Friday was the Fourth of July here on Al Asad. For some reason (in retrospect probably unwarranted), I thought that this would be treated as a “special” day here, but ’twas (mostly) not to be. No one really expected any time off—we are, after all, in a war zone, and the bad guys certainly don’t stop doing their bad guy stuff on a United States’ holiday. But I though that maybe there would be a special meal or something, like there was on the Army’s birthday.

Nope. Nada. (Actually, there was a nice display at the Ripper DFAC, but food-wise: nothing)

So, we made our own. Early on Friday, word got out that the PX had received a shipment of steaks from America, and we quickly dispatched a medic with a lot of twenties in hand to go check it out. She came back with a bunch of frozen goodies, including a couple of ribeyes for me. At lunchtime, outside the clinic in the covered triage area, we had an old-fashioned barbie, with some good onion burgers (I ate one of those) and our various steaks. SGT Christie England of Middlebury, CT cooked mine (and another one which I bought for our optometrist) and it was truly fabulous. I’m not usually a fan of previously-frozen steak, but this was melt-in-my-mouth delicious. Definitely the best thing I have eaten since my arrival to The Brown Zone many months ago.

Clinic in the afternoon was completely dead, with only two patients (bilateral lower extremity swelling in a foreigner who may just have hepatitis C, and an allergic rash). Right after clinic I had planned to hit the Gym and work off some of that ribeye, but we got a report that the Ripper DFAC had Reuben sandwiches, and we have been waiting for those. 1LT Coleman, SPCs Villareal, Lee, and Santiago all went with us there, where we each ate a sandwich and brought a few home for our buddies. I also brought an entire carry-out container full of olives and pickles, as I have been craving salty things of late.

Because I had royally pigged-out on Friday, I vowed to do a couple of cardio/aerobic sessions on Saturday. Clinic was again very light, and afterwards, before anyone could whisk me in a truck and off to lunch, I snuck off to the gym. After lifting weights a bit, I did 6.5 miles on the treadmill, and then went home to eat lunch. A couple of hours later, I was meeting COL Gober to do the fourteen-mile bike loop. CPT Baker came with me, but when we met COL Gober at the clinic, he had to make some calls.

Turns out there had been a MASCAL at the hospital, a military term for multiple casualties coming in at once. The story is that a suicide bomber had gone into an Iraqi facility (police?) and blown himself up, and injured seven of the good guys. There were a number of internal injuries, one Iraqi with a severe leg artery laceration, but no deaths among the good guys. The bomber himself had been fatally wounded. When the COL called back to get results of a CT scan, one of the patients had a kidney issue, so he had to head back to the hospital so would not be making the ride with us. Baker and I went, and with the winds picking up, it ended up being a very tough ride, and by the end of it, I felt completely wasted. Once I was back home, I watched a rather uninteresting Yanks-Sox game, and fell asleep pretty early on.

I think that when I look back at this July fourth, it will be a memorable one, in spite of the lack of formal celebration. The experience which, I believe, will most spring to my mind is a sweet one: On Friday night, I went to our small LDS congregation’s Family Home Evening meeting, during which we read aloud the Declaration of Independence, and played some dominoes in the little shack-like annex off of the back of the main chapel. During our meeting, the Jewish congregation shared the annex with us and, a bit apart from us, sang some rousing, traditionally Jewish-sounding songs in Yiddish. I will add that to the many surreal experiences I have had out here: a bunch of Latter-day Saints on one side of a slap-dash plywood building in the desert mountains of Iraq, with a gathering of Jewish soldiers on the other end, all of us acting out that most American of pursuits: the praising of God in accordance with our own consciences. Served well to remind me of the reasons why our forefathers declared independence in the first place.

The days continue to fly by here on Al Asad, with one weekend seeming to meld into the next.

We all like it this way.

Everything is working at the moment, too: my slow-but-steady internet keeps rolling, AFN is back on, the sand has gone away for the moment, the lights have remained on for one week straight, my bedsheets are clean and on my bed, and things are generally in their proper place.

Tomorrow is, of course, the 4th of July, and we are expecting some kind of celebration on post, though none has been mentioned as yet. At least, there should be something decent for dinner. As for our clinic, we are open (as always). But I and the senior enlisted have volunteered to “cover” for the day, so that our junior enlisted can take the day off.

Some random brain droppings, for what they are worth:

1. I am not a big reality TV fan (other than Fox News), but while channel-surfing a few days back, I came across the Gordon Ramsay-hosted “Kitchen Nightmares.” It was like watching a train wreck, and I am now addicted. The way this rather brutish, rude, self-absorbed host deals with the arrogant, equally self-absorbed, and incompetent chefs he has been dispatched to help, is truly awe-inspiring. And yet, in the end, they always end up liking this dude who has called them lazy, stupid, haughty, and untalented throughout the entire program.
2. Now that it is high summer in Iraq, we are unable to take any kind of a cold or even cool shower. The barrels which house our “non-potable water” are above ground and often dark blue, so they get very warm by about mid-day. No one even touches the hot-water knob anymore. We just crank the “cold” water and hope it is merely lukewarm.
3. The Red Sox are a decent team this year, but their lack of a bullpen has sunk them lately, and will continue to do so. Also their lack of David Ortiz.
4. There is a single BMW on Al Asad, which is often parked at one particular location which I will not mention here. The owner is a local national. The car sticks out like a sore thumb, among all of the tactical vehicles, white pickups with red flame stickers on the sides, and Chevy Trailblazers, the latter of which are a rather recent phenomenon. Our clinic has the only purple Trailblazer I’ve seen here.

Sorry, folks, not too much for you today. Just a small helping of the usual stuff. Whenever something interesting happens at work (usually interesting in a bad way), the medics look at me with a straight face and offer this only-partly-facetious condolence: “Well, at least you’ll have something to write on your blog tonight.”

Somewhere around my first month here on Al Asad, I heard mention that five DFACs (Dining FACilities) exist here on this post.

DFAC #1 is the small mess hall near the gym—the only place I have gone for breakfast here, and has pretty good food. It is known to the medics as the “rat” DFAC because when they first arrived here, their doctor at the time, MAJ Davis, had to inspect the place and found evidence of a rat infestation. Don’t know exactly what happened after that.

DFAC #3 is the massive hall where we eat most often. The food is just okay, but the selection is large, with a short-order bar, and a large salad bar. We go there whenever we have a big crowd, because everyone will be able to find something that they like. The middle of DFAC #3 is a large ice cream stand, with bona fide Baskin Robbins ice cream. There, an Indian man will give you a massive scoop of ice cream (even if you ask for a tiny one) and there is a self-serve area where you can add candies, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, caramel, and other items to your frozen treat.

DFAC #4 and #5 are almost identical, and are very small, designed to be convenient to the soldiers/marines who live in some of the nether reaches of the FOB, and they don’t offer a lot of selection. They do, however, have the last remaining true-blue Gatorade bottles, though.

The only reason I know about all of these is because I decided a couple of months back to buck the usual trend of eating only at the one or two most convenient DFACs throughout deployment. I wanted to get to them all. Kind of like checking out all of the restaurants in town. This is a bit harder than it seems, as there is no readily-available published map to this place (for OPSEC reasons), and some of the groups who use the outlying mess halls rarely come into contact with us city-dwellers. But over time, I discovered the location of all of them except for DFAC #2.

The lone remaining DFAC is in the center of a large Marine encampment called “Ripper,” and just getting in there requires multiple ID checks. Because of this, and also because of our transportation issues (bye bye bus), I never made it to the Ripper DFAC until last night. I had heard through the grapevine (one of my physician friends) that DFAC #2 was rumored to have Indian food (made by actual Indian people, not some KBR shmo from Oklahoma City) on Tuesday nights. This sounded incredible to me: anything different is very appealing at this point. It took some persuading, but I got 1LT Coleman and CPT Baker to head out there with me last night after my lecture. We made our way into the encampment, and after checking our weapons and waving IDs multiple times, we walked into a building which, from the outside, looked rather unimpressive.

Once we got in, however, I noted that there was an Appleby’s style square bar, with barstools and television hung from the ceiling, and a sign saying “wings and things” hanging from the rafters. There was also the reputed Indian bar (chicken marsala, some kind of really tasty rice, vegetable curry, and a spicy shrimp dish. Delish! There was also a taco bar (with actual, real corn taco shells), a Rueben sandwich grill (kraut + beef + buttered, grilled wheat bread truly = crazy delicious), and the main line with a bunch of other stuff. The layout of the mess hall was decidedly less “governmental” with some nice decor, a bunch of plasma screens, and the aforementioned bar in the middle. And they had bananas! Green bananas, but hey, they’re bananas. I’m not complaining.

So, all in all a good day for me. We went back again today and (ho, hum!) they were serving lobster claws and ribeye. The sad thing is that I really wanted another reuben, but that will have to wait.

Until tomorrow night.