Monthly Archives: July 2010
MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #4
Assumptions are the termites of relationships.
~Henry Winkler
(please feel free to use this!)
I love learning more about my fellow MilSpouse bloggers. So I created a weekly meme. Each week, I’ll post a list of questions on Thursday (so you can have your blog ready on Friday). Come back here on Friday (like today!) and enter your blog post into Mr. Linky below so others know who else participated and we can all visit other blogs. Please leave a comment too! And please feel free to use the button above!
(Please forgive me if I can’t get to visit everyone’s blogs the next few weeks. I’m supposed to be in South Korea right now, then will have a few days home with Huzzy (for the first time since the beginning of April!) before I head off to two months of school for the Navy on the opposite side of the country… I’m gonna be a bit busy!)
1. What food reminds you of your spouse?
So many (Can you tell he’s deployed? Everything reminds me of him!)! Steak, because he loves to grill outside. Beer Brats because he makes awesome ones. Sushi, because he loves it. And most especially rice… because he’s a rice freak. And I’d have purchased a rice cooker for him for his birthday except he guessed so I decided not to.
2. Who would you rather sit next to in a cross-country plane ride: an irritating non-stop talker, or a quiet stare-er?
Oh I really hope that I haven’t jinxed myself on this one. I don’t want either on my upcoming international flights (one of which will have happened by the time this posts). But I’d rather be next to a non-stop talker. I can tune them out. Or put on headphones. The stare-er would just creep me out.
3. What are your best tips on how to save money?
Huzzy is in awe at the ways I save money, but I know I can do better. I make sure I write down every purchase in a spreadsheet. That way, I’ll know where I can cut out. And those $3 smoothies here and there add up… you can see that in the spreadsheet! I also am a coupon clipper and I compare prices by doing ad searches and Google searches.
4. What is your favorite summer memory?
It would have to be camping. We’d camp at least three times during summer. Two of the weeks (separate ones) would be at a real campsite. No TV/video games. Just family games and talking. And riding bikes around the campground. And fishing. And swimming at the beach. And sitting around the campfire making S’mores, hobo pies and even grilled corn on the cob. The last week was at the fair as we (I) had horses there and we’d camp and enjoy the county fair. All of it was amazing and is something that brought our family together each year.
5. Do you believe in ghosts?
Oh my gosh, yes! We have a resident ghost that I’ve blogged about. And yes, he has moved with us. He’s here in the house in Washington. Not as active, but definitely still here. Maybe he likes having a larger house… he’s not disturbed as much. He’s a good ghost, albeit sometimes a bit tricky.
I think that spirits are all around us. I felt my dad with me for weeks after he died. My mom swears he kissed her on the cheek. I know he was there when I sold his house and at my wedding.
Please don’t forget to add your blog link to Mr. Linky below. But also if you are not participating in MilSpouse Friday Fill-In this week, please do not put your link on there… I will remove it. It is unfair to others who do participate.
MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #4: Questions for Tomorrow
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
~Herm Albright, quoted in Reader’s Digest, June 1995
(please feel free to use this!)
I love learning more about my fellow MilSpouse bloggers! MilSpouse Friday Fill-in is taking off even better than I could have ever hoped. I learned so much about my fellow bloggers and can’t wait to learn more… and hopefully even MORE will join in as we go.
Here’s the skinny for newcomers about MilSpouse Friday Fill-ins (and when I say MilSpouse, I mean significant others, too!):
Each week, I’ll post a list of questions on Thursday (so you can have your blog ready on Friday). Come back here on Friday and enter your blog post into Mr. Linky so others know who else participated and we can all visit other blogs. And please feel free to use the button above!
This week’s questions are:
- What food reminds you of your spouse?
- Who would you rather sit next to in a cross-country plane ride: an irritating non-stop talker, or a quiet stare-er?
- What are your best tips on how to save money?
- What is your favorite summer memory?
- Do you believe in ghosts?
I can’t wait to see what you all come up with tomorrow!
Please note that this post (and tomorrow’s) is auto-scheduled because I’m supposed to be in South Korea right now!
Standing Down
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.
~Ivy Baker Priest
This is going to be a short post. Mostly because as an officer, I have to be careful what I say.
Let’s just say that I’m very, very angry. Very.
And frustrated.
Less than 18 hours before I was to leave my house–and with my boarding pass in hand–I am now not going to South Korea.
Someone screwed up. Royally. The exercise I was going to be supporting is NEXT month. That is not what was told to the Reserve side. We even have documents to support this.
We are very lucky that I sent my travel itinerary to the fleet. That’s when they asked why I was coming now. Had this not happened, there would have been two Ensigns stuck at a South Korean airport with no ship (it’s not even near there!) to go to. That would have been interesting.
Now I get to try to pull off the greatest surprise ever (don’t spoil it if you know!).
However, I do believe I’m still scheduled to go to DINFOS (Defense Information School) the beginning of August but I’m waiting on confirmation from that. If I don’t go to the school, we’ll try the South Korea route again.
Never a dull moment in the military.
Off to South Korea!
The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
~St. Augustine
Okay folks, it’s official. I’m going to head to South Korea tomorrow for my two weeks’ AT (Annual Training). My orders were approved on Thursday. My tickets were booked on Friday and the tickets were actually paid for yesterday. Yes, the government can book tickets without paying for them. And it’s not unheard of for them to not be paid for when the reservist gets to the ticket counter. I know several people who this has happened to.
Without saying too much (OPSEC), I’ll be on a ship, so I’m not sure I’ll actually be able to visit South Korea other than seeing the airport. I’m hoping for a bit of liberty to see the country for at least a few hours.
I’m excited because this is the first time I’ll be on a ship and the first time I’ll be doing “real Big Navy” work. Woot!
I’ve been told that I can take photos pretty much anywhere on the ship (except some of the command areas and the area I’ll be working in), so I hope to do that so those of you who haven’t been on a Navy ship before can see a bit of what it looks like. You’ll at least see the berthing area.
So, I apologize to all my readers and all of those who generally get blog comments from me. I’m going to be absent for a while. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a few posts (I’ve already pre-scheduled the MilSpouse Friday Fill-Ins) here and there. When I come back, I’ll be very busy because I’ll have just four or five days before reporting to Ft. Meade, Maryland for my DINFOS training.
Catch ya on the flip side (of the world)!
MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #3
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
~Theodore Roosevelt
(please feel free to use this!)
I love learning more about my fellow MilSpouse bloggers. So I created a weekly meme. Each week, I’ll post a list of questions on Thursday (so you can have your blog ready on Friday). Come back here on Friday (like today!) and enter your blog post into Mr. Linky below so others know who else participated and we can all visit other blogs. Please leave a comment too! And please feel free to use the button above!
1. What is your favorite household chore?
This is probably sick, but I like vacuuming. But only since I bought my Dyson three years ago. It’s disgusting how much hair it can pick up. Disgusting and insanely wonderful at the same time.
2. What is your favorite childhood memory?
Oh gosh… I have so many! I think collectively it was getting working with and riding our horses with the family, going to horse shows, working with the foals, etc. Or maybe it was riding around on the three-wheeler turning hay bales upright so my uncle & cousins on the family dairy farm across the road could pick them up in the baler picker-upper (yes, we really called it that). It actually makes me sad that my favorite memories growing up are ones that my children won’t have. Of course, I also remember our family always working hard together and playing hard together. That is one memory I WILL create for my kids.
3. What is your most embarrassing moment?
Well, this moment is epic. As in… the prevention of it is now written into my college’s Resident Assistant training program. It was my freshman year of college. It was fall… or spring. One of the two. Anyway, it was raining. Hard. Not like Washington state rain hard. Like Michigan hard where the storms pick up moisture from the Great Lakes and dump it in one spot. Anyway, it was wet that day and we had to walk about a mile from our living centers to our classes.
So when I returned from class, I was drenched and quickly ran out of things to hang them on. So I hung my jacket on a metal thing that was protruding from the wall. One of the girls from across the hall came in to talk to me and noticed where I had hung it and said, “That’s a good idea.”
After she left I was staring at the jacket and immediately realized that it was hanging on an in-room sprinkler and decided it probably was not the best place to hang it.
Later that evening, I went into my friend’s room and we were talking when I noticed a hanger hanging off her sprinkler head. I told her it looked silly up there and she said she had hung her jacked up there and was able to get the jacket down but couldn’t reach the hanger. I told her I’d get it down since I was taller.
Did you know that sprinklers have a small tube that is around the sensor and that tube is filled with a gas that when disturbed (like when a hanger being removed touches it), bursts and sets off the system? Well I do… now. Luckily, only the one sprinkler went off but the entire fire alarm system when off in the 400+ person living center. Of course the fire trucks responded and everyone else.
The sprinkler flooded their room, and their suitemates’ room (next door) and the room directly below the suitemates’ room (somehow leaked down into the ceiling). Plus damaged at least five other rooms in our hall. You would be surprised at how much water comes out of just one of those!
Anyway, it was embarrassing. And expensive. I had to pay half the damages. The girl who put the hanger on the sprinkler had to pay the other half. People were talking about “the stupid person who set off the sprinkler system” the next day in class… they didn’t know it was me.
And the next year, when I was a resident assistant, our training included teaching our residents not to hang anything on or near the sprinkler system due to someone setting them off the previous year. I about died of embarrassment and immediately got redder than a strawberry in the sunshine.
4. What uniform of your spouse’s is your favorite?
Ooo… my absolute favorite is no more (well, for the enlisted like my husband). I absolutely love love LOVE the summer whites! I’m sad that they are no longer used (as officers, we still wear them, but as of last year or so, the summer whites for enlisted are no longer). My second favorite uniform is the summer dress whites. I don’t think those will ever go away!
5. What canceled TV show do you miss the most?
Um, I love Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. But it’s on GMC right now and I’m loving it. I really do miss Friends as well as The Cosby Show.
Please don’t forget to add your blog link to Mr. Linky below. But also if you are not participating in MilSpouse Friday Fill-In this week, please do not put your link on there… I will remove it. It is unfair to others who do participate.
