Life in the sandbox

I know, I know! It has been far too long since I last updated this site. In fact, I haven’t written a blog post since coming back to Baghdad. And now? I’m about to head out again, for a real vacation this time. Me and Boo are heading to Malaysia (truly Asia) for about a week and a half. I’m looking forward to wandering around in a real city and stuffing myself full of delicious street food.

(and not working, but I suppose that’s implied)

So what happened between my night in Amman and now? What happened to all those blog posts I was talking about? Bagels, homemade pasts, vanilla custard tarts…? I haven’t forgotten about them. In fact, I think about them often when I go to the cafeteria and find out that tonight’s “Asian noodle dish” was last night’s “Italian pasta medley” mixed with soggy vegetables and soy sauce…blugh!

But pretty much, life intervened. My previously three-person team was reduced to two, and a vague promise to bring that up to four people has not yet materialized. What does that mean for Ivory Pomegranate? Less time for everything, especially blogging.

So I’ve spent my recent days reading news, watching news, listening to news, briefing news, thinking about news, eating and sleeping (sometimes). One day I counted all of the online news articles that I read, and it was 58. They ranged from small breaking news blips, the ones that news wires publish with one line just so they can have the earliest time stamp when more information comes out later (don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, Reuters!), to longer features pieces on topics ranging from Iraq (duh) to most articles in the New York Times style section (love!).

I can already sense that this blog will be tweaked (or overhauled) in the coming months. There are plenty of food pictures stuffing my netbook’s memory, but the reality of my life (and I’m still trying to accept this) doesn’t facilitate food blogging.

It’s not all bad though, and Ivory Pomegranate certainly won’t disappear. I will eventually post the rest of my cooking adventures, but when the next twelve months includes (tentatively) a short return to DC, two weddings, and two possible moves to Yemen and Kyrgyzstan…I had to face it, I won’t be settled in a familiar kitchen for a long time. But I’ll have my camera, maybe a snazzy new lens, and a whole lot of time.

Or, at least, that’s the future concept.

Short-term plan? Malaysia, pictures, food, and if I can survive sacrificing sleep somewhere afterwards, maybe I’ll even blog about it.