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June 29, 2005
Retirement and stuff
I can't believe that in as little as three months, I will no longer wear a uniform. This 22 years has certainly flown by!
It isn't like a real retirement where I get to fish or knit or anything. I am planning to get a job as an RN until I decide what I want to do when I grow up. My adventures (or misadventures more aptly) in home buying in the last few weeks have shown me that it is not enough to just have an employable job title. I must actually GET a job. Silly banks. I am absurdly optimistic that this won't be a problem because I have already been hired sight unseen once (back in Washington), and have no doubt I will again.
I found a piece of property in Anna, Illinois that meets nearly every one of my wishes. Please cross your fingers that it will somehow magically still be on the market in a few months!
As for my retirement, I will be having a small ceremony on the 30th of September. Y'all are invited. These ceremonies can be anything from massively formal to just a big party in hawaiian shirts (my ex husband chose the latter and it was a lot of fun). I think I want something small but cool enough that I can pay respects to my enlisted roots. As a junior enlisted person, I can remember these retirement ceremonies having a huge impact on me.
My travel plans are not formalized yet, it could be anything in the first three weeks of October. I then have to spend up to 12 days in Norfolk, Virginia for mandatory out-processing. I am hearing rumors that this could be done in as little as three days though. I am anxious to get to Anna as soon as possible so I can get on with the rest of my life, so hopefully I will be one of the lucky ones.
I hope you all have a happy and SAFE 4th of July. Watch out for those sparklers - they are the number one reason we see kids in the ER on the fourth. And don't forget, put on the sunscreen!
Posted by DebC at 03:26 PM | Comments (3)
June 13, 2005
I Have A Contest For You!
But you have to go over to my sister's website to enter.
In other news, I just faxed a bid on a HOUSE. This will be by FAR my most expensive self birthday present, hahahahaha. I turn 40 tomorrow and it is only fitting that I should settle down and actually own some property like an adult. I was going to celebrate by getting a tatoo but I think this is probably a better investment (not ruling out the tatoo though, HAH). I will post more about it when I get closer to buying it. Hmmm, why do I have the urge to say "winning it" like it is an Ebay auction or something? Must decrease Ebay time.
Posted by DebC at 09:13 PM | Comments (1)
June 01, 2005
Corfu, Greece
We started out bright and early on Thursday morning by getting on a bus destined to a port up in the mainland of Italy called Brindisi. Seven hours of bus sitting. We are SUCH pros at this that the time flew by. Naw, just kidding. Actually, we got on the bus and our tour guide, Salvo, held up not one, but five DVD movies that we were going to watch. And let me just say that girls did not make ANY of the choices. We had Spiderman 2, Troy, Gladiator, I Robot and some movie I had never heard of that lasted fifteen minutes before we realized it was not for the wee ones. Color two of my boys really really happy. Seth had a whole backpack with Seth toys just for sharing with another little girl we knew would be coming along.
Seth also met a girl six months older than him and they became fast friends for the rest of the trip. Within the first hour she announced that they would be getting married. Then she told me that she had nipples and that her mommy did too but her mommy's were squishier and that hers were not squishy, "can I see yours?". Then she took a breath. I told her that she would get to see me in my bathing suit at the pool only. How, HOW can you not laugh right outloud? I have long said that I am very happy child protective services doesn't have a camera in my house. What isn't factored into that is that when they turn three and four, they are little tape recorders and happily spill their guts to whomever is nearest when the thought strikes. This little girl's mother works at the hospital with me. If you have never had the pleasure of talking to a three year old whose mother is a medical type, you are truly missing out on some of life's finer moments. Jake once told a lady in a grocery store that I have a vagina and that his baby brother was going to come out of my vagina and then asked her if she had a vagina. Yah. Those candy racks are not large enough to fit under, I just smiled and moved on. Anyway. I told her mother what she said. You know, so she could enjoy the moment as much as I did.
After the seven hour bus ride, we embarked on what was supposed to be a seven hour ferry ride. We had a sleeping cabin that was very comfortable. The ferry should have arrived in Corfu around 3:30 in the morning which is a tad bit harsh considering you can't even check into the hotel until 11:30. They slowed the boat down and arrived at 7:30 instead. I was very happy about how easy all that had been, until we cruised past the airport. After I lost a bit of time whining about how much time we wasted traveling by camel, I found out that the airport is basically only used for chartered flights and is horribly expensive.
We spent an hour in Corfu (the city) and managed to do damage to our trip funds right off the bat. I picked up a gorgeous wool tapestry of grape vines that I will hang, as well as a really neat nekkid female torso statue. Eli and Jake instantly spent their money on nothingness as usual and Seth picked up a cool wooden farm set (as usual). They are so very good at spending money, carrying out fairly complex transactions in both Euro and the US dollar. They are quickly able to figure out the conversion between the two to know whether it is worth it. And I mean "worth it" in a sense very different than *I* define it. They are also finally learning the consequences of buying worthless stuff when they run out of money and then find something very cool. That took me, what, about 39 years.
Once we checked into the hotel, the first thing the guys wanted to do was go swimming. I had promised them that we were only going to do a small tour and then maybe one daytrip. Normally, I pack in two or three day trips and our vacations are stressful. So guess when the first tour is? Yep, three hours later. No time for swimming considering we needed to eat lunch. We sat down at the pool and had a really nice lunch. The hotel is just gorgeous. Then it happened. At least three families from our tour got into the pool. It was like dangling crack in front of a junkie. They pleaded and begged and finally I caved. We got into our bathing suits about half an hour before the tour left. We skipped on down to the pool to discover that the families in the pool were now dressed and ready to go. Nobody to play with. We got on the bus. I promised them (remind me not to do that anymore) that when we returned we would get straight into the pool. From our two hour tour of the city. That we returned from five hours later to find the pool closed for dinner. Uh huh. My name was mud.
But the trip was very cool. The guys even enjoyed it. Okay, so it took five more dollars and an ice cream. We visited Empress Elizabeth's (Sissi) palace called Achillion. We already knew quite a bit about her because we have visited two of her other palaces in Germany and Austria over various trips. I simply love European history. Everything is so old and connected together. Sissi led an especially fascinating life (you can read more about her here). The palace in Corfu was dedicated to Achilles and contains quite a bit of art that she had reproduced. After the palace, we visited a Greek Orthodox monastery (Paleokastritsa Monastery) that was very ornate and overrun with feral cats. Actually, we found all of Corfu to be overrun with feral cats. Seth ended up barfing after eating a large strawberry ice cream before a bus ride (this is a necessary key fact that comes into play later). He didn't seem sick so we just accepted the nastiness of it and trucked on.
Like I said, the pool was closed by the time we got back so we cried abit and then ate some of the best food EVER. Gads, Greek food has to be one of my top five ethnic foods. I ate moussaka (it is like eggplant lasagna with a bechamel cream on top) three times in two days. So guess what we did the next day? Yep, we never left the pool. Seth stationed himself at the kid pool where his girlfriend soon joined him. There were people from all over Europe vacationing there, so there were lots of languages being spoken. One thing that was amazing to me was that each of the staff spoke no fewer than three languages and most of them spoke more. They would come to our table and say hello in two languages to see which one we were. I watched them flip to different languages instantly from table to table. It was very humbling.
Once Eli and Jake got over the fact that there were topless women lying around (this is mostly icky and an oddity to them), they got right into the pool. Jake kept getting in the pool and then out, rinsing off in the kid pool. The big pool was not chlorinated (nor heated, brrrrr) but very salty. Pshaw, says I. I used to spend eight hours a day in the ocean with my eyes OPEN (and walked uphill to school both ways with no shoes in the snow). I got into the big pool to demonstrate how not big a deal the salt was and instantly my skin shriveled and cracked with the extremeness of it all. The kids were determined though and persevered through it.
We had decided to go on a day trip over to Albania, fifteen minute ferry ride away, for Sunday (one can only take so much freezing saltwater). Paid cash, laid out our clothes and went to bed early. Eli woke me up around three to tell me he threw up, by six am, Jake was throwing up too. This is honestly the first time we have ever been felled by illness during a trip though, so our luck was out. Seth and I went to breakfast and decided that we were just going to have a mommy and Seth pool day. I decided to go take a nap around noon and by two, I was throwing up too. The three of us were so sick that we actually had sharp words over who was taking too long to barf because there was a line and only one bathroom. Poor Seth. He felt fine and was bouncing off the walls. Dinner and breakfast were included in our hotel stay but we could not leave the room. By about 9pm Jake and Eli were weakly hungry being a full six hours ahead in the illness. I ended up ordering pizza margarita (basically pizza crust with plain tomato sauce and mozzarella), something we eat quite a bit of in Sicily. Well, we didn't eat it in Corfu. It arrived and was ostentatiously smelly. We made it stand in the corner until it could behave itself and not smell so large.
Now, look! It is time to go, how did that happen? We woke up feeling pretty dang perky. We arrived at breakfast with all of our suitcases. AHHHHHHH, big bad smelly smells. Seth had to be fed so we all sat down and watched him eat cocoa puffs (a vacation treat that he had never had before). Can you believe how much those smell? Eli and Jake couldn't take it, so they went to sit in the lobby while I waited for Seth to get done. I left a full cup of coffee. Now you KNOW that ain't right. Amazingly enough the ferry ride (which really did only take 7 hours this time because they went full speed) went very well. Even though it was during the day, we still got a cabin and slept probably three of the seven hours. During the subsequent bus ride, we learned that 4 others on the trip had been sick as well. The really weird thing is that we don't normally have a problem with foreign germs. I am fairly sure that is what it was though. One poor soul was sick on the bus all the way back. Thank God for bathrooms ON the bus.
Anyway, we really did have a nice time all things considered. Corfu was beautiful; we are a little tanner, a little lighter and fairly well rested. Pictures in the Gallery. Don't forget to click on the first picture to see the larger pictures.
I had planned ahead to take the day off after the trip and that turned out to have been a stroke of genius. Best part was that when I returned to work today, my approval for retirement was waiting for me. Woohoo! 4 months to go. I am going to write up the Rome trip and also post more about what we are doing.
A few other websites with more photos and discussion:
Spianada (the square in oldtown)
Posted by DebC at 11:48 PM | Comments (1)