Nothing But

Almost got ran over by Dick Cheney’s motorcade this evening on my way to chow. Okay, maybe it wasn’t actually W’s Evil Overlord, but he was in town today, further strengthening the resolve of the Coalition.

Sure.

It really was someone important, though, as they had sirens. Sirens, however, border on the idiotic. Why would you want to advertise your presence to such an extreme as to scream, “Ooh, ooh, look this way at something important!”? Morons are just asking to get whacked.

Not only sirens, but flashing lights, four Humvees, three armored Suburbans, and a couple more urban assault vehicles full of Iraqi Army. If it wasn’t some Dick, it was some other VIP. Personally, I stayed behind a thick steel wall until they had passed. Just doing my part to get a decent pizza again. Perhaps they’ve got pizza at the Embassy (the Palace formerly known as the, er,… Palace). Per haps I’ll find out the next time. I say. “the next time”, because we found a friendly Master Sergeant to escort us in a couple of nights ago for dinner and a short tour.

Security procedures are one of the largest changes in the I-Zed (the oh so cool way to say Eye Zee now), and the Palace/Embassy has some tough security. Fortunately, our Sergeant has the right badge that allowed her to escort a few of us to a “State Department meeting” (nudge, nudge). Of course, I can’t go into details of the specific security procedures. Let’s just say they stopped short of a cavity search.

Regardless, I learned a very valuable lesson. The Department of State eats better than the Department of Defense.

Much better.

Much MUCH better.

They had lettuce.

And everything. They had freaking everything. For the past week, we’ve been eating brown. All things brown. Crunchy brown, soft brown, sweet brown, mild brown, hard brown and liquid brown. Brown freaking brown brown. The State Department, though, had prawn, and quesadillas, and fruit, and stir fry, and meatloaf, and pie, and lettuce. Ahh, we were stuffed by the end of it.

They even had the rare Beck’s NA. It’s a non-alcoholic product, of course, but slightly more tasty than the Coors NA (awful) or the Holsten NA (not so awful, but tastes a little like cow). The only good thing about any of them is that you can have one at your desk and at least pretend it’s a real beer.

For afters, we took a brief tour of the common areas of our old home. It was like when you go back to your old high school a few years after graduation. The structure is about the same, but the spirit is somehow different. For our newby, Wes, it was like being the spouse at a class reunion – he couldn’t see any difference at all, he was just happy to get some lettuce.