Happy New Year to all from the Baghdad Cafe, formerly known as the Saddam-A-Go-Go... The title of todays missive from the front has nothing to do with the situation as such, but was a title header from my mouthpiece, Mi Consigleri, you know, my Lawyer. He's a great guy and has been a friend of the family for years and years at this point. I was able to re-connect with him and his wife, who I had sort of drifted from if only in a physical sense in that I hadn't seen them in nigh a many year or so. But when my Brother "Mr Fed" got married, they were there, and since then, I've attempted to maintain some better contact, if only in the respect that I gave them the blog location, and told them that thats where they could find my adventures, as well as any long-distance shouts for counsel, legal or otherwise.
But, New Years Day in Baghdad... and I finally took some pictures from outside the wire. It was a short trip, curtaining my usual "resupply" as the gate is now out of control with 'contraband' searches. Yeah. They caught wind of the many trips some of us were doing out there to get the hootch, and subsequently, I'm done in that it isn't worth my job to get a buzz on. So now I'm back to being 'dry' until further notice. Eh... it'll make Household Six happy in that NOW I'll be saving money instead of spending it.
Now... I started this on the 1st of January... I realize that it's now like the 10th, but the reason for this is the fucking Hajji-Net that I have to use suffers from an UNGODLY lack of connectivity and bandwidth. A squirrel on a treadmill hooked up to a generator a'la Gilligans Island would have a better chance of maintaining the loop. I'm stuck posting now with no pictures, but I promise, once I get them up and get in my new "personal" bandwidth, I should be able to post. I guess it'll be a few posts, as I've been somewhat 'camera mad' lately. I've got some great shots that I want to share... the stuff the normal media won't show in any way, shape or form.
But to give an update, New Years, as stated was a boring afair to a certain degree. Quiet, dull and booze free. The only thing as of late (and right on time I might add) is the IR came down with some abdominal crud that now has me booked to the gills with killer levels of antibiotics. The docs here, per usual, are great, and since it wasn't sure what exactly I have, they decided to kill anything I may have, had or ever may get. Overkill works for me. The main reason I went to the docs was I was feeling a might 'sore'... specifically it felt like someone had kicked me in the scrote. Yeah... too much heavy lifting as of late and I done went and strained the 'vital area' and then, whilst in there I mentioned that I didn't feel so hot all around the whole abdominal thing. They checked, gave me antibiotics and then Praise Be To God, a script for the groin pull of Percocet! The doc initially tried to give me naprosin or some such shit, but after explaining that naprosin was like eating tylenol (no good for me... not enough pain killing ability) she hooked me up with the percs, so I'll be plenty happy and painless for a few days at least.
On to other things, The workload here has been pretty heavy... lots of heavy lifting and such. The VSAT dish I'm helping to field weighs in at 1000 pounds total, which, I guess for what it's capable of is lightweight. If this's the light model, God help me if I ever had to fuck with the heavy. The military is all about getting 8 of these things shipped in and fielded every two or so weeks, but what with the holidays, shipping issues, and the usual bullshit that comes with working for the "Green Machine" it's taking a bit longer. Needless to say, besides being a "strong back-weak mind" I've also been doing other duties and trying at the same time to have some fun.
On the fun side, there ain't been no bombs, rockits or durned mortar rounds round this way since that one night waaaaay the hell back when the SOFA agreement was signed. MockRetard Al-Sadist's boys demonstrated their displeasure with it, and subsequently, I found out that the Apache Gunships shortly expressed their opinion, which from my understanding was a 'permanant' end to the arguement. Gotta love the Apache... 25mm Bushmaster "Deathcannon" and Missles to rip open a battalion of tanks... what chance does the Dirty Haj have? I mean if you haven't seen that gunsight footage of them assholes getting blown to fertilizer, I suggest a youtube search of "Iraq Apache Gun Footage" and it should come up. Gruesome even in Nightvision Green but OH so sweet!
One thing I FINALLY got to do was build a deck on the front of my hootch. It was a bitch to do as I had to utilize "Ferengi Modes of Acquisition" to secure the lumber. Thankfully, the stuff is usually just laying around in piles, and I was fortunate enough to 'acquire' enough to complete the project... The trick is to pull up and LOOK like you're SUPPOSED to be loading the lumber on the truck, and if asked, have a cover story ready. That and finding time to work on it. I had to do it on 'my time' usually during the down time right before dark. I usually work from 8am until 4pm, and then I have a break until the emails stateside start coming in at 8pm to 10pm... plus other shit that crops up like having to go to the airport and other such shit. Either way, it took me a few weeks, but now I've got a nice little deck that extends out on the front porch, and in the summer it'll kick ass for relaxing after work. That and it keeps me out of the fucking mud here for the rest of the winter season, which was part of my reason for building it. I'll post them pics too when I can.
Other busy fun things here are that I'm starting to get replies on my BIG project, which is building a compound for the company here on Liberty. We got some solid bids, and I expect the beancounting assholes to try and have their say, but seeings that I got a good bid back in early November that they didn't take, and the price has now doubled, I advised them to not be fucking stupid and jump on this shit. It amazes me how corporate can be so dumb... I had gotten a GREAT bid of lik 78K to build and outfit our stuff... it's now at like 200K... The reason being supply and demand... what with Baghdad shutting down (everything but the Embassy I hear) and coming here to Liberty and Victory, the space and supplies are in short supply, but GREAT demand. I TOLD them dumb bastards that this would happen, but they blew me off, "because they know best"... Suuuuuuuuure you do... stupid suited fruits in wing tips sitting on a Ledger with a thumb in the ass and a pocket protector in the jacket. Me? I'm just the 'guy on the ground' with 5 years overseas experience... WTF do I know?
Well, break out the lube oil and bend over boys... this'n here's gonna be an allllllllll day affair.
Otherwise, Like I sdaid, quiet... almost too quiet. We'll have to see as RUMINT (Rumor Intel) is that the conventional wisdom is that the Dirty Haj are gonna try to 'test' the Obamamessiah. Me? The next week or so I'm keeping the body armor handy as in the past, RUMINT tends to be a 60-40 kind of thing.... 60 percent of the time it's total bullshit, but that 40% is what can kill you. I'll upsdate more, and when I get some fucking bandwidth, I'll share more pics. I can't even post the pics to my fucking MySpace or Facebook page either! Fuck. Anyways... Happy Belated New Year Y'all!
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