U is for UFOs and whatnot.

I love UFOs and conspiracy theories.  One of my favorite books is UFOs, JFK and Elvis by Richard Belzer.  It's so silly, but I'm sure the government is out there controlling exactly what we see and what we don't see and all that.  I'm fascinated by it all.  I loved The Lone Gunmen and taped every episode.  I am also fully aware that this brings me dangerously close to the world of the Super-Nerd.  Dangerously close.

But, of course, that has never stopped me.  Which brings me to a website I found probably ten years ago, way back when I was in high school (sick - I can't believe it's been that long).  Please enjoy - I really think Metric Time could catch on.

I support the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

T is for Track Star.

If you know me (and I'm assuming you all do, because who else would read this?), you know two things:  I am diabetic and I hate the military healthcare system.  Don't get me wrong, I am so thankful to have healthcare and to get my insulin needs fulfilled, but when it comes to the Navy docs I've dealt with, well, they leave a great something to be desired (like maybe getting my prescriptions right or being knowledgeable about my condition).

That brings us to a few days before our vacation when I went to the Air Force clinic to get syringes, because the Navy WAS OUT AGAIN.  Fed up to here *points way above head*, I asked how I could transfer to the Air Force clinic, followed my instructions and when we returned from vacation, I had a letter telling me to see a new doctor....  I was relieved, but anxious it'd be more of the same.

When I finally got in to see my new doctor, I was blown away.  Matt came with me to help bust heads if needed.  He was not needed (but I was glad he was there).

My new doctor was amazing.  He knew stuff about diabetes.  He suggested a different insulin schedule to bring down my HbA1C.  I was on board!  I was so super-pumped.

Then.  Then he suggested the unthinkable (for me).  Thirty minutes of cardio five days a week.  Thirty miutes of RUNNING five days a week.  And Matt heard it all, so I couldn't just pretend it didn't happen.

Disgusting.  Awful.  Miserable.

I am not a runner.  I have no desire to be a runner.  People who run marathons baffle me.

But now, I am slowly pacing myself to become a runner.  I started off walking five minutes and running one minute for a half hour.  Now I am up to 4 minutes of walking with 3 minutes of running.

And I hate it.  I hate running.  It sucks.  I do not feel better when I an done running.  I do not feel bad when I miss a day.  It sucks.  And I'm not even actually RUNNING.  I'm walking most of the time and jogging because Matt insists I'll wear myself out if I actually run.

Maybe it will be better when its not so stinkin' hot here, but I just don't know.  I'm sticking with it for now for my health.  But I am letting everyone know that I hate it.

Vacation, Part 5: 16 Hours in Hawaii.

We spent the night at Travis AFB (stinkin' nice lodge there) and hopped another AMC flight the next morning to Hawaii.  It was in the general direction of where we needed to be...  We thought why not?  Maybe we'd get to enjoy the beach or something.

Well.  This is where we hit the downfall of the AMC Flights.  When we got to Hawaii, there were no flights leaving for 16 hours.  There were also no rental cars available.  And no hotel rooms on base.

Awesome.

So we spent 16 hours in the AMC Terminal at Hickam AFB, trying to sleep, trying to charge our iPods, and trying to avoid the weirdo who seemed to think we three were BFFLs.  Yikes.

Anyway, somehow, we made it back to Okinawa and have been enjoying it ever since.  See?

S is for Singing. Or Singing Along.

I'll be the first to admit that my vocal skills are lacking. In the 8th grade, someone told me my singing sounded like a dead cow. Ouch.

This has never stopped my love of music.  My dream house has speakers in every room so no matter where I go, I'm listening to something.  I love all kinds of music: Barry Manilow to System of a Down, The Killers to The Blues Brothers.  Gypsy punk, 60's folk, 80's pop rock - I'll listen to almost anything.

Before college, when my parents bought me a beautiful new computer with a CD burner, I learned the glory of Mix CDs and I've been making them ever since.  I have a few fans out there (Mom, Ryan, Miranda) and a nay-sayer or two (MATT, who hates every CD I make).  I consider my Mix CDs an art (Mom says its my spiritual gift) and you know I like you if you've got one.

My favorite thing about the CDs is throwing them in the sweet 1994 12-disc cartridge in my Toyota Windom and driving around the island singing my brains out to something I (sort of) created.  With no one in the car to tell me I sound like a dead cow.

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As a side note:  I have quit quitting Facebook.  But I deleted between 40 - 50 friends, so I'm hoping it willbe less annoying.  So if you made the cut and I'm still FB friends with you, consider yourself lucky.

Vacation, Part 4: D.C. and West Point.

Okay, okay...  I know.  I never finish things.  I promise to be better about that.  And I'll finish the alphabet I left off on over a year ago.  But really this time.

So, after a lovely sunny stay in Florida, Matt and I flew to D.C. to see his very pregnant sister, brother-in-law and nephew.  We got to see their beautiful new house for the first time and taste tested several flavors of Wegman's Ice Cream.  Carrie is the ultimate hostess and I always love staying with them. 

After our brief stay in D.C., Matt and I took Carrie's car and drove through five states to be at Andrew's graduation from West Point Military Academy.  How flippin' cool is that?  The commencement speaker was ...  President Barack Obama!  Pretty neat.  Super-pretty neat.

If you squint really hard you can see itty-bitty President Obama with his hand on his heart.  --->

Now, let me just state for the record, that, despite my disgust towards Glenn Beck and the fact I can barely wait Fox News without screaming, I am a conservative Republican, through and through.  But hearing Marine One fly by, watching the caravan drive into the stadium and seeing the leader of the free world walk out was pretty doggone exciting.  I got chills.  Gosh, I love America.

Also, let me tell you first:  I paid attention to the President's speech.  I really, really did.  But, for me, it was not as interesting as the fact that I had just told my mother-in-law about photo-bombing, and she thought it was a hysterical concept.  We took turns photo-bombing each other and other people.  It was pretty awesome.  But we were paying attention.  Most unfortunately, all of those fun photos are on her camera.  I got this one, though:

<---Sorry ladies, he's all mine.

After the ceremonies and sufficient family time, we hopped back in the car to drive back to D.C. to catch our last domestic flight - back to Travis AFB.

Dreams.

Last night, I dreamt that I was going to Hogwarts (which ended up just being crappy cabins in the Kentucky woods).  When I got there, my friend from high school and her brother that she was always trying to set me up with were both there and I got put in the Hufflepuff house.  I was so angry because, really, Hufflepuff is lame.  There are no cool people in Hufflepuff.  Put me in Ravenclaw, at least.  Not cool.

And those were the thoughts that put into motion my attitude for the day.

On Watching The Blues Brothers:

"I really felt like I was getting to know Andrea better.  And the music was great!"

-my favorite co-worker and quite possibly my favorite person.

Vacation Part 3: Florida

I am working my way through vacation, but we still have at least two more chapters.  Please bear with me.

Let me start off by saying the weather in Tampa was so much more pleasant than I was expecting.  We got to spend lots of time at the pool without feeling all sweaty by the time we got back home. 

One of the first things I did when I got home was to go to the ladies meeting at church with my mom.  I go with my mom to the ladies meetings every time I'm home and it's like going to visit with 10 awesome grandmas.  I got so many hugs.  You have no idea.  It was awesome.

On Friday, Matt and I took Mom on a road trip to Gainesville to check out the University of Florida.  It was nice to just walk around campus with Mom while Matt did his research.

We went to our second baseball game in a week at Tropicana Park.  We picked blueberries and we go to see my grandparents.  We spent lots of time at the pool.  It was wonderful and relaxing to just be with my family.  I can't wait to get back :)

I've Been Dying for a Little Creativity.

So, I just bought these dress patterns from Vogue Designer Patterns for $5.75 each.  And four bucks shipping.  So I am feeling pretty awesome about that.  I can't wait to get them and get my stitch on.

Addendum to Vacation Part 2.

I forgot to add photos. Here they are:

 Matt and me in Tubac.

And in our hometown.

 

And with my BFFL, Crystal.

Unfortunately, this vacation was not much of a picture taking one.  I have almost not photos from Florida and then a burst of them at Andrew's graduation...  I'm so bad with my camera.

You Have Got to Be Kidding Me.

Well, it is the best film ever made.

Vacation, Part 2: Arizona.

Returning to Arizona always brings me a feeling that I never really thought would be possible. It brings me a feeling of coming Home. I always feel like I'm telling a bit of a fib when people ask where I'm from and I say "Arizona," but I suppose that's a story for another time.

We spent about a week in Tucson - hitting up The Gap (I went at least twice and touched absolutely everything in the store), relaxing at home, seeing old friends and making new ones. Mom and Dad-in-law took us to Tubac, AZ one morning for some Arizona centric shopping. It was like the Sedona area without the red rocks and the vortex-kitsch. It made me wish I had more spending money and more luggage space. And more spending money.

We spent Mother's Day in Phoenix doing something all mothers would love - going to a Diamondbacks game. Matt scored a sweet "Los D-backs Beisbol" tee shirt to support our Mexican brothers. Or maybe just to piss people off.

From there, Matt and I drove up to Flagstaff, probably my most favorite place ever. After a morning of Brandy's amazing Eggs Benedict, we decided to if anyone remembered us at church. We were excitedly welcomed home by Pastor Paul and made plans to meet for breakfast the next morning to catch up. I love our church family.

Crystal met us for dinner at Fratelli Pizza (a.k.a. the best pizza in the world, ever) and we spent the night at a casa grande she scored for the night. Hot tubbed it up in the cool, dark Flagstaff night. Amazing. Perfect. Best ever. (E-mail me those pictures, pls, Crystal? You know the ones I'm talking about... :D)

We bummed around the hometown for a while that day then early the next a.m., we hit the road to catch our flight to Tampa.

Goodbye, Dear Friend.

I have six days of Facebook Sobriety under my belt.

I have quit the FB indefinitely, but you can still reach me through this blog or the old-fashioned way: e-mail. never[dot]dexter[at]gmail[dot]com

Since I am not on Facebook, I have a lot more time to respond to e-mails. And watch TV.

Vacation, Part 1: Getting There.

Well, due to a tiny hiccup in the government in Kyrgystan, Matt's return home was delayed about a week. Which was lame because: A.) It had already been 8 months, for Pete's sake, B.) We had tickets to fly to the US on vacation four days after his actual return date. Four days is apparently not enough time to tell Marines, "Hey, we've got resources to help you, don't be stupid." Because of the extended transition time, we had to cancel our tickets and Travelocity basically put us out $3800. (That is a story for another time, but needless to say, Travelocity is now on THE LIST, along with Best Buy.)

We needed another cheap way to get back to the States. Enter: the Secret Society of the AMC Flights. Pretty much everyone in the Military community knows about AMC Flights. Ask anyone exactly how they work and maybe one in one hundred can tell you. Basically, when there is a training flight or a flight taking equipment somewhere and that flight has some extra space, military members and their families can hop on for either really cheap ($30ish) or free. This was to be our vacation savior.

There is a lot of waiting for spots on flights in your desired general direction, lots of layovers and lots and lots of uncertainty. But there is also lots and lots and lots of Free Flight-ness. Which, I guess makes up for it.

The first leg of our trip back home was a commercial charter from Okinawa to Iwakuni to Yokota Air Base. We had to arrive at the Kadena Air Mobility Command (AMC, get used to the acronym, you'll read it a lot in the upcoming posts) at something like 4 in the morning. And then we had to wait a few hours to find out if we were able to get on the flight. Then we had to wait a few hours to get on the flight.

When we got on the plane, we noticed that the seats in the middle of the plane were cordoned off with caution tape. We knew we were in for an exciting vacation. Apparently, the plane cleaners had opened the emergency exit over the wings and now those doors were inoperative. Awesome. Equally awesome? When the plane took such a deep dip, less like turbulence and more like Chester fell asleep at the wheel, that the oxygen masks several rows in front of us came down. Waaay awesome.

Fortunately for us, the rest of our travels were significantly safer. We spent the night at the amazing lodge at Yokota (full sized fridge, dish washer, etc for $41), flew to Elmendorf AFB the next morning, got to see the midnight sun in Alaska, then got to Travis AFB by 6am Sunday morning. Which we learned was not a good time to get a ride to the airport in California.

We spent the day sleeping and exploring the base on foot. Pizza Hut for dinner, sleep by 9, then shuttled off to the airport to catch our flight early the next morning. When we finally got to Tucson, I was happy to see my in-laws, happy to not be waiting for flights and happy to finally be home again. Gotta love the military lifestyle.

Reunion.

Approach imminent.

DiaBirthday #6.

Every year, I try to celebrate the anniversary of my diagnosis in a special way. Diabetes themed parties in college, theme park visits, special dinners, etc. This year, with all of the excitement of my impending reunion, I completely forgot about my Diabetes Day until about 6 days before... I didn't make any plans and pretty much expected it to pass without much notice.

Enter the best co-workers in the world. I mentioned my special day to The Best Co-Worker Ever this morning as I was reading the e-mail Mom sent me about it. When she returned from lunch (after a few strange calls for our other co), she carried cupcakes and a bag full of Twizzlers, Good & Plenty's (the Official Candy of DiaBirthdays), other candies and a box of Truvia - quite possibly my new favorite sweetener. They both wrote wonderful things (I'm assuming, half was written in Japanese) in a fantastic card addressed to Adrenaline Andrea.

The first few years, I celebrated my DiaBirthday so that I had something to look forward to, so I didn't spend the day crying and lamenting my bad pancreas. Now it is a reason to be silly and over indulge and maybe even to remind people that I'm a little different, but that's okay. I'm still really cool.

Buenos Aires.

And now the post you've all been waiting for - Mid-Deployment Leave! WHAT UP! (Yeah, I've been watching too much How I Met Your Mother. I love you, Barney Stinson).

Well, this vacation started out in the worst possible way: with an e-mail from Orbitz telling me that the longest flight of my incredibly long trip was canceled. After over an hour on the phone and many tearful explanations, I was rerouted and an extra connecting flight was thrown in there. I ended up getting there closer to when Matt got there than had been planned. Be still and know.

We spent our first week in the Recoleta area of BsAs at the Park Plaza Unique Hotel. We ate steak. Lots of steak. On one of our first days we took a short bus tour that gave us ideas for the sight seeing we did. We went to the Museo de Belles Artes, featuring both international artists and Argentine artists. We spent some time at the Recoleta Cemetery, where Eva Peron is buried. We spent a heck of a lot of time talking about food and looking for places to eat and eating. On Saturday we went to the art fair and bought our first piece of artwork from Don Roberto Solima.


[Click here for more pictures that I am too lazy to re-upload]

Our second week we stayed at a fantastic Bed & Breakfast in another part of Buenos Aires (I don't remember which part because I have been home for so long - I know I should have made this post right she I got home). We spent a lot of time watching movies (Sherlock Holmes, Valentines Day and Avatar) and a lot of time window shopping and probably should have spent more time sight seeing. We're such home bodies, even on vacation we just want to chillax and not do anything.

We had an amazing time; it was so great to be together again. Knowing he'll be home soon was a good feeling too. Keep his group in your prayers big time and I'll let you know when he's home safely.

So, listen up, all right?

Here's whats going down:

I love my job. More accurately: I love the people I work with now. Wow. My co-clerk says at least once a week how happy she is that I'm there. She tells me she can't understand why anyone (old bosses!) would dislike me or be mean to me. On Thursday she said "You're so weird!" And I love it. Like the Backstreet Boys, I'm back. Back again. Or wait... maybe that was Eminem? Whatevs.

It is currently Friday night. On Sunday morning, I am making that drive (actually, co-clerk is doing the driving!) down to the airport in Naha. The plane is flying to Tokyo then to D.C. and then to the final destination of... BUENOS AIRES! EEEEEEE!!!! I bought a iPod plug in thingie and a new iPod cover for the Baronness. She is pleased. I am pleased. We are all pleased.

Oh right, and I am going to see my husband after X months apart, we will finally be together again. And we will be buying lots and lots of leather and beef. Woot!

Also, please watch Inglourious Basterds, because it rocks. And the Olympics - starting February 12th in Vancouver. That is all. Will post pictures in three weeks.

Fine. You win.

All right, all right. I'll write something real.

The Monday before Christmas, I started my new job. My new-job-that-is-really-my-old-job-just-in-a-new-center. It's great. And amazing. And happy and wonderful. The directors take responsibility for their actions. The caregivers do their job and don't gossip about each other (that I have to hear). And probably best of all, my co-secretary is awesome. She laughs. She's smart. She smiles a lot. And because of all that, I am the same. I don't wear my cranky pants anymore. And my brain feels stimulated from time to time, although I could be doing better on that front.

I finally ordered a new computer. It should be here any day. I have already received the speaker and I am just waiting for the CPU, monitor, keyboard, mouse and, well, everything that isn't the speaker. When I get it, I will post loveliness and happy hearts.

I have been obsessing over Quentin Tarantino films lately. If you've ever met me (which most of you have) you know how it goes: for some reason, something goes off in my brain and suddenly I must know the whole story about an actor, a director, a talk show host, a TV show, and I cannot stop until this thirst is satiated. It's strange, but I'll be honest, enjoyable. Usually. Because usually I can easily find DVDs, footage, books, whatever on the subject. In Okinawa, I am not that lucky. The library is tiny. The video rental places are lame. My husband took Pulp Fiction to the desert with him (selfish!). I think the thing with Tarantino is that he is just so smart and so bizarre. I love smart and bizarre. Well, okay, I've probably worn out everyone's interest in that topic.

Wow. That's really about it.

Handwritten.