Friday, January 16, 2009

 

Umm Qasr - Immer noch Pech gehabt

Immer noch Pech gehabt, Umm Qasr Abteilung. Yep, today was gonna be a good day, but got off to a bad start. I woke up and decided that since I had nothing special to do today, I’d use my hair clippers then take a shower. Though it wasn’t warm inside my hooch, I took my clothes off because I didn’t want to get ‘em full of hair. Turned on the light in the bathroom, fired up the hair clippers and began trimming some of the long areas- behind my ears, the nape of my neck, and so forth. Got done, brushed myself off and started the shower so I could rinse off the leetle itchy hairs, right? Wrong. I had no hot water. I was standing there in the cold, with nothing but the ice-cold water flowing. The Hot was both a trickle and quite as icy-cold as the Cold. I was shivering, so I shut off the shower and put on my clothes again. Sorry, gentle reader, you’ll have to use your imagination to see a skinny old geezer shivering with hairs on his shoulders.



What to do? I didn’t want to go looking for a communal shower; I couldn’t wander the compound in a towel until I found the maintenance guys who’d fix the shower. A couple of facts stared me in the face- my water heater is next door. If the water heater is 1) not flowing water and 2) contains only cold water, a warm shower isn’t imminent.


I didn’t know if the maintenance guys did something to shut off the water last night. Maybe they did. Of course, telling someone would be rude, so they’d just do it and not say anything. But maybe there’s a more rational rationale.
However, my dilemma was not the “why” but the “here and now.” So I put three bottles of water in front of my space heater and turned it up high. After an hour, the water seemed lukewarm. In another hour, it’d be lunchtime, so maybe by then the water would be warm enough for me to take a water-bottle shower, like I did in Gannon. This wouldn’t have been a tragedy if I weren’t wearing all that itchy hair.
I sat in my slightly stained Ikea chair, trying to ignore the itching and I kept checking to see how warm the water bottles were. I played Hearts with Richie smiling at me from the desktop, listening to BFVS Radio 1 from Kuwait. The music isn’t ideal for a geezer, but occasionally I recognized a song. I just put some paperback books on the floor next to my heater so the water bottles would be a few inches higher and maybe heat faster. I also opened the dresser drawer and parked two bottles on the top edge, just above the heater.

My plans were to use warmed water bottles to shower the itchy hairs off, get dressed, walk to the main building and look for my laundry. Then lunch. After lunch, I’d try to get my hot water fixed.



No hot water? There’s ya problem!

I showered and got dressed. Feeling infinitely better, I walked to get my laundry, then looked next door to see if I could troubleshoot my lack of hot water. I looked at the water heater in the hooch next door, the one that supplies hot water to both hooches. Exercising my highly-trained Inspectorial observational skills, I detected something slightly amiss with the plumbing system: apparently someone had removed the hot water heater completely. They cleverly looped the hot water line into the cold water. Hence I got a drip from the hot water faucet but adequate pressure from the freezing water faucet. I shall attempt to resolve this today with the maintenance guys.


Immer noch Pech gehabt, Zweigestelle: Since today is Friday, the cook house had Brunch until noon. So when I went to eat at 12:20, the place was closed tighter than my ex-wife’s grip on our son.


This is my food for today, until the cook house opens at 18:00.


Not visible is the Tostitos label on my jar of salsa and the scoops Fritos. I reckon I’ll wash this complete meal down with my four-to-one Gatorade then check the internet.


Put my clean laundry away, stuffed the dirty laundry into the bag and I’ll take it to the laundry pick-up bin tomorrow morning. I put a small stack of water bottles in front of my heater to warm up for the next time I need a shower. And I downloaded some photos so I can save this blither for my blog.


BFVS Radio 1 tells me that it’ll be clear in Baghdad today. Southern Afghanistan remains cloudy. A jet plane crashed in the Hudson River but no one died. I may take my bottle of Richie-made granola and go to the spawar café to see what’s going on with the internet.



Do I want you this close to me? You thumb-people don’t understand us, do you?

Here’s one of the unnamed cookhouse cats. This one is a bit lighter in color than the others. She wants the bit of chicken I’ve got in my hand, but doesn’t know how to get close enough to 1) get the chicken and 2) remain a safe distance from me.
Yep, it’s gonna be a problem. The maintenance chief said they took the water heater for the Major’s room. Good on him. But that leaves me with no hot water. He said he’ll try to find another water heater. He’s the head of maintenance and used to people’s problems. I think he’ll look for another heater but there aren’t any to be had, so “I’ll look” is merely a euphemism for “Sorry, mate.”
After talking to the maintenance chief, I had a cigar and took pix of Heskette, the cat. (There’s a Brit gal who calls her “Hesco,” but that sounds like a boy’s name, so I’ve changed it to “Heskette.”)



This is Heskette atop the railing around the NAAFI smoke pit.














Heskette patrols the patio by the NAAFI store. “This is my turf. I’ll give you a temporary visa to be here. Pay up in food, OK?”














Here’s my impromptu water heater- two cartons of water with two mailing boxes and a third water carton straddling my heater.



Slow but the water is nice and warm. No one gets third-degree burns from this water but I can shower in the morning. Visible are my rifle, 75-pound vest and salvaged dresser.

I’m facing no hot water for the immediate future. So I did what I do best- make something good out of what I have. I took a case of bottled water from the pile on the pallet and stacked it on one side of my space heater. Took another and stacked it on the other side. Then I took two of the boxes Richie mailed me (empty) and put them on top of the water cartons. I cut a slit in the bottom of a third box and laid about half a case of water in the box so it straddles the hot air vent at the top of my space heater. Six hours later, I’ve got a half-dozen bottles of fairly warm water. Tomorrow I’ll shower with those. I could just get more water bottles, but I think I’ll practice a bit of conservation and re-use these bottles by filling them from my cold shower and putting them back in the box.






Here’s ya other problem- you need a fuse.


As if I weren’t having enough mechanical problems, my power strip burned a fuse this afternoon. I asked the British maintenance guy for another fuse but he had none. Al gave me another power strip but that one didn’t have enough outlets for everything so my frozen water will have to thaw a bit. However, Al’s power strip got my laptop from battery power to shore power. Hence this addendum to today’s post. I guess I’ll just get used to no fridge for a bit until I can get my power strip re-fused. There are about 20 liters of frozen water in the top of my fridge. Yes, I sorta planned this problem. We used to keep frozen water in the big freezers at Gannon and I borrowed the concept from them.


# posted by rich @ 2:28 AM
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