To achieve the objective noted in the header, I get up at four in the morning and walk a couple of blocks through the biting desert cold to the showers. When all is said and done, I stand in a tent waiting like the other passengers for the contractor to complete the roll call.
No VIP treatment this time. This time I sit in the belly of the C-130 like everybody else, and I am glad I did. It's kind of nice not knowing when the plane is making an abrupt turn, nearly flying on its head, or abruptly ending the travel plans of a flock of birds heading south. What's more, I find the seats designed for the paratroopers more comfortable than that mangy sofa in the cockpit. I am even able to stretch my legs. We land in Amman in a timely fashion, the guys greet me when I hop off the plane, and it is soon back to business as usual.
My men drop me off at home, and the moment I enter the house, I recoil. The damn heater is on. Mind you, this is not one of these environmentally friendly heaters. You need to submit a work order to have the heat restored to you after the long hot months in Jordan, and then you have two options:
1) No heat
2) The heat is on full blast. You're convinced your own little household is single-handedly responsible for taking out another iceberg.
It seems to me you have to turn on the AC to counter your made-for-home equator. But by doing so, now you have not only taken out an iceberg, but probably wiped out some rare bird species in the process.
I have always had this thing about heat. As a kid, I would faint in church a lot, whether I was an altar boy or just a regular member of the congregation. I always wondered why the church did that, especially those ultra-modern consumer-friendly churches that don't have the cave-like chilling atmosphere of the big cathedrals. What was the new Catholic Church trying to prove with this? Was it some bizarre plot concocted by the Protestants to wipe us out as a species? Were the church deliberately trying to make us feel like sinners and, consequently, have us share the experience of burning in hell for a while?
I've noticed it's the same with cars. As a kid, I used to suffer from motion sickness. On every trip we made, my brothers and sisters would yell, "Quick! Andy's going to throw up again!" Now add the heat to that, and I'll skip the sweating part and go straight to fainting or throwing up blood. People are weird. They need so much heat, you'd think they're longing to become unborn again, i.e. to crawl back into their mothers' wombs.
There is absolutely nothing I have against winter. That way the canopy comes off the bed, and I don't have to worry about any damn mosquitoes (now there's a species I would suffer for. I would gladly leave the heat on full blast if I knew it was contributing to their extermination - it actually does the opposite). Summer can be a bit of a letdown, too. There are the rooms where the AC has turned the whole place into the North Pole (while reducing the ice shelves of the actual location). I think people are jealous. I think deep down they want to be cold. I think they want to freeze so they can stick it to the penguins and the polar bears. Otherwise they would just turn the damn AC down.
Anyway, it's good to be back in Jordan, not imagining that you have to listen for mortars or small arms fire. It's good to be back with my family again. Here you can settle for the dumb-ass who won't get out of his car and persist in honking his horn to some nut who has no idea he is there. By the time the guy has honked the horn five minutes, you have everybody in the neighborhood wishing they could aim an RPG at him. At least I have never heard of anyone dropping dead from the sound of a blaring horn.
No VIP treatment this time. This time I sit in the belly of the C-130 like everybody else, and I am glad I did. It's kind of nice not knowing when the plane is making an abrupt turn, nearly flying on its head, or abruptly ending the travel plans of a flock of birds heading south. What's more, I find the seats designed for the paratroopers more comfortable than that mangy sofa in the cockpit. I am even able to stretch my legs. We land in Amman in a timely fashion, the guys greet me when I hop off the plane, and it is soon back to business as usual.
My men drop me off at home, and the moment I enter the house, I recoil. The damn heater is on. Mind you, this is not one of these environmentally friendly heaters. You need to submit a work order to have the heat restored to you after the long hot months in Jordan, and then you have two options:
1) No heat
2) The heat is on full blast. You're convinced your own little household is single-handedly responsible for taking out another iceberg.
It seems to me you have to turn on the AC to counter your made-for-home equator. But by doing so, now you have not only taken out an iceberg, but probably wiped out some rare bird species in the process.
I have always had this thing about heat. As a kid, I would faint in church a lot, whether I was an altar boy or just a regular member of the congregation. I always wondered why the church did that, especially those ultra-modern consumer-friendly churches that don't have the cave-like chilling atmosphere of the big cathedrals. What was the new Catholic Church trying to prove with this? Was it some bizarre plot concocted by the Protestants to wipe us out as a species? Were the church deliberately trying to make us feel like sinners and, consequently, have us share the experience of burning in hell for a while?
I've noticed it's the same with cars. As a kid, I used to suffer from motion sickness. On every trip we made, my brothers and sisters would yell, "Quick! Andy's going to throw up again!" Now add the heat to that, and I'll skip the sweating part and go straight to fainting or throwing up blood. People are weird. They need so much heat, you'd think they're longing to become unborn again, i.e. to crawl back into their mothers' wombs.
There is absolutely nothing I have against winter. That way the canopy comes off the bed, and I don't have to worry about any damn mosquitoes (now there's a species I would suffer for. I would gladly leave the heat on full blast if I knew it was contributing to their extermination - it actually does the opposite). Summer can be a bit of a letdown, too. There are the rooms where the AC has turned the whole place into the North Pole (while reducing the ice shelves of the actual location). I think people are jealous. I think deep down they want to be cold. I think they want to freeze so they can stick it to the penguins and the polar bears. Otherwise they would just turn the damn AC down.
Anyway, it's good to be back in Jordan, not imagining that you have to listen for mortars or small arms fire. It's good to be back with my family again. Here you can settle for the dumb-ass who won't get out of his car and persist in honking his horn to some nut who has no idea he is there. By the time the guy has honked the horn five minutes, you have everybody in the neighborhood wishing they could aim an RPG at him. At least I have never heard of anyone dropping dead from the sound of a blaring horn.
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