Laundry and Birdwatching

I needed to drop Rick off for an onsite meeting early this morning at the contractor's camp inside the air base. We arrived early, but the contractors had already left, a minor SNAFU. Rick missed his ride to the site and we both would end up at work an extra hour today.

Back at our office, I dropped off my laundry with Dan in Logistics. He takes all our wash down to the base laundry every Monday and Thursday. We fill out forms with our items listed, and it comes back in a day or two clean and folded. This is just one of Dan's jobs keeping our office facilities humming. He takes it in stride and with a sense of humor. He and his co-workers were singing Christmas carols when I came in with my green laundry bag and having a good time talking about how to play tricks with the dozens of bags. Then Gary mentioned seeing the Eurasian Hoopoe outside his window. It was the same woodpecker looking bird I'd seen flying by on Friday. It appears we are right in the middle of it's range. When I looked it up one Google, I found it a popular model for stamps all over Europe, Asia and Africa.

I biked along the muddy perimeter road this evening at sunset, and managed to keep on top of a dry crust of mud over the soup below. Following Humvee tracks that pushed the squishy stuff out of the way worked well too. Except for one spot where I got stuck in some really sticky goo and had to pull the bike out. My sneakers will eventually dry out. Also managed to run over a scrap of barb wire abandoned long ago, and partially deflated my rear tire. Thankfully, I'd replaced that tube with a slime filled tube that I was able to pump back up and get home without getting muddier than I already was. Dozens of Collared Doves flew from their evening roost in the tamarisk trees when I went by. And some type of Lapwing Plover got really upset with me being there, cried and hovered near me, then fled over the berm to the marsh beyond. Might have been defending a nest. These plovers look like huge killdeer, but I doubt they are Sociable Plovers as I'd guessed the other day, as they are endangered, and Iraq is loaded with these birds.

Finished my writeups on two more police stations today, but I need to come up with plans to build new stations without breaking the bank. Tension in Al Nasr today is causing problems for one of our water pipeline jobs and east of Nasiriyah, a mud school waits for a final signoff as the contractor is threatened if he continues. Another subcontractor is dealing with the kidnapping of his brother, for money not politics, and unfortunately the practice is not uncommon.