I’ve got nothing tonight. Nothing.

Not to say that there aren’t new stories here (there are), nor that I don’t have some interesting stuff in my back pocket to share with you (I do—an actual list of topics to eventually hit on, enough material there for the next few months).

It’s just that it ain’t flowing tonight, for some reason, evidenced by the fact that this is my fifth try at getting something, anything onto this web page. So, what you get instead, is a bit of a travelogue (just prepping you for Fast Sunday, kids), and some brain droppings of an even more random nature than usual.

By 7 AM today, I woke up and turned on the heater. It is surprisingly cold here still, with temps down in the low 60s early this morning, with a brisk wind making it feel colder than that. Usually when it is windy here, that equals a lot of orange-brown dust floating around, but today the air was crisp and clean. I hopped on the trusty bike, and pedalled to the clinic.

Our little clinic has been pretty chilled out lately, after a frenzy of activity the first week I was here. I think that a lot of our “frequent fliers” left town with a big wave of departures at the end of March. Some things I have seen recently:

• a severe reaction to the smallpox vaccine, in which the soldier had itchy sores all over his body; steroids’ll fix that…
• two kidney infections in young women
• a couple of smokers with a tendency to respiratory problems, pushed over the edge by the recent dustiness; one of these is heading home early sometime this week
• a lot of fingers slammed into Humvee doors (which are REALLY heavy now that they are armored); none of these were broken
• about a half-dozen people with rashes that I could not see, but they could

When I am in between patients, I spend my time checking e-mail (two work accounts and my trusty g-mail), and checking out my favorite sites:

• wsj.com – Wall Street Journal. There is at least one good article a day here, and always some primo editorials
• jewishworldreview.com – Puts all of my favorite political columnists in one place
• nytimes.com – Know thine enemy. Actually, there is a ton of great writing in the New York Times (David Brooks, Paul Krugman whom I love to hate), some hilariously bad writing (Thomas Friedman—how in the world did this metaphor mangler become an instapundit on Iraq?), and some that just makes me groan in delightful misery and horror, like reading a Harry Potter book (Maureen Dowd).
• ejectejecteject.com – Bill Whittle’s absolutely brilliant essays on Honor, Trust, Courage, Empire, War, etc. Start here. If you like Reagan, you’ll end up reading all of them, and you’ll be a better person for it.
• bosox.com – Of course.

Lunch today was forgettable, but I did sneak out some relish packets for my chicken salad kits I keep in my trailer.

The afternoon was especially dead, so we were out of there by 4:00 sharp, which is rare. I went to a dinner meeting with some doctors and administrators, and guess what we had for dinner?

C’mon, guess!

WRONG!

We had king crab legs.

I kid you not, we had king crab legs for dinner. Pretty sure they weren’t Alaskan king crab legs, but they definitely were legs, they were kingly, and it was crab. I could tell that they had been frozen, but they still tasted really good, and just the fact that we had them, in the middle of the dust bowl, was remarkable. They also served a “near beer,” which I have noticed that they do on some weekend nights, and on special occasions like Easter; the presence of the near beer reminds me that there is absolutely no alcohol served on this base, nor can you buy it at the PX, or anywhere else. No pornography, either, as it is illegal in these parts. Not that I’m keeping score, but it seems to me that we are ahead of Utah on both counts there.

But I digress; back to the meal. To all of the evil, military-industrial complex warmongers at the no-bid contract-awarded KBR corporation, who are only in it for the quick buck and who could care less about me and my soldier colleagues (read all about it; just search “KBR” on the New York Times or Washington Post web pages): thanks for the crab legs. Nice touch. Of all of the heartless, cold, faceless mega-corps out there, you are my current favorite.