I would like to take a moment to express my sincere thanks to the many friends, both real and virtual, that I have.

The outpouring of support, thoughts and prayers for me and my family this week has been tremendous and has really helped me deal with the challenge of losing my dad and the additional tragic loss of my sister-in-law.

I hope to someday have time to go back and thank everyone individually for your kind words. In the meantime, I just hope you will know that the tweets, e-mails, comments, Facebook messages and calls were greatly appreciated. You all made a very difficult situation much easier.

At times like these its important to know that you’re not alone. I feel good knowing that I have so many good friends – even the ones I have never met.

Thanks.

My good friend Anne and I were having drinks with friends tonight and got into a discussion about the train wreck that is Britney Spears. Reports indicate Spears lost custody of her children after being caught driving without a valid California license (despite possibly being legally licensed in Louisiana). Apparently she had been told to get a California license since she’s been living there for years. She refused, then took the kids for a drive this weekend.

So Anne and I are talking and I mention the fact that I am considering a Britney related post. After begging me to leave the poor girl alone, I explained my perspective. This post is not going to add yet another voice to the chorus beating up on Britney. Instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to address the larger issue of celebrities and their poor hiring decisions.

Celebs generally hire personal assistants, publicists, makeup artists, stylists and countless other staff to make their life easier. The one position they all need to fill is “Driver”.

If you look at most of the problems celebs have had over the last year, it all comes down to one thing – they all involved celebs trying to drive themselves. Keifer, Nicole, Lindsay, Britney, Paris, Mel, etc. etc. All of them were driving themselves and should have had someone else do the job.

Had Mel had a driver, he wouldn’t be staring down the business end of anti-semitism charges. Had Paris called a car service, she would have avoided jail time. If Lindsay had someone waiting curbside, she could go on being a giant coke whore and nobody would care.

It’s not like limos are all that hard to come by in LA. It’s not like the expense is that great given these are people who spend $2,000 on ugly pants and huge sunglasses. It’s just amazing that the one thing that could keep them out of trouble is the one accessory they don’t have.

A friend of mine is currently serving in Baghdad and over the last couple of weeks has been sending out some really interesting notes about life in war-torn Iraq. Given that she is also a woman, and has to deal with the unique weirdness that can create in a Muslim nation (and, frankly, in a military setting), I have found a lot of the stuff she writes to be insightful on several fronts. First, she has to deal with the challenges of being very much in the minority. Second, she spends a lot of time examining the challenges on an emotional level. Finally, she really explores the “stranger-in-a-strange-land” aspects of her time in Baghdad.

I’ve asked for her permission to strip the identifying details and share them with others, as I think they’re a really good read. The notes she sends are almost completely non-partisan, and rarely mention the political implications of the war or make an effort to “cheerlead”. They’re just her thoughts on her current situation, and they’re pretty interesting

I’ve posted the full text after the jump, but thought I’d highlight my favorite part of her most recent dispatch.

The unusual becomes commonplace and the completely bizarre becomes completely acceptable.

Even the interaction between people is different. Social norms do not apply. There is an intense need for human connection that drives relationships between people to form quickly and sometimes in unconventional ways. For example, at lunch the other day, I ran into a fellow passenger from my maiden rhino voyage into the IZ. I had not seen him since the morning of our arrival, but he recognized me and asked to join me at the table. Two hours later I found myself able to recite back the intimate details of his life: Where he has lived in the States over the past fifteen years; the names, ages and pursuits of his two sons; the circumstances of his divorce; and the people he most often calls back home.

A few evenings prior, I was dining with a co-worker when an army captain sat next to us, showed us pictures of his grand-daughter‚Äîhis “reason to get home”‚Äî told us all about his wife and children back in Indiana, gave us a full account of the last twenty years of his life, and shared with us his political affiliation and views on the 2008 primaries. He kept commenting on what a pleasure it was to carry on a normal conversation with two-young women.

There is Romanian special operations captain who I occasionally meet for coffee in the evening, simply because he tells me that I am the only person he speaks with outside the office and how he looks forward to it every day. I don’t know what he does here in Baghdad, but I do know all about his beautiful daughter, the reasons for his divorce, the grueling physical and psychological training he endured to obtain his commission, and the songs currently on his I-pod playlist.

It can take years to build relationships in the real world. Here, it may take only hours.

Click through to read more.

(Read more…)