Day #2 in Kuwait. I am sitting in a USO tent right now, where the A/C is cranked and has it down to a crisp 84 degrees in here. The good news is that I have some nice pictures, which span the trip so far, and which I will upload as soon as I figure out a way to do it with the poor bandwidth that I have.

Today started at 0400 after a pretty miserable night’s sleep for all of us. There is a big myspace.com concert on post here tonight and one of the bands practiced until well after midnight. Not a real intricate band, either—sort of a death metal-rap-punk outfit, which sounded from my vantage point (inside my tent, about 1/4 mile away from the stage) like three basses and a drummer, with more of a lead grunter than a lead singer. The band is named “Disturbed.” That name makes a subsequent derisive comment so easy, that I’m just gonna let it lie. Either way, it is nice of them to come all the way out here to Kuwait.

The throbbing bass ‘n’ drums was not the only thing keeping me and my compadres awake, though; we also have some serious jet lag. I have slept no more than 8 hours over the past 48, but I still could not get to sleep easily, or stay asleep when I got there. Ended up listening to an audiobook all night—that plus the sounds of my equally restless bunkmates squeaking around in their cots and getting up to hit the latrine, a trip I also made. I finally called it at 0400 and got up to take a shower. At 0500, we were headed out to the shooting range.

The range was about a half-hour away from the base, so we went through the same drill with the bus and a lead car with a gunner. A little less creepy in the daylight, though. Now note the sequence and timing of events here, as it is typical Army:

0500-0530: Bus ride to range

0530-0545: Safety briefing

0545-0600: Range patrol personnel arrive and drive around “clearing the range” for us. (I asked what this meant, and found out that they are ensuring that there are no camels out there. Apparently, it costs the US government 5000 bucks if we kill a camel.)

0600-0615: Camel patrol reports “all clear,” and we take some pix, then walk to the range.

0615-0617: We shoot our allotted 15 rounds each from our Beretta M9 pistols. No targets, no score sheets, just shooting at black silhouettes, maybe 30 meters away.

0617-0630: Pick up shells.

0630-0700: Wait in bus for unclear reasons, but no one was complaining (too busy nodding off).

0700-0800: Drive back to post. (Took longer coming back, because of the security in getting on post.)

So, if you have done the math, that was a three hour excursion, involving 7 people besides the doctors, so that we could shoot off 15 rounds at a silhouette. I can now understand why someone might take a potshot at a camel, but thankfully, this was a day no dromedaries would die. Oh, and by the way:

approx 0705: Camel sighting! Woo-hoo! And these were no fat, westernized, hot-dog eating fraudulent American CINOs (”Camels In Name Only”). These were real Kuwaiti camels, two-hump variety (everyone’s preferred camel, if we’re really honest with ourselves), walking around a real desert. Besides the soldiers and range patrollers, these were the only living creatures of any kind (plant, animal insect) which we saw while on our trip to the desert. I kid you not, there was not one leaf of dying grass, not one ant, not even any tumbleweed. This Kuwaiti desert is truly a sterile entity.

When we got back, we had time for breakfast. I’ve decided to stop saying how good the food is, so that I don’t offend Lorri. Actually, the bacon was a little chewy today, so I limited myself to only about 17 pieces. Lots of Texas Pete’s slathered on the scrambled eggs, and a nice big cup of leaded Coke. We then had some computer training, electronic medical records. COL Vigersky got himself and me out of the latter 3/4ths of this training, as we active duty folks constantly use the military medical system, AHLTA.

Note: Rant ahead.  (Sorry, but sooner or later I had to address this topic.) AHLTA (don’t know what that stands for, but around the Army docs it’s “Aw, Hell, Let’s Try Again”) is a much-dreaded, horrifically bad and uniformly despised system for entering patient encounters (notes), some bureaucrat’s $10 billion dollar baby, which is virtually non-functional due to poor programming and templates which were clearly not designed by a working physician. What makes it all the more frustrating is that the VA has a system which is excellent, intuitive and easy to use, and in the public domain (i.e. FREE). We could have just adopted that one (or the also-excellent Walter Reed Internet Clinical Database or ICDB, which I’m told lives on in the Air Force), but somebody somewhere simply could not bear to divest the Army of this expensive, clunky, and unusable system. It used to be the joke that the best thing about being deployed was that you got a break from AHLTA, but unfortunately, this rough beast has worked its way to the middle-east, and is current slouching towards Baghdad as I write these words.

Back to the stuff you care about. Here is a picture of our posse out here Kuwait. The pic on this page is small, but if you click on it, you’ll get a bigger one.

Left to right, you’re looking at LTC Tom Essex (Internal Medicine), yours truly, COL Bob Vigersky (Endocrinologist at Walter Reed), CPTs Charlie Anonuevo and Brent Johnson (dentists), and MAJ Tom Earwood (Psychologist). Kneeling in front is our own “combat grandma,” nurse anesthestist COL Page Neville, one of the sweetest ladies I’ve ever met, and not bad handling that M9 either. This was taken this AM (10 March) out in the Kuwaiti desert, right before our 15 rounds. You’ll notice that we are in “full battle rattle”–flack vests with metal inserts, which weighs in at about 40 pounds. My M9 is hanging from the green pouch on my chest.