It's been an amazing week. I've neglected blogging because frankly I've been enjoying spending time doing really stupid stuff with Nick.

He drove in Wednesday and got in about 11pm. Thursday was Thanksgiving. While pretty much everyone but me at the Rusty Scupper had to work, I got to have Nick spend the first holiday with my family. (Christmas day I'm flying to St Louis to spend Christmas with his family).

We were totally lazy Thanksgiving- aren't you supposed to be? While everyone else was toasting to sparkling cider, I brought two bottles of champagne and had a good time with Nick. I fell asleep (passed out?) on him during the Dallas game (couldn't care less) and woke up to watch Four Christmases with Nick, my sister and brother and law and my brother in law's ex son in law (got that?).

Friday morning my favorite Baltimore radio station 98Rock put on an event called Bacon and Beer/Purple and Black Friday at Hightopps in Timonium, MD to celebrate the upcoming Baltimore Ravens vs. Pittsburgh Steelers game. The event was basically a Kegs and Eggs event- it started at 6am (which is legally when you can serve alcohol in Baltimore County) and had drink specials. 98Rock broadcasted live. It was a blast. I wish Nick had been a bit more into it...he was still feeling the effects of the champagne, the 6 pack of IPA, and a Captain and birch beer (a surprisingly good combo!) from Thanksgiving night. We did get some awesome breakfast food, a load of bacon, and I had two amazing beer-mosas. (Yup, that's right- beer-mosas.)  A really fun morning.

We came back to my parents house and slept a few hours, got up and ate and fell asleep on the couch again. We basically spent all of Friday in comfy clothes and catching up on episodes of Fringe from the last month. Oh, and eating pizza. Awesome day.

Nick left this morning though. I'm pretty psyched to see him again this weekend in New York City. My sister and I try to go every once in a while when someone from her work charters a bus for a day trip to NYC. She booked it again like three months ago for this upcoming Saturday, December 5th. Nick's birthday is Wednesday so I had the idea that maybe I could just change the bus ticket into a one way to NYC for Saturday and come back Sunday night instead. I've never spent the night in New York City before. It worked out well- My sister Tina and I are going to hang out all day Saturday. Nick is going to drive in and take the subway the rest if the way in on Saturday (since Groton, CT is only 2 hours away) and meet up with me for dinner when Tina takes the bus back that night at 6:15. We're going to see Shrek on Broadway (yay! our fist Broadway show!), stay at a military hotel which was a third of the cost of every other motel there and I can go back Sunday night.

It will be a nice way to celebrate his birthday and spend some time together. I still already miss him like crazy. It's sad to see all his stuff from this weekend gone when I came home from work today. Ugh.....two months from this Friday until Hawaii. It needs to come faster- it's way too cold here.

So I was thinking...I always wanted a new license from somewhere other than Maryland. At least for probably over ten years I haven't been a huge Maryland fan.

Of course there are things to love about Maryland. Blue crabs, Old Bay, Baltimore Ravens, tailgating for home games, Towson bars, Towson University (my alma mater)'s Homecoming in October each year, gorgeous Annapolis, Ocean City in the summertime, Halloween in Fells Point, karaoke at The Charred Rib in Lutherville, and of course my amazing friends and family. All of these and so much more are things I'm going to miss.

But when it comes down to it, I have never been a fan of the cold weather and have always wanted to move somewhere warmer. California has always been my dream. I would still love to live there one day. We actually had San Diego down as our number one preference when Nick had the option a few months ago. Pearl Harbor, HI was number two. We had Virginia Beach/Norfolk, VA as number three since it was closer to Maryland. Groton, CT; Kings Bay, GA; and Bangor, WA were our last few choices. And of course Guam. (Thank God we didn't get Guam. Apparently guys actually wanted to go there...I guess if you're single it doesn't matter...)

Nick warned me not to get excited about the idea of San Diego. I think if I had to pick anywhere in the US I probably would pick San Diego- but so would a lot of other people. It was probably most of the guys in his class' number one choice.

I'm one of those people that truly believes in things being meant to be. Hawaii is such an amazing opportunity that still seems surreal. I mean...I always wanted to visit there. It's literally number 2 on my lie goals list...And now I'm going to live there? For three years?

Crazy. Absolutely crazy.

It looks like I'm going to get my wish of having a license from somewhere else. And it'll have a rainbow on it too. That's nice. I'll be sad to leave behind my happy blue and white Maryland license with the little crab on it. But it'll be exciting to move onto new, bigger, warmer things. ;*)

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.

Today was the first full day of training- and a double at that.

The people seem nice. But the BEST part...the break between doubles is about 2-3 hrs long. Not quite long enough to go home and do anything....but long enough to drive around the corner to my new favorite cafe: Spoons Coffee Cafe.

Amazing food and coffee. And super yummy lattes. With pretty designs....I think I could live with this....

My first day of work was today..It was really just filling out paperwork and getting the lowdown.

I think I'm going to like it there. I'm almost sad I won't be there longer because it seems like the kind of restaurant that will work well. The food is good and it's in a great price range to make money- even the lunch schedule. Plus they have amazing cream of crab soup. Yum.

I also found out I get a free soup, salad, or sandwich for a meal for each shift I work. Or 50% off a menu item. Not too shabby.

And this new brunch/latte place I discovered last week is apparently only 3 minutes away. Uh oh.

I have about 9 training shifts before I can actually serve. And that doesn't include the final test of waiting on a manager. If I don't pass that I have to train another week. :(  So I need to do well! I asked my manager to put me on the schedule as much as possible so I work every day this week until Sunday, starting with a double tomorrow.

Should be a fun week! Hopefully I can get through it and start serving asap...before I have more bills due!

It's been a week now since I last saw Nick. Man, do I miss that boy.

Last summer when he was stationed in Panama City and I was in school we went two months without seeing each other. At that point though we hadn't been together super long. I truly believe it's SOOO much harder now that we have lived together the last year.

I went to Canton tonight, an area in downtown Baltimore, but left after two hours. It was really nice to catch up with my old best friend Tony, but being there with random 90's rap songs playing in the second floor of Coburn's I really just missed Nick.

At least I know there are only three weeks until Thanksgiving when I'll see him again. I just can't believe how hard this is. I can't imagine how hard deployment is going to be. It seems worse being here though because I feel almost like I've been dropped off and left behind. Which of course isn't the case. But it just feels so weird being back in my parents' house and by myself (at least I have the dog fortunately!).

Alright. I'm complainey tonight. Sorry. At least he isn't deployed. At least I can call him if I need to. I just can't wait to be living with him again. The warm weather would be kinda nice too...

Today was day two of job hunting. Yesterday I hit the Hunt Valley area where I used to live. I didn't know offhand if any particular places were hiring though. I didn't have the best of luck but had a few leads in.

Today I hit downtown Baltimore. One of the places I really wanted to apply to didn't accept applications yesterday, so I thought by doing it today it would cover that place too. Good thing- they were the second place I applied and they hired me!

They were probably one of my top two or three choices too. An upscale restaurant which will look good on my resume and hopefully make me some money. It will be full time, and they already know which days I need off for the holidays and approved them. I think this will work out well. It's also fulltime. I really hope to make some money working my butt off since Nick's not around.

Since I can't really let the new job know I'll be leaving in February I'm going to leave the name out of this blog. Those of you who know me know where I will be working though. I hate to be dishonest but I don't know another way to do this...Guess that's the military life. Thank God we'll be in Hawaii for three years.

Training starts at the new place on Sunday. Which is awesome because it gives me the rest of the week to enjoy being off and to not stress about not having a job/not working. I already have brunch lined up tomorrow with a friend and lunch on Thursday. I'm going to enjoy my mini-vacation. :)

The ironic thing is I finally sat down to update my blog yesterday after a few CRAZY long days in a row of moving and I entitled the blog Murphy. It was supposed to be about how Murphy's Law really took effect with our move. Twenty five minutes into typing my computer shut down to update and kicked me out of Firefox causing me to lose everything I'd just typed....Murphy's Law?

So last week was crazy. On top of the movers coming and everything being hectic with having them there packing, trying to separate everything we need for the next three months before we move to Hawaii, I also worked pretty full days on Monday, Tuesday, and even Wednesday, the day we actually left Charleston.

I ended up not having any problems with the movers only taking certain stuff. In fact, as I look for things I am realizing I forgot to put aside some things I really wanted to...like that pair of snow boots I bought last year that I have only worn twice and was looking forward to wearing here over the next three months. I'm sure they'll get tons of use in Hawaii. On an island. Haha.

Back to moving day. Wednesday we slept on the floor on a sleeping bag in the living room. At 4am I woke up because I heard Maggie making gulping noises. Sure enough I got up and turned the light on in time to see her vomiting on the carpet. I managed to get her over to the hardwood floor before she went again. Then she calmed down a little bit. At 4:45 and 5;15 she started getting sick again.

We already had our alarms set to go off at 5am. I never went back to sleep when Maggie started getting sick. On top of that, I woke up at 1am earlier and couldn't get back to sleep for an hour. So I basically got up at 3am that day. And went like 26 hours without sleep. Sooooo fun.

Maggie kept getting sick all day. I wasn't planning on feeding her or giving her water anyway to help keep her from getting sick in the car. Throughout the day Nick barricaded poor Maggie in the kitchen (on a clean-upable hard wood floor as opposed to the carpet which we were steam vacuuming so it could be inspected that day).

We left at 5:30ish pm to get on our way to Baltimore. I thought it was going to be more dramatic driving over the bridge one last time and seeing everything a last time- instead I was too distracted worrying about Maggie. She got sick again not even two minutes into the drive. Thank goodness I put down a shower curtain, her seat cover, and three towels on top of that JUST to make sure. Thank goodness.

Basically it was a pretty miserable and long trip. Maggie was just miserable. Even with Benadryl to calm her down. The last two hours I had the light on in the car watching her and she was gulping down trying not to be sick and almost falling over nodding off.

We got into Baltimore and arrived at my mom's house at 4:30am and didn't get to sleep until 5:30/6am. Maggie was sooo happy when I let her into the yard. Immediately her tail and ears went up. After being sick for 24 hours she wasn't sick anymore.

Today's Sunday so I've been in Baltimore since essentially Thursday morning. I got to have dinner and do pumpkin carving (my first time!) with my sister and her family and with Nick on Thursday night- after basically sleeping until 5pm. Friday we had dinner with my parents. Saturday for Halloween we dressed up as Bill and Sookie from True Blood and went downtown to Fells Point to see all the costumes. This morning Nick left for Connecticut.

Definitely a lot harder to say goodbye to him today after a year of living together than it ever was last year when he was stationed in Panama City and I didn't see him for nearly 3 months. I can't even imagine what April will be like when gets deployed for 6 months.

The nice thing is I will definitely see Nick for Thanksgiving weekend. Since it's only about a 5 hour trip (hopefully with not too much traffic) he will be coming down for that weekend to spend it with my family. We had such an awesome Thanksgiving together last year. Neither of us went home so we did our own little Thanksgiving with turkey, biscuits, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. I made everything and we just hung out in sweat pants and made cocktails, ate, and watched 80's movies all day- I specifically remember Little Monsters with Fred Savage and Ben Savage. It sucks not to be able to have our own Thanksgiving again this year, but then again it will be awesome to have him here for our family Thanksgiving since he won't be here for Christmas.

I digress.

As of right now I am unemployed and freaking out a teeny bit.

I started Craigslisting tonight and am going to get up earlyish tomorrow to Craigslist some more, make some lists of local restaurants, and hit as many as possible to apply. Hopefully I won't have to resort to a restaurant that's too far away from home. I'm just crossing my fingers that I can find something quickly. I guess if I don't find something by the end of this week I'll just go to the downtown Hooters and try to work there again. Guess we'll see.

The nice thing will be not having a schedule this week- I'll get to meet up with some people I haven't seen in a while. So excited to see my best friend Erin tomorrow night for the first time in six months! And hopefully a bunch more people soon too.

Alright- up early tomorrow to job hunt....and try to figure out which clothes I have and which ones I forgot and actually somewhat organize the room I'm staying in at my parents. Ahhh, crossing fingers for that job.