January 16, 2008

It’s been a while since my last entry. Some of you might say – how was your weekend? Well, there are no weekends here. The only slight break we get is that people in the Pentagon and DC are off for the weekend and are unavailable, but things keep moving here. I am settling into my job and have met most of the people now, but most of them are not receptive to providing me with information, so my job is quite challenging. Making slides and preparing briefs is the last thing that people who are busy and making things happen want to do. I think the military and the government in general has fallen into the trap of spending more time preparing and disseminating PowerPoint slides instead of just doing the work. You could get rid of half the people (myself included) if you didn’t have all this reporting. Can you imagine how it worked back in the day during WWII – sorry I can’t move forward until I have this PowerPoint briefing in the field on my laptop. Anyway…..

So, I was mentioning the Galley (Navy term) here…..it is a very dangerous place. Imagine going to the all you can eat buffet everyday. I have been here long enough now that they are beginning the repeats, so I can see that it would get old very quickly. There are several places to eat, but most of the food is the same. I usually go to what they call he main Dining Facility (DFAC). When you walk in there is a main line with things like meatloaf, fish, chicken, (Sunday was crab legs and steak) mashed potatoes, rice, noodles, peas, carrots, corn and always corn bread. Then there is a specialty grill that has the hot sandwich of the day or stir fry of the day like a tuna melt, Monte Cristo or rueben sandwich. Then there is another line that usually has a themed item, taco bar is popular as well as Indian bar and one time there was pizza bar. Then is the salad bar – last week they had the good green lettuce, but yesterday they just had the iceberg. I am trying to have a salad everyday. Then there is a cold deli line – cold sandwiches (I haven’t tried that yet), followed by the potato salad, macaroni salad and other things. Then in the back they have the short order line where you can get hotdogs, hamburgers, grilled cheese, French fries. I have only been there once to get a corn dog. They also have a soup section with 2-3 soups. And if that’s not enough, there is dessert…..pies, cake, Baskin Robbins ice cream, soft serve ice cream, cookies. So……you can see what I mean about the Galley being a dangerous place.

The weather has been sunny here, but still cold.

You may have read in the papers that the Secretary of State was visiting yesterday – I didn’t have a sighting – didn’t even really know about it until the end of the day. It was interesting though that we had reports of 5 rocket attacks into the Green Zone yesterday. I heard the alarm for two of them, once while I was in the Galley ("Incoming, incoming") and the all clear when I was inside the Palace. I think because it has been so safe since I’ve arrived that I have formed a false sense of security – and I still need to remember that people are shooting at us.