The Weekend and the Job

So this weekend I did get a chance to explore the downtown, Friday I went down there, but then it started raining and I had neglected to bring the bumbershoot and I headed back to the hotel.  Sat was a pretty decent day, so I went down, explored the flea market (mostly junk in my opinion, if I ever buy anything it will either be something to hang on the wall or a textile, they looked to be pretty nice.  After that I ran into a farmer's market, I bought a jar of Rhubarb jelly (kompote) and on the day's I remember to grab an extra roll at breakfast, it is pretty good.  After that I went through an art museum that was pretty much all modern stuff, although the architecture of the building was rather magnificent.  A quick tour of the big bookstore down town, with their 100 titles in English.  Then finally walking through a mall and on to the Sommerfest, which in this case was a music/food/drink festival on the main square and park downtown.

Sunday was a bit more pedestrian, I loaded up all my dirty laundry (filling my backpack and then a net bag, enough for two loads) and walked to base to do laundry.  When I finished with that, I camped out in a restaurant in the basement with some of their home brewed beer and spent several hours writing up my turn-over document for Minneapolis.

Monday I spent half the day doing paperwork to get reimbursed for the hotel expense.  I also signed up for a class on the Politics and Government in Africa.  It should be an interesting class, hopefully give me some background for the job, although my real job is just to get Reservists to the command, especially the money.

Today I attended, and will attend tomorrow, a European Command Intel Reserve conference and I've been learning all the intricacies to the reserves and intelligence.  It is a world unto itself, and I'm not even talking about the work they do.  There is such a multitude of three letter agencies, all with different pots of money and all with something to contribute.  It will be interesting to dig into the job, and I'm started to get an idea where I have to start.

Two final things, I'm getting tired of coins.  On base they use Dollars, so I have to carry both US and EU coins.  The smallest EU bank note is a €5.00 note, so everything smaller is coins.  The €.01 (euro penny) coin is even smaller than the US penny, it is incredibly annoying.  The one nice thing on base is that they don't use pennies, the just round up and down, how convenient.  The other thing is that I have been having these dreams about the house I grew up in in Edina, sort of weird.  I'm just wondering if it has to being "dislocated" and my mind is referencing the most enduring "home" I've ever had.