Things I Plan to Do More Often.

-Read my Bible
-Go to church
-Think happy thoughts
-Eat healthy food/make more healthful decisions
-Hang out with people
-Update my blog

Songs that WILL NOT be on my Christmas playlist this year.

-I'll Be Home For Christmas (most specifically: Josh Grobans's version - not to be played under any circumstances)
-All I Want For Christmas is You
-Blue Christmas
-Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
-Happy Xmas (War is Over)

Songs that will be played often to make up for the lack of the songs above:
-Purple Snowflakes by Marvin Gaye
-Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree by Cyndi Lauper
-Soulful Christmas by James Brown

Relocation.

I have a new job. Well, really, it's the old job, just at a new location. A new, happier, less stressful location. Cheers!

Things that I Read Every Day.

-All the Facebook status updates I can stand (good thing I only have 113 friends).
-As much Yahoo news as I can get away with at work.
-Annie's Blog
-The Happiness Project
-All of my e-mails (even if I don't always respond to them).
-Job postings on island.
-Working on reading my Bible everyday.

Adventures in Doggie Sitting.

As most of you know, I am dogsitting Molly's best friend Tea (think Tea Leoni, but I can't get the accent over the "e" properly). Have you ever seen two dogs who look cuter together?



I doubt it.

Anyway, Tea has a lot of toys. These toys end up all over the house. There is one particular bunny that she takes up to bed every night and brings back down every morning. For whatever reason, yesterday, bunny didn't make it all the way downstairs. And it really creeped me out.



I didn't set the bunny like that. I know neither Molly nor Tea have opposable thumbs to set the bunny in such a manner. Sitting so perfectly. Possibly having a conversation with a ghostly bunny counterpart. Bunny looks so interested in what Ghost Bunny might be saying. CreeeEEepy....

Maybe I've been watching too much Halloween TV.

Pleasantries?

Somedays, my boss comes in and seems to love everyone. It is these days that I am sure she is bipolar.

The Kindle: Now With International Wireless.

kjsdbv pdsiuyrlfhgbliudfgnv:IK!! Why must you tease me so??

What Do I Have To Say?

I've been mulling over that question for a while now, trying to figure out what you, my dear audience, might be interested to hear. Do I bring up the work situation? Probably not. More on what I've been reading? Perhaps. Molly did the cutest thing...? Maybe not.

Truthfully, there's just not a lot to say. Matt is where he is. I chat with him and see him somewhat regularly. I'm somewhat unsuccessfully keeping busy. This includes watching more Nickelodeon than I would like to admit, doing less reading than I would like to admit, and eating meals that I don't even want to think about, much less admit.

I am heading Stateside soon, for a few brief weeks, including my 26th birthday (and my Grandma and Grandpa's 70ths, my dad's 49th and my parent's 28th [right?] anniversary). I am eager to see my family and spend time not thinking about things and certainly not going to work.

I will keep you all updated as life progresses, trying to update more frequently and certainly more interestingly.

R is for Read, Reading, To Read.*

Books I Have Recently Read.
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Book I Am Currently Reading (because I can only read one book at a time).
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Books I Am Preparing to Read.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer
Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Don't I seem quite intelligent?

(Call it cheating that I just realized I was on R and could sneak this post into my alphabet. I call it resourceful.)

Books, Books, Books!

New book by JSF!! I CAN'T WAIT TO GET MY HANDS ON IT!

Eating Animals

This is particularly good news considering I am coming up on nine months of extreme reading.

Matt's Address

If you would like Matt's address, please e-mail me at: never.dexter@gmail.com and I will get it to you. I'm sure he'd appreciate any mail you want to send him.

Work on a Saturday (With a Twist).

This Saturday I am working in the evening, as opposed to my usual Saturday day time schedule. This is boring, I know.

So please enjoy this:

Q is for Quitter:

...which I am not (regardless of the appearances).

So, you might think I have deserted my blog and my alphabetical endeavors. I have not.

I have merely taken a break to devote myself to my more interesting and personally rewarding practices such as vacationing and taking care of my husband (which is, in itself, a full time job).

I promise that in the next few weeks I will begin to remember this little blog and I will start posting again. Be patient, dear friends.

Vacation!

Wow. Vacation is awesome. Matt and I just got back got back a week or so ago from a lovely week in Phuket, Thailand.

We left super early Saturday morning and arrive at the Okinawa Airport before it even opened. That's so Okinawa. Seriously, what other international airport doesn't open its doors until 6 am? We flew from our home-island to mainland ("Fantatic Fukuoka") to Bangkok to Phuket. Tiny layovers, just enough time to grab our bags and find our seats (when we knew we needed to grab our bags - they almost stayed in Fukuoka... oops!).

When we got to Phuket, we hired a cab to take us to our hotel... Oh.my.goodness. Driving in Phuket is NOT like driving in Okinawa. Drivers go twice as fast. Every other vehicle was a motorcycle. And pick up trucks! I hadn't realized that there really aren't any in Oki until I saw so many of them in Phuket. We also saw a bevy of 7-11's and quite a few Family Marts. I love you, Family Mart!

We stayed at Amari Coral Beach Resort, just south of the Patong Beach city limits. The view from our room was spectacular and the resort was just a short walk to the shopping and eating available in Patong. The room was small, but had a nice little balcony that we spent a lot of time on. Here is our breath-taking view:


We used a lot of our time to just relax and enjoy our time together. We did a ton of shopping (although a minimal amount of buying). We ate such amazing food I can hardly believe it. One night we took cooking lessons at the hotel - invite me over and I'll make you some Pad Thai or Red Chicken Curry. We even ate at Molly Malone's Irish Pub TWICE. After my amazing pastie the first time, Matt had to go again to have his own pastie. He gets food envy pretty easily.

Thai people are very good at sales. Or at least wearing you down so you eventually buy something. As we walked through Patong, we were be inundated with calls for "Taxi? Taxi?" "Tuk-Tuk?" "DVDs?" Several reached out to shake Matt's hand which is just shady. There were tons and tons of illegal/bootleg/knock-off products. Shoes, clothes, CDs, and a shocking amount of faux-Tiffany's jewelry. I'll admit, I was tempted. But my annoyance at the Thai sales tactics overshadowed my need for some Tiffany's Wannabes. Most places I didn't even want to look.

We visited a store that called itself "The World's Biggest Jewelry Store." The Thai selling technique was in full effect here and I just felt uncomfortable the whole time. I knew we wouldn't be buying anything too expensive and I didn't want to waste the lady's time. I got a small sapphire ring after being forced to try on most of the jewelry in the sterling silver collection. It is quite lovely and I am sure I will get a lot of use out of it.

I did a lot of poolside reading while Matt spent hours swimming to his hearts content. I read Freakonomics and got a start on The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Matt read one of Gladwell's other book, Outliers, between the hotel and Japan Immigration. He really enjoyed it. We actually bought a lot of books and I snagged a copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban - WITH THE BRITISH COVER! Yeah, I rock.

We also spent a lot of time in the hotel lobby, looking out over the ocean drinking fruity drinks. Every morning we ate the continental breakfast that was AMAZING. Great foods from all over the world... We gorged ourselves there daily.

What else, what else? I can't think of anything... I'll answer and questions I can... Maybe I'll post more later... I have been a terrible blogger lately. Anyway, I will leave you with this:

P is PC.

Yes, I am going there.

I am a PC girl. There was a time, ages 5 - 11, when I was a Mac girl; I'll never forget my days playing The Dark Castle. But since then, I had developed a love for PCs. I liked them. They worked for me (well, okay, not the Compaq Presario 700, but that's a story for another time). They're unpretentious and I know the OS. What else do you need?

As most of you know, two weeks ago I purchased a new computer. It was fancy. It was beautiful. The screen was large and the picture was crisp. I liked Windows Vista. My music sounded great and my-oh-my, it even had a Blu-Ray drive. I loved my new computer dearly.



Well, apparently Queen Constance (yes, my technologies all have names) did not love me back. After five blue screens of death in ten days, I decided it was best if we parted ways. So I took her back to the store and they refunded my money. In cash. Now, all I have is an empty place in my heart where a new computer should be and $999. Cash.

Busy-ness.

I had SO MANY things to do today. Most of which are things I do not want to do. Like mowing the lawn and doing dishes. But I am EXCITED about the reason for the chores.

P.S. Ready 2 Rumble on the Wii is the kind of game that makes your shoulders hurt in the morning.

MJ.

I don't believe it. Wow. Some people you think will just be around forever; Michael Jackson was one of them. I was hoping he'd be able to turn his image around before his death. I am choosing to remember the good: he was an incredible dancer, performer, entertainer and broke so many barriers, both racially and in media. Perhaps now I will take dance lesson and learn Thriller.... but let's be honest, that would take a good 50 years in itself.

Go download some MJ and be sentimental about the good days.

Things I've Been Reading Lately.

A Year in the Book of Psalms.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss.
Mental_floss magazine.
The Happiness Project.
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson.
Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Stephen Levitt.

TV.

The sentence "LaSonya would cut somebody in a minute" is why I watch Women Behind Bars. Call me and I'll say it to you exactly as I heard it. It's awesome.

O is for OPSEC.

OPSEC stands for Operational Security (love those military acronyms, right?). It's a pretty important concept, as any AFN commercial will tell you. Abiding by OPSEC means being careful about what things you post on the internet - blogs, Facebook, MySpace, wherever. "The Bad Guys" can take the little pieces of information that you post innocently enough and put it together to form a bigger picture of what is going on.

Say a spouse, we'll call her Mrs. C. Puller, posts on her blog that her husband, Gunny Puller is coming home from Iraq next week. Maybe previously she had posted an address so all her hubby's fans could send him care packages. Maybe she had put on her site that she was a "Proud Xth Marines, XX Battalion WIFE!" Well, we can piece together that there is going to be some changes in Iraq, with Xth Marines, XX Battalion. We know where they are located. And I'm sure other details that the loose lips of Mrs. Puller let go.

OPSEC is why I'll never mention where Matty is going, when he's going, when he's coming back, none of it. We can never be to careful about what we write and where we write it. You can't control who sees what you put on the internet and all the little pieces you and your friends post can come together to form a big picture.

Keep my husband safe, don't spread the word. If you want to know whats up with Matt, e-mail me personally and I will respond personally.