The Beginning
I guess this photo is as good as any other to begin my blog posts because, despite of all the chaos of the past few months and the traveling I've recently done, it's really pretty simple where I am. I am here. Or at least, here is the easiest way for you to find out where I am, how I am, and what I'm doing.
Tonight, here is Winchester, Virginia, after half a day of learning how to provide secondary first aid on an injured person (in Dunn Loring) and another half day of driving cars really, really fast and stopping them even faster here near Winchester. (Ann, I promise not to drive like that when I'm at home.) You can probably figure out which part of the day was more fun. Tomorrow I get to shoot guns and watch things get blown up (and how to keep myself from being blown up), and Friday, I get to drive cars really really fast again. Except it will be backwards, and from the passenger's seat (it's called driver-down training). And yes, I expect the next two days not only to be fun, but to provide me with very practical skills I hope to never need, but will be glad if I have to. I guess the same is true for the less interesting first aid classes from earlier this week.
The photo above is from last week. It's taken from the Foreign Service Institute in Fairfax where I was receiving training about Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq. It is not intended as a commentary about my new employer, the US State Department. I'm assuming they just haven't gotten around to putting building maps in the new wings to K building, but maybe they want me to be lost. What can I say, I took the job! I'll be back at FSI next week for the more general Iraq course, before heading out next Friday night to Baghdad via London and Amman, Jordan. After they get done with me in Baghdad, I'm heading off to PRT Diyala, which is at a forward operating base near Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad.
Now, you may be asking yourself what this has to do with Oregon land use law. Well, nothing. This is a career change for me. Some have called it a mid-life crisis (it isn't), and others swear that I have lost my mind (well, it's usually put in the form of, "are you [insert your favorite expletive] NUTS?!?!?!) You'll have to ask Ann about that, but I don't think so. There's no need to go into the 101 reasons why I'm here in this post. Suffice it to say that my first step into a career in international development is as a PRT Rule of Law Advisor (Iraq) for the State Department. It's a 13-month position that should, I expect, help me figure out whether I really want to be doing this kind of work in the future (but preferably in a non-conflict environment with Ann by my side). It's a change that was long in coming, germinated last fall, took a lot of nurturing for several months at the beginning of the year, and suddenly took off in the late spring.
Before I knew it, I had way too little time to deal with everything that deserved my attention and so I took off from Eugene airport a couple of weeks ago with a way-too-long list of things I needed to do around the house, people I needed to call/e-mail and paperwork to get filed. My apologies for not touching base with everyone before I headed out, but when the State Department wanted me, they wanted me. Things they said would take a week took 2 days. Things they said would take 2-3 months took a week. I've been playing catch-up since Mid-May and I'm still behind on everything, which means I left a lot of pieces for Ann to pick up. So this is my vehicle to communicate to all of you, while not having to remember to communicate with each and every one of you, which I obviously haven't been doing such a good job of lately (have I ever done a good job of that?). They tell me I'm going to be working very long days and won't have a lot of time to do much else. Hopefully I'll be able to post every once in a while (I am assured they have internet access).
So before I end this long, rambling first post, I want to thank Ann. Without her, this blog site would not exist. She thought of it. She built it. She encouraged me to use it to keep in touch with all the many people who care about me. Like so much in my life, this would not be possible without her. Thank you Ann.