Wow
Let me start off with an apology - sorry for the long break in postings. Wow! Time flew by, I even left and returned on R&R, and I'm only able to post today because it is yet another day of protest in the Middle East and since this week is Iraq's turn, we're locked down.
To get away from Iraq for a moment, R&R was pretty good. I got to spend lots of time with Ann, got my taxes done (thankfully we didn't owe anything), worked on the house a bit, got my fill of Oregon rain (which I enjoyed) and got to play with Mina. Ann and I went on a mini-vacation to Portland and stayed at a rather nice, modern hotel downtown (as you can see from the picture). Ok, the room was a room (nice bed, free internet access) but the courtyard to the hotel had a nice vegetated wall, and our room overlooked it. It was nice to get away from everyone and everything and just enjoy our time together. I'm one lucky guy.
As for the few weeks between when I last posted and left for R&R, well life was simply crazy. Productive, but crazy. Not only did I have my own 2 jobs to do, but for three of those weeks (including when I last posted) I was taking on the third job of being the rule of law section leader (which meant daily meetings and more admin work than I really wanted to deal with). Then, we added a new person in the rule of law section, which meant even more distractions from my main duties. I even lost it one late afternoon - at least no one was around to see it (well, 2 guys were and they were just dumbfounded, and thankful it wasn't them that caused me to blow my top). I was never so happy to see a boss come back from vacation!
Despite all of that, I managed to get a lot of work done. A lot of projects that I worked on came to fruition (I've managed to spend over a million US dollars of US taxpayers' money for worthy rule of law projects in the Baghdad area), I helped two moot court teams get to Washington DC to compete against other law schools, I cleaned up a big administrative mess of back-logged paperwork and I stayed safe. If this were a 4-act play (interspersed with three R&R intermissions), this last one was the "get things done" act (act 1 was "get your bearings"). Unfortunately, since the PRTs are closing, there are no more get things done acts. That's too bad, because I've just figured out how to do just that - more time would have been very helpful. But that's not to be, so this coming act should be "descent for landing" with "close-out" to follow my R&R in early June.
I'm hoping that things are not nearly as chaotic or exhausting this time as last. That's important because now I really have to get into "find a job" mode. It's strange to think that my time here (at least with the PRT) is ending. So now I have to figure out what's after this. Anyone have any clues?
I'll close for now to recover a bit more from my jet lag (these 12 hour plane flights - 18 out of 22 hours in an airplane - Eugene-Denver-Dulles-Kuwait - are killers). Hopefully I'll get back to posting steadily. I leave you with one final image from Portland, taken after tea with Ann in the Chinese Gardens.
