14 February 2007
Ice Age
There was a hiss in the air that sounded like bacon frying. It was dark at the usual time, and I went straight from the soft nether land of bed to the coffee percolator and out to the balcony to listen.
The sleet was coming down with a palpable hiss on the ice-sheet that runs across Big Pink's pool deck and across the parking lot and over the shrubs and road to Route 50 and thence to West Virginia.
No one is going to be moving this morning. The Government is shut down, and all the schools in three states. I shivered a bit. It had not been the dreaded triple-whammy of weather, which occurs when the Jet Stream collides with a low-pressure front to the northeast and a warm moist front coming up from the Gulf.
The triple whammy brings snow by the buckets. This was only a double-whammy, and we have an inch of ice to show from it.
I glowered at the white sheet. I had been counting on at least five inches of snow, averaged between the airports at Dulles and Baltimore, in order to win a meteorological bet of tropical drink from a colleague in Maryland.
This could have been the big one, but it was not. It was just a pain in the butt.
I brightened momentarily. The pain actually was not that bad. I had not scheduled any meetings for this day, expecting metropolitan paralysis, and a day of e-mail and ice in the home office is remarkably similar to a day or e-mail and no ice. My mood dampened. This was not a day with the kids and toboggans. It is a new world.
Everyone in the Federal Enclave is on liberal leave, except those who telecommute. Those who work from home are stuck at the office.
Not even the Shia cleric thug Moktada al-Sadr could get out of town. He is lucky. He has apparently taken his leave of Iraq, and has relocated to the milder climes of Iran.
With the surge of Americans arriving in Baghdad, Mr. Sadr must have taken measure of the situation and fled to avoid capture or death during the lock-down of the capital. The Mahdi Army who owed him allegiance is splitting apart at the seams under new pressure and absence of hands-on leadership.
Maybe there is a ray of light in here somewhere, maybe a respite. The weapons that have appeared of late on the field are troubling. The successful attacks on the American helicopters suggests fresh man-portable rockets have been introduced, though Iran, certainly, but only as a way-station on their way from the Russian arsenal.
Advanced heavy caliber sniper weapons have also been found, manufactured with precision by the Germans and exported to Tehran.
I wonder what the ice would have done to the Mahdi Army? I can imagine al-Sadr summoning his cadre to a meeting in the eastern suburbs. His commanders would have looked at the sky, as I did yesterday, and wondered at the motivation.
I have been here too long, perhaps, since the slightest perturbation in the atmosphere makes me retreat to the bunker. I was already there, in my bunny slippers and sleek silk pajamas when the e-mail arrived, “suggesting” that I attend a meeting. There was no call-in data. They seemed to want me there in person.
I paused at the keyboard. This was a delicate matter. If I wrote back suggesting that prudence dictated a telephone conference, I could be seen as less than eager to perform my duties. I am too new on the job and to vulnerable to get that reputation.
I pursed my lips and typed a gung-ho message, hoping that catastrophe would intervene before I had to get in my car and drive.
The critical hour of travel was at hand when the message of sanity arrived, providing a phone number. I called a colleague who had been summoned to the same meeting to warn him, and give him the opportunity to turn around. My eyes widened with horror as he reported that he was already there. The roads were fine, not a problem.
Damn! Now it was a manhood test! I slung my briefcase and walked disconsolately down the stairs, knowing precisely what was going to happen. It would be easy to get to the meeting, the temperature would plummet, and coming home, I would wreck the car.
Damn!
I don't know what the Madhi Army cadre would have done, but I am every bit as implacable. I was in the car in a trice, and as predicted, the roads were heavily salted, though just a degree from transitioning to sheet ice. Everyone from the industry team made the meeting, and my absence would have betrayed a lack of testosterone.
Sliding sideways out of the garage two hours later, simultaneous with the unscheduled release of the entire Federal Government, I was certainly gratified about that.
It only took an ice age to get home.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com