How to pack Care Packages

I have a bunch of friends overseas right now, so I've been putting together a few care packages lately. Some guidelines I like to follow:

Just like emails, care packages work best if they are smaller, but arrive more frequently. The fact that you get something is the best part, not that it's perfect.

Remember these are items that need to keep well, and be eaten on the move, and may well get very hot and very cold on the way.

The process takes a lot of steps, which is why it is hard to complete sometimes. (I had some friends tell me after I got back last June that they had put a package together for me, then never gotten around to mailing it, and eventually started eating it as sat on their kitchen counter. It made me laugh because I have done that myself.) They are: get a mailing address. Buy the stuff. Pack the box. Take it to post office to mail. (You have to do this because it is going overseas, and you have to fill out a customs form).

So, what I usually do is the the address from an email they sent, put it on a post note, and stick that note on the box I intend to use. Once again, the box doesn't need to be huge. 10" X 13" X 5" is a good size. Then I go and buy things at the store and repack them in the box, which I throw in the car and mail the next time I can.

Items I like to include:
A note. ANY news from not-in-the-desert is entertaining!

Triscuits (or other crackers like Ritz, Saltines, etc. Buy the small box and leave the crackers in it.)

Easy cheese. (One can per box of crackers.)

Summer sausage. (Nice because it comes sealed in plastic, and keeps well. Also, after you open it, you can slice easily, and put on the crackers, but it isn't as messy as tuna or (shudder) Spam.)

Chocolate. I like the fun sizes of Snickers, Butterfingers, Baby Ruth, etc. I buy the big bags and then repack them in 1 quart ziploc bags. This makes them a little easier to carry and share, and also contains liquid chocolate if the package gets hot on the way. Also the ziploc bag is often useful afterwards.

Drink mix. Obviously it is difficult (though not impossible) to mail liquids. Unless someone is really jonesing for a particular beverage they can't get downrange, get the drink mix instead.
(See note on alcohol below.) I also takes these out of the original box and put in mini ziploc bags.

Cookies. I buy the variety packs of small (~2 oz) bags of things like Cheeze its, Animal Crackers, frosted animal crackers, mini oreos, mini chocolate chip cookies, Nilla Wafers, etc. The small bags let you avoid repacking them yourself. I open the box and put the small bags in the care package loose, they also act nicely as padding.

Other candy. Fruit roll ups, gummi bears, twizzlers, etc. Again I look for small bags, or I rebag them myself.

Beef jerky.

Trail mix.

Other stuff: Current magazines, books, small cheap toys like legos or suction cup dart guns or matchbox cars.

Illegal items:
Booze
Porno (Note that the CENTCOM version of porno means "any depiction of a female body above the ankles, between the wrists, and below the neck." Not kidding.)
Bibles or other religious materials.

(For those of you who speak military, possession of these items will generally get a military member an at least an Article 15 off the bat, no questions asked. For those of you that don't, that's bad.)

Once you get into a decent rhythm, you can start customizing based on inputs from them, but don't stall out on the process, or you'll never get them mailed. If you don't hear from whoever, just mail it generic. Oh, and if they have their address before they leave, pack one and mail it the same day they do so they will get it a couple of weeks after they arrive.

Oh, also: Do yourself and the person you are mailing it to a favor: Don't use their rank in the address, and leave as little return address information as possible (magazine mailing labels, for example). Anyone downrange should be shredding or burning address information from inbound mail, but make their job easier - don't write it on the box, use a label they can easily cut off. If a bad guy (or opportunist) sees a rank on a package, they might decide it's someone worth mailing a letter bomb or poison fruitcake to. Or maybe they'll mail it to the return address.

Government Credit Card

Well, the mandatory US Government credit card changed again, from Bank of America to a Citibank Visa. It last changed in about 2005, I can't remember from what.

I've always hated the government card. In short, it is a card you are required by law to carry and use for all travel expenses. Here's why I don't like it: It works just like any other credit card but not as well. The government doesn't have a credit line, it's my credit rating the card is issued against, but I am required to use it. If the government is slow to pay my travel voucher (still haven't been paid for my deployment, due to DTS problems), it's my credit rating that takes a hit. I also have less control over viewing charges online than I do with my own bank (USAA). This thing is a waste of time for everyone except the youngest military members, who haven't yet established credit.

FOD

I was out driving today and I had to pull a U turn. The road was narrow, so I had drive on the should a bit, which was dirt, not asphalt, and had some gravel on it. As I did so, I instinctively said to myself that I had left a prepared surface and would have to do a FOD check before driving further on the flightline.

(FOD=Foreign Object Damage, a term that describes rocks or any other object that gets out on a flightline that can be ingested by an aircraft engine and cause damage.)

tags:
email, deployment, 2008 rote,

edit 2 jul, line breaks, minor editing

coming home 4

I have two keys on my keychain for my apartment complex. One is for my front door, the other is for the amenities (gym, pool). The amenities key has a diamond shaped head, just like my room key while deployed, so I keep trying to use that to open my apartment.

More that I miss from the desert:
One of the greatest perks that You often don't hear about is the embroidery shops there. With all the uniforms we have, and all the different badges and ranks, a tailor/embroidery shop is pretty important. A shop like this is often two to five folks working sewing machines, with someone working the counter. They usually do their work by hand, so if you can draw it, they
can make it. (Unlike in thje U.S., where everyone is now tied to computerized embroidery machines; you need a digital image file or they can't make it.) It's pretty cheap, and usually faster than here (a couple of days at the most).

coming home 3

It's also nice to not have to shred or burn anything with my name or address on it.

Something I miss: free postage on letters.

I still tap my right leg in gym shorts. The only pocket in the USAF PT gear was a small velcro thing on the lower hem of the right leg, it's where I would keep my keys.

coming home 2

My body still doesn't quite know what time it is...I fell asleep at about 2000 last night and just woke up (0200).

Yesterday I went to bed at midnight and woke up at 0430 and couldn't get back to sleep.

Coming home

More things to get used to to:

Being able to drink out of the faucet.

Being able to drive faster than 15 miles per hour (It still looks like everyone is speeding, everywhere, all the time.)

Hearing the sounds of children. Seeing children, and old people, out in public.

Seeing grass. I spent a night on the east coast before coming back to Vegas, and the grass and trees were so green there, it hurt my eyes.

Fast internet. I have the middle speed available from Cox, and it is so much faster than every connection available it the desert, it is like regaining a sixth sense.

timestamp

Okay, this is annoying.

I just changed my timezone back to pacific (Zulu-8) from Iraq (Zulu+3), and this changes the timestamps on ALL entries, including the ones when I was in Iraq.

traveling with a weapon

The Air Force has declared that everyone going to the desert will carry a weapon. This is a stupid policy that makes all of our travel slower and less secure.

While carrying a weapon, I am only allowed to use a GOV to travel when I am not on a military base, and I have to maintain physical control of the weapon at all times. So, for example, yesterday when I checked in for my flight at an airport on the east coast three hours before I could check baggage, I had to find a place to stow my luggage, and wandered around the airport with an M-9 pistol in my backpack. I wonder how everyone around would have felt had they known. (Granted, it was unloaded (and I never had ammunition for it) and inside a case secured with two locks, but nevertheless, it is a gun in an airport.) Interestingly, the people at the check in counter rarely bat an eye when you tell them this, I believe in large part due to the war, which has a lot of military folks both in an out of uniform traveling with weapons these days.

To travel with a weapon, all you need to do is claim that the weapon is unloaded and being transported in a locked case (which is of course a checked bag, not a carry on). They give you a blaze orange tag with confirms this and you sign it and put in inside the case.

When I got off the plane in Vegas, my bags didn't, since they didn't make the connecting flight that I did. I could have just taken a cab or gotten a ride home from a friend and had them deliver the bags, but instead I did the prescribed thing and waited there for the bags to arrive on a later flight while calling trans from the base to come and get me. They carried me to the base armory where I left the weapon and then a friend picked me up.

So every person going to the middle east has to carry a weapon and it means an extra 1-4 hours at each commercial stop you make, and you have a whole bunch of guns floating around out in the system. Or you could fly a single military cargo plane to the desert and set up an armory there. The Air Force chose the former.

Rote complete

I hereby declare the spring '08 rote complete. 12 Feb - 21 Jun 08

I am firmly back in the U.S. and it feels good.

Everything has a familiar and yet exotic feel...even sitting down at a desk to surf the internet free of restrictions or letting myself go three days without shaving. I got home late last night and started turning my regular life back on. I took down the drop cloths and began locating all the important things I left in stay-behind locations, like my datebook.

More to come.

Yahoo

My Yahoo and Blogger pages used to route through Britain, but a few days ago they started showing up in German.

dust two

I was walking around the other day in the dust, and I saw some folks wearing masks. I have one too, the disposable kind you might use working on drywall or somewhere there is a lot of sawdust.

The second day I was here, there was a dust storm and I had a cough for about six weeks. I would wear a mask for the dust storms after that, but at some point I got out of the habit. Now the dust doesn't even bother me. I wonder if I will have trouble breathing the air back in the States since it isn't as thick?

dust

Dust storm rolled through here yesterday. This has the interesting side effect of making it cooler, I guess because the dust is reflecting the sunlight before it reaches the ground.

The air gets really still and quiet, it reminds me of the way foggy air feels; it's actually nice to walk around camp. The dust is so fine though, it gets in through any opening in a building and collects on every surface.

excuses; good samaritan

It has been true of each of my deployments that by the end, my knowledge of the situation is at it's peak, my flying skills are good, but have fallen off from their peak (somewhere around month 3), my apathy is at a maximum and my patience is at a minimum.

All of this is a left-handed way of apologizing for the fact that haven't written many good entries lately. Yesterday was another helluva day at work; they never end. Despite my best efforts, we had a number of late takeoffs, and it is hard to care very much about that since whether I care or not, or work against them or not, they still happen and no one else cares. So yeah, apathy, because the only thing I can really change around here is whether or not I get an ulcer. I have no patience right now to write decently constructed entries about things here. It takes too much effort to write clearly, try to explain things from a non-military POV, screen it for opsec, proofread it and post it. (Not to mention the fact that I don't care to re-live my work hours during my free time.) I might do some backdated posting after I get back to the states, hopefully I will at least finish some of the 10 or so draft entries I have going right now.

So the deployment story I will spend the time to write today: I spent a few minutes face down on concrete on my way to chow before this for incoming fire.

Anyway.

Sorry for the tangent. This entry was motivated by the recent news story of the older man who was struck by a car in Hartford recently.

(I am reading back each way I have written this and there isn't at least some part of each that comes our sounding preachy, self-righteous, or insensitive. So do I post this? At risk of seeming an ass, I will...I'd rather be a bad writer than not one at all.)

I am reminded of some things I learned in the Boy Scouts. The proper thing to do would be to block off traffic, send someone to call the police and emergency services, then render first aid, but only if you think he's going to die right there. If he's breathing and not bleeding to death, you shouldn't touch him, and if he's conscious, you should tell him not to move either until trained help arrives.

A note on sending someone for help: You have look one of the on-lookers in the eyes, ask for their name, and then say, "Hello John Smith, nice to meet you. Go call 911 immediately and tell them there has been an accident at 123 Main Street and they need to send police and an ambulance." If you can do this while shaking their hand or slapping them on the shoulder, so much the better, it distracts them momentarily from the panic and confusion.

This last step is important and illustrates a common problem in urgent situations involving groups of people: no one's in charge, no one wants to be in charge, and everyone thinks someone else has all the relevant information and is doing something. The name step is important because it cuts through the herd mentality. Most people will react fairly well in a urgent situation if they are given simple instructions for tasks they've done before that make sense.

All of this is a round about way of saying that while the reaction of onlookers might have been slow, I don't think it was criminally so (the hit and run drivers are another story, and they need to be punished). Within 1 min 10 seconds, there were several people standing in the street around the victim and there was a police car on the scene. I think that's probably competitive with the response time in any city in an industrialized nation.

Thoughts? I haven't had much time to scan open source news for public impression of this incident.

food

Interesting this rote that I haven't gotten tired of many foods, probably because of the variety there is here. I used to get tired of certain foods or meals and would have to quit them for awhile, but here that hasn't happened. The only things I can think of are pineapple and the generic breakfast meal (scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage). I even preemptively stopped drinking so much red gatorade, which is available here in abundance, so that I wouldn't burn myself out (or get kidney stones), but I don't seem to have built up a revulsion to it.

forgetful

My shift changed recently, and I started showing at the internet cafe earlier. So I forgot they close for cleaning at noon (local), so they are booting me. More later.

institutionalized

This is a post about being institutionalized, in the Shawshank definition of the word.

It would be hyperbolic to call it brain washing, and a little understated to call it simply "becoming comfortable with one's surroundings;" I have recently noticed myself in a mood here that I've experienced before on deployments: content happiness.

I had a few decent days at work, where I wasn't dead tired at the end of my shift, and I had time to get enough sleep and do a bit of blogging and emailling, and I was happy. And at first it's a strange change, and a welcome one, because I hadn't been happy in weeks. And you don't question it, because it's good to be happy. But then it wears off and you start to think again, and you realize that you're happy because you have accepted the crappy things in your life that you cannot change. (Interesting comment of stoic philosophy here.) You accept those things, and minimize them, and do what you are able to be happy with your life as it is.

On rote, it's easy to settle into routine. Same things at the same time, every day (or every other day, every three, etc.) And once you settle in, and begin to get good at your job, you get a measure of control over how things go, and have a measure of predictability. Certainty, even the certainty of something bad, is usually less upsetting than ambiguity. (The complete unpredictability of my life in Hercs was another reason I didn't want to stay.) So even though you don't have all you could want on rote, you get comfortable.

What's really disturbing to me is that some of these times are the happiest I've had in the last few years...deploying is the only thing I do consistently for the AF, so it's the only thing I get good at and consequently the only thing I feel empowered doing. I realized as I was walking around Al Udeid this last trip in than I have spent more time there in the last 5 years than I have anywhere else except Abilene, TX.

Happiness, but it's the happiness of a hamster in a cage. All your basic needs taken care of, a place for everything and everything in its place. But it doesn't last. Eventually you remember the things you are missing out on at home through emails or phone calls or mail, or you go home, where life is messy and disorganized and you never have enough time for all the friends you want to spend time with. You go from the hive of deployed life when you can't get a moment to yourself to your empty apartment, and having to work to find people to hang out with. After my last rote I woke up one morning and realized I hadn't slept in a bed next to a woman in more than a year.

I have had good experiences on the road that I will carry with me for a long time, and I'm grateful for them. But I'm not getting any younger...one day I'll need to start this "the rest of my life" thing or I'm afraid I won't be able to. I've been terrible at relationships my whole life, I'm going to need some practice if I actually want to get married some day.

I have to quit deploying.

[writing dates: 8 apr 08, 28 apr 08, 30 apr 08, 3 may 08]

keys, masters

I left them in my room the other day after work, but getting in didn't suck as much as I was expecting. I walked over to housing (slightly conspicuous without my hat, which was also in my room) and asked to be let in. They verified my ID and a KBR guy walked back with me in 5 minutes and opened the door. He's on a one year hitch out here, he was from Florida. I think he said he was going to make $87,200 for the year, and that's tax free of course.

Oh, and in some good news, I just logged in and found I passed my masters class. Just one more to go to half way, which I may or may not decide to do.

quotes; mental paradigm

From my sensor:
"Talking [to people from home] on the phone just reminds me of how much I wish I was there."

From a random woman walking by, she was coming back from the gym: "I mean WTF? I have 21% body fat." The inflection of this remark indicated she was extremely disappointed by how high this number was. I could go off on a long tirade about how women constantly overestimate the importance of their weight, or I could post the Marlene Dietrich quote about women and men, but I will just settle for saying this: The woman was beautiful and had a nice body and I wouldn't have changed a thing about her.

It's extremely good for one's morale to think of the rote you are on as being your last trip to the desert ever. Then, rather than thinking of how much you would rather be home, you start to think of all the things you would like to get done before you leave. This actually helped a lot on my last rote, and doing well by me so far this rote. (I do begin to wonder how many times I will have to use these tricks though). There are bunch of things I still want to see around here, plenty of photographs to take, souvenirs to buy (the craftsmanship and selection of things here is better than any of my previous locations; there's a local bazaar here that sells an $1100 hookah that's about seven feet high; they have a variety of leather bags and wooden boxes that are of unbeatable quality for the price), and units to visit. This might very well be my last time in Iraq, inshallah. What will I be able to tell people about it when I get home? Will I have good stories? Good pictures? Will I really be able to make people understand what it is like here? That's part of the reason for this blog, and my numerous other attempts at recording things here.

[As I type the last words, big voice comes on, "This is the command post. There has been an indirect fire attack. All personnel are released. All personnel should remain vigilant for UXOs. All clear, all clear, all clear. I say again..." And there is the sound of a two ship of helos passing overhead. A QRF perhaps? Or medevac for someone who got injured?]

xkcd, quotes

The XKCD comic today was outstanding, and included a cameo by another favorite comic of mine, Calvin and Hobbes.

Some recent quotes from the rote:

"I'm gonna throw a half-way-done-with-the-rote-party. Something small, some balloons, streamers...a couple of strippers, maybe a keg..."-BDA

"Anyone who doesn't want to see a naked man better not come in here. I'll leave it cracked for BDA." - Cokane. (He was changing to run on the treadmill. Oh, and this is unrelated to the quote up above. And finally, BDA is a man.)