It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again (okay so I missed a week or two… or months, whatever). If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it 

This week’s TT is dedicated to my new home state. I love it so much. Huzzy and I plan to be here as long as we can. And we are planning on retiring here when we get to that point.

The Top 13 Reasons I Love Washington State

1. This state has the best roads I’ve ever seen. I’m coming from Michigan where everything is under road construction, but no road will be fixed unless a pothole swallows a car. Seriously. They won’t patch until the pothole is nearly a foot wide.  Just the other day, I went through road construction here where they were tearing up the road. Um, I’m didn’t even notice ANY potholes on the road and yet it’s being fixed. Yay!
   

   Mt. Rainier barely seen through the haze of the setting sun.

2. I love being near the water. Coming from Michigan, we were never were more than an hour from a Great Lake. I love being so close to water everywhere here.
3. Speaking of water… I am LOVING the tides here. I love how it changes the beaches (if you can call rocks that).
4. I love the house I’m in and the large backyard for the dogs (even though my landlords are kinda a pain in the rear)
5. I love how green everything is. Even when we arrived in winter and there weren’t any leaves on the trees, the evergreens and the grass were still green.
6. I love the weather. When it “rains” it is 99% of the time still LIGHT outside. Nothing like in Michigan when it rains and the sky turns so dark it could be night. Heck, most of the time when they call for a rainy day, it only rains for like 10% of the day. In Michigan, if it’s a rainy day, it RAINS ALL DAY.
7. Speaking of rain… uh, what they call rain here is what we call “sprinkles” and “misting” in Michigan. People freak out here when it actually rains hard.
8. People freak out with snow too. If lucky, they may get 10 inches of snow total in a year. Compare that to the 170+ inches we received last year in Michigan and… heck, I’ll take the 10 inches. And ya know what, I’ll actually ENJOY the snow. I hate snow in Michigan because It. Never. Stops. But here, I’ll take it!
9. And the temperature? Uh… yeah, 40 isn’t that cold (not when you PRAY for windchills above 0 for weeks on end in Michigan and cheer when they hit 20 above).  And there is no freakin’ humidity here. Seriously. I was here when the “OhMyGodI’mGonnaDie” heat hit last summer. All 90-100 degrees of it. And I was confused because it felt like 80 to me. I like not walking outside and being drenched in sweat immediately. Or feeling as though you’ve stepped into a sauna so hot your breath is taken away. Or so hot that if you sit on a penny in a hot car, Lincoln is permanently burned on your thigh (ah-hem.. Sespi!)
10. This place is really dog friendly. Michigan is not.
11. I’m absolutely loving the military spouses I’ve met here. I think I’m making more friends here than I have ever.
12. I love the mountains. Love, love, LOVE them. Olympics to my west and Cascades to my east. My breath is taken away every time I come over a hill and see the snow-capped mountains. Especially on clear days when I can see Mt. Rainier looming like it’s just a few miles away.
13. And the best reason ever: This where Huzzy will return when he comes back from sea. This is our home.

~Author Unknown

It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again (okay so I missed a week or two… or month, whatever). If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it 

This week’s TT is dedicated to a site that makes me smile every day., mostly because it scares me how some of my family photos could easily end up on there (though more on the “wow, she has a mullet” side, than the “why is the dad naked in the family photo” side). It’s a newly-found site. I hope you enjoy it.

My 13 Most Recent Favorite AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com Postings

1. Jerry decided to pitch a tent a little early (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

2. My Best Friend's Sweating (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

3. Hockey Mom (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

4. Just a little closer to God. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

5. Sweet dreams. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

6. Perhaps Candy Apples would have been a better choice for this family. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

7. Reminds me of the Harlequin masks. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

8. Screw Jolly. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

9. It's not easy being in a room with no corners. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

10. You may now smoosh the bride. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

11. Deck the Halls. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

12. Merry Christmas from the Swingers. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

13. They couldn't wait to get their own choker. (from awkwardfamilyphotos.com)

Better HAS to come after the worse for us. Because this is getting bad. The actual deployment doesn’t bother me. I signed up for that. What I DIDN’T sign up for was also being apart from him while he’s on land.

If I were in Washington, I’d still not have him for Christmas. However, I could get through Christmas quite easily because I could look forward to the coming months when we’d be together. However, as it is now, it’s looking like–unless there is a miracle–I won’t move until after he’s left on another deployment.  He has told me that his “land time” has been changed and will be very, very short before going back out to sea.

It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again. If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it 

So here I am, looking into the future and not knowing when I’ll see my husband again.  Not knowing when I’ll get to live with him again.  So for today’s Thursday Thirteen, I’m doing a list of 13 Things I Look Forward to When I Finally Live with My Husband Again.

13 Things I Look Forward to When I Finally Live with Huzzy

1. Waking up next to him every morning.
2. Laying my head on his shoulder.
3. It will be HIS turn to take care of all the dogs.
4. He holds my hand when we are in the car.  Awww.
5. If I’m living with Huzzy, that means we are settled. Which means I’ll have all my clothes… not the 10 changes I currently have.
6. If we are settled, I will have a real bed. Not a twin mattress on the floor.
7. Huzzy taking out the garbage.
8. Cuddling together on the couch watching a movie.
9. Having him come up behind me and slide his arms around my waist and give me a big hug… at random times.
10. Having someone to cook for.
11. Having someone to talk to after I leave work and share things with.
12. … intimate things.
13. Him. Most of all, I just look forward to being around him.

No, it’s not Huzzy’s homecoming that I’m blogging about today (I wish… but that’ll happen next year). But after yesterday’s tribute to those who have served, today’s Thursday Thirteen is about the homecomings of those Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen.  More specifically, about the homecomings to their best friends… the dogs in their life.

When Huzzy comes home, I had planned on videotaping him coming into the house (wherever the heck we are) and watching the dogs’ reactions to him.  I know it’ll be video-worthy.

It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again. If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it

So here are 13 videos (there are several in the last one, so that adds up to 13 or so). I found these at the Mental_Floss blog. Warning: you might want to grab a tissue.

1.
Gracie welcomes her daddy home from Afghanistan. The wife saying that she’s going to cry actually made the tears flow for me.

2.
Buddy welcomes his owner home after seven months. This cracks me up because the dog is so darn excited that he just can’t stand still enough for his owner to pick him up.

3.
These are the weirdest sounds I’ve heard from dogs. It sounds so incredibly human.

4. Click here for a video I’ve seen so many times, yet it’s so worth it each time (not a YouTube, so I can’t imbed it into this blog). It’s two dogs greeting their owner after 14 months in Iraq.

5.
You gotta love Basset Hounds! Reggie welcomes his person back from Afghanistan.

6.
Rocky greets his favorite Soldier.

7.
Tiny dogs greet their person after a month away for training.

8.
Boxer greets his owner. A bit timid at first, but the enthusiasm grows!

9.
Doxies greet their Sailor after an eight month deployment to Kuwait.

10. 
This soldier nearly becomes his dogs’ human hurdle!

11-13.
Tired of seeing dogs greet their owners? (yeah, neither am I, but that’s all I have!).  Check out these heartwarming reunions of our military members surprising their children with their homecoming. If you haven’t cried yet… get ready to!

It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again. If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it

I can’t believe I’m still living in Michigan.  I thought for sure that I’d be in Washington by fall.  I am SO not wanting to deal with another Michigan winter.  So, in honor of the fact that it actually SNOWED today (no accumulation, thank God), I thought I’d find a fitting “Thursday Thirteen.”  So here it is:

13 Reasons I Hate Winter

1. It takes 5 minutes just to put on all your outwear so you can walk the 2 seconds to your car to turn it on so that it can warm up 10 minutes. Driving on a super-cold engine isn’t good. Then you go back inside, take off your outerwear, do something for five minutes (’cause if you leave your outerwear on too long you get too hot… and then it doesn’t feel like you are wearing anything when you go back outside) and then start putting it all back on.
2. It takes significantly longer to take the dogs outside. Greyhounds need jackets when humans need jackets. And Skah, the fuzzy wonder dog, looooooooves the snow (hey, his breed originated in the mountains!) and usually likes to take lots of time outside.
3. It is dark when I get up. I hate this. It makes me feel like I didn’t get enough sleep.
4. It is dark when I get home. I hate this, too. Makes me feel like it’s bedtime and I don’t get much accomplished.
5. Shoveling snow.  Back-breaking work. ‘Nuff said.
6. It’s tough to stay active in winter when you can’t go outside for more than 5 minutes because the -20 degree weather (yes, negative 20) means you start getting frostbite within minutes.
7. Snow starts flying in October.  It can fly through April. Heck, May has been known to have a 6-inch snowstorm.  That’s seven months of winter. It feels like it never ends.
8. Heating a house to 64-65 degrees (my normal temperature since the Greyhounds get too cold at the 62 I used to set the thermostat for) in sub-zero temps means $200+ electric bills a month.  My hands and feet are cold from October to May. In fact, my nails are generally a lovely purple color most of that time due to the iciness of them.
9. You know how pale Edward is in the Twilight series? He looks like he has a tan compared to how I look mid-February.  If I don’t wear foundation and blush, people will continually ask, “Oh my gosh… you look horrible… are you feeling okay?”  Stupid translucent skin (though I am lucky that it tans nicely in the summer).
10. Dirty snow. Everywhere.  Snow that doesn’t melt for 3+ months at a time gets realllly dirty along driveways and roads. It’s not pretty.  In fields, yes… but everywhere else, it’s pretty darn ugly a few days after it falls.
11. Other drivers. Seriously… if it is snowing/icing/sleeting… slow the &*$@ down! I can drive just fine in the snow. However, I’m not a miracle worker who can magically avoid all the idiots on the road who think that since they have an SUV or snow tires that that somehow makes them magically be able to drive 60 mph on an ice-covered road.
12. We have mostly deciduous trees around here. Which is absolutely gorgeous in the spring, summer and fall (which constitutes only 5 months of the year, COMBINED). Not so in the winter. The trees look dead with no leaves and combine that with the dirty snow and the fact that it gets dark at 5 p.m. and you have one very depressing landscape.
13. People who say that they’d rather deal with a Michigan winter than a Florida summer. Let’s look at this from a numbers point of view.  When I was in school, we considered “room temperature” to be 72 degrees.  This is the temperature that the majority of humans are comfortable at.  For the sake of ease, let’s call it 70 degrees. So a Florida summer generally is in the 90s and 100s.  Let’s be nice and say that with the heat index, it can easily get to 120 degrees.  That is a 50 degree deviation from the generally accepted “comfortable” temp.  The same 50 degrees the other way is 20 degrees.  We can easily reach a -20 in real temp with the windchill at -30 (two winters ago I remember us sitting at -18 for three days and we rejoiced when after two weeks, we finally went above zero).  Negative 30 is a 100 degree variation from the “comfortable” temp.  That is a variation equivalent of 170 degrees on the hot end!  So we deal with a wider range of deviation from “normal.” Yup, I’d rather deal with a hot summer than a freakin’ cold winter.  Now, I don’t like hot, humid summers at all (and Michigan has those too!) but I’d rather deal with that than the cold of winter.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Friday Funny! I have a hilarious video of the fuzzy pup Skah and how “brave” he was last night.

It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again. If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it

13 of My Favorite Most Recent Failblog Photos

1.

Liquor for babies... nice

2.

Burglar throws knife at 72 year old homeowner. He misses. Homeowner is a former boxer. The homeowner's fists don't miss.

3.

Watch for children and other wildlife.

4.

Meth Bible Camp. Dead End.

5.

Jack Goff. Name fail.

6.

Dixie Normous. Name win!

7.

You looking for chicks?

8.

Scohol Zone. Someone needs to go back there and learn to spell.

9.

Poo Ping Thai Chinese Cuisine. Yum.

10.

How YOU doin'?

11.

Way to encourage people to fail.

12.

Knockers!

13.

In case of FIRE: Awaken sleeping employees slowly to prevent nervous shock and leave as fast as you do at closing time.

It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again. If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it

13 Random Thoughts

1. I suddenly looked down the other day and noticed that our 17 month old Great Pyrenees puppy is no longer a puppy.  He’s filled out and is totally boxy now instead of lean and lanky. It happened pretty much overnight
   

   Skah at only 11 months... he had lots more growing to do!

   (which is probably why he’s limping… they do that when they have huge growth spurts).  My puppy is gone!  But at least he’s replaced by a majestic, regal dog.

2. Why do people insist on being stupid? Ignorant I can deal with but stupid is a whole ‘nother ball game.
3. I hope I get gained by my Navy Reserve command in the next few weeks. I’d love to start drilling soon.
4. My commissioning ceremony is Saturday. Holy Moley, it’s turned into something huge! Apparently the CO of the recruiting district has made it mandatory for all recruiters in this zone. Probably has something to do with the good connections both my place of work and myself have with him.
5. I’m terrified that I’m going to show how new I am that day. I had to ask the local Chief with help on how my combo cover is supposed to fit.  And I just finally figured out today a good way to do my hair the way I’m supposed to.
6. I was about to cut off said hair to my chin just so I didn’t have to deal with putting it up the “proper” way, which I couldn’t figure out until today.
7. This past weekend marked 3 months that Huzzy and I have been married.
8. By the time I see him, we’ll have been apart 11 out of 18 weeks of our marriage. Most will say that it’s the Navy life, but he’s not on deployment.  That will happen sometime this fall.
9. I need to make a page on OPSEC (Operational Security) so people know why I can’t be more specific than “this fall.”  I got the idea of doing a page like this from To the Nth. I hope she doesn’t mind me copying her idea.
10. I am really craving some Olive Garden Soup, Salad and Breadsticks lunch. Huzzy and I need to save as much as we can since we are supporting two households (and I am working two jobs to do that). But he went out with friends to see Transformers last night and I think I should get something, too. Besides, that lunch won’t cost as much as the movie did.
11. I really need to get my house finished and on the market. I’m glad my mom and brother are coming over this weekend to help. Too bad I have to work on Sunday, too.
12. My mom is bringing over a twin mattress. WOO-HOO!!!! No more sleeping on couch cushions on the floor (though they are infinintely better than sleeping on an air mattress that can’t hold its air)!
13. I need to start doing these things days in advance so they are already up and I don’t have to scramble around every Thursday morning to get my morning stuff done AND my TT.

It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again. If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it

Random Darwin Awards for the Past 13 Years

For those who don’t know… the Darwin Awards are awards giving out posthumously for people who die doing stupid things around the world. The awards say, “Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.”

I find them hilarious because I can’t believe the stupidity of some people.

1. 2008 Darwin Award: Two men who had just returned from boot camp decide to make sure a tree they were cutting down didn’t fall on a house by wrapping the rope around their waists. They flew like Superman for a while.
2. 2007 Darwin Award: A man decides to get rid of moles by inserting metal rods into their holes and attaching them to a high-voltage power line.  Uh… he didn’t know that the ground is a conductor of electricity.
3. 2006 Darwin Award: A man wants to disassemble an RPG  for scrap metal by driving over it several times.  When that didn’t work, he used a sledge hammer to do the job.  The RPG isn’t the only thing that is scrap now.
4. 2005 Darwin Award: A man, in his drunken mind, decided that he couldn’t have consumed all the alcohol that was missing in his house and decided his neighbor must have done it. To get revenge on the “bottle thief,” he decided to stab himself in the chest, call 911 and blame it on the neighbor.  His first stab didn’t seem too bad so he did it again… and pierced the left ventricle of his heart. Witnesses were able to confirm that the neighbor did not steal the alcohol. Guess he showed the neighbor!
5. 2004 Darwin Award: A man was too impatient to wait for his lava lamp to heat up so he had the genius idea of helping it heat up by placing it on the stove.  He must have been absent during his middle school science classes when he learned that heat expands things.  The autopsy showed that he died of glass shards impaled into his heart.
6. 2003 Darwin Award: Robbers were surprised to see policemen surround the building they were robbing. So they decided to go out in a blaze of glory and fled shooting at everything, including at the police, in sight.  The problem? They were using real guns but shooting blanks.  They soon found out the cops weren’t using blanks.
7. 2002 Darwin Award: When pulled over for erratic driving, a man decided to flee the officers on foot instead of manning up to a probation violation.  He then made the genius decision to shoot a 9mm wildly behind his back at the officers as he ran.  But the officers didn’t kill him.  Nope, he ended up shooting himself in the back of his head as he ran.
8. 2001 Darwin Award: Travis, 16, was on the roof of a church lowering a stolen generator to the ground, when his jacket became wrapped in the electrical cord and pulled him over the ledge to dangle precariously in the air. Though he could have cut himself free with the sharp knife in his pocket or wriggle out of his jacket, he didn’t. The surviving thief, unaware of his friend’s plight, waited 15 minutes before leaving Travis, trapped in the freezing rain, to die of exposure.
9. 2000 Darwin Award: At the Grand Canyon, the edges are roped off for obvious reasons. Many people toss coins onto the ledges below like a dry wishing well. One man decided to capitalize on this by climbing down and collecting the coins. When he tried to jump back up, the weight of the coins in the bag caught him off balance. He soon found himself in the same place as coins that didn’t stay on the ledge.
10. 1999 Darwin Award: One man (do you see a pattern here?) decided to rob a clothing store named the Dum Dum Botique (great name, huh?).  In order to do this, he bent the bars guarding the windows and jumped in.  Unfortunately, his sweater caught on the bars. He was found the next day strangled to death by his sweater.
11. 1998 Darwin Award: A car thief thought he was helping out the people he stole from by eventually torching the car so they could at least claim insurance on it. When he torched his last van from the inside he didn’t realize the driver’s side door handle was broken. His body was later found inside the burned van.
12. 1997 Darwin Award: A man died of a cobra bite. Not because he happened upon it outside.  No, this man reached into the tank of his friend’s pet cobra.  When it bit him, he refused to go to the hospital saying, “I’m a man, I can take it.”
13. 1996 Darwin Award: A lawyer was showing his law students the strength of a skyscraper’s window by ramming it with his shoulder.  It wasn’t the first time he did this, but it was the quickest trip to the first floor that he ever had.

It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again. If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it

Thirteen Reasons I Love Our Dogs
(because after coming home Monday night to diarrhea up and down the hallway, in the livingroom and throughout

the bedroom, I need to be reminded as to why I love them. It was very similar to this episode… only not in a crate.)

1. I love being greeted when I come home. It’s especially nice to not be alone in the house when Huzzy is away.
   

   One of my first photos of Chase... and my absolute favorite.

2. They are comical. Don’t believe me?  Try using a laser pointer with two young dogs in the house.
3. They love me no matter what.
4. They feel the need to cuddle with me whenever I sit down.
   

   Lulu enjoying the sunroof of my car.

5. They are so worried about me, they follow me everywhere… even to the bathroom.  Though sometimes that’s an annoyance.
6. Chase likes to smile.  And that cracks me up.
7. Skah likes to growl and “play fierce” when you put your hands up menacingly.
8. Lulu is always happy-go-lucky. No matter what.
9. I love burying my face in their neck… especially the fuzzy one (Skah).
10. If you are in a bad mood, they’ll cheer you up by tossing
    

    Huzzy and me with Skah when he was 11 months old.

    you their favorite toy… or just snuggling with you.

11. If you need a good cry, they are there for you.
12. Dogs are good conversation starters.  Not that dogs talk… but when you talk to otherpeople, they are good topics.
13. Our dogs have eargasms.  You know… when you scratch their ear and the emit a guttural moan that sounds like someone is having a… well, you get the picture.

It’s time for the Thursday Thirteen again. If you have a Thursday Thirteen of your own, leave your website in the comments section and I’ll try my darndest to visit it

Top Thirteen Searches That Brought People To My Blog

1. wife of a sailor- Okay, yup, that’s what I am, so that makes sense. No need to link to a certain post.
2. will the navy change me- Yes, the Navy will change you. It will change your spouse too.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Again, not a certain link.
3. greyhound personality- Unique.  Greyhound personalities are unique. Very interesting dogs.
4. marrying a sailor- Yes, that’s what I did. And I’d do it again. And again. But I’d like more than five weeks to plan the wedding.
5. house with ghosts in them hurting people- Okay, my house used to have a ghost in it, but I’m pretty sure he left. But he never hurt anyone. Ever.
6. what the movers wont do pcsing- There are many things that the movers WILL do but there are a few things they won’t.
7. fat lol cat- Yup, had one of those on my site.  Pretty darn cute, too!
8. navy life- Oh gosh, I have so many posts about it. Just click “Navy” on my category cloud.
9. sailor’s wife stress- Wow, another one that I have many posts on. Don’t worry about clicking on anything, just scroll down!
10. how much money can you swipe on navy fed-  About $500.
11. blue fawn greyhound picture- Yeah, you can see that here too. Lulu is a blue fawn Greyhound.
12. miss my sailor husband- So do I, honey… so do I.
13. who owns the cat husband or wife?- Um… I’d say no one. No one can own a cat!

Okay, question for you… why doesn’t anyone use capital letters anymore?

~Wifey