Notes from today

A really good workout and walk last night. I have no intention ofbulking up or getting my "swell on" as they say in these parts. It just feels good to move, stretch and walk. I am planning on starting the yoga class late next week. I am getting questions daily about when I am going to "host" the class. I am going to use a video at first to make sure we are on track and everything flows. Then pick it up on my own.

I am having a hard time with mindless idle chat. I would prefer not to chat at all. Especially not about just stuff... There was a huge announcement at real work today. Thank goodness my co-workers are keeping me informed.

Craving today: Lobster Bisque and Slovenian Mushroom Soup
We got to talking about soup and the fact that I really like it. Especially, bread bowls. You cannot beat soup in a bread bowl. Summers are great for soup because the vegetables are both fresh and plentiful. I am keeping my facebook updated, my friends and neighbors are on it so it makes it easier.

Yummy summer soup
Blog
posts

Interesting blog

A

few things going on here.

Politics and change are running high right now.

I am attempting to stay away from the politics and be flexible of any change. As long as my shift runs smoothly, I just hand it off. Period. And when I pick it back up the next day, I try to iron it out again for our duration.

I am trying to cut back on things that really grind my nerves, but one of the things, that max me out is the chewing of sunflower seeds and spitting the seeds in a cup. I may be greatly tested. My right hand man is a big sunflower eater, which in turn ends with a big sunflower shell spitter. He must have had a cup of sun flower seeds in his mouth yesterday and then occasionally he will chat with me with the seeds in the mouth. I know this is a small issue, but it is like a small pebble in your shoe.

Speaking of shoes. When I first got here I developed a huge blister. There is so much river rock everywhere that my ankles roll back and forth. I definitely neededsome trail shoes. They have came in the mail and for the record they are pink. So, imagine this... me in Iraq with pink trail shoes. They are perfect. Providing the comfort I need and a small smile when I lookdown.

Currently reading:

A Homemade Life
Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table
By Molly Wizenberg

This is a great to read for the beginning weeks of a deployment. All of the recipes sound great. I am loving this book. I am trying to just read a few chapters each night to make it last a little longer. This would make a great gift too. I have read her blog on and off for a long time, nice to see that she has published a great book to mirror her blog.
Orangette
Her struggles and her memoir run the common theme for me ... food.. relationships... cancer...
I especially love how she met her husband... It is a great story.

From the Publisher:
When Molly Wizenberg's father died of cancer, everyone told her to go easy on herself, to hold off on making any major decisions for a while. But when she tried going back to her apartment in Seattle and returning to graduate school, she knew it wasn't possible to resume life as though nothing had happened. So she went to Paris, a city that held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat. She was supposed to be doing research for her dissertation, but more often, she found herself peering through the windows of chocolate shops, trekking across town to try a new pâtisserie, or tasting cheeses at outdoor markets, until one evening when she sat in the Luxembourg Gardens reading cookbooks until it was too dark to see, she realized that her heart was not in her studies but in the kitchen.

At first, it wasn't clear where this epiphany might lead. Like her long letters home describing the details of every meal and market, Molly's blog Orangette started out merely as a pleasant pastime. But it wasn't long before her writing and recipes developed an international following. Every week, devoted readers logged on to find out what Molly was cooking, eating, reading, and thinking, and it seemed she had finally found her passion. But the story wasn't over: one reader in particular, a curly-haired, food-loving composer from New York, found himself enchanted by the redhead in Seattle, and their email correspondence blossomed into a long-distance romance.

In A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother's pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately entwined. You won't be able to decide whether to curl up and sink into the story or to head straight to the market to fill your basket with ingredients for Cider-Glazed Salmon and Pistachio Cake with Honeyed Apricots.

Wednesday

My days are filled.
It is ok here.
We are having a dust storm, these last for hours which lead to days.
I bought the out going OPs SGM's bike and helmet. I hope to use it a bunch.
Basic Training graduation is next week for my little girl. Now soldier. Now woman.
I received two great boxes yesterday. Dried blueberries...from a co-worker. Cannot beat that.
I am eating toast with honey and peanut butter for dinner several times a week. It is my thing at the moment at the mess hall.
I finally uploaded pics from the camera and posted some on fb.
Cannot wait to see the pics from next week.

strange on Audio

This is was in the free stack and I have been using it to go to sleep... It is interesting... but different.
Snark By David Denby

Description
What is snark? You recognize it when you see it -- a tone of teasing, snide, undermining abuse, nasty and knowing, that is spreading like pinkeye through the media and threatening to take over how Americans converse with each other and what they can count on as true. Snark attempts to steal someone's mojo, erase her cool, annihilate her effectiveness. In this sharp and witty polemic, New Yorker critic and bestselling author David Denby takes on the snarkers, naming the nine principles of snark -- the standard techniques its practitioners use to poison their arrows. Snarkers like to think they are deploying wit, but mostly they are exposing the seethe and snarl of an unhappy country, releasing bad feeling but little laughter.
In this highly entertaining essay, Denby traces the history of snark through the ages, starting with its invention as personal insult in the drinking clubs of ancient Athens, tracking its development all the way to the age of the Internet, where it has become the sole purpose and style of many media, political, and celebrity Web sites. Snark releases the anguish of the dispossessed, envious, and frightened; it flows when a dying class of the powerful struggles to keep the barbarians outside the gates, or, alternately, when those outsiders want to take over the halls of the powerful and expel the office-holders. Snark was behind the London-based magazine Private Eye, launched amid the dying embers of the British empire in 1961; it was also central to the career-hungry, New York-based magazine Spy. It has flourished over the years in the works of everyone from the startling Roman poet Juvenal to Alexander Pope to Tom Wolfe to a million commenters snarling at other people behind handles. Thanks to the grand dame of snark, it has a prominent place twice a week on the opinion page of the New York Times.
Denby has fun snarking the snarkers, expelling the bums and promoting the true wits, but he is also making a serious point: the Internet has put snark on steroids. In politics, snark means the lowest, most insinuating and insulting side can win. For the young, a savage piece of gossip could ruin a reputation and possibly a future career. And for all of us, snark just sucks the humor out of life. Denby defends the right of any of us to be cruel, but shows us how the real pros pull it off. Snark, he says, is for the amateurs.

All is well.
I am settling in. Making time to read, exercise and walk.
Most of the time is enjoyable.
I have been fortunate during mail call. It is great to know I have pretty amazing friends and the fact that not all of my packages are not from my personal orders from Amazon or drugstore.com.
The daughter only has a few days of Basic left, I cannot wait to chat with next week and see a few pics.
The food has been ok in the mess hall, but can tell I will need to supplement the food. The fresh veggies and fruit appear to be on a rotational basis. Bananas only get placed out at breakfast, so I need to try to get to that meal at least regularly. I picked up a pear the color of a beautiful fall leaf this morning. I was looking forward to having it for lunch. The appearance was fare greater than the taste... It was a little dry and the sweetness has poured out somewhere in route. Maybe next time. The sad thing is that the desserts are great, I just do not want to eat desserts all the time. Cakes, cobblers, cookies, ice cream, even cheese cake....

random pictures

Temp living
Fancy bathrooms in the Kuwait Dining Facility.
Lifestyles of the free and almost famous

great read - most enjoyable

Just finished listening to The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan.

Highly recommend it.

From the publisher:

For Kelly Corrigan, family is everything. At thirty-six, she had a marriage that worked, two funny, active kids, and a weekly newspaper column. But even as a thriving adult, Kelly still saw herself as the daughter of garrulous Irish-American charmer George Corrigan. She was living deep within what she calls the Middle Place—“that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap”—comfortably wedged between her adult duties and her parents’ care. But Kelly is abruptly shoved into coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast--and gets the diagnosis no one wants to hear. When George, too, learns that he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly’s turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her—and to show us a woman who finally takes the leap and grows up.
Kelly lives deep within what she calls the Middle Place—“that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap”—comfortably wedged between her adult duties and her parents’ care. But she’s abruptly shoved into a coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast—and gets the diagnosis no one wants to hear. And so Kelly’s journey to full-blown adulthood begins. When George, too, learns he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly’s turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her—and show us a woman as she finally takes the leap and grows up.
Kelly Corrigan is a natural-born storyteller, a gift you quickly recognize as her father’s legacy, and her stories are rich with everyday details. She captures the beat of an ordinary life and the tender, sometimes fractious moments that bind families together. Rueful and honest, Kelly is the prized friend who will tell you her darkest, lowest, screwiest thoughts, and then later, dance on the coffee table at your party.
Funny, yet heart-wrenching, The Middle Place is about being a parent and a child at the same time. It is about the special double-vision you get when you are standing with one foot in each place. It is about the family you make and the family you came from—and locating, navigating, and finally celebrating the place where they meet. It is about reaching for life with both hands—and finding it.

Until yesterday

Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman
36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. *37 When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. 38 Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.

Until yesterday, I did not understand the deeper meaning of this event in Luke.
I never realized how dirty Jesus' might have been, How many tears she would have shed to clean them, How moved she must have been to have been there at that place, at that moment. And how the perfume would have changed the complete aroma in the room with the Pharisees.

49 The men at the table said among themselves, "Who is this man, that he goes around forgiving sins?" 50 And Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace

Wow - not sure how Friday came so quickly.
The days and nights are blending a bit.
The weather is consistently staying at 115 during the day, but cools off later in the evening.
I checked out the movie I love you, Man at the MWR last night. It is funny. Had us all laughing out loud and it was funny to be in the theatre with 98% males and the main characters receives an open mouth kiss from another man. They were squirming which made me laugh harder!

Serious Note:
A U.S. soldier is believed to have been captured by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan's border region, a U.S. military official said on Thursday. link
Say a little prayer.

Everyone is talking about Michael Jackson. It is funny to chat with the BC and CSM about MJ.
I had a poster in my room of him, in fact I might still have it tucked in my hope chest. I have this great picture of Cheryl, Amy and Jamie from about the 8th or 9th grade and his poster is the back drop behind us. I do not have it on digits, but maybe I will scan some them when I return.