16. March 2009 · Comments Off on Orange Juice and Other Things We Take for Granted in the Food World… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

As promised, more about the funny OJ picture I posted.

There are assorted DFACs (Dining FACilities) scattered among the base. Different foods, different hours, different dining atmospheres. Most of the time I’m eating from the dining hall near my workplace 1-2 times per day…and it was never eating in the chow hall. I’d eat during my duty shift and I can’t be away from the desk for too long…so I get the food to go and eat in the darkness of my workstation.

I eat my largest meal at about 1:30am, a dinner-like meal (called “Midnight Meal”) and then I pick up some breakfast not long after sunrise. Sometimes I grab the breakfast foods during my midnight meal and just have some cereal and milk at my desk. I turn in in the mid-afternoon for a “night’s” sleep and if I felt hungry, I’d have a snack of some sort, like an apple, some yogurt, or if I was really hungry, a 6″ Subway Club sandwich on Parmasean Oregano bread.

Did I mention that my dorm is right behind a Subway? I treated myself once a week the first few weeks, but I haven’t been at all in the month of March.

In the DFAC there are a lot of choices…imagine what you see in a college dining hall. There’s a main course that’s usually pretty “comfort foody”, like roast beef and mashed potatoes, or chicken parmasean, or perhaps fried catfish with hush puppies. Then you have other options, such as a full salad bar, fresh fruit bar, deli bar and breakfast bar. And it’s a serious breakfast bar, comprable to a Shoney’s or full service hotel breakfast bar.

Also, you have a short-order grill, making awesome omelettes for breakfast, and serving up burgers and grilled chicken sandwiches at lunch/dinner/midnight.

Sidebar about the omelettes. They’re outstanding. The military dining halls seem to have this special way to make their omelettes…paper-thin egg layer filled with the goodies, then wrapped in the egg like a burrito. Or a crepe. I haven’t had an omelette lately (cholesterol concerns), so I’m going to show you pictures of the ones I’ve made for my family on our flat griddle as an example of what we get here. So yummy!

From 2008 01 23 Assorted Cooking

From 2008 01 23 Assorted Cooking

Did I mention the desserts? Lots of great options, Breyer’s ice cream, European-style gelato, baked goods galore. Seasonal fare:

From 2009 02 14 AUAB V-Day Cake

A lot of food. It’s tempting to eat full meals for 3 meals a day. Like the college dining hall experience, having everything prepared for me might make it easy to gain weight, like I did in college!

The food quality is decent, I guess. I’m again comparing it to a college dining hall experience, and in my case, Penn State’s dining hall is my frame of reference. Not a 5-star Zagat’s experience, but definitely not bad either.

Since we have it quite well here in so many other ways, such as this wireless connection with which I’m blogging to you, I’m going to avoid complaining too much about our food quality. Oftentimes, they’re serving foods I simply don’t like: stroganoff, baked fish, well-done steaks, etc.

Note: You might have heard on the news about “Kellogg, Brown and Root” food and construction services, and some of the contracting scandals in the past several years related to how they’re owned by Halliburton/Richard Cheney. We do not have KBR food service here, it’s offered in Iraq and Afghanistan and from what the Airmen tell me, it’s very outstanding.

Anyhow, there are also some basic staples that are in such high demand, food services had challenges keeping it in stock for us. Orange juice is the first example. I saw assorted fruit juice boxes for us my first day here. Some stray mango and strawberry juices. Someone mentioned that the orange juice boxes are good, too. I didn’t help myself to any on the first day, not realizing that I wouldn’t see those juices again in the dining hall for 60 days!

There’s a machine that dispenses juices from concentrate, but the output wasn’t very good. At my first attempt at orange juice from that machine, I heard the glop, glop glop of the concentrate chunks plopping into my glass, and I was morified! On occasion we’d have apple juice or cranberry juice from concentrate and I would just mix the too-concentrated output from the machine with some water. That was good enough and fulfilled my fruit juice craving.

I’d mentioned a couple weeks ago my excitement at getting some orange juice when I went to the Carefour store off base. Starting on March 10th, these cute little baby cartons appeared in the beverage cases in our dining halls here. YAY! And it’s my favorite kind, super-pulpy!

From 2009 03 18 OJ

We get milk here in the form of little 8 oz. bottles (actually, I think it’s 225 ml). Whole, 2%, skim, chocolate and strawberry. It’s all very good, but my stomach has a hard time with other-than-skim milk, so I stick with skim in my cereal. Or a bottle with my dinner.

Apparently I’m not the only one who prefers skim milk, we run out about 1-2 days per month. That’s a little frustrating because it’s very important to me to keep up with my calcium. But of course I survive!
I’ve started getting pretty creative in my meals lately — they’ve fully cycled through the menus here several times. Tonight I made a BLT sandwich: lettuce, tomato, wheat bread from the deli bar, some bacon from the breakfast bar. That was quite tasty.
Earlier this week I had a breakfast burrito. I asked the short-order grillmaster to scramble me an egg with a sausage patty chopped up into it, with some tomato and green pepper. Served it up in a tortilla wrap with some salsa. That’s a also very good.
I think I’ve grown weary of not knowing exactly what’s in my food. Call me a control freak: when I’m cooking at home, I make a point to know the ingredients of everything I make, but when faced with a dining hall serving up comfort foods like chicken-fried steak with pepper gravy, you don’t know any more about what’s going into you than at a diner. The food might be super-yummy at times, but I simply can’t make a habit of it.
I work a desk job, I sit on my butt for 75-90% of my time on shift. I make a point to work out 5-6 times per week, so I’m not gaining weight, but I’m definitely not losing weight either.
Like the laundry — having the food cooked for me, while it’s great for the Lazy Lady side of Major Mom, leaves me with a loss of control. I cannot wait to be home again to cook for the family and myself!
11. March 2009 · Comments Off on Pictures from After Howie’s Surgery · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

I’ve corrected the coding errors. Sorry ’bout that. Click the link in the lower left to see a better version of the photo album.

07. March 2009 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,
I’m seem to be suffering some sort of insomnia. I’ve not gotten more than 3-4 hours’ sleep per night this past week, except for one night — a night off — where I made things worse by sleeping right through till almost morning. This is bad because I work nights here.

So I’m living that quote above. I remember once learning that if you cannot sleep, your body can still get rest by just remaining still in the dark.

That’s easier said than done. There are several contributors to the insomnia — working night shifts is a start. Also, I think as I get older I’m developing an oversensitivity to caffeine. Over the past 2 weeks I’ve been compensating for the lack of sleep by consuming more and more caffeine: diet sodas, coffee, chocolate…

Yesterday, because we were showing around some visitors from the U.S., I needed to stay awake all day after working overnight. So I consumed some 2 large coffees, 2 or 3 cans of Diet Pepsi, ahem, Pepsi Diet, and also this beverage called “Rip It”…and energy drink that’s provided to us in the dining halls here. Really. You will see on this website that Rip It “Fuels Our Heroes”…

Then I turn around and try to go to sleep before all that caffeine works out of my body. So even though I was playing Patricia-the-Bobble-Head in the meetings — as were our visitors who were suffering horrific jet lag, I would lie in the dark and be alone with my thoughts and frustrations.

So after my 2-3 hours sleep Friday evening, I awakened at 11pm with a resolve to go into work and not consume any caffeine during my shift.

I did not do well. It was horrible. I must have faded in and out several dozen times. I hadn’t been this tired since Timmy was a baby, and I certainly hadn’t felt this tired doing critical Air Force work in over a decade! I’d be sitting at my workstation, staring at weather charts, and out of nowhere it would be 10 minutes later. Did I fall asleep? Was I just staring at the computer screen? The good news was that I didn’t miss any of my tasks during the shift, but I certainly looked foolish swooning all over the place…my workstation is alongside a high-traffic pathway and who knows who saw me.

(My boss here is now a Facebook friend and might be reading this — hey Matt! Don’t worry, everything got done!)

The good news is that I thought I would have had a blinding headache, but I don’t. I think getting the caffeine out of my system is all I need to do, and I will stick to one good-sized coffee per day, 1-2 hours after I awaken, as I typically do at home.

I’m barely awake enough to finish typing up this blog entry, but I have about 30 more minutes on the clothing in the dryer.

Yes, I’m currently doing my own laundry. I’m living in Rose’s dorm and I get to do my own laundry! As you might remember from my previous post about the laundry, although I thought I would absolutely LOVE the idea of laundry service, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be and I’m thrilled to get to do my own this morning.

Also, the civilian wireless connections on this base have been giving me a lot of problems, so I’m limited in my blog posts for now to e-mail only. In other words, I am able to e-mail text to my Blogger account and it posts automatically. I’m also about to set up the ability to e-mail Twitter updates, which tie into the Twitter widget on the right side of the blog and my Facebook status. These posts are also auto-forwarded to Facebook.

Anyhoo, enjoy this blog post and I hope to come back to you soon with some fresh photos and an update on Howie!

04. March 2009 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

So many of you know and love our Howie-the-Wonderdog.

From Howie

From Howie

Howie apparently blew out his knee while running around in our backyard on Tuesday night. We’re guessing he was chasing squirrels, they are the bane to his existence! He was hit by a car while chasing a squirrel in 2002. He now cannot put weight on one of his hind legs. We ended up cutting our weekly webcam session short Tuesday night when the boys alerted Dave that Howie was walking funny after coming in from the yard.

Dave took Howie to the vet Wednesday and was told that Howie’s knee was “blown out” and he’d need surgery to repair it. The vet used an ACL injury analogy that you often hear associated with professional football players.

And even with the repair, we will have to be careful with him for several months.

I talked to Dave on the phone today so he could explain to me with more detail what’s going on…he’s scheduled the surgery on Monday. Dave will also have to explain to the boys what will be going on with Howie, and that it’ll be very very important that he not exert too much pressure on his sore leg after the procedure. Dave will have to carry Howie quite a bit.

I’m very distraught that this had to happen while I’m away…I’m definitely hoping for the best, from what the vet has said, this is a routine injury and is a routine procedure to repair him. Dave seems to have the situation under control…I wish he could just have a normal week. I don’t think there’s been a week without crisis, illness or injury since I’ve left just after New Year’s!

04. March 2009 · Comments Off on This Week with David Brinkley…I mean, with Major Mom · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

I’ve laid low from the web lately. Partly on purpose, partly because the WiFi hotspot has been acting strangely. So here’s a summary of what I’ve been up to this week (omitting job-related stuff, obviously):

First off, a friend from when we were stationed in FL came over from a nearby base for a visit. She came over two Fridays in a row — Friday being her day off. The first time she came was to see a couple of us, and by her next visit, 5-6 other people had caught wind of her first visit and convinced her to spend the entire day on our base, catching all of us as we were migrating through our various shift schedules. Yes, she’s that popular 🙂

Her name is Kasi and we had a great time together in Florida. Here is a picture of the two of us in front of the dining hall, one of the few places we’re allowed to be photographed:

From 2009 02 27 Kasi_Patricia_AUAB

Just like how I have to wear civilian clothing when I go off base, she had to also for her visit over to here. Kasi’s been training for numerous triathalons when she gets home to the Washington, D.C. area this summer and her fit lifestyle and new boyfriend have been doing her very well!

On Monday, I got to take another trip off base, this time with my colleague on the weather night shift, Mike, and the night shift JAG, Brad. The point of the trip was to give Mike, our relative newcomer, a windshield tour of the city. Unfortunately, we had another pesky duststorm and we were a little limited. We went to the Villagio Mall again, and did some driving around downtown, and had lunch at a lovely hole-in-the-wall diner-type joint in the ‘burbs.

Meet Brad. It turns out he’s also stationed at Offutt and lives in a neighborhood very close to ours. We arrived the same week and I really enjoy talking to him — he’s one of the coolest JAGs I’ve ever met! I apologize for the picture of him stuffing his face, but I more want to point out the mixed dips and flatbread we had with lunch. This was SO GOOD!

From 2009 03 02 Doha_BradMike

And here I am enjoying it too, but you couldn’t see the mixed dips as well:

From 2009 03 02 Doha_BradMike

We also enjoyed a “mixed meat” grill, which was an assortment of lamb, beef and chicken kabobs, served with vegetables and more flatbreads, as well as chicken “shwarmas”, which are like chicken lettuce wraps. When all was said and done, it came to about $8 per person for an incredible amount of food!

I had some sleep issues this past week. In part from my off-base trip, but also in general, some temperature changes and some back problems posed challenges. For about 5 days straight, I was getting 4-5 hours of sleep per night. It used to be just once a week or so…such as after a trip off base and we’d get back sorta late. But after 5 days of it, I was a zombie by Monday night’s shift and I had a pretty tough time staying focused while on shift.

Thankfully, my sleep on Tuesday was wonderful, and I was able to get 8-9 hours of rest, and was so happy to see my boys on the webcam early Wednesday morning.

For the first time, Timmy cried while on the webcam and it nearly snapped my heart in two. He said the reason he was upset was because Daddy and I kept talking and he wanted to tell me something, but usually he can use his words to express himself that way, so the tears were definitely building up for some time.

So many other folks here with young children have told me about their kids having tearful episodes on the webcam right away, so I was considering myself pretty fortunate…they were right, it’s pretty emotional when it happens. Timmy was pretty strong, though, he took himself off the camera for 2-3 minutes, and then he came back to us with a big smile on his face, and he told me about his new friend at child care. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand his new friend’s name that well, it sounds foreign, like “Najoon”, but I did understand when he said his new friend’s name’s first letter is “N” and the second letter is “J”. So maybe it was “Njune?”

Timmy also told me I’d been gone 56 days. According to the count they’re doing, I’ll be gone 44 more days, but I think it’ll be more like 39 if I can help it. I won’t have any exact information until April, but based on what I’m seeing with the inbound/outbound flight schedules, I’m encouraged that I’ll be away for less than 100 days…

The temperatures are on the rise here. We got up to 93 last Saturday before noon (Feb. 28th), but then a duststorm came through and plummeted the temperature a whopping 12 degrees! But with the wind it made quite the difference. We’re still in a cool spell, but I think by this weekend it’ll be consistently in the 90s every afternoon. Unlike Iraq and Saudi Arabia’s hot, dry weather, we’re close enough to the Persian Gulf that we can get a bit of humidity here, too. I see my uniforms needing to be washed a lot more often, I was soaked in sweat just walking from work to my dorm at 8:30am on Saturday.

This upcoming week brings several diversions that definitely helps with the routine around here. Tomorrow I get to move into Rose’s dorm room while she gets a 2 week vacation. Rose is assigned here for a year, so it’s one of the benefits of commiting oneself for that long. Another perk is that her dorm is more like a suite hotel-type accomodation. I’ll take some pictures when I move in…I’m very much looking forward to a semi-private bathroom and kitchenette, a dinette set, a small easy chair in the room, and limited in-room Internet access. It’s government Internet, which blocks many sites, such as my blog, but I’ll be able to get into e-mail much easier.

Also, we have a number of visitors coming in from the states this week to visit with the weather teams stationed in the Middle East. As one of the few token reservists here, I’ve sought some advice from my commander and Senior NCOs as to what I should/shouldn’t discuss in terms of reservist issues. To be honest, we don’t have much — we’re an easy bunch, but I hope I get a chance to voice our concerns.

Such diversions to the schedule significantly help my attitude here. This past week was my toughest yet in terms of keeping my spirits up. I started eating poorly (no veggies or fruit, too much dessert), wasn’t motivated to exercise, and was frustrated from the lack of sleep. Those three factors together were toxic to my attitudes about everything else. I was decidedly crankier and folks started to notice. I think the sleep and eating have been improved, and today I ran 5 miles and did some bicep/chest weight training. I feel great right now!

Time for post-workout shower and lunch! Taco bar at the dining hall — I make myself a Moe’s style burrito!

01. March 2009 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Books Read on this Deployment

1.) The Marching Season, Daniel Silva: 16 Jan 09
2.) Angels and Demons, Dan Brown: 20 Jan 09
3.) Deception Point, Dan Brown: 25 Jan 09
4.) The Other Boleyn Girl, Phillipa Gregory: 3 Feb 09
5.) Marley & Me, John Grogan: 5 Feb 09
6.) Cruel and Unusual, Patricia Cornwell: 11 Feb 09
7.) Point of Origin, Patricia Cornwell: 21 Feb 09
8.) Black Notice, Patricia Cornwell: 1 Mar 09

27. February 2009 · 6 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

I’ve been getting a number of care packages from my family and friends. Dave and the boys, my in-laws, Paul’s family and Wendy’s family have all sent goodies and they’ve all been awesome. The snacks, books, magazines and drink mixes have been greatly appreciated!

This post today is about one particular…unusual…item I received at the end of January.

A Chia Pet.

And not just any Chia Pet:

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

How cool is this? It came from Paul and his family and I was very excited to get it. Folks who work near me who saw me unwrap it agree: it’s a cool gift! Paul and his wife Louise must have been sympathetic after reading how excited I was about a pathetic little patch of foliage — the first I had seen after several days here.

I’d given Dave a Chia Homer before, 2-3 Christmases ago. I remember the issues we had keeping his head completely filled with water, the very top of the head is higher than the water outlet, so the very top of the head never gets any water and therefore doesn’t grow.

Sounds like a challenge to me!

So here we go! I started this project in Feb 1st, so you’ll see 4 weeks worth of growth! It’s like one of my traditional craft blog posts! Fun fun fun!

First things first: GO SOAK YOUR HEAD! As is always the case with terra cotta, a good soaking will help the pot retain moisture.

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

I had difficulty finding a container to use, but with some ingenuity, I come up with this:

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

See how nicely Homer fits inside?

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

Next, we start the seed mixture soaking. Chia puts the seed in some sort of stuff so that when you soak it, it becomes a gel that will adhere to the terra cotta easier.

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

…and you let that stuff soak for a “few” hours. I had instructions that said “overnight” and the seed packet said “1 hour”. So I went middle-of-the-road and let it soak for the duration of my weather shift, probably about 9 hours.

So now spread the seed gel stuff over Homer’s head:

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

And there you have it — Homer’s Gellin’ (2 Feb):

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

Now enjoy some time-lapse photos of Homer’s growth, starting with 4 Feb:

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

6 Feb:

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer
From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

8 Feb — yeah I started remembering to rotate him after seeing this directional growth:

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

9 Feb (do you sense a lack of lighting?):

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer
From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

Let me pause here and address the lighting issue. You see, Homer is a thirsty son-of-a-gun. I was giving him some 4 oz. of water per day, so I needed to keep him in plain sight so I can remember to water him. Unfortunately, I work overnight, so Homer spent time in a flourscent-lit room while I work, and I kept the room dark during the day while I sleep.

It was at about this point that I told myself “Forget that!” and moved him to the windowsill on the OTHER SIDE of my light-blocking curtain.

The point of this picture below is to show how sparse the growth is on the top of the head. As mentioned earlier, Homer is thirsty, so the seeds at the very top seldom were watered, it was very difficult to keep the water levels that high.

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

13 Feb — looking a bit like Don King:

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

After moving to the window, Homer started doing MUCH better. Unfortunately, I can’t enjoy him the same since he remains on the other side of the curtain from me.

27 Feb:

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

Showing the root growth down the back of Homer’s neck!:

From 2009 01 31 ChiaHomer

So now what? With all the growth, it’s now more difficult to keep Homer watered. He’s consuming 6+ oz. of water every 24 hours, in part from evaporation through the terra cotta, in part from what the foliage requires.

I’m probably going to scrub down Homer and start again for the month of March, this time taking better advantage of the sunlight on the other side of the curtain earlier in the process.

That should leave enough seed for Paul to generate his own oxygen source once he gets here in the next few weeks.

I went out shopping at the “Villagio” mall yesterday with Rose. As expected, I wasn’t able to take that many photos, since we’re advised not to get natives into our photographs.

I did a little bit of shopping — H&M had some pretty head scarves that I could wear as non-head scarves (i.e., around my neck). But mostly it was awesome to window shop with Rose, the stores there cover the entire spectrum of shopping experiences, from Claire’s jewelry all the way to Chopard! We had a fun lunch at a Mediterreanean lounge, mezzahs and chicken sandwiches. Then we just wandered for the afternoon.

I got to pay a visit to the Carrefour store, which I had mentioned previously is a French-owned “hypermart” chain, like Walmart. No, like Super Walmart! So I browsed the grocery section and came across something I hadn’t had since I got here…

Orange juice!

For some reason, the juice selection at the dining facilities has been lacking. They have one of those from-concentrate dispenser machines that sometimes works, and the one time I successfully got juice out of it…the juice was brown. Ew?

You can buy shelf-stable juice (i.e., not in the refrigerated section) at the BX, but at Carrefour, they had full-fledged dairy, meats, produce, etc. I decided I’d pick up a carton of fresh orange juice.

That was harder than I thought. The juices were mostly blends of mango, strawberry, apple, pineapple, lemon and orange juices. They all seemed delicious, but I was on a mission.

And then I found it:

From 2009 02 17 Villagio_BilingualSigns

Oops…let me turn the carton around for you:

From 2009 02 17 Villagio_BilingualSigns

Jackpot! I was a good girl and only took one carton, though I was tempted to get about 10 of them! I love orange juice — especially the super-pulpy stuff. The rest of the family prefers the less-pulp kind (to quote Dave: “I don’t want to chew my orange juice”), so I usually enjoy super-thick juices when I’m on my own.

Then I noticed the price: 14 Qatari Riyals. That came to about $4.25 for the 1/2 gallon carton!

Phew!

But I don’t care — I have my OJ and today I’ve enjoyed to nice 8 oz. glasses (okay, plastic cups) of the liquid sunshine!

One of the things I did take pictures of today were the signs for many of the western companies as translated into Arabic. In fact, visit the original photo album and you can play the “what American company is it?” game with some of the signs…

I might be tempted to sneak in one more glass — er, cup — of juice before I head to sleep this afternoon.

14. February 2009 · Comments Off on Meanwhile…Back at the Ranch… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

The kids (and that means Dave too) were enjoying their first “workable” snow of the season.

What does “workable” mean? It means snow angels that didn’t blow away, plus snowmen and snow forts!

Enjoy the slideshow!

This is my attempt to share a video I took about 1/2 hour after the first wall of dust and wind hit us here on the 11th. Visibility was about 1/10 of a mile and the winds were from the northwest at 35-40 knots.
It takes a REALLY long time to upload a video to You Tube from here, so this is a Google Picasa attempt.

Click on it and see what happens…also feel free to view the rest of the pictures from this album here. I didn’t take many, conditions weren’t great for the camera.

The wind has died down considerably today, but the dust is still suspended in about the lowest 500 feet. Visibilities are up to about 3 miles, but dust is still getting everywhere, including my laptop as I type this. Don’t fret, Dave sent me plenty of canned air and computer cleansing wipes.