So I'm sitting in the new office, making what will be my final entry from Iraq, and my last entry to this journal. Tomorrow, early in the morning, I will head to Jordan, starting my 40+ hour journey back home. Wish me luck. :)

G'night everyone. You've been a lovely audience. Please remember to tip your fabulous wait staff, they work very hard.

Okay, ticket bought, flight plan decided upon, barring major disaster.

Depart Amman, 2:15 AM, 3/20/04
Arrive San Francisco (SFO), 1:50 PM 3/20/04

See you in 5 days, boys and girls.

Mm, flight plans may still be changing.  I guess they want me to stay another day so I can coordinate with people coming in from London.  It's a good thing I'm so ecstatic about going home, or this would be REALLY stressful.  As it stands, I'm a lean, mean, rollin' with the punches and gettin' shit done machine.  Geh.  So much to do!

I'll leave Baghdad in the early morning on March 18th, expected travel time to Amman : 12 hours
I'll be leaving Amman on March 19th at 1:25 AM.
I'll be in Paris for an 8 hour layover, and then off to LAX.
I'll be arriving at LAX on March 19th at 4:05 PM.

From there, I can catch a bus to SLO and arrive sometime around 1AM, for a total of ~42 hours  hours of travel.

Thank god I'm buying some of the abundant, over-the-counter valium here before I leave.  ;)

Anyone in SLO have a spare bed or couch I can lay comatose in upon my arrival?

So it looks like I'll be headed back to the U.S. on Thursday or Friday.  I still don't have my ticket, but if things go according to plan, I should be getting back some time late Friday night.  

One thing I can tell is that this is going to be a brutal travel experience, just from looking at the flight details.  Flight details like "departs AMM at 11:00 AM, arrives SFO at 9:48 PM, total flight time, 20 hrs, 48 minutes."  *shiver*  Ah, well.  20 hours in coach is worth it to see my friends and family again.  

Entries will probably be spotty while I make the mad rush to finish everything I need to get taken care of, but I'll post more details when I've got them.

I arrived back in Baghdad today.  The trip was uneventful.  As we were leaving Arbil, I saw a sign that made me laugh out loud.

"National Iraq Foundation for Communications and Industry"
This sign sounds like it would be attached to a large government building, but, in fact, it was a mobile phone store.  Smaller than the Verizon outlet in San Luis Obispo.  

Which leads me to reflect on business names here.  By and large, there seem to be two types of business names.  The first, "Al (whatever)", which, when translated, frequently winds up being something like "The Hammer Store" or "The Pants Store" or "Bob's Store".

The second is ridiculously important sounding.  The above mentioned "Hammer Store" would wind up as something like "Iraq Center for Specialized Construction Equipment and Materials".  If I saw a store like that in the U.S., I'd be afraid to shop there.  "Jesus, they'd just laugh at me if I walked into that place and asked for a hammer.  They're the National Center for Specialized Construction Equipment and Materials!"

I don't have any special insight into this phenomenon, it's just something I've noticed.

Also, in Mosul, I met three unrelated (I'm pretty sure) men named Eunice.

This is a weird country.

It's another beautiful day in Mosul, I'm looking forward to spending the day on rooftops doing site surveys.  I should be able to finish up and get back to Baghdad tomorrow, and then we'll finish this up once and for all starting next week when the last of the equipment arrives.

Rather than writing replies to the 47 hojillion comments (okay, 17) on my "Dear Anonymous Coward" post, I'll just cheat and do the quick sum up.

Thank you for being supportive, I'm glad to know that my friends aren't thinking "What are you doing?  Stay out there, you retard!"  It's good to know that people are looking forward to my return home as much as I am.  :)

As for AnonCow, I'm not going to sweat the comments of someone who is trying to put me down and doesn't have the grace to identify themselves.  It's important to address these sorts of things, though, and I'm glad that someone said the thing that I was wondering in the back of my head.  It gave me a chance to look at things that I might have otherwise left unexamined and that might have come back to haunt me later.  

I don't have any regrets about coming out here, and I'm not going to have any about leaving, either (with the exception of not seeing giantlaser and slownewsday on a regular basis.  Oh, and slownewsday's delicious delicious cooking will be missed.  And they have the best bread I've ever eaten here.  But other than that, no regrets.)

Anyway, I can tell I'm beginning to enter the "extended deranged rambling" stage of this post, so I'll wrap it up.  Thanks to all of my friends for being supportive and full of awesome.

The power has gone out and the UPS equipment is out of charge, so I'm pretty well stuck doing nothing for a moment.

I bum a cigarette off of Saad and go out on the rooftop to smoke.

The sky is perfectly clear, cloudless, shocking blue.  The air is a bit chilly and there's a steady wind, but it's comfortably warm in the sun.  The school across the street has gotten out, and the sounds of traffic mingle with the laughter, chatter, and occasional shrieks of the children waiting for their parents to pick them up.  Across the street, huge trees sway gently in the breeze.

The only unusual thing about this beautiful spring day is the thunderous roar of the jet engines overhead as three fighters circle the city on patrol.

The cigarette, like all of the cigarettes I've had here, is terrible.

Current Mood: inscrutable

Yesterday, I got an anonymous comment in my LiveJournal.

Subject: Just couldn't hack it eh?
I guess you're not quite as tough as giantlaser

I wrote a snide reply and then thought better of it, deleted both comments, and moved on.

I don't especially feel the need to justify myself to some anonymous jackass who wants to snipe at me, but upon further consideration, the comment reflected some of my own thoughts so I thought I'd put it to good use.  

Parte ye firste :
Just couldn't hack it, eh?

If you define "hacking it" as "spending the entire year in Iraq", I guess not.  I don't have any special concerns that I would be unable to do this job, or that I could live the entire year here if I chose to, though.  No individual challenge I've faced has been insurmountable, but no individual challenge I've faced has been particularly interesting or fulfilling to overcome, either.  To sum up, I'm not that engaged with the job I'm doing.  Staying here isn't a good decision for me or for the company I work for.

A digression : Could you live in someone's bathroom and eat only plain oatmeal for a month?  Probably.  But why would you if you had other options available?  How would you feel, if, after 10 days of living in someone's bathroom, eating plain oatmeal, you decided to go back to live in your perfectly nice house, and the next-door neighbor who you don't know from Adam started flicking you shit about "not being able to hack it?"

Parte ye seconde :
I guess you're not quite as tough as giantlaser

As for this, I'll go ahead and agree.  I'm probably not quite as tough - I don't have his relentless drive or his urge to force himself to do things that scare him.  Would he have quit under these circumstances?  I don't know.  He's not as attached to having personal space as I am.  He'd probably be more willing to take the long view of spending a quarter of his time here on a poorly-planned clusterfuck nightmare of a project like Mosul.  He certainly enjoys guns more than I do.  He's got Jayme here with him, so he's probably not as lonely and homesick as I am.  He also obviously enjoys the job more than I do.  Regardless of the differences, I think that under the same circumstances, he wouldn't have quit.  I'm not as tough as he is.  I'm okay with that, though.  

Tough isn't something I've ever really tried to be.  I've lived through some difficult situations, and that's required some fortitude from me, but I've never thought "Gee, I wish I were tougher."  I'll settle for being true to myself and finding happiness where I can.  Maybe that's a cop-out or a justification, sour grapes and all that.  *shrug*  Maybe not, too.  I like to think I'm self-aware enough to dodge booby traps like that on occasion.  

In the end, I'm just glad to be going home to my friends and family.  Perhaps I'm a wimpy failure, but at least I'll be a happy wimpy failure.

Current Mood: contemplative

Yesterday, at around 1 AM, I was awakened by gunfire.  It came from the side of the house opposite the gate, and it didn't sound terribly close.  Still, I spent an hour or two of wakefulness - first wondering "Am I going to get shot tonight?", then just trying to unwind.  It's not the first time I've heard gunfire here, not the closest I've heard it, nor is it the first time I've been awakened by gunfire, but with the stress I've been under, it shook me up a bit.

Yesterday morning at 6 AM, I was awakened by one of the houseguests dragging a spare mattress into my room, which is pretty much par for the course whenever The Boss is away on a road trip.

I miss my friends and my family terribly.  

I'm unhappy and I'm risking my life for a job I don't enjoy.

In terms of my resume, this job is a really great opportunity, and I may be shooting myself in the foot (proverbially speaking) by quitting.  But I'm not going to let fear of a missed opportunity trap me in a job and a situation that I don't like for a year.

Last night, I gave The Boss my 30 day notice.  He was polite and friendly, inquired as to why I was quitting, made some efforts to convince me that I should stay, but did not press the issue.  

I woke up this morning, went out on the lawn, did some exercise with one of the guards staring at me the whole time, showered, and told Tyler and Jayme.  For the first time in a couple of months, I don't find myself clenching my jaw whenever I'm not paying attention, and I slept through the night.

Perhaps this is not the right decision to make, and toughing it out would be the better choice, but it feels right to me.

I'll be returning to the United States sometime around the beginning of April, unless they send me home sooner than that.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: morning office sounds