Oh, Hello there.

Remember me? That person who used to blog pretty regularly about somethings? Yes, me!

So, there's been lots of hiatuses in my updates. But without a job (yep!) I'm hoping to get back in to the groove. So here's the fast update:

DECEMBER/JANUARY

Christmas was spent in Knoxville, visiting Mary and Kyle in their new house - i can't believe they're homeowners! We drank too much moonshine, at lots of yummy food, and played music, laughed, and sang a lot. 

Then I spent some time in Arlington. Mommy and I went to see the Degas exhibit here. 

Arriving home, i received the christmas present Dave had ordered for me - a print of Mr. Darcy's profession of love. AWESOME!

And I picked up Slider from the kennel. He'd had an accident - jumped and caught his neck on the fence and pulled a huuuuuge chunk out. YUCK. So here he is, looking extra pitiful with his band-aide. 

January was also my last month of work. The school finally hired someone to replace me, right before I left, so I didn't leave my teachers in a lurch, which was my biggest fear. My teachers were very sad to see me go. I think that if I'd felt this appreciated while I was working there I probably wouldn't have left. But I did. And I do not regret it.

FEBRUARY

Since I wasn't working, I was able to help out a lot with homecoming preparations. Amy and I made these AWESOME signs. Amy and her granddad did the cutting, I did some of the painting, had a painting party to get more done, and then glittered the edges.

Then we had to stake them. We installed them over by the Ops Side gate. Which took for-eve-rrrr.

Two days after homecoming was the Change of Command, so we also decorated the anchor in front of the O'Club. 

And I ordered this sign. To be reused every time. "Welcome home Dave, the cat missed you." HAHA!

In case you don't know, our cat is a terror. No really. We had to get him declawed because he kept attacking people. He only loves Dave. So you can imagine how difficult 7.5 months were without the love of his life, and having to settle for me.

Here's Dave! Bottom, far left. 

And there I go! First one out of the gate to rush Dave's plane. Which is almost the last one in the line. 

Reunited and It Feels So Good!

MARCH

So now Dave is home. He had three weeks off before he checked into his new squadron. We hung out, looked at fifteen houses, went skiing for my birthday, tried to Space-A to Hawaii, failed, twice, saw Beauty and the Beast on stage in San Jose, attended the Cinequest film festival where we saw a series of comedic shorts, and eventually made it to hawaii. 

Finally on our way to the tropical island paradise. 

On the beach where the first season of LOST was filmed. 

March 30 was Maya's birthday. We went and got mani-pedis, starbucks, and apparently learned to night-walk. I tried to buy Maya a lip gloss, you know something fun to apply and apply and apply... well, this actually was a lip stain. So now she really is 6 going on 16. But, in her defense, she applied that herself, didn't even color outside the line! 

Dave's Home!

We interrupt this Parisian reminiscence to tell you that Dave is home! For good! Or at least until he flies a jet over the ocean... but he won't deploy for a long while, so that's nice. It's nice not to have an empty house any more! I refused to clean which made his homecoming easier -why bother cleaning when we're just going to tear it apart in the next week or so anyway? (Still no orders, btw....)

Missed you, boo!!

An Unexpected Lunch Date

Last night I received an urgent email from Dave - with the subject PLEASE CHECK THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Jenny, you will appreciate the extreme use of exclamation points AND capital letters as it conveys the emotion behind the comment.) Dave's important news: Can I meet you for lunch tomorrow? Heck Yes! So I this morning I wore heels for the first time in months, and picked up some McDonalds (hey, he didn't say four-star lunch, just a quick bite).



While I only got to see him for 40 minutes, I'll take what I can get. How do we feel about his boat-stache? Dave flew in on a C-2 (as a passenger) to fly one of 192's remaining jets out to the boat.

UPDATE: Dave's plane broke so he gets to spend the night at home! Yayyyy!!

UPDATE #2: Dave gets to spend ANOTHER night at home. Woot!!!

An Update

1. On Sunday Dave left for Fall cruise, aka Part 2 of the 2009 deployment schedule. It's not as long this time, but is never fun.

2. We are in TCORR 2 - extreme wind is expected within the next 12 hours due to Typhoon Melor. Although it will probably end up being another blustery Winnie-the-Pooh type day, all base activities will be closed tomorrow, school is cancelled, and it will be rainy and windy.

3. I now have a pretty full teaching schedule and will have to give it up in 3 weeks. Awesome. I've got at least one class every day - except Friday. Unfortunately, we're scheduled to be leaving soon, so I'm already looking for someone to take over the classes. Lame.

4. Still no letter telling us we can move. Quadruple Lame.

5. On Sunday I ordered eight Jane-Austen films. I could really use them tonight and tomorrow since I can't do anything tomorrow!

6. I've bought a plane ticket to visit my sister in Germany! Exciting! I'll be there November 3-18. While it will be fun sharing Scott's birthday, it will be sad that I'm missing Dave's birthday and our wedding anniversary. I'm beginning to think it was quite amazing that Dave made it to our wedding in the first place.... Dave and Scott share the same birthday, though different years.

7. It's officially fall. I wore my first fall sweater today.

8. Today I received "gomensai" money. Last week I went to meet my conversation student, as scheduled. Except he didn't show. I called him at 12:15 - 15 minutes after our scheduled meeting time - and he was sleeping and very confused. So this week he kept apologizing and saying how ashamed he was. At the end of our lesson he insisted on paying me for last week. I let him pay me for last week in the hopes that I won't have to keep hearing about how sorry he is! (Gomenasai means Sorry.)

9. I disliked the movie "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past."

10. I accidently saw Glen Beck's "interview" with Michael Moore today and it made my brain hurt.

Finally...

Some pictures from Dave's first deployment! Yaaay!

Dave took the nice camera to Iwo Jima this weekend. So I took the opportunity to upload the photos from the "pocket" camera, which Dave took with him on deployment. Unfortunately, there weren't many photos.



Iwo Jima.



Dave's view flying




Obligatory self portrait





Fellow JO (Junior Officer) golfing off the back of the carrier... Dave couldn't golf because no one brought left handed clubs... I see a future gift in the making...




View from their hotel suite in Singapore. Unfortunately, this was basically the only photo from Singapore because the battery died, and Dave had left the charger onboard the ship.



Wine that finally made its way back to us! Dave could bring up to three bottles of wine on to the boat from Australia. Unfortunately, it was confiscated, and saved until they returned. They took each bottle, carefully wrapped it in duct tape, and legibly wrote the name of the shipmate. When they returned to port in Yokohama, the guy who had only the wine was only available to pick up wine from 0700-0800 each morning. What great hours... regardless, it's great that the wine made it back to us, especially since they're from Dave and I's favorite vineyard.....

A note from Dave

So does Harry Potter come out tomorrow in the US? I’m hoping at some point it’ll be shown on the boat, but I’m not holding my breath. Wall-E was on today. I still think it’s an overall mediocre movie, I just get irritated with its preachiness. On a positive note, I got to see the Southern Cross last night for the first time. It made me sing the song “Southern Cross” to myself in the airplane. It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be. On another positive note, I dropped a 2000 lb bomb today. That’s about the same weight as the original Volkswagen Bug. It blew up too, which was nice. I also got to see an F-15 up close for the first time in the air. However, since he was supposed to be a bad guy, and I saw him behind me, that wasn’t so good. Oh well, can’t win them all ;). I’m hoping the pic of me and Relay off the tanker turns out.

Lucky Dragons

A slide show the CO's wife made for all the guys. Dave, when the Skipper shows it to the squadron, pretend it's the first time you've seen it!

It's Official.

Dave's on deployment. Boo. While I am "used" to him leaving for a few weeks at a time, I am *not* used to having no animals to keep me company! The house is SUPER quite without the clicking of little(big) dog toes, and the random scurrying of cat paws. No one to wake me up and ask to be fed or taken out also means I can sleep till noon (bad). I've been trying to keep my days structure. So far I'm on day two. Yesterday I did nothing. Nothing. I had dinner at my neighbor's and watched a chick flick. Today, I was up at 745am to go to base for Body Pump. Oh man, that kicked my butt! I'll be sore for days, I'm sure. I'm going grocery shopping today, and if I can find some fresh sage, I will attempt to make ravioli from scratch (!). Cooking keeps me busy, but it's not as gratifying when I'm only cooking for one.

The good news is that Dave will be home for a few days in June, so this won't be that long without him. Also, he has very regular access to email, so i can get updates. I'm sure once things get in gear he won't be able to email me more than once a day, but right now I'm enjoying 2-3 emails a day.

In other news, I am highly annoyed with Shutterfly. I ordered a "brag book" of the animals, and a customized calender with all my photos. I placed the order April 20. Via online tracking, I know the order made it to New Jersey (??) on April 27. Just in case you didn't know, today is May 21. Where is this stuff!?!? My 12-month calender is May 09 to May 10.... I'm already going to miss the first month :( So I'm getting highly irritated. Blah!