messiestobjects

Do the birthday health gamut

I'm in Amman, Jordan! Not much to say... I got fitted for new glasses and went to the dentist. Nothin' like getting your teeth drilled for the first time in 10 years on your birthday. Good fun. Saw the Roman Colliseum that they have here... it's pretty small as Roman Colliseums go, but I got a nice sepia tinted panoramic shot of it. If Jen had been there, she would've been in the shot and looking all sepia colored, too. (1!)
Tomorrow I'll get my EKG exam... my vacation is going to be so crazy that I have to get an EKG test in order to go! ..er ... what if I don't pass it? What's an EKG? I didn't think of that until  just now... great. I should be alright... I quit  smoking close to a year ago now... okay 8 months ago, but close enough.
Anyway, keep your collective fingers crossed for me. Think, 'go EKG! go EKG!'

S.A. (S.pace A.dventures? S.outh A.frica? S.uper A.wesome?!)

My itinerary change is official: I'm signed up for the Zero-Gravity flight on November 19th in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida instead! They had to cancel my Zero-Gravity flight in Moscow due to mechanical issues with the plane. Huge Bummer. But the Mig-25 edge-of-space flight is still on. One less day in Moscow, one more day in St. Petersburg.  The U.S. Zero-G is cheaper than the Moscow one, and I'll be spending the remaining cash on the extra flight and Hotel there, so it pretty much balances out. So I'll be in the States for Thanksgiving for sure!
Also, I just got an email from my Space Adventures planner, and she says that there will be some people from some popular South African news show there on the same day as me to do the Mig-25 flight, and that they want to interview other fliers... so I get to be on South African TV, too. Dude, total package deal. It's a good thing nobody I know lives in SA to see me make a dork out of myself.

it's a messy casserole, after all

So that friend I mentioned a few posts back got back to me! Very nice e-running into old friends. Anyway, he gave me a good topic for this one; "So, like, what the hell you doing in Baghdad? That is quite a place to be at this moment in time. what do you think of the war? what kind of work is it you're doing? You probably guessed I'm against it like the majority of people on earth are, I only hope you are there trying to do some good...?" ... erm. I get this alot... and it's really bothersome for me. I am on the Bush Bashing Bandwagon, no doubt about it. Every time I see his picture on CNN or FOX or some other entertainment network like those, I want to vomit. Well, okay, not REALLY, but the man makes me sick. And yet...
And yet. Here I am, livin' large offa the cash flow tricklin' down from the blindfolded lady of justice's now-covered nipple. Alot of people here feel pretty much the same way... Love my country, Hate my Government, but money's cool, too.
So the burden of guilt is on me, and now I hafta explain myself. See, this is why I shouldn't be blogging. I've got too much to answer for, and I'm a terrible liar.
Anyway. I'll tell you what I told him. (But with alot more words, 'cause I've had time to think about it...) I am a migrant worker. I'm a migrant worker because for as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to travel. I've travelled lots of places simply by finding a job in some far off place and tramped around on my time off. It's awesome! I can't imagine my life up to this point having gone any other way. Baghdad was simply the next logical step in that series of steps that  I was already, well, you know. Stepping...on. Or something. I try not to say things like 'Path' or 'Life's Journey', because even though Bush won't make me actually vomit, gay cliches like those just might.
Well. Baghdad. Next logical step. And believe me, I've seen some things and changed in ways I never thought I'd be lucky enough to experience. Or unlucky. Your choice how to take it.
I have a similar relationship with my job that I have with my country: Love my work, hate my boss. I'm Project Manager of a large camp for security teams! WOW! I started as a Housekeeping supervisor at my last job. I get to make decisions and stuff, now, like a real grown-up person! If the guy who hired me had known me better, well, let's just say I got real lucky. Still, this will always look awesome on my resume, no matter how it ends up. But my boss drives me insane. He's one of those guys that thinks he knows something about work, even though he's had a silver spoon up his butt for most of his life.
I have met alot of friends here in Iraq... There is a family that I've been working with since my first week here. I brought them with me when I changed jobs. When I leave, likely I'll never see them again. That's true anyway, even in America... It's rare that you ever again meet up with people you knew in a certain setting (school, work, etc..) once you leave it. But the difference here in Iraq is that the departing is much more stark. Every time I go on vacation, my Iraqi friends make a point of making me promise to come back...
There's also a very real excitement that comes with being in the middle of the world's most watched TV drama. I've met ambassadors, seen really big explosions, and whistled 'Darth Vader's Theme' while Paul Bremer and Dan Rather walked by my dinner table, back in the CPA days. I've eaten dinner Iraqi style in the home of some Bona Fide Iraqis... That family I was telling you about. I've driven in a not very sober state alone at high speeds down Route Irish, 'The Most Dangerous Road in Iraq'. Okay, yes I'm stupid.
The money. It's great. I can buy a chicken farm with a fireplace, now.
  But let's get right down to it. There is not one single reason named above keeping me here, in and of itself. They do make a fine casserole, though.
And what do I think of the war? The war sucks. All the lies, which are more obvious than George W. being a throwback chimpanzee, they suck too. You know what else sucks? The insurgents. They suck pretty bad. They kill more Iraqis than anyone else, in the name of God. Alot of my employees have had to quit because someone found out they were working for Americans, and were threatened. One of Scott's employees was actually kidnapped and ransomed for $30,000 or so. That sucks. My best Iraqi friend, Steven, was afraid to tell his new girlfriend that he worked with Americans until 2 months or so had passed and he made sure she wouldn't be the type to tell someone. Pretty sucky. If you check out some pictures I found on a disc here, you'll see lots of other sucky stuff related to the war.
Anyway, not sure where I was going with that.  I'm not sure that there's anywhere to go with it.
  So as you can see, if nothing else, my reasoning certainly is pretty messy. Good thing I named my page the way I did... so Apropos!

Seasoned traveller contemplates an end to his travelling days

The original header on my site read "Seasoned traveller contemplates an end to his travelling days"  I didn't really know why I did that... I just kind of typed it out and there it was. Then my friend Jen wrote me to ask what I'd meant by it, and at the same time offered the explanation! "what's this about?  Is it the trip to space (or close to it), that has got you feeling like there's nothing left to do?"
Damn good point! After riding to the edge of the Earth in a super-sonic jet, where can I go where I won't be a trifle bored? That may sound jaded, but I've actually experienced this before. On my first vacation from Baghdad, I was in Germany and the U.S.... I really felt kind of out of things... Everybody in the States drives so tamely, 55 mph, straight lines, no bombs or gunfire, not zig-zagging under every bridge in case someone standing on it throws something down at you, not constantly looking in every direction for people who might look like they want to kill you... there was a kind of decompression. It's a cliche, but everything looks alot smaller once you've travelled in big places.
Now, I think I'm getting ahead of myself a bit; I haven't even made it to Russia yet, let alone the cockpit of the Mig-25, but believe me, my imagination has covered every aspect of the flight. I aleady know what I feel like back in more normal parts of the world, and I'm sure Jen is right; that's exactly how I felt when I wrote that... plus I've been thinking about buying a pension or a hotel or something, which means I'd have to stay there and run it... who knows.
I really hope my travelling days aren't over... i need to do South America yet. Then I'll only have to hit Australia and Antarctica to get all of the continents. At least I'm getting the atmosphere out of the way!
(Excuse me... I just got excited enough that I have to go to the bathroom again...)

messiestobjects' messy adventures

As I said in my first post, I've got a late start on the blogging thing, and all of my best stuff is old news. That's why I've opened another blog page where I've posted a whole bunch of old mass emails which I wrote about various adventures and/or nonsense during my stay in Baghdad. There are also a few from my European days, but only a few.
  I'm kind of self-conscious about putting stuff on the internet, especially since alot of it is only interesting to me or people who've been there. But it's been fun doing it, and I suspect anybody that bothers to read it is interested anyway, and otherwise will steer clear of yet another guy's bloviating blog.

I lie, and I lie...

Since it's my first time ever blogging, and because I've had a vodka cranberry or two, I'm pretty jazzed about the whole thing, and now I feel like writing something. Derka Derka Jihad Derka.
So I'll start with my nickname: messiestobjects came about because when I was signing up for my very first yahoo email account, way back in yonder yore times, I wanted to be messierobjects. Which, as any self respecting guy who reads books about popular science in order to get girls knows, is a classification for really big objects in space, like this:

But some jerk had it already, and I'll be damned if I ever settle for something like messierobjects1972 blah blah bleckam bleckam. And so, having compensation issues, messiestobjects was born.
Incidentally, I'm from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and I got the idea for doing this from a website I stumbled on today... I found an old friend from Stroudsburg online because he had a blog. I've posted on his site and have yet to hear from him, but when I do, it's gonna be cool. So I thought, man, if I had a blog, someday someone might stumble on it and, you know, that's pretty cool, too.

First Post!

I've gone and done it. I'm thinking about the whole blogging thing, and here I am, signing up. I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing with it, other than getting some frustration out from time to time.  I feel like this is coming late in my life... I've been slacking around Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for about 8 years now, and now I decide to go public... all my best stuff is old news. HOWEVER...
In one week I'll be flying to Jordan to hang out, take care of some mundane sorts of life things, float in some salt at the dead sea, blah blah blah. And then a week later I'm flying to Moscow so that I can fly to the very edge of the planet in a Mig-25 with the company 'Space Adventures', the same people that put that Tito guy on the International Space Station for 20 million bucks. Here are some details about that and other programs they offer.
So I'll certainly be writing about all that.
So, I guess some backlogging is in order... meh. Perhaps another time when I'm more in the mood to write about myself. You can always check out my about page if you give two craps. If you don't, believe me I totally understand. Having said that, here's a link to my smugmug page where I post all the pictures I've taken on my travels.