Curtains!

While I was snoozing away today, my office hung curtains!  I know this doesn’t seem like much, but considering we do not have windows, I can now imagine that we do.  Yes, that sounds silly, but when you work in a building without windows, this is a big step.

My office is a 15 x 20 foot plywood box with six desks and shelf that travels along 3/4ths of the walls.  We have maps in almost every available space detailing where our assets are and their capabilities.  We also conduct our flight tracking on a whiteboard placed for all to view.  Any non-US military personnel are unauthorized to view any of this information.  Therefore, when we had local workers in our building to place additional outlets in our offices, we had to create a quick way to “sterilize” the office or cover up anything that could compromise US Forces through intelligence gathering (seeing our maps and flights).  I hope that all made sense, if not, what an excellent question for Mama Turtle!

To quickly cover up our walls, we hung 550 cord over our maps and whiteboards followed by the placing of curtains made of various colors of bed sheets over the 550 cord.  When the locals were done with their work, the curtains were neatly tied to the side of our maps and boards.

This seems as though it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is!  Now, when I am sitting here working or filling in the time, I can close the curtains, zone out on my work, and imagine there are windows!  If nothing else, it adds a dash of color to this plywood box. 

Picture this, I was sitting at my desk, leaned back in my chair, feet up on the desk (like any good officer), coffee within reach, working on my cross stitching, when my NCO walks in and greets me with, “Hey Grandma.”  I guess I got too into feeling like I was at home.  If only I had reading glasses on, I would have peered over them and told him to get off my lawn, but only after offering him some freshly baked cookies. 

Look what I made!