Today is day 53 of deployment. I guess everyone goes through their ups and downs during deployment. The whole first month I wanted to hang out with the other wives and be away from my house as much as possible.

The last 2 or 3 weeks I have been a hermit. This should partially be blamed on Netflix streaming video though which I finally got to work. I've been watching Lost (had never seen it before) from the beginning. I started about 2 weeks ago and I will probably be done season 3 by this weekend. Plus it's an even more amazing show when I recognize places from the island in the shots. I want to shout, "Silly Jack. There's no smoke monster at Kualoa Ranch." :)

Anyway, after a great night's sleep and getting to sleep in today a teeny bit (lately I've been doing these early online trainings at work that have me getting up at 4:45am!) I woke up to the best email ever.

I had emailed our videographer from the wedding to see if he could do a shorter version of the practically 2 hour dvd he had sent me. He took amazing shots but the dvd was ALL the raw footage which repeated shot after shot. We fast forwarded through most of it when Nick and I first watched it.

Anyway, our amazing photographer Philip Lemoine (highly recommend!) put together this little diddy for me. And made my whole day.

Thought you might like to see it too. :)

While I don’t want to be Debbie Downer and constantly talk about how SAD I am without my hubby and how my life is LACKING without my hubby…I think I need an easy pass just for this first month. Or at least right now.

I just sent an email off to Nick which, well, there’s a good chance it might get blocked from him reading it because the censors who read it before him may think I’m clinically insane and that it will worry him. But hey, worth a shot.

This morning was just a typical Friday. Aloha Friday here in Hawaii where everyone dresses down and you get to smile more not only knowing it’s Friday but it’s “Aloha Friday.” The true meaning hasn’t been described to me but I like to think of it as a mini holiday once a week.

Anyway, the day was normal. Good even. I even got hit on yesterday and today by a guy in the office next to me. I was quick to brush my hand through my hair quite a bit and flash the ring finger. I still don’t think he got it until today when I blatantly told him I’m here because my husband is stationed here. Anyway, it was still flattering was my point.

Traffic today was typical Friday traffic- much worse than any other day this week. But I saw a guy giving the shaka (See My Pieces of Hawaii section if you don’t know what that it- promise it’s not the finger)to someone briefly while inching along- it kind of made my day a little. Especially because only days before I witnessed two different people giving the finger to two different cars within five minutes of each other. (Okay I was one of the cars on the receiving end. I instantly tried to recall if I had done that to someone before and felt horrified and swore it would never happen again. Hey, it’s not my fault the lane was closed and I had to get in front of him. Oh Lord I do sound crazy today.) Meaning of this little rant? It made me happy to see someone giving a “happy” symbol instead of such a mean one. Wait..does that sound dirty..?

My day went downhill when I remembered to swing by Long’s (aka CVS) on the way home to pick up a prescription I’d forgotten to pick up the day before. They didn’t have it. I would have to come back. After I left they called to say I had no refills left despite the refill website saying I had 2 refills left. If I’d known I didn’t have any refills left I would have made a dr’s appt much sooner. So I was left trying to struggle to make a dr’s appt sooner than 2 weeks and/or get a prescription written by people who had never even met me and didn’t have my medical records. Yeah, you guessed right. They don’t do that. Meh.

I was supposed to go over a friend’s house tonight and spend some girl time but just got myself way too stressed about all this and still hadn’t made any food to bring, didn’t know if I could handle going to the hectic grocery store at 4pm on a Friday, and KNEW traffic was NOT going to happen with me at this moment. I did not know if I could give lots of shakas.

After I had a relaxing cup of Vanilla Rooibos tea and a big ol’ slice of garlic beer bread, I walked the dog and checked the mail. Bam- overdue bill with the wrong address on it. It was a third notice of a bill of Nick’s I had been looking for and hadn’t received any of yet. Because they blatantly spelled our address wrong. That’s the fun thing about Hawaii words and people who are not Hawaiian- they (and we) often don’t get them, how they’re pronounced, or how they are spelled. Although our street name starts with a K. The envelope’s street name started with an A subsequently followed by 4 more vowels. Didn’t that trigger questions? Guess not. Anyway.

Then the website I went to immediately pay our overdue bill was not so user-friendly. Fortunately I was able to call and talk to someone and make sure we didn’t get any late charges due to them not having the right address anyway. But I also tried to get our interest rate dropped down- apparently it’s some law that if you go on deployment, all credit card rates and I guess certain loans drop down to SUPER low interest rates. Well, this company apparently needs orders. Which I’m pretty sure we don’t have- not ones saying when and where he is deployed since it’s essentially top secret. Sigh. Now his CO has to write an email from the boat for me to pass to the credit card company. And I subsequently have a headache and believe I will be indulging in pizza, champagne, and Twinkies for the rest of my evening. Vanilla Rooibos Tea be damned- you weren’t cutting it.

You know I think today was destined to not be great. It all actually started last night.

See what you should know about me is that I am a little, teeny, weeny, tiniest bit afraid of zombie movies. I won’t watch them alone. Occasionally they still pop into my head from time to time. I don’t know how that happens…I mean I’d be amazed if Ghost Whisperer triggered something….Well, now that I think of it….

Now, what you should know about Nick- he is a zombie expert. We’re talking he would be the hero of a zombie movie. I mean he’s read books. Done research. Really. (I promise he is a cool guy.)

The bad thing? He didn’t make an appearance in my dreams last night.

I was in this little town. And the zombie virus started taking people over. Not the sort of funny kind like Jenna Jameson in Zombie Strippers. The mean scary kind. They went crazy- tore at each other, their skin decayed a bit. Plus they looked really pasty. Me and some unnamed no face friend ran from them and hid away. After the rage part of the virus died down a bit (haha…died down) the zombies became more toned down but had hot tempers and still decayed looking, pasty white skin. Not my thing for sure. Plus not all of them made it through the rage part of the virus since it sort of made them kill other people.

So this friend and I try to blend in. But hey, I live in Hawaii. I have a tan. We didn’t blend well. The zombies were onto us. They attacked. They chased. I think they even went after my dog. I climbed some trees. I kept trying to get myself to wake up and I think I started to a few times but was so tired I immediately lapsed right back into the dream. The last thing I remember was a zombie pinning me to the ground and dripping its nasty, slobbery, virus-infected spit onto my face in an attempt to infect me.

Yeah, when you spend your night fighting off dead, rage-infected corpses how well do you think your day is going to go?? That’s what I thought.

Oh, look. A glass of bubbly. Good night!

I've begun randomly breaking into song and dance. Not well choreographed musical masterpieces like in Glee. More like random rap songs consisting of the words "puppy," "walk," and "WHAT" repeatedly and accompanying hawt dance moves.

As I watch (laugh at?) Jersey Shore and have an evening off where I’m not falling asleep, (actually I already napped for an hour) I thought I’d catch up. :)

December was crazy!

Christmas was awesome. My family celebrates on Christmas Eve because of my parents’ crazy schedules. That worked out pretty well because I ended up flying out on Christmas day to St Louis to be with Nick for Christmas and the few days after.

My sister was upset this year we didn’t do the Twelve Days of Christmas…Last year every family member awkwardly jumped in front of a video camera to sing/say/yell/scream/laugh a verse of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It was a hot mess we all complained all the way through about doing but cracked up laughing when we got to watch it. Unfortunately my stepbrother and his wife had to run to church because they were in a play or something so we didn’t have time to sing this year. Darn.

Christmas day I spent a good deal of time at airports and on planes. I wasn’t fortunate enough to get window seats and spent the two flights (there was a layover in Atlanta) trying to sleep with my head strangely pushed forward while safely cushioned in one of those round travel cushions.

I made it one piece and got to clean up and nap before heading over Nick’s Aunt Cathy’s house to meet…well, everyone. I met his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Everyone. They were hilarious. We had a Chinese gift exchange (where everyone brings a gift and everyone gets one but you can steal other people’s gifts) where I won a duct-taped wrapped soccer ball that took me 10 minutes to open. I was cool enough to be the only person to get something sort of adult (The Hangover on dvd) and the youngest cousin ended up getting it…ooops. I didn’t know there was going to be a 15-year-old. Ah well.

Nick, his two twin brothers, one of their girlfriends, and I went to see Avatar Saturday, in all our 3d glasses glory. The movie was awesome…it also really reminded me of Pocahontas and Ferngully but set in Jurassic Park. Hah.

Saturday was perhaps the funniest night in St Louis. We went out to a little local bar in Ferguson called Marley’s. It was such a hilarious mid-Western bar. I don’t know what the funniest part about the bar was.
There was a winking wolf sign on the wall. The bartender didn’t know where the gingerale would be if they had it.

When I asked for white wine (I know, I know, I should have just done beer!) I was given a wine glass and a plastic individual-sized plastic bottle of Sutter Home Chardonnay. The dj played two Lady Gaga songs in a row and 4 out of 5 of Gaga’s latest singles within a 40 minute period. With "Oops I Did It Again" interspersed in between. We met up with Nick’s cousin Colleen and her boyfriend Nick there and had a blast laughing about the bar and the rednecks in it who looked beyond confused when Gaga came on and not-so-subtly ogled every girl who walked through the door. Oh Lord.

Sunday we were supposed to go to his grandparent’s house two hours away on a farm, but the snow began early and wouldn’t stop coming down. Instead we got to enjoy a totally lazy day inside eating cinnamon buns and watching movies. Can’t complain.

Since I was set to leave Tuesday, Monday became my touristy day. Nick took me to the Budweiser brewery for a tour. The tour was an hour long- we got to see the Clydesdales, their stables, the brewery, the packaging/bottling factory, and finally the hospitality room. That was probably my favorite. We got two 12 oz samples of our choice of beer. I had Shock Top for my first “sample” and got to try Michelob Ultra Golden Light for my second sample. The Mich Ultra Golden Light is only sold in St Louis and parts of Illinois so it was cool to get to try. We got to see a bunch of different kinds of beers I didn’t even know Bud made- although we didn’t get to try them all. Bud even makes a Bud with Clamato and a Bud Light with Clamato…Nick told me Clamato is clam juice and a bloody mary mix. Ew.

After the brewery we went to see the Arch. Tickets were sold out to go up to the top, and there was a crazy security line where they made you lift your pants legs and scanned you and everything just to go to the gift shop inside. So we just took some cheesy pictures outside, got some Hooters wings To-Go from the Florissant, MO Hooters, and then headed back to enjoy our last evening together for a whole month.

I was back to work the next day and since I was lucky enough to have off for Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, I had to work New Years Eve at my restaurant. It was a really long day. I was a double and was there from 9:30am until just after 2am. Up until about 1am I still really wanted to go out afterwards and celebrate with some other work people…then the day caught up with me. I ended up coming back, having a hot shower, eating a bunch of Bagel Bites, and finishing two glasses of champagne before going to bed about 4:30am, just when my mom was getting up for work.

The fireworks in the Inner Harbor were gorgeous. This was the first New Years Nick and I haven’t been together. It honestly made me a bit sad. But I’m so happy I finally got to be with him for Christmas at least. And while I didn’t expect to be spending New Years Eve with my fellow co-workers in our awesome khaki cuffed pants, white button-up Oxford shirt, and crazy fish/lobster/crab ties, when the clock struck midnight even the bitterest employees had huge smiles on their faces as they walked around wishing everyone else a happy new year.

I had all these thoughts as I watched the fireworks about how I’m getting so much closer to such a huge adventure. It’s unbelievable.

There are only 32 days from now before my big move to Hawaii. It is slowly becoming more and more real to me. (Except when I’m outside with my two scarves wrapped around my entire face sans eyes…Hawaii isn’t quite as realistic then.)

The New Year is just a reminder to me now of all the things I need to do. I still need to send in all my forms and information for my dog for her quarantine. I need to buy her crate for the flight. I need to put my car up on Craigslist- but before that I need to get an oil change and clean that poor car out too. And most importantly, I need to spend some quality time with my family and friends before I leave.

2010 is going to be such a crazy big year. I can’t wait. :)

Thought I'd try acting like a grown up this year. I'm attempting to send Christmas cards.

This might not seem like a big deal but Christmas cards, if you've done them before, are actually a lot of work. Especially for someone my age who has a lot of friends who move around almost as much as I do (I'm on address numero seis in three years...granted it's a reoccurring address but still).

I spent my evening writing Christmas cards and emailing people for addresses. It'd be nice to finally get everyone in my Outlook up to date. And birthdays would be nice to have to. I always liked to pride myself in remembering birthdays...and then college happened. My memory hasn't been the same since then. :)

Last year I discovered Plaxo, which is amazing. It's a website that's free to sign up for (at least I'm pretty sure it still is) and you add friends and every time someone on there changes their address it notifies you and updates their information in Outlook for you. It also sends you Outlook notifications for their upcoming birthdays- conveniently 5 days in advance, just enough time to send a birthday card.

Speaking of birthday cards, I suck at those. I promise to get better in the future. I love correspondence, the old fashioned snail mail kind, despite my carpal tunnel. Papyrus is one of my favorite stores. I love collecting stationary. And I love sending handwritten notes to people. But birthday cards...sigh. Not actually a fan of buying a generic birthday card and just signing my name to its already prosaic, rhyming, cutesy phrase. I'd rather honestly send a letter or a cute note that's a bit more personal that wishes them happy birthday. But that would probably come off cheap.

Anyway, I can't believe it's Friday night and I'm blogging about how I just spent my evening writing Christmas cards (mid November), bugging people on Facebook for addresses, watching the Nanny, and shopping for XL dog sweaters on eBay. Yup. I'm that cool.

PS. If you are reading this, you should probably stop laughing and send me your address so I don't have to hunt you down to send you a Christmas card. Kay? Thanks.