Smoke Decks and Slidey Rug

Peter's deployment is starting to loom in the near future. It's like an alarm clock ticking in my head. Sometimes it goes off and I snooze it and stick my head back under the covers. Sometimes it goes off and I have a meltdown before I snooze it. That happened this week. I had a nice rant about how much I hate the Navy. And now, since I can't spend the next year and a half hating the world and expect to maintain my sanity, I am going to find something nice to say about the military.

So here it is: I like Smoke Decks. Little covered patios far away from buildings where the smokers can go light up. I am allergic to cigarette smoke. Every time I went to smoky bars in college I would have to suffer with a stuffy nose for a week. My only attempt to smoke a cigarette was caught on film as a series of photos of me violently gagging every time the cigarette got within arm's length of my face. It's one bad habit I will be safe from. But the military has a large population of smokers. So I appreciate it that they give them nice gazebos with chairs and trash cans where they can go smoke at a safe distance from my face. And that's the best I can do with military appreciation today.

In other news, my cat has a new favorite game, Slidey-Rug. She races across the room and jumps on a rug at full speed, making it slide across the tile floor like a sled. Eventually it gets bunched up and stops, and if this happens abruptly she does a face plant into the floor.

Evidence:

Scream Like a Little Girl

I like to think I keep my cool around small creepy creatures. Insects. Snakes. Spiders. Amphibious Slimy Things. I get along well with them on two conditions:

1) They do not invade my personal space. This includes landing on me, attempting to bite or sting me, and taking up residence in my bedroom. Or some critters are not allowed to enter my apartment period.

2) They do not sneak up on me.

Yesterday morning I woke up to find a dead roach on the floor. It was small by Okinawa standards (only about 2 inches long) but large by my standards. However, it was dead. Laying on it's back, legs folded up, wings splayed out. Not cool that it was in my house, but nothing really to get worked up about. At first I decided I would just leave it for Peter - husbands are good at cleaning up gross stuff after all. Then I remembered that he will be deploying soon and I should probably be a big girl and clean it up on my own.

I got a nice wad of papertowels so I wouldn't have to touch it. I scooped it up. I flipped it over to look at it and congratulate myself on my bravery. Then IT MOVED. I screamed. I threw it across the room. I ran in the opposite direction. It took until I was safely hidden in the bedroom before I realized that it was just a bug. Plus only one leg had moved. So I crept back out and checked on it. It was laying upside down on the floor again. If you don't have any experience with roaches - they fly. This one did not. It just landed on it's back on the floor again. So it must have been close to death. But it still took me nearly half an hour to get up the courage to attack it with a shoe. And then longer to pick it up again and safely deposit it in the toilet. Mission accomplished.


In an effort to recover from the trauma of the nearly-dead-but-not-quite roach I am posting a picture of something soft and cuddly. In the foreground is a stuffed animal. In the background is my cat, back when she was still sweet and cute.

A Grown-Up Moment

Last night I was admitted to an alcohol serving establishment without being carded. It wasn't cheating on my part either - we were at a wine tasting event. This is a first for me. I'm twenty-three, and most of the time I am mistaken for a twelve year old. I usually consider it an accomplishment if I can walk into a PG-13 movie without hassle. I'm marking the day on the calendar.

My glory didn't last long. Tonight I went to a Deal or No Deal mock up and got carded again. My streak as an adult was over. I didn't even win anything.

It snowed in Colorado yesterday, so here's a spring photo to make the people back home feel better (or jealous).

Casanova

Peter has been highly amused by my neck troubles. It really is not that bad, but my range of motion has been limited. Specifically, I can't look to the left. So Peter likes to come up behind me on the left side and try to hand things to me, just to make me turn my entire body to see him. Since he is amusing himself at my neck's expense, I thought I would amuse myself here at his expense.

This is a photo of Peter the Romantic Cow (taken at our Bachelor/Bachelorette party)

The only injury I have had in Japan that was traumatic enough to require a doctor was a concussion last summer. How did I get the concussion? Peter gave it to me while trying to be romantic. He was on duty at the hospital that night. I came by in the evening to have dinner with him and keep him company. He grabbed me and dipped me to kiss me... and dipped my head directly into the stone windowsill in his office. I spent most of the rest of the night laying on the floor of his office. Luckily, the ER was right down the hall. Admitting that my concussion came from a kiss was embarassing enough, but since both of us worked at the hospital at the time we were friends with the ER staff. By the next morning, the entire hospital knew about my concussion and Peter had aquired the nickname Casanova.

Days When I Shouldn't Get Out of Bed

Yesterday I pulled a neck muscle while getting out of bed and couldn't turn my head all day. I suppose I probably deserved it for snoozing my alarm too many times. But is was still not exactly the way I wanted to start the day. The fact that I can injure myself while doing nothing makes me think that ignoring my New Year's Resolution to work out more often is probably a good thing. Imagine the damage I could do with a weight machine. Anyway, I have learned my lesson. Clearly getting out of bed is dangerous, so I have decided to be lazy.

The pets are stongly in favor of this plan. This is a photo of them taken several hours after the alarm went off, and they still hadn't pried themselves out of bed.

Jeopardy!

Alex Trebec and the Clue Crew from Jeopardy! travelled around the Asian military bases last week and held contestant auditions on the military bases. Peter and I went to try out.

Round One is a pre-test. If you can remember enough trivia under pressure to make it to Round Two you are pitted against other potential contestants. You ring in to answer questions, and the people with poor reflexes are elliminated. Round Three is an interview.

Peter and I didn't make it past Round Zero - Following the Directions to the Test Site.

Clearly, the people too stupid to find the test aren't worthy of taking the test. We went to the wrong location on the wrong day. We did, however, find the Alex Trebec autograph signing. At least I got an autograph for my effort!

Alex is the first famous person I've "met."

I Don't Know That I Don't Know

There are times when I am so utterly clueless that I don't know where to even begin asking questions. Most people feel that way about math. I feel that way about small children. If you want to make me uncomfortable, hand me a baby. Someday we'll have kids and I'll either get over it or we'll get a nanny.

But one place where I never expected to have that clueless feeling is...while shopping.

But I did. That's right. I admitted it. I had DIFFICULTY spending money.

Obviously, there is a language barrier for me here. I only know a few words of Japanese and I certainly can't read it. They have three different alphabets!! But there is usually enough English around for me to get by. (In fact, there is a surprising amount of English used in advertising, which makes me wonder if knowing English is "cool" or a sign of social stature. Or maybe it just works it's way into society because they are all multi-lingual.)

The biggest way the language barrier affects my shopping habits is by making it difficult to locate stores. There are buildings all over the place that I am afraid to walk into because I can't tell if they are shops or houses. Once in the store it's sometimes hard to find things because I can't read the signs. The only way I am going to find the shoe department is by walking through the ENTIRE store (Peter thinks this is a good thing). There are also a few products that I would never buy because I don't know what they are and the directions are in Japanese. But those also aren't products I'm looking for, so I don't miss them.

Last week, I decided that we needed more drinking glasses. Our current set has been biting the dust for a year now and it got to the point where we needed to wash a cup every time we wanted a drink. So I went to a store that I know has a home section. The hunt began. In America, I would be looking for 6oz. or 8oz. juice glasses. I found the dishes. I found wine glasses. Beer mugs. Champagne flutes. A can of Campbells Tomato Soup and a can of SPAM. A knife rack and a picnic basket. Pokemon chopsticks. Insanely ugly huge glasses. But where were the juice glasses?

Answer: In a box labeled "Stacking Iced Coffee Glasses."

Additional Note: Next time I need soup I should look next to the champagne flutes.

Here is another example of Japanese-English that almost makes sense, but doesn't:

(Clicking on the picture will bring up a bigger one that is easier to read).

News I Didn't Want

Peter's name was put in for deployment again. So as of this fall this blog will be back to it's original purpose of keeping friends and family reassured that Peter is alive.

I did not post much this week for several reasons. The first was because it was hard to find things to say that did not touch on the topic of Peter leaving, and that couldn't be discussed until the important people had a chance to hear about it. If you're an important person and you didn't get a phone call yet, it's because there aren't enough hours in the day when Peter isn't working and you would be awake. The second was because I am having a hard time finding nice things to say. Particularly about the military - but at least this time they gave us warning more than a few days in advance.

It's a bummer.

This is Rambo, helping unpack Peter's seabag after his last deployment got cancelled.