Yesterday was Hilary and I’s one year anniversary, which we spent on our roof enjoying a quiet dinner to ourselves. Quiet if you discount the clank and hum of the generators and howling cats, the occasional heavily armed South African sneaking a peak, or the beeping of the UPS’s as the power went out and back on and back out again.

It was a very nice surprise on her part. After cooking dinner (Penang curry with chicken and mixed vegetables with sides of Thai fried chicken and steam rice) she wrapped up two plates and told me to go put on something nice because we were going on a date. Um, dates aren’t usually given security clearance in Iraq, and there’s not really anywhere to go. But I played along, thinking that we’d just “go out” and watch a movie in our house. Heck, that was a good enough date a year ago (well, then we really did go to a movie theater).

Back in October the guys at VVAF suggested I take a suit with me to Pakistan in case I ended up going out to dinner with some big wig like a diplomat or David Bowie (one always needs to look good when David Bowie arrives). I brought my suit but haven’t had the occasion to wear it and was lately wishing I hadn’t brought it. To make a long story short, I dappered myself up with my suit, despite it still being a good 95 degrees outside, because we were going to go someplace with some fine ass food. Of course, it was my food, and luckily I didn’t have to tip anyone for the service of removing the plastic wrap.

Once dressed, I was surprised to be ushered up to the roof where Hil had set out a patio table and chairs, with a bed sheet as a table cloth. Two candles, an iPod with speakers, a bottle of wine (a gift from our housemate), our plates of food, and something wrapped up with a ribbon and bow. I made do with a place to put my suit jacket, and got down to the good evening. And a good evening it was, complete with brownies and milk for dessert.

Afterwards I was able to open the box. It was Hil’s engagement present to me: a fancy watch! It’s a badass watch, all elegant and with a laser beam feature hidden somewhere in it that I haven't found yet. It’s the kind of watch that a dude might get jacked for in the LBC, but right now, that won’t happen. Not because I’m not in the LBC, but because we have to find someplace to have a few links taken out. Therefore, It hangs down real low on my wrist (er, hand), in the style of a thug’s watch. A thug watch style is loose, just like that, because said watch has just been pilfered from a display case, no money down. Right now, my watch says “don’t step.” You don't mess with a dude with a thug watch, even if he is wearing sandles instead of Hi-Tecs or BKs.

I still haven’t given Hil her engagement present (that whole ring thing). I tried a twenty dollar bill the night I proposed and it didn’t work so well. It’s sort of difficult to try to get a ring to this part of the world. I don’t want to trust it to FedEx, and I think they have an anti-jewelry clause. The biggest problem is that since January I haven’t known where I’ll be in the next month because of silly contract stuff. Once all that seemed to have been sorted out and I was going to be in Iraq for a year, we got the surprise of that contract not going through. Unfortunately with it taking a minimum of a month for mail to get here from the US; it would have been cutting it close to have shipped a ring since we’re headed to Amman in less than a month. I guess Hil’s contented as long as I keep cooking and work out with her on occasion. Maybe she’ll get it if we go back to the states for a little while after this contract.

It was interesting sitting up there on the roof. Roofs are always refreshing despite their being over our heads all the time. You don’t really go anywhere to get to a roof, but when you’re there it always seems isolated from any other place in your life. Maybe the feeling comes from sneaking onto the roof when I was a kid, or maybe it’s the remnants of some sort of chimpanzee inclination to climb to the top of a tree and stick your rosebud butt out for the world to see. I don’t know, but I like roofs. No one else around, nothing overhead except for a few stars, and in the case of last night, someone out in the lights below was a car loaded with explosives.

That car thing has been interesting. For three days now we’ve been in lockdown. At first it was a car in Erbil, but the new reports are “a car in our neighborhood with explosives.” By “our neighborhood” I mean a fairly large part of town, I just can’t say what neighborhood because that might give it all away and my bootie might get singed and burnt. But the neighborhood we live and work in large, and has many, many more dense, high-profile, and high-value targets than us. While we’ve been given the impression that the threat isn’t substantiated, it is still a threat so we have to take precautions. I did fell strange walking down the street after work yesterday, going to the kitchen to cook, and wondering…”there’s a car in our neighborhood.” Well shit, there are a lot of cars in our neighborhood. I can see four right now. It’s not exactly a paranoid feeling, but more in a way of surreal. Maybe how some people in the suburbs of DC felt back in the sniper days of ’03, with all the white vans?

It would be pretty sweet to see a car tearing down the road and our 60 guards (with 40 guns) unlead their guardliness upon it: Pesh Merga style. Car getting punched with holes, hub caps flying off, window and watermelon like thing getting shattered. Car does a hard veer to the left, hits a wall then banks harder to the right, hits a pile of rubble and launches up 20 feet in the air, final hub cap flies off, bounces thrice on the asphalt below, and then the bullets tear into the gas tank, stream of petrol tailing behind the flying car, bullets bouncing everywhere, and then it speaks...WHAM! Car blows up, burning chassis lands on a trask heap and everyone starts dancing, pulling out beers, Van Halen music starts up in the background and bikini clad women start roasting marshmellows over the car as a single hand, hanging out what's left of the window, stops its convulsing and then falls off, severed to the dirt below.

That would be sweet.

Because of all this, I still can’t go shopping for kitchen supplies. Since I can’t go shopping, I can’t fulfill my plans for anniversary things, Hil’s birthday things (later this week), buy some knives that will cut, a blender, baking flour, or a whole host of things.

Instead, I just get to go about making my list and giving it to someone and wondering why I got certain things. Yesterday for example: two bottles of lemon juice. I thought about it for two hours, and then discovered that what I had asked for was “fish sauce.” Pretty close. It was a step below the canned pineapple, when I made a great point of requesting fresh pineapple. I even drew a sweet picture for the guy, and I know that pineapple is easy to get here. Oh well.

Update on the sourdough starter: the first 24 hours I had doubts because nothing seemed to be happening. But now, the bowl of fermentation that’s on my desk is making me cough! My sourdough is going to be straight bubonic! If I have enough flour, I’ll try my first loaf this afternoon. When I refreshed it this morning it had to skim all sorts of white goopy stuff off the top. It’s making me proud.

I’ll go make today’s list now.