We Al Asad-dwellers are in the middle of yet another hellacious dust storm which has lasted about a week, and have had a few power outages a day over that period (presumably related). When the power went down a couple of months ago, it wasn’t a huge deal; we would just move the functional clinic into the few rooms with windows, and we were back in business. Now that it is warmer, the power outages are a bit more problematic, as the temperature begins to rise rapidly and within an hour of the A/C going off, the buildings become almost uninhabitable.

We sat in the dark in a swelteringly hot clinic today when the lights went off at around 2 PM. After about an hour, the temps inside had to have been 90-plus. We kept the clinic open, but the patients slowed down to a trickle, so I sought a cooler location than my office, and ended up in one of the patient rooms, where I made myself at home on the exam table, inclining one side of the table and laying back on the butcher paper. I popped my ipod in my ear, and put on a good audiobook (”The Long Ball” by Adelman) and listened for a few minutes before the heat and the comfortable position put me to sleep.

I woke up about 15 minutes later in a pool of sweat, and noted that the lights were still out, and I could hear some shuffling down the hall. The medics were moving all of our vaccines into containers with ice, so they would not spoil in the currently-useless refrigerator. Another one of the problems that occurs when the lights go down. We stuck around until about 1630, when the lights came back on, and then we finished our notes and headed home.

Not a whole lot else to report to you from the Orange Zone today, but I would like to ramble aimlessly on one other topic. No Iraq content below, so feel free to check out here, if you wish.

Viva La Vida

In the seventies, when I was a kid, there weren’t nearly as many bands out there making music, but there were a lot more “supergroups”—the kind of rock group that can fill a huge arena, and for whom a new album release was a big event (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, etc). Today, everyone and his little brother can “release” an album via the internet or iTunes, and they often do just that. As a result, there are thousands of “indie” bands, some of them excellent, some not-so-great (that part hasn’t changed). But a few supergroups remain, and one of those is Coldplay, a British group whose clean sound and artsy approach to music I have admired, but somehow have never quite “gotten into.”

Until now.

Coldplay’s latest album just came out this week (although through the magic of the internet plus a whole lot of patience, I had it a week ago), and is truly excellent. I’ll spare you the full-on review here, as you can read that elsewhere, but suffice it to say that Viva La Vida is a truly great album, start-to-finish. Added to Coldplay’s trademark top-notch production and instrumentation are some really great melodies, and an upbeat theme (”Live life to the fullest”) that runs throughout the ten seamless tracks. It has violins and cellos and pregnant piano chords, among other tricks (including, at one point, a full orchestra), all of which keeps things creative and interesting. Five stars from me, and something that I think even the dadster would like (though he might want to eat a Mento first).

[Note from your faithful editor: I tried to upload a song, streamable from this site, and will attempt again later, but for now the orange dust is gumming up the works and I barely got this much up. The band's official site (www.coldplay.com) allows you to listen to snippets, or watch a video.]