Ok, I did it again. I went on R&R and didn't bother to tell anyone. Even worse, the news from Iraq was a bit disconcerting, but no one knew not to worry (in case you did). What can I say? Mea Culpa!I was back in Oregon for the end of May and the first half of June. As proof, I submit this picture taken of me by Ann:

No, this isn't Iraq, it's central Oregon - they don't let us just get out and around like this in Iraq. Ann and I spent the last weekend driving to the three units that make up the Fossil Beds National Monument. This one was taken at the painted hills after a truly incredible day of shooting and the typical hurry up and wait photo story. After dinner we returned to the hills, but it had clouded over. Ever the optimist, we hiked up to where we wanted to shoot, just in case the sun peeped through. Sure enough, it did, blessing me with 10 furious minutes of shooting as much as I could. Then clouds again. So what does a photographer do? Go to another location - just in case. And after another hour of waiting with the bugs swarming and the winds blowing, I get another glimpse of sun, this time for 5 minutes. But that's enough. In case you were wondering, this is what I was photographing when Ann captured me:

My three weeks went by quickly, even though it was two days longer than expected. I had to get out of Baghdad a day early because the Sadrists decided they wanted to protest on the day I was leaving and there was no way I was going to let myself get grounded (wound up being an unnecessary precaution - though it happened to several folks in February). Then on the way back, I found out the windshield of my plane out of Eugene was cracked (and therefore grounded) and, because the day before was the University of Oregon graduation day, there were no open seats out of Eugene for three days. So Ann and I drove up to Portland and I flew from there the next day. The bright side of it all (besides spending an extra day with Ann) was that I got to ride first class from Portland to Dulles, and business class from Dulles to Kuwait City. It guess it pays to have flown 50,000 miles in a year.

In between the flights we dealt with logistics for Geneva's wedding with Ben, babysat Holden, went up to Portland, took the foreign service officer test, hung out with friends and did the central Oregon trip. Not too bad, though I didn't apply for any jobs or do many of the things I had on my long to do list. Oh well, I thought my time was better spent being with Ann. I'll play catch-up here.

As for here, we are definitely in close-out phase with more and more people departing the PRT. It's almost a ghost-town. We'll have an official function to say thanks to many of our Iraqi contacts and we'll start the process of officially boxing things up, preparing final reports and closing the curtains. I should have time to do some posts (and I have some ideas in my back pocket already) and make things a bit interesting online. So stay with me, I'm not gone yet.

One final thing - Happy Father's day to you Dad, and all the fathers out there. I'd already forgotten the day and woke up to a gift from Ann in my e-mail box (The Beatles Anthology Box Set). Thanks Ann.

For those of you wondering whether the extra hour of waiting in the painted hills was worth it, well you tell me?

By the way, Ann got me a new camera for my birthday. Check out the website here. An old-school digital camera for an old-school photographer - fixed focal length lens, manual shutter speed and exposure compensation dials, manual aperture ring, fairly large sensor and some digital bells and whistles like in-camera image stitching. You've got to love the ability to do this, without a tripod or a computer:

Mea Culpa

Happy Fourth of July

PRT-Rescue Part 2

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