Since most of our time here isn’t being spent kicking down doors or being shot at, one would assume that this place would be pretty relaxing or even “chill” as the teenagers say these days. The following are a just a few instances in the last 24 hours when I was anything, but “chill”.
Gnats in yo’ face
Yesterday afternoon Dan and I decided to go for a run around Z-lake. For those of you who have never been to Baghdad, Z-lake is a big z-shaped lake that Saddam had built around one of his palaces. Saddam always wanted a place to “get away from it all”. What better place to do that than at a lake? The current lake used to be full of dirt and rocks, but hey, when you’re the King and you want a lake, just make someone build it for you. And that’s what he did. So, Dan and I decided that there was no better way to spend an afternoon in Baghdad then to go for a run around some dead dude’s lake. It started off pretty well. We were running at a brisk, but enjoyable pace. But then, out of nowhere, we hit a force field of gnats around the 2.5- 3 mile mark. I literally mean a force field. I tried to tuck my chin into my chest and stop breathing but there was no way around it. I remember looking to Dan and shouting at the top of my lungs, “Worst idea ever! We are never doing this again! I can’t believe the Army pays you to make decisions!” At the end of the run Dan had no fewer than 250 gnats stuck to his sweaty forehead. Gross!
The face off
The worst part of my mornings is by far breakfast. I mix up what I eat from day to day, but I always ensure I have 4 hardboiled eggs on my plate. Gotta get your protein… After loading the plate up and filling up on OJ, I sat down at the table and began what I like to call, the faceoff. I immediately let out a big sigh as I knew I was about to spend way too much time and effort trying to crack open these eggs. Anyone reading this who has actually tried them knows exactly what I’m talking about. Rumor has it that the cooks are playing some kind of cruel joke on the Americans. The bottom line is that these hard boiled eggs are the hottest things I’ve ever touched. There’s different ways to war game it so you can minimize the amount of 2nd degree burns you receive to your fingertips. I don’t know if I’ve quite figured out the best way to do it, but today I tried cracking each egg piece by piece and rotating through the eggs in a painful game of round robin. 2 f*cks, and 1 god dam*it later, the eggs were out of their shells and steaming. It almost reminds me of all the effort you go through to crack open crab legs just to get to the payoff at the end when they’re freed from their shells. But I can’t stress enough that this is way more painful.
Sure, we could do that….but you”ll need to change first
The Army is all about standards. Uniform standards, which can be found in Army Regulation 670-1, are one of the most referred to standards you will hear about in the Army. Even when you are deployed there are uniform standards. Some of these uniform standards seem pretty logical (ie: physical training will be conducted in the physical training uniform). Others don’t seem so logical. I’m starting to build a personal pet peeve toward certain squadron uniform standards. The uniform standard for the dining facility (that’s the DFAC for you army types) is the Army Combat Uniform (ACUs). I sometimes find myself sitting in my room in pts thinking about how hungry I am, but trying to decide if eating is actually worth the 4 minutes of effort it takes to change into another set of clothes, just to come back immediately after lunch and change back into pts so I can conduct pt, followed by another change into ACUs so I can get dinner, followed by yet another change into pts to sleep in. You never fully understand how much of a pain in the ass changing clothes is until you find yourself doing it 7 times a day.
It’s the little things that kill you.
-The Quarterback
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