I mulled around the various booths for less than an hour, but it was a fun little event and a nice reminder that I am getting to see some very unique and cool things out here, despite having to put up with some rough days.

I'm Sorry

2005-03-05T09:20:00.000-08:00

I apologize to all my loyal readers out there, but I’m just not in the mood to write much of a post today. I’m getting completely fed up with work and with being out here, and I’m “this close” to just calling it quits. I know, I know – in my head I can’t stop telling myself to do the right thing, stick it out, and follow through on my goals - but I think a big part of me has stopped caring about all of that. I’m really tempted to just “take the money and run,” so to speak. My goal in coming out here was to get rid of my debt, and I’ve done that. I also came out here to avoid any further legal trouble stemming from my suspended driver’s license, but in nine days my license will be valid again. I’ve accumulated enough money at this point to at least get me started, to tide me over until I find a job, a place to live, and get myself settled. So why am I continuing to struggle through a situation that I’ve already decided I despise? Here’s the plan: I’m going to try and have a sit-down with my boss(es) tomorrow, and see if anything can be done to improve the situation. It’s possible that the level of stress, frustration, and bitterness I’m feeling is just temporary, because right now is a particularly busy time for this base. I’m probably not supposed to tell you too much because it could be considered classified information, but suffice it to say that events are occurring which are causing my workload to increase substantially. These events are temporary, so maybe things will calm down again soon and I won’t hate life so much. Then again, maybe not. At any rate, I’m not in the mood to give you a fun and interesting post, so instead you get this little rant of a journal entry. I did go to an “International Day – Meet the Coalition” event today, which was actually pretty cool, but I’ll have to tell you about that some other time. For now I’m going to try and organize my room real quick, and then lie down in bed and watch a DVD to try and relax and take my mind off this place. Hopefully I’ll wake up tomorrow in a better mood. Encouraging song lyric of the day: “It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll…” ~AC/DC

I know this will look good when it's done

2005-03-01T08:36:00.000-08:00

It’s been warmer here lately, which is kind of nice. Normally I’m a big fan of the cold weather and the snow, but that’s because I normally get to go out and enjoy it. Out here the snow is just something to trudge through on my way to take a shower, so you can imagine it’s not quite as appealing as it would be if I was home in Colorado. I haven’t seen any snow in a while though, and today it was actually warm enough that I was outside in a t-shirt. I don’t know if winter’s over for good or if this is just a brief warm spell before Jack Frost’s final hurrah, but either way it’s a welcome change. I had two things on my to-do list today: item one was to get started on my vacation planning, and item two was to get the ball rolling on filing my taxes. I decided to go ahead and get the tax stuff out of the way first, thinking it wouldn’t be too big of a deal, and then I’d jump into the vacation stuff. Oh how wrong I was. I spent a good hour sifting through IRS Publication 54, which is titled “Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad: For Use in Preparing 2004 Returns.” Leave it to the IRS to give a document a 15-word title. I made it to page 39 of the 44 page booklet before I finally called it quits, having found the answers to most of my questions. I learned that I get an automatic 2-month extension because I won’t be on U.S. soil on the 15th of April, so I really don’t have to file anything until 15 June. I decided I’m going to try and put it off a little longer than that by filing Form 2350, aptly titled “Application for Extension of Time to File U.S. Income Tax Return for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad Who Expect to Qualify for Special Tax Treatment.” Try saying that five times fast. I managed to find a copy of that form on the web which I can download and print, but my task for the remainder of the evening is to find a way to file that form electronically. Wish me luck. Special thanks go out to everyone who’s emailed me with words of encouragement lately – I really appreciate it. I’m working on writing everyone back, but don’t be offended if you wrote weeks ago and I still haven’t responded yet. I’m doing my best to hang tough with my remaining time, and continue to sow generously in the hope that I’ll reap generously in the future. Perseverance has become my new theme in life, and I’m doing my best to live it. I’ve tried to calm my frustrations by comparing this experience to some other, smaller frustrations in life. I’ve never been one to get excited about doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, or cleaning the bathroom, but sometimes you’ve just got to suck it up and get those things done in order to achieve the goal of having a clean and well-kept house. The best analogy I’ve been able to come up with, and one that works really well for me, is comparing this experience to sitting under a tattoo artist’s needle. Sometimes it’s not so bad, and sometimes it stings like hell, but it’s just something you’ve got to endure if you want to walk away with a great looking piece of ink. In this case the “ink” I want is the financial freedom that comes from eliminating my debt and accumulating a decent chunk of cash on top of it, and I’ve got five more months of “needle work” to put up with to get there. It’s not a ball of joy right now, but I know it’ll be worth it in the end, and I also know I’ll regret it forever if I back out early. The tattoo analogy provides an extra boost of encouragement by reminding me that if I can stick it out until the end, I’ll have plenty of money to blow on all the REAL tattoos I’ve been wanting for so long.

Life's No Fun Without Something To Shoot For

2005-02-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

I just found out today that The Good Doctor is dead. Apparently work keeps me busier than I thought; I'm a week behind on current events. As much as I'd like to, I cannot honestly say that I am a Hunter S Thompson fan. Until today, I hadn't read a single word of his. I'd heard the name, but beyond that I suppose we were total strangers. I spent much of the day today (too much, really) researching him and reading as much as I could soak in about the man, and I've come to the hasty conclusion that I like him. I'm not completely sure why, but I do. Maybe it's that I tend to feel a closeness to anyone that lives in my home state. Or maybe it's because two days ago I unofficially decided that I want to be a writer. The first few articles I read painted a picture of Hunter S Thompson as a wild man, a drug-addicted renegade with a knack for blurring the line between fiction and reality, and maybe he was. I assumed his writing would be abstract, almost artistic, if that makes sense - not the type I typically like to read. Then I discovered his ESPN articles, and I was pleasantly surprised. I like the way he writes. I have a document on my computer that I call my "Amazon.com list," a collection of authors/books I'd like to read if I ever find the time to purchase them. Hunter S Thompson is now on that list. As I alluded to above, I would like to be a writer. This epiphany came to me Thursday night during an engaging discussion with coworkers, one of the few truly fulfilling conversations I've been involved in since arriving here. The conversation itself isn’t so consequential, but it reminded me of a goal I had years ago. I was approaching the one year anniversary of my employment at the CSU campus coffee shop, and I decided I wanted to be a bartender. I was fed up with my job, and I was sure that bartending would be a whole lot more fun than waking up much too early in the morning to pour coffee for grumpy professors. One month later I had landed a job at a local bar, albeit not as a bartender. I was tasked with bussing tables and checking IDs, and for my trouble I was compensated with minimum wage. It was a foot in the door though, and sure enough, three months later I was behind that bar pouring drinks (and making a lot more than minimum wage in tips). The initial decision to become a bartender was a bit unorthodox, but it soon became my goal. In retrospect I made some mistakes along the way, and I had to put up with a few months of breaking up fights, turning away drunks at the door, and cleaning dirty dishes, but eventually I reached my goal and got behind the bar. I recently came across an old journal entry from the night after that first bar shift. It seems a bit silly now, but as I read that old journal entry I relived the joy of that night just a little bit. I had endured the 'trenches,' and I had reached the prize. I was never a great bartender, but it was fun while it lasted, and quite possibly the most enjoyable job I've had to date. Now, I have a new goal. I’ve been in tech support for over a year now, and I’ve discovered that I don’t like it. I don’t like fixing computers. I don’t like dealing with problems, or being held responsible for fixing them. I’m bored, and frustrated, and I simply don’t care. I have other aspirations now. I want to write. I haven’t figured out exactly what I want to write, but I’m pretty darn sure that I want to write. This, I’ve decided, is my new goal. I’m sure I’ll continue down the road I’m currently on for the rest of this contract, and quite possibly for a few more months after that, because I’m just too addicted to the money. But I don’t want to do this forever, or even for another five years. I want to travel the globe and write articles about my adventures. I want to visit the world’s most beautiful snow-covered peaks, snowboard down them, and then journal my experiences for others to enjoy. Writing has slowly crept closer to the top of my list of dreams, right up there with professional snowboarding and professional musicianship. Those first two are unlikely to happen due to a lack of talent, and who knows, my writing talent may prove to be severely lacking as well. But for what it’s worth, or maybe just for my own peace of mind, I want to try. I’m becoming convinced that life cannot be lived to the fullest without a goal, without a dream to aspire to. For now, this is mine. Here’s to going for it. In more down-to-earth news, I had a pretty good day today. It was my day off (as it is every day that I post now), and I ended up going to a social gathering of sorts. It was a going away party for a man I don’t really know, and I wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t been invited by a very attractive girl. You guys know how it is…if a pretty girl indicates that your presence is welcome, you’ll be there. The party turned out to be decent, and it was the first real social event I’d been to since arriving back on this base after my vacation (speaking of which, I realized that I haven’t been down to the Tali Tav since before I left on vacation, so I think another trip down there is long overdue. I’ll work on that in the coming weeks). The party was a good break for me, a nice change of pace after months of nothing but work and sitting in my room. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the pretty girl was there, too. She stayed much too busy playing hostess for any real conversation to happen, but like I said, I’m becoming convinced that if life is going to be worth living, you’ve got to be able to dream.

I've Always Said I Don't Want To Be Rich...

2005-02-22T08:50:00.000-08:00

Another day, another dollar, and another blog post with nothing to write about. I know I'm down to just two posts a week, yet somehow I still can't come up with anything to say. Is life really that bland, or have I just lost all semblance of creativity? On the subject of two posts a week, I told you a week or so ago that I would be posting on Tuesdays and Fridays. I doubt that I have very many readers who took note of that and bother to check for the new post on those days exactly, but if any of you exist, this news is for you. I will now be posting on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I made some adjustments to the Helpdesk work schedule and ended up changing my days off, and thus my posting days have changed. For the rest of you (most of you), just keep to your normal blog-checking schedule and hopefully you won't miss anything. That is, assuming I haven't already driven you away with my incessant work rants and the like. Wasn't this blog supposed to be about 'Adventures in Afghanistan?' The chronicles of a boy who'd never been off his home continent, moving to a far away land and having fanciful and entertaining experiences? Tales of travel, foreign cultures, new people, and maybe the occasional humorous anecdote? Yeah, I thought so, too. I don't know how it ended up being a collection of rants and complaints detailing the rigors of putting up with a less-than-desirable job situation and a terribly boring life outside of work. As much as I'd love to get back to writing entertaining and insightful summaries of my 'adventures' out here, it's not going to happen today. Sorry kids, sometimes that's just how the cookie crumbles. So now that I'm debt free, I'm starting to wonder just what it is that's keeping me out here. If you've been reading at all over the past few weeks, you know that I'm not exactly loving life right now. I used to be able to say that I was enduring this challenge in the name of financial freedom, that eliminating my debt was worth the costs, whatever they may be. Well now I've eliminated my debt, and yet I'm still here. This past Saturday morning, in the middle of a particularly intense episode of stress-induced frustration, I stepped outside for a quick breather; I needed to collect my wits and calm myself down, and for the first time it occurred to me that I could just go home. I mean, the bills are paid off, and that was the whole point of coming out here, right? Mission accomplished, so why not just cut my losses and be done with this whole thing? The answer came to me yesterday morning, during an IM conversation with my brother. I'm not leaving here yet because I'm making gobs of money. Plain and simple, that's all there is to it. The money is just too good to call it quits. And that brings up an age-old discussion that I'm just now starting to have with myself...what's more important: money, or happiness? The obvious answer to that question, of course, is happiness. At one point or another we've all told ourselves that we'd rather be happy, doing something we love, than doing something we hate even if it happens to pay a lot better. I'd have to say I'm no different. If you were to ask me right now if I'd rather be at home enjoying myself, going to concerts, hitting the slopes, and hanging out with friends, but presumably making less money (and spending it more frequently), versus being out here living a boring and difficult life but making a lot of cash, I'd probably tell you that I'd rather be at home. But if I'm being completely honest, I'll tell you that the above question was a lot easier to answer before I grew accustomed to seeing a substantial sum of money show up in my bank account every two weeks. For now I've decided to stay, for a number of reasons. First, I signed a contract that said I'd stay here for a year, and I owe it to the company to live up to that and fulfill my obligation. Second, there are certain penalties I'd have to endure if I decided to quit early: I'd owe my company a few thousand dollars worth of bonuses that they've already paid me, and I'd miss out on all the "end of contract" bonuses that are yet to come. I'd also have to cancel my upcoming vacation to Europe, which is something I'm really looking forward to. Lastly, since I have no life whatsoever out here, I spend a lot of time day-dreaming about what I'd like to do when I do get home. Most of these dreams involve things that take money: I'd like to buy a car in cash, maybe start a business, and also set aside enough to eventually take a few months off and travel the world with my brother. None of those things would happen (at least not as easily) if I decided to head home tomorrow. The money vs. happiness question is still an interesting one though, and I'm not sure I really know what my answer is yet. For now I can hide behind the debt issue as my answer. I can say that I didn't necessarily choose money over happiness, because prior to this my life back home wasn't exactly full of happiness. At the time I was dealing with the struggles of climbing out from underneath a mountain of personal debt, and now I'm dealing with the struggles of a job I hate and a life that is sometimes mind-numbingly boring. In this case it was one struggle vs. the other, and the benefits of this particular struggle outweighed the costs. This struggle came with a one year time table, so even though technically I'm already debt free, I still owe five-ish more months in the name of achieving that goal. The real question will come at re-contract time. When that day rolls around, I'll be faced with a scenario that looks a whole lot more like an even fight between going home for less money but more happiness vs. staying out here for less happiness but a lot more money. I still don't know how I'll answer that question when the time does come. For now I'm waiting to see if this promotion to System Admin ever happens, and if it does I'll have to wait and see how much I really like that job compared to the one I have now. To be fair, there are a few up-sides to living out here, despite the conditions. To me, the most obvious of those is that not only do I make a ridiculous salary, but I don't pay a single bill. I enjoy the luxury of having a roof over my head, electricity, running water, and food; and for all of that I don't pay a dime. All of those basic amenities are paid for by the US government, so thanks to everyone out there for paying your taxes. Oh, and that reminds me of another bonus of being out here: a large percentage of my income is completely tax free. When I say that I get to keep my entire paycheck, I really mean that I get to keep the entire thing, without having to cut Uncle Sam his share. I also get to do things out here that I probably wouldn't be able to do at home, like take three weeks off to go follow some bands around Europe for a while. All in all I guess it's not terrible. I think I can handle another five months.

How Being Good At What You Do Can Back-Fire

2005-02-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

I think there was a part of me that hoped taking this job and moving to Afghanistan would allow me to relax a little bit. Sure, there were bound to be challenges and adjustments, but to some degree I assumed that life would be much less stressful out here. No bills to pay, no errands to run, no lines to stand in, and none of the many little annoyances that come with life in the States. Well, one of two things has happened: either life really is less stressful out here and I'm just used to it, thereby taking it for granted, or else I was completely wrong and life is no less busy and stressful than it would be back home. As soon as I seem to have a handle on things, life is right there to throw me another curve ball and make sure things stay interesting. The last two weeks or so have seen a lot of people in my company either leave their jobs or put in letters of resignation announcing their intent to leave very shortly. Some are leaving because their contracts are over, some are taking jobs in Iraq where the money is significantly higher, and one just decided that he's fed up and is ready to go home. I can't say I blame that last guy; he's been working as a civilian contractor out here for close to three years now. I think I'd be pretty fed up at that point, too. The Network/System Administrator shop has been hit the hardest by these recent departures, which turns out to be a good thing for me. I've been passively trying to get into that shop for a while, and with all the recent departures I decided to get a little bit more vocal about it. The 'big bosses,' as I mentioned in a previous post, are reluctant to promote me because they claim that they can't afford to lose me at the Helpdesk. I don't blame them; in all honesty they're right. Thanks in no small part to this company's willingness to hire anyone with a pulse, I'm the only one at the Helpdesk who has a clue how things run and is able to get the job done. This puts me in a bit of a quandary, because my bosses are essentially telling me that my superior skills and work ethic are the reason they won't give me a promotion that I really want. I made enough noise that they've finally caved and are now allowing me to split time between the Helpdesk and the Admin shop. I still retain my title as Helpdesk Team Lead, but I spend 6 of my 12 working hours at the Helpdesk and the other 6 in the Admin shop. My hope is that I'll be able to absorb enough knowledge at the Admin shop to prove myself and thus the 'powers that be' will let me stay there full time. I don't really care whether or not they ever give me the official Admin title; in fact I wouldn't mind continuing to run the Helpdesk from the Admin shop. That's how things worked when I got here, and I see no reason why they can't operate that way again. I'd still be the Helpdesk Team Lead, but I'd spend most (if not all) of my time working in the Admin shop. Even if that never happens, I can't complain about my current set-up, splitting time between the two shops. It gives me enough face time at the Helpdesk that I can still keep an eye on things there, but I also get to spend half my day doing something a little bit more challenging and a little bit less monotonous. The other aspect of this new setup that has proved to be positive is that spending less time at the Helpdesk should make it easier to be a disciplinarian when I need to. In the weeks since I was made the official Team Lead I've been working side-by-side with the other Helpdesk folks still, which has made it easy to continue to see them as peers. I can be a bit of a pushover, so I've had a hard time enforcing certain policies, particularly with the people that I have to sit beside for 12 hours a day. I'm hopeful that spending a bit less time as a peer, at least as far as physical presence is concerned, will make it easier to keep my people in line. In non-work news, I'm officially obsessed with the show "Monk." I bought the DVD collection of the show's first season months ago, back when I first got here, to give me something to help pass the time. I completely fell in love with the show, and I recently bought the DVD collection of season two. If you haven't seen this show, it's definitely worth a watch. Tony Shalhoub is an amazing actor, and the way he portrays the character of Adrian Monk is absolutely hilarious. I watched three episodes last night and another one today, and I just can't get enough of it. It's an extraordinarily clever show, and I highly recommend it. The new opening theme song for season two is great, too. Hear a little bit of it here.

Getting A Little Bit Restless

2005-02-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

Lately I don't do much. For those keeping score, I've officially given up on computer certifications for now. I've got a few reasons for that, and one of them actually makes sense and is halfway legit. Suffice it to say that I'd much rather spend my free time ripping CDs and rocking out in my room than trying to memorize a bunch of questions about stuff that I ultimately don't care about. So since I haven't been studying, just what is it that I have been doing? A whole lot of nothing. My buddy Thomas, who's heading home to San Diego in just a couple of weeks because his contract is over (lucky bastard), is a fellow coffee connoisseur and he makes a fresh pot of his favorite Kona brew every afternoon before he goes on shift. It's become a habit to stop by his room and pour myself a cup daily (he shares freely), and today was no different. As I finished this afternoon's cup 'o joe I was just sitting down to bust out some emails. For some reason the caffeine really hit me, and suddenly I wasn't in the mood to just sit in front of a computer. I was really wired and antsy to do...something. Problem is, there's nothing to do out here. I thought about going to the gym to work out, but quickly scratched that idea because I had just gotten out of the shower and didn't want to have to take another one. For lack of a better idea, I finally settled on just heading outside to walk around for while. I grabbed my iPod and was off. It was a sunny afternoon but cool, about 35-40 degrees. Had it not been for the strong wind, it would have been a perfect day. I cranked up the music and just started walking, and I hadn't made it far at all when I suddenly started longing for a skateboard. I'm not much of a skater (truth is I pretty much suck at it), but I used to have tons of fun riding around, trying to ollie, pretending I was good. I haven't been on a board in forever, but for some reason I really wanted one this afternoon. I was just restless and antsy to do something to burn off some energy. I thought about turning my walk into a run, but then I realized I was wearing uncomfortable boots and scratched that idea. The wind picked up, and I kept walking and admiring the snow covered mountains all around me. The whole scenario reminded me of walking the CSU campus on one of the chilly, windy spring days that are so common in Fort Collins, only this time I was just enjoying my walk, not in a hurry to make it to a class. I ended up walking for a good 30 minutes or so, until the chill finally got the best of me and I headed home. The walk was a cool way to kill some time, the perfect combination of invigorating and relaxing, but it wasn't quite fulfilling. For the past six months my only forms of recreation (outside of the occasional workout) have been reading books and watching DVDs, and today I really had the urge to do something, anything, else. I wanted to ride a skateboard, play video games, go bowling, throw a football around, ride a bike - heck I would've been happy to shovel a driveway for a while. I don't know if you'd call it cabin fever or what, but I've definitely got the urge to get out of here for a little bit. In other news (read: boring work stuff), a lot of people out here are suddenly deciding that they're ready to leave, and maybe that's part of the reason I'm so restless lately. The bright side of all the turnover is that most of it is coming from the System Administrator/Network Administrator shop, and my company doesn't have anybody from the States lined up to fill those positions. That means they're likely to end up promoting from the inside, which means I'm likely to get another promotion here soon. I'm really gunning for that, and I'll let you know how it goes. I'm hearing through the rumor mill that management is balking at sending me to that shop because they just promoted me to Team Lead of my own shop barely a month ago. I think that line of reasoning is dumb, but maybe that's why I'm not in upper management. At any rate, I'm doing my best to persuade them to give me the job without the new title, which means I wouldn't get the accompanying pay raise, but that's something I'm willing to sacrifice for a much needed change of scenery (plus, it's not as if I can complain about what they're paying me now). A promotion would also mean a shortened work week, which I'm actually excited about. Eight hour days are much more manageable, and just might keep me from going insane. And finally, the other news worth mentioning for those not in my 'family circle' is that my sister got engaged yesterday. I saw this coming a long time ago, but it's still pretty crazy to say that my little sister is engaged. I like the future brother-in-law, so that's good news. I tried to call her yesterday to congratulate her but couldn't get through, so I decided to call my brother to see what he thought of the announcement. I didn't get through to him either, but I got a huge kick out of his outgoing voice mail message, which is a hilarious line from the movie Old School. The quote itself is funny enough, but hearing it literally minutes after my sister announced her engagement was priceless. Brilliant timing. Anyway, congratulations to Emily and Dave!

MXPX and Growing Up (part two)

2005-02-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

The brief encounter that I'm about to describe happened a few weeks ago now, and I've been meaning to put together a post about it for a while. The topic sort of ties into my last post, so I've decided to finally sit down and finish it. Here's what happened... After dinner, right before I left the dining facility, I went over to pour myself a cup of coffee as a I usually do. I noticed an Air Force Captain looking at me for a brief moment, and then she introduced herself. The conversation went something like this: Her: "You're that guy who's always wearing the MXPX sweatshirt." Me: "Yeah, that's me." Her: "I used to go to MXPX concerts all the time back in, like, 1996." Me: "Yeah, me too! That's back when they were still good. Their new stuff is..." Her: "It's definitely gone downhill. Anyway, my name's Steph." Me: "Hi Steph, I'm Josh." Her: "Nice to meet you." Me: "Yeah, you too. Well, I'll let you get back to your food. See you around." It was just a quick introduction, no big deal; but as short and inconsequential as our conversation was, it triggered a quick flash of nostalgia. I can vividly remember an MXPX show that I went to in 1996, in fact it was the first time I saw MXPX live. I remember being driven up to Denver (I was too young to be trusted with driving an hour's worth of interstate by myself) and waiting in line outside the venue. The place was called the Mercury Cafe, a small restaurant/bar in the heart of downtown Denver. When they finally let us in, those of us who were underage were herded upstairs where we were to remain for the duration of the show. I was fine with this, as my beer drinking, pool playing days were years down the road. There were four bands playing that night; MXPX was headlining. There couldn't have been more than 500 people in that upstairs room, probably less, but it was by far the biggest 'concert' I'd been to. I remember at one point I saw Mike, MXPX's bass player and lead vocalist, walking around in the crowd, enjoying the opening bands. He was 20 years old at the time, and to many people I'm sure he blended in perfectly as just another punk-rock face in the crowd, out to hear some bands and have a good time. To me he was an idol, a bona fide rock god, so of course all I could do was stare at him, completely star-struck. I made my way to the front of the crowd in time to watch MXPX tune their instruments one last time at the side of the stage, and then they finally stepped up the mics and started the show. By that time the room we were in was completely packed, so as soon as the band struck the first chord the place transformed into one giant mosh pit. The whole mob of us pushed, shoved, and jumped in unison, most of us yelling every word to every song, creating the chaotic but wonderful scene that I've come to know as the Punk Rock Show. I remember there was a lot of crowd-surfing that night, more than at a 'normal' show, mostly due to the design of the room we were in. The crossbars that supported the roof were low enough that with a little boost from a fellow fan you could grab one of the bars and swing above the crowd until finally letting go and dropping down on top of everybody. At one point during the set Mike himself joined in the fun and swung out on top of the crowd in what was one of the coolest stage dives I've ever seen. All too soon the fun was over, and it was time for the sweaty, exhausted masses to make their was home. I waited in line after the show to buy a t-shirt, and then I got all three band members to sign it. I treated that signed shirt like the treasure that it was, and of course I still have it today. That whole scene - the show, the band, the music, the crowd, the t-shirt - all came flooding back to me after my brief conversation with Steph, the Air Force Captain. She mentioned going to see MXPX in 1996, and for all I know she could've been at that show. What struck me most was, how did we both get from where we were then to where we are now? At the time I was a carefree 16 year old kid who's only concern was how I was going to talk my parents into letting me go to a punk show on a school night; now I'm 25, in the beginning stages of what will inevitably turn into some kind of career, bumping into a fellow punk fan who's now wearing an Air Force uniform! How did this all happen? It doesn't seem so long ago that my chief concern was finding another gig for my flegdling little ska band, preferably one that paid us. Now my chief concern is finding another company to work for, preferably one that has a health plan. I guess I'm starting to realize that I'm an official grown-up now, and it's really messing with my head. Being a grown-up isn't all bad. I have a whole lot more freedom now; I can drive myself to Denver whenever I want, for instance, and I can decide for myself where I want to live (why in the world I picked Afghanistan is beyond me, I'm still struggling with that one). I know I'm not the only person my age who has struggled with the onset of official adulthood, in fact I could name three friends right now who are going through the same thing. This is not a phase in life I was ever warned about, so I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. I know that adulthood and all the responsibilities that come with it are inevitable, but right now my feeling are more aligned with the lyrics to a song by (who else?) MXPX that asks: "Responsibility? What's that?...I'm still young and I'd like to stay that way, 'cause growing up won't make everything okay." My role models in life are mostly snowboarders and musicians, guys like Reese Roper (of Five Iron Frenzy fame), who at age 29 penned the lyrics to a song called "At Least I'm Not Like All Those Other Old Guys" with such brilliant insights as "I'm wearing my Vans right now, so high school kids will think that I can skate. I pay almost all my bills, I sleep on a futon still. I've got a degree in science, yet still shaking my fists in defiance. Anyway, I'm not cliche, I hardly own any ties. I may be old but at least I'm not like all those other old guys." I don't personally feel 'old' by any stretch of the imagination, but I do feel 'grown-up' sometimes, and that's just a little bit weird for me. I guess the lingering question is, will I feel out of my element in the land of adulthood forever?

Am I Really A Grown-Up? (part one)

2005-02-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

I can tell you right now that for at least the next three weeks or so work is going to be extremely busy, which means the amount of time that I'll have to read emails and post to this blog while I'm at work will be reduced to nothing. I still want to keep in touch as best I can, but please be patient with me if your emails don't get answered right away. My goal is to keep the blog updated twice a week, on my days off, so check back here on Tuesdays and Fridays for the latest bit of insight into my increasingly busy life. My goal was to get the first "day off" post up yesterday, but that didn't happen. I had an idea for what I thought would be a cool blog post so I got started writing it, but then I got really tired and went to bed before it got finished or posted. I came back to it today, and I realized that it was becoming a lot longer (and quite honestly more boring) than I intended it to be. I decided to take the very broad topic I was writing about and pare it down into something more manageable. Enjoy. I spend a lot of my off time out here watching DVDs, because, let's face it, there's just not much else to do. I've decided to share a little bit about what I've been watching lately, and who knows, maybe reveal a little more about myself in the process. Let's begin, shall we? I'm a big fan of what I like to call "band DVDs." These are DVDs put together by recording artists, and they usually contain live sets, behind the scenes footage, music videos, band commentary, photos, early footage, etc. Half of the DVDs I watch out here aren't actually movies at all but rather these "band DVDs." Back when I was living in Colorado I never had much money to spend on DVDs, so my whole collection was something like seven discs. Of those, probably two were actual movies while the rest were band discs. I figured since that's a unique little area of interest of mine I'd discuss it for a bit. The first band video I ever bought was actually a VHS tape called "It Came From Bremerton," by MxPx. I've since lost that tape, and I'm actually very distraught about it, because it's now out of print. I've been scouring eBay for it off and on with no luck, so if anyone comes across a copy please let me know. I'll pay big money for a copy of that tape. Anyway, by the time I left on this trip I had accumulated only three more videos (this time on DVD): New Found Glory's "The Story So Far," P.O.D.'s "Still Payin' Dues," and Reel Big Fish's "The Show Must Go Off!" I can still remember being unbelievably excited last summer when I saw the Reel Big Fish DVD in the store, to the point where I immediately bought it and then rushed home to watch it. The live set was great, but Tyler (Reel Big Fish's trumpet player at the time) and his unabashed drunkenness was a bit un-called-for. I can remember being about 45 minutes into the DVD when my roommate came home; I don't remember if he said anything verbally but he gave me a look that said "Seriously dude? This is what you're watching?" For a long time after that I figured I was probably the only weirdo who, despite being an official "grown up," still enjoyed sitting on the couch and watching a ska band rock out on his TV. That all changed a few months later when I came across this comic. I just happened across a link to the main 21deadmonkeys page, and I thought it was pretty cool, but it wasn't until I read that strip that I was finally sold on the comic. The strip, and mmr21's comments below it, could have been a page out of my life. Sounds weird to say (and I'm sure it is, but I'm saying it anyway): reading that strip was huge for me because it kept hope alive that maybe there were still people out there who I could relate to, people who would "get me;" a group of rock solid ska kids who were also struggling with this whole adulthood thing. Since arriving here I've picked up DVDs by The Aquabats, Weezer, the Warped Tour 2003 DVD, MxPx, Tenacious D, Less Than Jake, and Catch 22. I'm going to have to say that my favorite is the Less Than Jake disc, simply because of one scene from a live set they played in Rhode Island a few years ago. Near the end of their set the bass player Roger notices a guy in the crowd and calls him up on stage. Up walks this man who's easily over 35, possibly early 40's, out of a crowd of a couple thousand teenagers. It soon becomes apparent that this guy is not someone's dad (as you would assume), but just another Less Than Jake fan. The band starts the next song (a wonderful little ditty called "All My Best Friends Are Metalheads"), and this guy makes a complete fool of himself dancing along on stage. It's all Roger can do to keep singing and not burst out laughing. That scene had me rolling on the floor the first time I saw it - not because of the guy's dancing - but because my first thought was "that's going to be me someday." I could just see myself, at 37 years old, standing in the front row of a ska-core show, trying to blend in with a few hundred kids who are two decades my junior. Slowly but surely I think I'm turning into "that guy;" you know, as in 'You don't want to be that guy.' Yep, that's me. I have a few more thoughts on the topic of "growing up," which is something I haven't quite come to terms with yet. I'll leave it alone for now, but with any luck we'll pick this up again on Friday.

Missing the Mountains

2005-02-06T05:13:00.000-08:00

Sundays are usually a pretty slow day at work, and today is no exception. Back when I was a little bit more motivated than I am today, I used to spend a fair amount of time on Sundays studying for certifications. Lately I've been too disinterested (read: lazy) to study, which I might come to regret here in a few months when it's time to start job hunting again. So I just got done watching a recap of Winter X Games 9, and it absolutely drove me crazy. It was one of those typical "best of" sports shows, where they cut together the biggest tricks and biggest crashes with a loud, high-energy soundtrack. The show left me completely fired up at the end, ready to strap in and go huge. Then I remembered that I'm stuck in Afghanistan, which is extremely frustrating because the closest thing I'll get to "going huge" this season is jumping out of bed instead of just stepping out. I know, I'm a wild man. The X Games wrap-up was good though. I got to watch teenage prodigy Shaun White, a.k.a. The Flying Tomato, make an X Games comeback after last season's knee injury. He looked as smooth as ever, although he left with only one gold medal which is less than I've come to expect from Shaun. At least he's still got the hair. I was also excited to see that my future wife, Aspen's own Gretchen Bleiler, walked away with another super pipe gold. Travis Rice's double backflip on the Slopestyle course was just sick; hands down the coolest trick thrown at X Games 9. The Snowboarder X course was awesome this year - the best BoarderCross course I've seen to date - and it got me completely psyched. If I had the skills to ride about 10 times faster than I currently do, I'd be in next year's race, giving all those Europeans a run for their money. Don't laugh, it could happen.

Free At Last

2005-02-04T07:38:00.000-08:00

I know I've been a slacker when it comes to posting lately, and I apologize for that. A big part of the reason I haven't posted anything is because I haven't felt like there's all that much to say. Life out here has definitely lost its novelty, and lately the only thing I feel like talking about is how much my job gets on my nerves. Instead of posting on the blog, I've spent most of my internet time in these last few days writing emails, but sadly most of those have turned out to be I-don't-like-my-job rants, too (I apologize to anyone who's gotten an email from me recently). Today was actually one of the elusive good days, so I thought I'd share that with you. I also have some good news to announce. A lot of you know that while I was living and working in Colorado Springs last year, I was really frustrated by all the debt I was in. My financial situation wasn't downright terrible, but it wasn't exactly good either. I was working hard to get myself back in the black, but the amount of money leaving my bank account each month was a constant thorn in my side. I was making headway on my debt (albeit very, very slowly), but in the meantime I wasn't able to spend and save the way I would have liked. That ever present frustration led me to take this job, a fairly spur-of-the-moment decision that I made for one reason: money. I know this isn't a very uplifting story so far, but stick with me. The good news is coming, I swear. So I signed a contract, sold most of my worldly possessions, packed the rest away, and boarded a plane to head to the opposite side of the globe. I've been here six months now, and it's definitely starting to wear on me. You all know by now that I'm not thrilled with my job, and on top of that I miss being home. To list a few things off the top of my head, I miss concerts, snowboarding, family, friends, girls, and beer. There is one thing, however, that I don't miss, and that is the pile of bills that arrived in my mailbox every month; which finally brings me to the good news... Barring any unforeseen tragedy, I will never have to deal with that frustration again. Since I have no bills to pay out here, I've spent these first six months sending almost all of every paycheck I've earned to various creditors. There have been several small victories along the way as I've closed a handful of credit card and student loan accounts. By the time I arrived back here after my short trip home in December, I was down to only one creditor still hanging over my head. At just a few minutes after 7:00, roughly one hour ago, I opened my browser and logged into that last account, where I finally read the words I've been waiting so long to see: "Loan Status - Paid In Full." Ladies and Gentleman, I am now officially debt free; and let me tell you, it feels AWESOME. From now until I finally leave this place, I get to keep every penny that I earn. I've got to tell you, it's a pretty good feeling to sit out here and collect a huge paycheck and not have any obligations to fulfill with that money. What's even more of a relief, though, is knowing that I've learned my lesson. I learned the hard way that it's a very bad idea to spend money that I don't have, and I know I'll never do it again. No matter what I end up doing for a living after this job, no matter how much I end up making, I can rest assured that all of the money I earn is now mine. I can invest it the way I want to, save it the way I want to, and spend it the way I want to. The days of taking half of my income off the top and sending it away to lenders are forever behind me. That, my friends, is an absolutely wonderful feeling.