As The Sparks Fly Upward

We are currently in the midst of a storm (comma, sand) which has knocked out our internet satellites, so I write this at 8:41 PM Iraq time, but can’t know for certain when I will be able to upload it. I have a few people out here in Iraq who read my blog, and have gotten some feedback from them, and from you, which I think is worth addressing briefly today. You can file this under “housekeeping” I suppose, but I think the following self-imposed Q & A session may go a small way toward explaining myself and this website.

Q: Why did you set up the site?
A: I set it up primarily to keep my family and close friends apprised to some degree as to my whereabouts, i.e., to answer the question on a daily (or near-daily) basis: “Is Erik still alive and well?” It also doubles as my journal in which I chronicle my experiences here, whether good or bad, happy or sad, interesting or not-so-much. All of this explains why there is a lot of travelogue on rupard.org, and why some posts aren’t really that compelling. I have a few friends who started blogs when they got out here, or shortly thereafter and then bailed two-to-three weeks later when the blog posts became kind of samey. I have slogged through the samey-ness, and if you are reading this now, so have you. Thanks, and I hope there has been something of value in each post.

Q: Where is rupard.org hosted?
A: Netfirms.com, which has been pretty good. A few outages here and there, and the support is fairly minimal, but they are a popular enough web hosting site that I have been able to find solutions to most of my initial setup problems via google. One modest downside is that they do not have an effective way (that I have found, at least), to make the page links more attractive, i.e., “rupard.org/can-sweet-can” instead of “rupard.org/?p=31″. But Netfirms is cheap ($80/year), and it does the job.

Q: Why not rupard.com?
A: When I started the site, I owned rupard.org, but not rupard.com, which was owned by a cheesy bunch of internet squatters called “Nametech, Inc.” After literally years of working their price down, I eventually bought rupard.com for around $200 in February, and eventually will mirror the site there as well. That process takes some work which is difficult to do without good net access, so will have to wait until I get home.

Q: What blogging platform do you use?
A: Wordpress, a fabulous, free piece of software which is installed on the web server at Netfirms, and does all of the fancy formatting for me. I picked a theme that I liked, altered it a bit with “plug-ins” (such as the countdown timer at the top left), and after a bit of a learning curve, was finally up and running. There are other good ones, too, including Moveable Type and the Blogspot.net platform.

Q: Do you use any blog-editing software?
A: Wordpress offers the ability to type in a post simply by clicking on the page and writing into the online editor; however, this is bandwidth-intensive, and simply does not work out here. Therefore, I could not survive out here without a simple-but-elegant piece of software called “BlogDesk” which allows me to compose offline, and then posts itself later.

Q: I know you Erik, and you are a political animal. Yet, aside from a few early posts, you have avoided politics on your blog. Why?
A: Excellent question, self. There are two reasons for this, a pragmatic one, and a more personal one. Pragmatically, my freedom of speech is somewhat abridged by my being in the employ of the US government, and having sworn to uphold the constitution when I was commissioned. Because of this, I have to be careful what I say about certain people who are in my chain-of-command, including POTUS and the Veep. The more personal reason is simply that, on the few times I dabbled in politics here, it just did not feel right. I can’t quite explain it, but there is something about being out here in uniform practically all of the time which makes me less inclined to run at the mouth about such matters. I expect this to change when I get home. If you are wondering, my politics re: the war run pretty similar to Bill Whittle’s at ejectejecteject.com.

Q: You have promised on a few occasions to write about the people with whom you work, and yet you have not really written much about them at all to-date. What gives?
A: In writing about my co-workers, I have come across a problem which I did not anticipate. Before putting their life story/pictures, etc online, I really need to ask their permission. No problem there. The problem is that if they say “yes” to me, it is hard for me to know whether they said yes because they really don’t mind being a permanent part of this blog, or because I am “the Sir,” as they refer to me in clinic (not by my request, by the way). I really love and respect these people, and do not wish to embarrass them or invade their privacy in every way. So, I have kept my discussion of my medics and other staff at a bare minimum. This may change; in fact, I hope it does, as their stories are pretty interesting, to a person. But I have to find that comfortable spot where I know that what I put out there via this vehicle will not cause discomfort to my fellow soldiers. Not so easy, as it turns out.

Q: What happened to the hermit crab?
A: It is sitting in a sealed test tube on my desk. Still. Pretty lame, I know.

Q: How many “hits” do you get a day on this blog? Who reads it?
A: My “wordpress stats” plug-in tells me that I range between 100 and 450 hits per day, with a few days higher and lower than that. These are discrete hits, so if you check it fifty times in one day, only the first one counts. There are clear trends: far fewer hits on weekends than on weekdays. The hits come from Georgia (where my family and many friends are located), the greater DC area (my former stomping grounds, and I am an alumnus of the Walter Reed Internal Medicine Program there), the Northeast (where my parents and brothers/sisters are located), scattered UT/ID/AZ hits (LDS stronghold), some Iraq hits from my colleagues, and a few random hits from elsewhere.

Q: How do I make a comment on this blog?
A: At the bottom of each of my little entries (called “posts”), there is a bit of blue-colored, bold text which says someting like “no comments” or “3 comments.” If you click on this, it will bring up a text box, wherein you can write to your heart’s content. Alternatively you can sign the “Guest Book” by clicking on the link above.

Q: Can I comment even if I am not part of the Rupard family, or don’t know you personally?
A: Absolutely! I’d love to hear from you. (Just remember: this is a “family” blog.)

Q: Why do you want my e-mail when I comment?
A: Wordpress asks for your e-mail as a default which I cannot turn off. Filling out that field is NOT required, however. If you do fill it out, that address will be for my use only, and will not appear anywhere on the screen after you hit “Send”. In addition, if you have your own website, you can enter it in the appropriate field and then if someone clicks on your name, it will go to your site.

Q: Do you enjoy writing this blog?
A: A good question to on which to end this exercise. I do enjoy writing the blog, much more so since I gave up trying to write a perfect essay every time and instead just typed out a quick draft, once-overed rapidly and then published it. This rapid-fire method causes some chaff to be tossed in with the wheat, but it makes me much more prolific, and the process of writing much less painful. Writing is enjoyable to me; revising not so much.

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.

Not in a great mood tonight, and I can’t entirely explain why. Read: time for a good old-fashioned rant. Sit back, dear reader, relax, and bask in my unmitigated irritability.

Our AFN has been down for going on four days now. This, of course, happened on a weekend where the Armed Forces Network broadcast the Yankees-Mets game (a rare opportunity to root against BOTH teams). At home, no TV is not such a big deal, as there are lots of other things to do, but here in Al Asad, our measly six channels are precious company. When I think about it, there are really only eight things that we actually do here: eat, drink, sleep, work, poop, pee, lift weights, and watch tube. That’s it. I want my AFN!

I cleaned my room this weekend, and even went to the considerable hassle of not only borrowing someone else’s vacuum to do my carpets, but also of borrowing my neighbor’s heavy-duty transformer, so that I would not kill my last remaining outlet. When I went to bed on Saturday night, my room felt clean for the first time in a long time. And then when I woke up this morning, as I was attempting to peel my sticky eyes open, I could smell that unmistakable chalky scent, and felt like someone had been banging erasers over my head all night. When I finally got my lids pried apart, I could see the Orange Glow Of Death through my windows, and I knew that I was doomed to a day of coughing, snorting, and unintentional guffawing. And, ask anyone who knows me, I don’t guffaw easily. Chortle, maybe; snicker, occasionally; hoot, sometimes; but guffaw? Rarely, if ever. And, my freshly-vacuumed carpet now has a slight orangish hue (except for the footprints).

Also on Saturday, I took my sheets in to be washed. This is a relatively rare occurrence for me, because I do not have an extra set of sheets, and thus for the 48-hour laundry turn-around time, I have to sleep directly on the pillow-top which Lorri sent me many moons ago. So I went to pick up my beloved bedding today, along with three other bags of laundry which I dropped off at the same time. All of the laundry bags were ready for pickup except one. I’ll let you guess which…

On another note: I am giving a big Hematology presentation at the hospital tomorrow afternoon. It is just about ready to go, and looks pretty good, jokes and all. Gonna put some finishing touches on that now, so will check out for the moment.

You might be a deployed soldier if:

-You have recently dusted your refrigerator. The inside of your refrigerator.
-You feel guilty that you only worked out twice today.
-Every item of footwear in your possession is made of brown suede.
-You frequently get up at 4 AM to watch live sporting events.
-You don’t know the first names of any of your co-workers.
-You occasionally don’t know the sex of your co-workers.
-The person making your Subway sandwich laughs when you ask for tomatoes.
-You drank 2 liters of water in the past three hours.
-You have a favorite flavor of Crystal Light.
-Your favorite “mall” is actually a tent.
-In the past month, you have not gone beyond a 1-mile radius of your bedroom.
-You frequently conjugate the word “Skype.”
-The most fuel-efficient vehicle in which you have ridden lately is a Hummer.
-Ounce-for-ounce, you consume more ibuprofen than carbohydrates.
-That guy on your ID card looks a bit like you, but 40 pounds heavier.
-You have recently taken a “shower” with nothing but baby wipes.
-You own 17 pairs of prescription sunglasses.
-You can say the phrase “more bacon, please” in perfect arabic.
-Today you accidentally “slept in” until 0445.
-You know 5000 jokes about Chuck Norris.
-You actually like Chuck Norris.
-You can quote lines from five different gladiator movies.
-In making decisions, you frequently ask yourself “What would Jack Bauer do?”
-Your preacher carries a 9-mm.
-You never raise your thermostat above “18.”
-You consider cheese-flavored microwave popcorn a two-course meal.
-You are beginning to see the artistic value in rap music.
-When you sneeze, orange dust comes out.