caffeine in arizona?

well, after my last entry at least my bday got a bit better. we went back to our lodging (more about the lodging later) and we all were getting ready to turn in for the night, i walked out of the bathroom and my 2 team members and the CPT were in one of the rooms together. after having discussed male practical jokes about passing gas earlier in the day, i thought for sure i was being ambushed. i walked out and asked why everyone was in there, as i hovered outside the doorway. then the three of them began singing happy birthday to me! then they handed me a plastic bag with a funny Godzilla card, 3 chocolate bars and a Latina magazine! If I hadn't been dehydrated I probably would have shed a tear. I gave them all hugs and thanked them. they were so sneaky earlier in the afternoon when we went to the PX...I usually catch on to stuff like that, but they completely surprised me. they were so sweet. they realized i was feeling pretty crummy and i was in transit away from home and i was in iraq. it really made at least the end of the day better for me.
unfortunately, i still woke up on WED with the bug so that kind of stunk. V8 and yogurt for breakfast: the no coffee thing would normally have been tough, but over here you kind of function with adrenaline and with constant jet lag. given that, you don't feel the caffeine highs and lows so much. our briefing to the COL went fine. it was short and sweet and we got some more data and met with some other folks. we stopped for coffee (my first cup in about 4 days) and talked a bit on a picnic table in the courtyard in front of the PX. it was good team building. as a result of the coffee, we stayed up past midnight working and going over notes and comments from the day. my team, chuck donaldson (environmental planner) and lauren fahnestock (water/wastewater engineer), are really great. they are very smart, professional and fun. I'm glad they're traveling with me. (you'll probably see them in some pics later.) i stayed up until after 2 am....the caffeine hit me hard. wednesday we went into the air traffic control tower and got a low-flying bird's eye view of the airfield and the base. We also had a bunch of sand storms all day. I don't have to tell you how many places sand can get in to when it's blowing constantly with high wind for hours on end.
the place they put us in this time is really cool. last time we were in CHUs or containerized housing units, this time we are in a refurbished/renvated hardstand building. this just means it's an old Iraqi facility that's been renovated. first of all, the buildings were old iraqi air force officer family housing units, which is neat, but kind of weird to be living somewhere where a pilot may have lived who engaged in fighter dog-fights with the U.S. air force. second, if you saw these houses you would think you were in arizona. they are stucco and painted in yellows and light peach colors. they have an enclosed front courtyard that probably used to be for fruit gardens and a rooftop patio. they are actually pretty nice and i can imagine they were really nice back in their hey-day. now, they've been renovated to look good with fresh paint and finishes and they are furnished to accommodate 20 people. we don't have 20 in ours, just the 4 of us, but each of us has our own room. we have one toilet room with sink and a bathroom only with a shower and 2 sinks. it's been okay for us, but i can't imagine sharing one toilet and 1 shower with 20 people. then again, i guess it's better than a port-a-john and no showers....that always puts things in perspective.