If It's Monday, It Must Be 80's New Wave Remix Day

20 March 2006, Camp Lemonier, Djibouti - Horn of Africa

I had no trouble finding my rack last night...(snore!)

Yesterday had been another, in a string of many long days spent changing the bandages of the Marines that had received their smallpox immunizations a few short weeks ago and asking them to clean up their messes in and around the tents.

The routine; the common and the mundane - It seems to be the same thing day in and day out around here - out on the Horn of Africa...

Most everyday you will find me in one of several places - the Aid Station; the Emergency Medical facility; the MWR tent; the Exchange; the Base Gymnasium or back in my "9x9 cell" which is the very space I will call "home" for the next few months.

You can set your watch by me! Once the usual morning routines have been completed...

Shower...check.

Shave...check.

Get dressed...check.

Get chow...check.

A short jaunt to the gates of the security compound and into the Aid Station - there is where you'll find me firmly planted in my favorite chair by 0700, logging-in to the computer in order to fetch my emails, compose a few quick and snappy answers (along with the usual love letter or two) and settle into the sidetracks of walking to and from the restroom, getting water to drink and telling the Marines keep their areas clean - especially after meals! The paternal instinct embedded within me wants to immediately right the wrong (that and a touch of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder might be the real answer!) In a place such as this, cleanliness is next to Godliness and besides, you can never be too careful with security! One of the thousand hungry crows looking for a "beak-up" in the compound may be a recent Al-Qaeda convert and spy.

After all, crows are crafty birds...

Oh! Please allow me this moment to digress a bit and shift away from the skillful guile of my feathered friends and gear toward another recurring problem here in the campsite - getting to sleep!

With 15 other tent mates working all hours of the day having to live in the very same residential and spartan living quarters, the interruptions due to obscenely loud movement, stumblings, bumbings, fumblings, lights being turned on and general loud stupidity are many. I dare not sleep with headphones on because if a fire broke out in the tent, I'd be a "crispy critter" still asleep in his rack, but trapped in an eternal sleep with headphones still solidly in place! (What a picture that would make, eh?)

Somehow last night I finally managed to get to sleep! Only to wake up to another cloudy, warm, humid, mundane and almost sure-to-be boring Monday morning.

Thinking to myself that this was going to be just another ordinary, manic and slow Monday, I decided to shake-up the routine and add a little nostalgia into the recipe. Old habits die hard (or so they say - cough! cough!), so I took a page from the old "Break-the-Boredom-Routine-at-Work" playbook and decided to hook-up my computer along with all of the music I have stored neatly away on my external hard drive and get into some music in order to better choreograph the next 24 hours of my shift.

If it's Monday, it must be "80's New Wave Remix Day"!

Tuesday is all 70's Music...

Wednesday, mostly classics and opera...

Thursday is for Jazz & Blues and Friday is reserved for whatever I happen to be in the mood for!

Monday! Monday! Monday! A day filled with the likes of Ah-Ha, The Stray Cats, A Flock of Seagulls, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Madness and many, many, many others.

Monday! A day spent embraced by the sweet and often silly memories of my reckless High School adventures - their pathways laid clearly before me as each of the songs seem to have a particularly special place in my life - the very "fingers and tendrills" of the chords and melodies are wrapped firmly in nostalgia and around my coursing veins which are in tune with the steady and rhythmic pumping of that flesh covered metronome within me that continues to pump ever onward!

For today, I have approximately 12 hours worth of 80's music to enjoy...

As of right now - at this very moment - my day is filled with music and my mind faintly occupied in diligently trying to complete this muddled and befuddled BLOG entry. The Smith's "How Soon Is Now" is playing in the background and I am left to wonder and contemplate the insanity of that question as the white-hot sun begins its slow and simmering climb toward the "meridian hour" and the many babbling voices in the background begin to fade...

I escape into the safety and memory of song...It sure beats being hot, sweaty and bored all day long!

Originally published 20 March 2006 on the blog "Totum dependeat (Let it all hang out!)"