The Holiday Spirit
Everyone is really getting into the holiday spirit here. Virtually every office has decorations somewhere. In our case we've got them everywhere! All four of us received decorations from friends and family, so we went to town on our office. Some might consider it a bad dream -- a trailer park collides with Dollar Store.
There was a large inflated Santa near the front door of our headquarters building, but one night he was kidnapped. The ransom note, carefully constructed of letters cut out of magazines, demanded better food and sexier women in return for Santa's life (obviously written by men!). Santa was returned without incident the next day, but apparently suffered abuse at the hands of his captors as he would no longer hold air. Thankfully the PAO office was able to keep this incident out of the news, however, Human Rights Watch has threatened to blow the lid on the Coalition's treatment of Santa. It never stops.
Mail call has been an interesting event. The other day we received some 7,000 lbs of mail -- more than 500 pieces. We have a very small postal center, so the packages were unloaded into the yard in front of the post office and a horde of volunteers worked like ants sorting and stacking the packages by section to be distributed throughout the compound. If the amount of food being received is any indication of our future, we will all weigh 25 lbs more after the holidays!
Most offices are planning holiday parties this week but the one thing we will all miss (besides family) is the spiked egg nog. General Order #1 prohibits the consumption of alcohol, along with a few other things. I've never read it (culpable deniability), but I heard it also prohibits sex. Now let's think about this for a moment -- if you were the commander would prohibiting booze and sex be the first thing on your to-do list when you took command? I think not. It's a special hardship for PR consultants like myself to have dinner minus wine. So we'll be toasting the holidays with the usual soft drinks, bottled water and hopefully a little sparkling grape juice or "near beer." It's just a good thing we get hardship duty pay!
While I sit and type this my senior sergeant is surfing the news on the Internet and my plans officer, an Artilleryman, is watching Toy Story II on his computer. I'm listening to music on my computer using headphones, but can still hear him giggling over the blaring music. My plans officer, a female Captain, just baked a loaf of bread in her breadmaker. The smell of fresh baked bread has attracted a small following of men out of the Joint Operations Center. We all spent time in the gym tonight and are relaxing in our sweats as we contemplate when to pull the plug for the evening and retire to our rooms. Sometimes it's hard to tear ourselves away from the office as it's really the only action we have here.
It's a good thing the four of us get along so well considering the amount of time we spend together each day. The people here are probably the single most important thing that makes this bearable. They all have incredibly positive attitudes and can be a lot of fun.
I just want you to know that you can sleep well tonight. We've got the front lines of the Global War on Terrorism covered -- with chocolates, fresh baked bread, cartoons and a lot of goodwill.
There was a large inflated Santa near the front door of our headquarters building, but one night he was kidnapped. The ransom note, carefully constructed of letters cut out of magazines, demanded better food and sexier women in return for Santa's life (obviously written by men!). Santa was returned without incident the next day, but apparently suffered abuse at the hands of his captors as he would no longer hold air. Thankfully the PAO office was able to keep this incident out of the news, however, Human Rights Watch has threatened to blow the lid on the Coalition's treatment of Santa. It never stops.
Mail call has been an interesting event. The other day we received some 7,000 lbs of mail -- more than 500 pieces. We have a very small postal center, so the packages were unloaded into the yard in front of the post office and a horde of volunteers worked like ants sorting and stacking the packages by section to be distributed throughout the compound. If the amount of food being received is any indication of our future, we will all weigh 25 lbs more after the holidays!
Most offices are planning holiday parties this week but the one thing we will all miss (besides family) is the spiked egg nog. General Order #1 prohibits the consumption of alcohol, along with a few other things. I've never read it (culpable deniability), but I heard it also prohibits sex. Now let's think about this for a moment -- if you were the commander would prohibiting booze and sex be the first thing on your to-do list when you took command? I think not. It's a special hardship for PR consultants like myself to have dinner minus wine. So we'll be toasting the holidays with the usual soft drinks, bottled water and hopefully a little sparkling grape juice or "near beer." It's just a good thing we get hardship duty pay!
While I sit and type this my senior sergeant is surfing the news on the Internet and my plans officer, an Artilleryman, is watching Toy Story II on his computer. I'm listening to music on my computer using headphones, but can still hear him giggling over the blaring music. My plans officer, a female Captain, just baked a loaf of bread in her breadmaker. The smell of fresh baked bread has attracted a small following of men out of the Joint Operations Center. We all spent time in the gym tonight and are relaxing in our sweats as we contemplate when to pull the plug for the evening and retire to our rooms. Sometimes it's hard to tear ourselves away from the office as it's really the only action we have here.
It's a good thing the four of us get along so well considering the amount of time we spend together each day. The people here are probably the single most important thing that makes this bearable. They all have incredibly positive attitudes and can be a lot of fun.
I just want you to know that you can sleep well tonight. We've got the front lines of the Global War on Terrorism covered -- with chocolates, fresh baked bread, cartoons and a lot of goodwill.
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