R&R leave completed, return to duty
9:15PM Central Afghan Time
First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to sroni2004, who continues (though not at AadlerSpeed) to produce copy for our joint project, “Queen’s Gambit”. No definitive word yet on whether I’ll see her at WriterCon II, but I continue to hope.
I’m back from my furlough to Germany, and relieved to be settled in again. I departed KAF the evening of 20 February, and returned the morning of 21 March, so I was gone a full month. Since only 15 days of that was taken up by the furlough itself, that will offer some idea of just how much time one spends traveling or waiting for travel.
I stayed ten days at a resort at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, then five at a hotel in Freising (sort of a suburb of Munich). I went on tours, and spent a day learning to ski, but mostly I just relaxed. (Relaxation included a certain amount of alcohol indulgence, but the plain fact is that I don’t drink that much when I’m off on my own; that’s for group partying.) I also wrote a new fic, which I had deliberately delayed beginning because I wanted to do the whole thing in Germany … and, upon finishing it, was so happy that I wrote a drabble in the Munich airport.
(That still leaves me one short of my self-chosen goal of doing nine stories during this deployment, but actually I’ve already beaten my Iraq performance. While on orders for that deployment, I finished one story and wrote seven more in entirety, for a total of eight; this time through, I’ve so far finished one story, written seven more in entirety, and done a drabble and a short Alias fic. I still intend to produce one more in the Buffyverse - and have five weeks to do so - but I’m pretty happy with things as they stand.)
The major problem came when it was time for me to return to duty. I had a several-hour layover in Amsterdam, followed by almost six hours in the air to Kuwait, and then had to sit at the Kuwait airport for something like four more hours before the bus took us to the transition base; I didn’t get to bed till 6:30 AM. Out again late enough in the evening that I didn’t arrive at Bagram (Afghanistan) until 10:30 PM, by which point it was too late to call anyone at our HQ to come get me, so I slept at the USO facility next door to the terminal. I had already checked with the Air Force people as to when I should show up for a flight to KAF; I called twice more to confirm, got a night’s sleep, reported as arranged … and was told roll call had been two hours before, and the plane was taxiing for takeoff as we spoke. I was so disgusted that I parked at the USO for the next 43 hours, eating potato chips and MREs and napping on the couches, walking to the terminal every three or four hours to check flight updates. Two were scheduled and then canceled; I caught the first that actually got off the ground, landed at 9:00 AM, then went through the rest of the day without sleep so I could get a normal bedtime.
I have some things to catch up on, but I’ll spend the next couple of days keying in and editing the single story and the drabble, for posting here. I also will devote some time to answering feedback posts to “First Do No Harm”; the last two weeks, I didn’t have enough Internet access to be able to respond.
Our replacements are to begin arriving within a couple of weeks, and we should be back in the States the first week of May. I can’t believe it’s almost over.
Man, I’m glad to be back!