Trip To The Coast

Joe asked me to take some pictures today and send them to him. I wasn't sure where I wanted to take the pictures, but eventually decided on making my first trip out to the coast and visit Monterey/Pacific Grove. The day started out overcast, but warmed up to a high 60s to low 70s sunny day.

The Fridge

Joe called at 7 AM this morning (midnight in Korea) to let me know that he was headed down to Seoul with the squadron chaplain. Tonight will be another night of no sleep for him, and I don't see him getting much rest the rest of the weekend. I suggested he get a hotel room down there so that he won't have to travel 2 hours back to get some sleep, but I don't know if he will get the hotel room.

On a positive note, this morning was the first morning in a long time where I opened the refrigerator door without even thinking of plugging my nose and as a result I smelled....Nothing! The refrigerator is usually my arch-nemesis in the morning. Even if I plug my nose there is no guarantee that I won't still gag from the overwhelming smell that the refrigerator releases when the door is opened. Declaring myself having fully conquered the refrigerator in the morning is sure to result it me discovering otherwise in a day or two. I am pretty sure this morning's success was due to my nose being a bit stuffed up this morning and I also that fact that I slept in until around 9 AM.

No Rest For Joe

It  is past 11 AM in Korea right now and I really want to call Joe, but he didn't get to bed until past 5 AM and so I do not want to wake him up if he is still asleep. He mentioned that he was going to be up at 8 AM to go somewhere with the squadron commander, but hopefully the trip is delayed until the afternoon.

Both Joe and I have a four-day weekend due to President's Day, but my weekend will be far more restful than his. His squadron had an alert on Friday night which kept him up until 6 or 7 AM. Then, on Saturday night he was up all night for a different reason. Neither of us can remember the last time he has a restful weekend, though I am guessing it was New Years Eve weekend when we went down to Seoul and stayed at a hotel for a couple days.

I wish I could whisk Joe away on a vacation for a couple weeks. Not a whirlwind tour of the US visiting everyone type vacation, but a real get away where he could rest, relax, enjoy the scenery, and not worry about his phone ringing in the middle of the night. We had hoped he would be able to come back to the States for Christmas and planned on touring around CA, but November changed everything and I ended up going to Korea for Christmas. The next time he will be able to take leave is August, which will be for a wonderful but not restful reason. Hopefully between now and then he will at least have a couple weekends where he can relax in Korea.

Long Day

What a day. I was ready to go to call it a day and go to bed for the night while it was still early morning and I  hadn't even gotten up to start the day. From there it just went downhill. Nothing in particular went horribly wrong, but things that were messed up and needed my attention and things I had forgotten to do kept popping up throughout the day. The high point of my day was being able to talk to Joe this evening (during his lunch time) and tell him about the difficulties I had a work. It is so nice having a husband who understands  not only the army language (full of acronyms), but also understands the situations and is also able to give very good advice. Sometimes all I want to do is vent and have him tell me I am doing a good job and it will all be okay and he is also good about listening during those times.

On a more cheerful note, once again I walked to work and admired the beauty of California. Everything is green right now due to the occasional rains, and the temperatures are generally in the high 30s to low 40s in the early morning but get up into the high 50s and low 60s by the afternoon. In the summer everything turns brown and it gets hotter, but right now it is gorgeous. Even the brown of summer isn't too bad and still has some beauty to it. It still hasn't sunk it that I live in California. I never imagined that I would live here, nor did I have a strong desire to live here, but here I am nonetheless. Someday I will actually explore the state and perhaps drive out to the coast, but so far I have either been too busy or too lazy. I'd love for Joe to be here with me so that we could explore and see the sights together, but he won't be able to take leave until August.

I am not sure why I am still awake and not in bed since I am really tired. The only explanation that I can think of is that if I go to bed that means that it will be morning when I wake up. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Rambelings

While at West Point I had a blog that I updated regularly. Back then I told myself that I didn't care who read the blog or what they thought. The blog was basically an online journal for me, though I did try to at least recognize that other people would be reading the blog entries. I stopped updating the blog regularly after I graduated and was deployed to Iraq later that year. The Army was beginning to realize the operational security (OPSEC) implications of blogs and social network sites such as Facebook and Myspace and as a result there was a lot of interest in who was maintaining a blog or Facebook page and what they were posting. My somewhat carefree view of a blog as an outlet and way to share my thoughts and adventures of that day with my family and friends changed because I was worried that the people I worked with, or would work with in the future, would see the blog and not approve of something I wrote. It grew to the the point that I found it too much work to find something to write about that would make it past all of my self-censoring.

I have tried to start handwritten journals many times, but they never provide me with the satisfaction and ability to see my thoughts clearly like typing them out provides to me. Handwritten journals also don't provide me with the invisible audience (yet also very visible - Hi Family!) that acts as a motivation for me to write. It does seem a bit strange to me that I keep my thoughts to myself in speaking unless I judge my thought to be of enough interest to another person or have a need to share the thought, but that I also prefer to have an audience in the background when I write down my thoughts and daily life.

With so many recent changes happening with Joe and I (marriage, command, Jenavieve's death, baby on the  way, moving again in the future), I do hope to start blogging again to chronicle my thoughts and daily life with some of the enthusiasm that I approached it with while in college.