Happy Holidays

I wanted to wish everyone happy holidays. Though we're away from all of you, you're in our hearts.

Car shopping

This weekend Tom and I are going to have some friends from work over for Thai food and then later we're going shopping for my car. I feel almost like I belong here now. Unfortunately, several things have been sacrificed to facilitate this.

The first thing is shorts. Dang do I miss my tired old denim shorts. I miss them tons. The second thing I'm missing is what little color I had on my skin. That's right. I'm even whiter than before. I never get out during the day and this really isn't the type of place where you wear your favorite denim shorts anywhere. I foresee my rooftop getting some serious face time with me ad my shorts when it gets a little warmer. Let's not even talk about the fact that my liver is starting to recover from my time on Kwaj and BOY! Is it mad at me! :)

So yeah, I've turned in my huffy for probably a small SUV. I know. Totally not me. This is one of those places in the world that in lieu of a tank or hummer, an SUV really is the safest thing to be riding around in. As much as I hate the idea of adding to the world's pollution problems, I'd really rather live to fight another green fight another day, so an SUV it shall be. The final sacrifice I've made is my driving style. I am used to being a child of the gentle West, where signals mean "please let me in" and your co-drivers 99% of the time will politely oblige. Here, signaling means "I'm a sucker, please speed up and try to end my sorry life." Also, survival of the fittest, or pushiest is really the rule of thumb here. So I've found myself "bossing" people around on the road and just pushing my way into traffic. Totally not me. Everyone looks at me funny if I am a 10 and 2 driver, so that's right out too. Man. I might as well install some hydraulics, lower my seat and get me a gat...

A day at the shore

Next weekend we're attending a black tie affair with a bunch of rugby players... weird hu? Anyway, we met up with some friends, Eddie and Patty who took us shopping. I've included a picture of them and Tom.

The other picture is of some fishing boats. We went to the fish market after the mall. The smell inside was incredibly overpowering, but these boats were incredible! They take the fish off the boats and right into the market. The critters are cleaned in front of you and you can buy them at auction by the bucket or as individual pieces from the stalls. All in all it was a great day.

Breakfast at Tiffany's... I mean zone 6.

I had a very surreal experience this morning. John Tompkins, Devin Noel and I had breakfast at the Arifjan Zone 6 DFAC today. Holy cow was that odd, but only in retrospect. Devin called me up at my office and casually said, "Hey, wanna go have breakfast with me and JT?" "Heck yeah, I wanna go have breakfast with you and JT!" I said and toddled off to the "unfashionable" side of base.

I was done with my bacon and was working on my banana when it dawned on me that I had gotten to Kwajalein about a month or two after Devin did. We both lived in the PBQ at the same time... that hell hole of a dumping spot for newly arrived bachelors on Kwajalein where people who didn't merit actual housing were given their first taste of their place in the Kwaj pecking order. We'd struggled through our first few (9) months together and were eventually moved into more permanent quarters, but we always had those first months together to complain about. We worked together for about 7 years.

I met JT at work and loved him from the get-go. I worked with one Miss Annie Consul who was the apple of John's eye. He pined for her. Oh did he pine. Many a night, John and I would sit at the yuk club over drinks scheming about how to win him his lady love's heart and hand. Today he is married to my friend, Princess Annie and they lived happily ever after. He'd been on Kwaj for lots more years than I had and had gone through lots of ups and downs before I even got there.

So here I was on the other side of the world, in the exact opposite climate, reliving a moment that happened many times before in another time and place and it felt like coming home. I was so sorry to drop them off this morning, I can't tell you. Whether this was a longing for people who I knew and loved from what seems like a lifetime ago, or a general sense that something is missing since I left Kwaj, I am unsure, but I do really really miss my life there. I just miss Kwaj. I miss my Kwaj family. I miss my girls. I miss the boat shack crew. I miss watching the Criminals over a cooler of beer and amidst obnoxious shouting about the questionable morals of the other teams mothers. I miss my department. I miss those cool kids who worked for me and were so generous while teaching me how to be a supervisor. I miss just chilling out over an impromptu dinner party. Try as I might, I just can't re-create that. Maybe I'll look back on Kuwait when I leave and feel the same things, but for now, I'm just homesick.

Villa Incognito

Without even asking permission, I'm going to snag a couple of photos off Devin's site (see link to the right) of our new pad. The first one is the stairs leading up to the main living area.

Everything is marble here.

Up the stairs is the main door into the living room. The second picture is looking from the main doorway into the living room. The glass doors at the far side lead out to the front balcony.

The third picture is the living room leading into the kitchen from in front of the balcony doors. Hi Tom! The other fella is Tom's pal Mick who stayed with us for a while.

The bathroom picture is the guest washroom between the living room and the kitchen. Tom had to have these fish in the washroom. We affectionately refer to them as the Potty Pals.

Here's the kitchen too. We're planning to get some bar stools to sit at the counter.

And finally, the Mick Room. This is our spare bedroom where friends or family can come by and stay for a while with us. In the mean time, it's serving as my imaginary friend's bedroom. I'm not sure what he's going to do when someone comes to stay...