hairspray and effeminate men

SO it is New Years Eve. We have 45 minutes to go in 2007 for you westerners here it is Heisei 19 and about to be Heisei 20, Heisei is the current emperor and he is in his 19th year of reign.

I was sick all weekend but I am feeling better, just congested so we went out, hey I have tomorrow to recover. Yeah it is freakin cold out there, the wind is like ICE and I have no voice, it has been dropping off more and more all day.

So what did I learn today? Young men here no about teasing, bleach and hairspray than even your most trapped in the 80s Southern hairstylist. Alot of them also look like chicks. We saw a band play at a festival down on the waterfront. They were good (well as far as we know) and the lead singer was a riot. He was a total ham and well I want his hair. Ok if I could have spikey funky hair with no work. These guys were everywhere they had bleached hair, teased hair and basically more style in their hair than any of the women.

Well we wandered around and had some yummy ball things, I forget what they are called but it is basically fried dough with a little piece of squid in the middle coated in a ginger sauce and fish flakes.

Unfortunately it was very cold and we got bored and my voice is now completely gone so we came back befoe midnight but hey that means it was easier to get a cab back to the hotel.

Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu!!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Japanese Santa at More City Mall in Yokosuka

I have been meaning to update but things have just been hella crazy. Let's see what has happened in the last 10 days. Our house fell through, Tuesday afternoon. The owners pulled out after a week of us wasting time because we HAD a house. So on Tuesday we find out but the agencies are all closed on Wed. Thursday we saw some places, we honestly did not like any of them. We were however going to take one because dammit we need a home. Well I was walking out the door to check out the area around the house on Friday and I got a call from one of our agents, Tsuda-san who was the agent on the house we lost and we really like him. He had a place for us it is brand new, meets our quaifications and the owners are ready for us and the dogs to move in. They sound like they have none of the hangups the previous owners did. Now I just have to like the house, well hubbs has duty so off I go. Love it, it is perfect, sign hubbs name on the dotted line and now I wait again. That was Thursday, the housing office is closed until Wednesday morning so I still have the contract and hope it all works out. I feel better about it this time.

Saturday we went out to the house to check out more of the area and so hubbs could at least see that. It is great, there is a grocery and lots of shops, a produce store in the house across the street. The train is less than a mile away and the bus is just down the street. We need to figure out the bus. The trains are easy though so we think the bus will be too and the housing agent thinks it is a straight shot.

So today is Christmas and hubbs has duty so yesterday we went to Tokyo to celebrate Christmas eve. In all honesty we are both beyond Christmas at this point and it just keeps getting in the way. The base is shut down for 4 days (where we cant do anything) and the country will shut down between the 26th and 29th and remain that way until the 3rd (so if we can et the house nothing can be delivered). So yeah that sucks. On top of the fact that the lack of people to process paperwork means the Navy currently owes us ALOT of money, we think we are pushing $2k at the moment if not more, that does not include all of the housing money we need to round up. Thankfully we are doing well so when the money comes in and the hotel is paid, we should have a nice chunk of change.

Ok now for Tokyo. We went to Tokyo via the train. We saw Akihabara, Ginza and Roppongi Hills. It was all packed and not my style at all, just too many people but it was cool at the same time. Personally I think I need me one of the $5000 massage chairs, Sharper Image aint got nothing on these babies.

First we hit Akihabara, Fry's aint got nothing on this place. It is the Geeks heaven. There was lots of anime stuff and enough electronics to make your head spin. It was pretty cool but with no money to spend and everything being so expensive, nothing totally peaked my interest. I do have to say the household appliances are pretty crazy cool though.

This is Akihabara see the sea of people down the street, by the bridge? The road was closed and it was wall to wall people.

We also saw this awesome BumbleBee from Transformers.

After awhile we wandered off to Ginza which is the fancy part of Tokyo. We hit the Sony Gallery and saw lots of top name stores. My favorite was Coach because it reminded me of my cousins :) Christmas is very big here but more like Valentine's day, or so I have been told. There were decorations everywhere. Here are some pics hubbs took. Even the Japanese were picture crazy.





oh yeah and if you want a moosehead to hang on your wall but dont want the dirty job of obtaining a real one, just buy this realistic plush one.

From Ginza we went on to Roppongi hills in search of food since a 1200 yen bowl of ramen is a little out of our league. It was like a super mall on crack and the lights were gorgeous. My favorite was the Banana Republic Christmas trees, it had BR ornaments all over it, oh yeah commercialism at its best.

Here are some more pictures :D Unfortunately none of the ones of Tokyo Tower came out.

Things I have noticed

Even the basic cheap, prepaid cellphones has more bells and whistles than I can shake a stick at or ever comprehend the point of. Some are cool, like besides voicemail the phone itself can record as voicemail. Some are weird like a diary or spending log, but the log is in japanese

Cars are not as small as people in the States think. Yeah you will not see a Surburban or an Excursion but you will see vans, Station wagons and SUVs, no pickups. We have seen cars as big as Chargers, Jeep Commanders and a HUGE SUV called a Harrier, yes like the jet. We still do not want a car but may need to get one. If we do we want a small SUV or hatchback, something one dog crate can fit in. Most likely a Nissan Cube or something else that resembles our Element, there are lots of versions here. If we get the house we want, it is on a narrow road and I will become a superstar at parallel parking.

Shopping malls here kick the malls in the States buttocks. We visited 3 today. 1 was connected to 2 other buildings with bridges over the city streets below. Each mall was geared toward a diferent group of people. We found the wealthy one with its Coach Store and other big names and then the other two were more up our alley. I got a small wallet/pouch today for Yen, so I can keep the money straight because it is a bit crazy with all the coins.

I have no idea how far we walked today but it was quite a bit. Just going to get the dogs at the kennel, walking them and going back to the hotel is about 2 miles. I do that every day and then a ton more because I get bored at the hotel. Tomorrow after walkies we are hopping on the train to check out the neighborhood we are hoping to move to. The Housing people have to deem it suitable for us, so we are waiting.

Before I leave tonight I will leave you with some pictures, these are things we found in a vending machine.

Dr Pepper bottle


Yummy corn

Things that take getting used to

Ok first off everything has instructions and they are in Japanese. Well duh we are in Japan right? But we are also on an American military base in an American hotel. That being said the toilet and the bath have instructions. I have to take a pic of the faucet in the toilet, I cannot even begin to describe it, it has 3 dials.

To turn on the water the faucets go down not up. All the faucets in our room are like a typical kitchen faucet with a single arm yo would push up to turn on the water and turn left or right for hot and cold. Ours are identical except it is down.

The driving on the left thing. Yeah I keep looking the wrong way to cross the street. Hubbs has stopped himself from getting in behind the wheel when we get picked up and it is just a bit unnerving. It makes us REALLY not want to drive.

Japanese, yes the language. We know some we know the polite phrases, you know Thank you, excuse me and I'm sorry. We use them all the time with Spanish speaking people with no issues. I speak broken spanish when I need too and do not feel at all stupid, yet here I have yet to utter a Japanese phrase for fear of being laughed at, looked at like an idiot or being refferred to as a stupid gaijin. Even though it is DAMN obvious I am a gaijin.

Japanese commercials are hilarious. I mean where else would you see a giant beaver hocking laxatives, well we think it was a laxative.

ok that is all for now, hopefully today we will venture beyond the gates

We made it to Japan!

so at 6:20 am Japan time I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed even to my surprise. Oh the joy of better living through pharmeceuticals well actually it was herbs but yeah. I figured it was time to get up as I had popped the melatonin and something else I cannot pronounce around 10pm and was out in minutes. So now that I have slept let me tell you about the ordeal that kept me up for the 45 hours prior.

So I wake up Weds morning at 8am. Do the thing get on the plane in the afternoon and get to Seattle, that is where the fun begins. We were loaded with stuff so we hae the lil cart thingy, the crates dont fit so we cram Elsa in with Gaven and stack them. Not 5 minutes later Elas's crate falls and cracks, a good crack too, a no way in hell my baby is flying to Japan in this crate crack and it is 8pm and we are still at the airport. The directions I had to the station for the shuttle to the hotel were wrong so we went up 2 floors, across a bridge and back down 2 floors when we could have just crossed the street. Oh yeah and ELsa is pissed at us the whole time and Gaven was just dazed.

Got the shuttle and head to the hotel. They now want to charge us more for the dogs and act like they are doing us a favor because they dont take dogs over 20 lbs, that girl got the riot act and yeah I paid the price I was told whn I called to confirm. It is 8:45pm, the pet stores close in 15 minutes I was not having any of that from er AND I hate to fly, oh yeah and I was damn hungry. So she draws me a map to the 2 big pet stores and Target. I tell hubbs to feed and water and hang out and I will get the crate. Go back and have them call me a cab. The directions were wrong (OF COURSE!!!) thankfully the cabbie, while not knowing where it was thought the directions were wrong and headed down a different, similiarly named street, on the way to where we thought we should go. I spotted PEtsmart, he waited and I got the crate. Get it back to the hotel all on only $20 cab fare with tip, go to put it together AND THERE ARE NO BOLTS IN THE PACKAGE!!!!! Thankfully we had a crate with bolts to take apart. We go to the hotel restraut get dinner to go and head back to the room, it is now after 10. We decide to be up at 2:30am, to guarantee we are at the AMC desk at 4am, ummmm yay?

Well needless to say my insomniac self could not sleep, hubbs had wanted to stay awake but that did not last, I may have dozed over the last 2 hours before the alarm went off. So off we go, no wait for the shuttle and he wisks us off. While unloading the shuttle (oh yeah we have 1 big upright suitcase, a seabag, a good sized duffle, a small duffle, laptop case, backpack,2 dogs, carryon suitcase of paperwork and a partridge in a pear tree, so yeah 7 bags and 2 dogs) I go to get carts and see a skycap he looks at me and goes"AMC?" I said yes and he loaded us up and got us where we needed to be. Which is good because we would have never found the place. So we get through the massive line (we were last at 4am) and get setup, the girl didnt tag the dogs and didnt know what to do with them other than demand $206 CASH to fly them. Thankfully hubbs knows his ATM pin, I couldnt use mine in GA so I have no idea. There were no other dogs around and they said to have them back by 6:30 so I ignored the fact that there were no tags. We took them out, Elsa would not potty to save her life and had not since San Diego. Gaven on the other hand is all about claiming and roc, tree and bush he sees. At about 6am we head up and there are more dogs AND they have tags, so I told a different worker, and she got them tagged. We left them at 6:30am as we were hearing we were one hour delayed. There were 14 animals on the flight, they do this every week so I took a leap of faith since they do not inform us when they are on the plane. The same woman who tagged them guaranteed me that she insures they all stay together and all get on the plane and she was very nice about it and not cocky like I am sure my neurotic questions could have warranted a cocky answer. SO I went with that. When we got to the terminal it was pretty full, more floor space was taken than seats and EVERYONE was asleep, so we plopped down and hubbs conked out and I crochetted until it was a decent hour and I started texting some people. Talked to my friend Amanda for awhile and then WE WERE DELAYED FURTHER! So now our 9:40am flight that we were told to be there at 4am for will not be in until closer to noon and hopefully gone by 1300. ummm yay? Oh yeah and kids are arriving so it is getting noisy which is undersandable but so are inconsiderate people who did not notice the entire gate full of sleeping people so it got loud. They did give us food vouchers, but when Burger King is the only place around they will run out of food, at least they ran out of breakfast, thankfully I wanted lunch.

11am a flight crew shows up, but we had not seen a plane we are all hoping they just know something we don't. Then the plane arrived at some point and no one deplanes, we are debating if they are empty and were just stuck in Dallas due to weather, then we see 3 pilot types leave and hope that is the case. People start lining up, we start to laugh, what is the point. So at some point they start boarding so away we go, good news, we got the exit row and it is only 2 seats across. Bad news no seats in front of us and no room in overhead bins. We stow te entertainment bags and check the ever precious paperwork, never leave our site bag, then AFTER it is gone they tell us it will be unloaded with the normal baggage. Well fuck! but it is too late now. While we had leg room and could stand up without hitting our heads we did not have working overhead lights and the headphone jacks were hella staticy, unbearble staticy. I had my new Ipod and hubbs had his gameboy so away we went.

The flight was smooth and uneventful. Hot towels, 2 hot meals, the first of which was VERY good at least mine was and hubbs ate his so it must have been better than SOS. The movies were ok, and the one I wanted to watch (Evan Almighty) was bearbable even with the static and the crappy projection. Why is it I always sit where the projector is crap, it was out of focus but I could see the one in the next section up. I occupied myself with dozing while listening to The Golden Compass on the IPOD as I was conserving the battery for movies when I REALLY needed them later, could not read because we had no light. I got maybe 30 min sleep. The lady next to me was sleeping like a champ almost the whole way.

Now the fun begins. Getting off the plane they do it based on pets/family/rank and final destinations. So once our group came up we were already gathered so we got off quick. Then we hear it, "have your travel orders ready". Thankfully this is not common but not uncommon either so they kept my passport and our IDs to find the bag. No bag. I see a lady who works there looking at tags, I pull ours out and look at the bag next to me "SHIT!!!! it has our number and it is not our bag" When the guy gave us the tag, he gave us one and then said oh wait, Yokota and switched it, too bad he had tagged them wrong. I tell the employee she tells the Air Force guy,I tell him how important the bag is, he mutters something about :Seattle strikes again and that would be what the lose" and tells me to hang tight. So we wait and wait and of course besides the only bag we care about and the fact that we have not seen the dogs, I have not seen another bag yet. Yay I see one, and it is destroyed, can this get any better? SO slowly and quite far apart I gather 2 of our 4 checked bags. AF guy comes back and asks about the carryon and I tell him no dice, tell him what the guy who took it did with the ticket swap and the other bag going to Okinawa, describe it and show him a similar one, yes everyone there had one like it. So he heads off. While he is gone, the vet explains quarantine to me (12 hours) WOOHOO!!! And I see another bag. Then AF guy arrives with my bag, I shout "hallelujah!" thank him and rush off to get hubbs who is trying to describe our transpo and paperwork issue with someone, the guy with our IDs comes running through yelling our name, I catch him hand him the orders, grab hubbs so he can straighten that out and go talk to transpo guy. Who gets an oh shit look because he did not know of an animal transport, even though we had a reservation. HE starts making calls, hubbs comes back so I go back to the dogs, yeah they arrived at some point before I got the magic suitcase. Hubbs finds the final bag and tells me the van is here YAY!!!! We load up and off we go for the 2 hour drive toYOkosuka with our barely English speaking driver but we are together and intact.

BUT WAIT THERES MORE!!!

SO driving from Yokota to YOkosuka was cool. We had go through Tokyo. First thing, mind you I was pushing 48 hours and pretty much no sleep at this point, when the van driver hopped in on the right side I freaked a little. Then I remembered "oh wait that is where the steering wheel is" and then driving on the left was a trip. The signs were confusing, not jst because I could not read them but because they were very different, they had maps on them with roads going every which way. We were in it for a couple of hours and, there was too much going on and I am even more committed to not driving. The architecture was beautiful. There were alot of ferris wheels and to see so many Christmas lights was trippy. It was night time so we did get to see the city with the lights on, it was beautiful. I cannot even describe it, I have never seen anything like it and sometimes we were stories above the street with highways crisscrossing every which way. There were alot of ferris wheels all lit up in a very seizure inducing way.

Ok so we get to the base, I cannot find my ID. The gate guard was laughing at me, in a friendly way, I am sure he knew we were fresh meat and I had to have it to get off the plane. The guy at the airport had put it in my passport so I had not seen it and did not remember giving it to him. Hubbs told me and pulled it out and the guard smiled, and waved us through. Get to the kennel it is 9pm and of course it is closed. Go to the Lodge, they call security and they basically say we are SOL but will call the ship to get an answer. Well long, blurry story short, no answer hubbs' Chief shows up, takes the dogs and hubbs. I go to sleep. He got the dogs settled at his house in their crates and the hubbs checked in at the ship. The Kennel opens in an hour so here we go again, they better have our reservation.

That is all for now

jete ne!

The great PCS roadtrip 2007

So Thursday morning I got up hella early and drove north to Virginia Beach, VA. I had almost no sleep and was exhausted before I hit Columbia, SC.

Goodbye GEORGIA!!!!

Goodbye SOUTH CAROLINA!!!

Goodbye NORTH CAROLINA!!!!

I pulled through, it was uneventful and the pups and I got to the beach. The hotel was one step above crack whore hotel but they didnt hassle us about the dogs and it was cheap. Friday they once again tried to keep hubbs from continuing on our journey but I had copies of the "missing"

paperwork. I finally got to meet my friend Sharon, whom I have talked to online for over 3 years as well as her husband. She tried to kidnap my doggies but it wasn't happening. Weather in VB SUCKED and we just wanted to hit the road. We did go see some lighthouses though at Fort Story.

The drive out of VA was rather pleasant. The leaves were damn pretty.

We also saw a fairly large cross on the side of the road but it was nothing compared with what was to come.
We also passed a sign for Blacksburg and Christiansburg, VA. It made us ask the question, do black people live in Blacksburg and must they be removed from the Christians in Christiansburg? Yes that is the sick twisted humor we have but at the same time when in the South we often found ourselves wondering if that had ever been true.
There was also a Waynesboro, VA whic made us scream in terror because we are not headed back to GA for quite some time.

Monday evening we arrived in Bristol, TN.

It was damn cold there. We had dinner with the husband and wife I grew up next to back home. She practically raised me. It was great seeing them again and friggin hysterical to find out that they aren't fans of the east either.

Here are some signs that made me giggle.

Algood

BuckSnort

THIS IS SPARTA!!!!!!

I Liked the factory


Welcome to Graceland!!!

Tuesday we headed off to Memphis, TN. Unfortunately my girlfriend who lives there was out of town but it was cool, we saw Graceland (the outside) and cruised Beale Street. I loved Memphis and would love to go back and spend more time.

Wednesday night found us in Oklahoma City. Man that was a painful drive, it just felt hella long. We ate at a yummy chinese buffett and saw my friend Amanda and her family. I havent seen her daughter since she was a week old and I had never met her husband. It was great and alot of fun. OKC is where the architecture style changed to a style more like what I am used to seeing, it was comforting.



Gaven liked Amanda and her family. In fact he spent the night waiting for them to come back.

Here is a slideshow of OK, it is not much

Thursday (my goodness I have been on the road a week) we headed to Albuquerque. My not-so-cousin gave me a good place to get some real Mexican to try and it was YUMMY! We thought we had finally gotten west of the Waffle House Empire, had not seen one since Amarillo. Well there is one at the hotel in Albuequerque. It was our longest day on the road but not as dull as the day before. Somewhere in Texas, Hardee's changed into Carl's Jr, which made me smile. We stopped at the Largest Cross in the Northern Hemisphere and the Cadillac Ranch.

We finally got near the end of our trip. Hubbs I learned loves to take pictures of rocks. We stayed in Williams, AZ which is an awesome little town outside the Grand Canyon. We spent a day at the Canyon. I got food poisoning but thankfully we were on the way back to the hotel. The next morning I still felt like crap but I wanted to get on the road, to get home. So after 11 days on the road we made it to my mother's house. I recovered after a few days and then we headed south to San Diego. So now that is where we are until December. Here are the pictures and the story so people can quit their whinin. :P

Miscellaneous in Arizona, including one of the few living animals we saw. We saw lots of wildlife but little of it was breathing.

Here is the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. It was BEAUTIFUL and something well worth the detour.

And finally the Grand Canyon

Friends and Augusta

Tonight as I realized I was bored and had a TV without a tuner and a DVD player without cables to hook it up I started making calls at 8pm, which is major taboo in my world. I made my calls in order of proximity to my house and after 2 calls had procured a set I could get tonight. It made me realize how awesome the people I have met here are.

I have experienced a lot of neat things since I moved here, things that I am just not accustomed too. I think I learned more about friendship in the last three years than I have in my 25 years prior.

I have had friends drive 3 hours to tow a friend of mine they didn't even know who was broken down on the side of the road, just because I asked. They have helped us fix furniture, put in a fence, plant trees and bushes, sent their teenagers to do my yardwork when hubbs was gone and countless other seemingly small things that were huge to me and hubbs. In just the last week, people have stopped by to dig holes and plant shrubs, fix my mini blinds (cos I am lame), fix my driveway, fix my closet doors, hang out in my attic with me cos it scares me, move a TV for me 10 feet cos I cant lift it, find AV cables for me at 8oclock at night cos mine got packed and I am bored, and shown up totally unexpected (even had to ask for directions) just because they wanted to see me one last time before I leave and I have been too busy to get together. It just means alot to me. I hop I am half as lucky to find such great people in Japan.

so yeah I thought I would tell the world.

In the next week I have to finish painting (but I have no stuff) and clean the house (again no stuff) but I am not worried as I know I will be taken care of, the Lord will provide all I have to do is ask. It is a wonderful feeling

revisited by my favorite word

Renege. Just have to say page 517 of the last Harry Potter. Racial slur my ass, that is all

too damn early again

So yeah I am having a very unusual form of insomnia for me. I get bored at night so I go to bed decently early, 10 or 11. Then I wake up around 6 and can't get back to sleep. I guess this is better than being up until 4 and sleeping until noon but damn it confusing me and it makes my days feel so long. So I dont have to be at church for 2 hours, so I am off to study. ummmm yay! I guess

Oh what a day

So this morning my friend Tom came over to help me tame my back yard. I have been feeing bad about not doing too much to get the physical house ready for the move and hubbs has been doing ALL the outside work. I am still working on getting off all the meds I was given erroneously so was sick most of the week but come this morning I was feeling decently enough. Which is good 'cos I have almost no way of easily contacting Tom, at least not to say, "don't come." Well it was wet at 8 am but he was here right on time and away we went. We moved quick and got alot of shit cleared out of the yard. In 2 hours we had what I thought would take us all day, finished. Now I can plant some shrubs to hide the monolith that has appeared behind my house.

Oh and now for the part that my friedns who new me forever ago (yes I am feeling old lately) will find fucking hilarious. Me + machete = I suck. Yes I cannot do any damage when swinging a machete at weeds. Oh wait it gets better. It rained on and off until about noon. By dinner time I was going try and get a fire going in the pit. Me + hatchet = I suck. Yes I could not swing the hatchet hard enough or accurately enough to splinter up a piece of dry wood to make dry kindling. So yeah I suck and the strong me that once was has become a weak lil bitch. I can't think of what else to call myself. I mean I used to be tough and strong and now, well I get pampered too much or something because I swear I bet if anyone would have seen me with that hatchet they would have died laughing. So there you go I am pathetic and I am putting it out there for the world to see, but no one saw it and I can delete this later. Oh the power I wield :P

but the Jack Daniels Roast I made kicked serious buttocks. I will have to use that marinade recipe again and figure out what else I can drown in it. I am going to miss my grill when it leaves me in a couple months

River of Life

The run down

5 days
over 100 12-17 yearolds
not nearly enough adults
1 hotel

Oh yeah can you feel the fun yet?

16 work teams
like 6 porches built
9 houses painted
16 yards cleaned up
some really awesome food, they made me fat
One guy who could end up being on my list of favorite people, but then again maybe not
Just all around a ton of fun for a good cause and purpose.

The part people care about:
meeting random people to avoid the same people I have been eating and sleeping with for 3 days.
Deciding walking into a church service through the front 30 minutes late with a guy who is not my husband would be a bad idea. Then again if it had been my husband people would have fallen over dead as he has only been in church twice in the last 3 years (one my baptism and the other was on the way to the lake, we weren't backtracking for him). It was a good choice. I had more fun shootin the shit with him anyhow.
Anyone who did not know me thinking I had a thing for him, made me giggle. Yeah maybe if I was younger and not married but otherwise it didnt cross my mind but it was a lil flattering.
The world found out that I only love Mitchell for his tools. But oh what tools they are :)

Now the best part:
Different woman in my bed every night.
Being in a bath tub with 2 guys
Being in a bathroom with 6 guys and another chick
hiding under the stairs with 5 guys.
shoulder rubs
Almost pitching a guy off the balcony.
Waking up to different rays of sunshine every morning

I am sure I will come up with more but that is all at the moment. I am still tired and I feel like ass but it is all good. Did it change me? It takes alot to change me. I did like however for once staying local. I do not like the idea of going to other countries to do mission work when there is so much that can be done right here.

I had ENTIRELY way too much fun and some of it I am sure was inappropriate for a church retreat but it was good times all around. And get that DAMN SONG OUT OF MY HEAD!!

My Ordeal

Ok back in May hubbs was denied orders because I am supposedly sick. A lot of phonecalls, faxes, doctors appointments and scrambling later we managed to get me cleared by the hospital in Japan. This was all due to a misdiagnosis. On May 21st I was cleared and hubbs applied for orders. At the end of June/beginning of July he received orders to Japan. WOOHOOO!!! Now that is the back story. Here is where it gets fun.

We went on vacation in the middle of June. He did not have “hard” orders when we left but I made the docs appointment anyway for overseas screening. When we got back my screening was the next Wednesday, June 27th and we had until Friday July 13th to get everything complete. And so it begins.

Go in on the 27th and this lady who has been a pain to me for months acts like she is God as far as my screening is concerned and then proceeds to tell me she can’t do anything because we are Navy. This lady is the EFMP coordinator at a JOINT command yet she acts like she does not have reason to help Navy family members. No big deal, the doc signs and coordinator gives the almighty stamp. I argue with both about tests I KNOW I need done and they tell me no. Thursday I learn an important paper was left out. I call the EFMP coordinator. She is not in, she does not work on Fridays and screenings are only on Wednesday which is July 4th. I schedule the screening for Wednesday July 11th, just in case. I also scheduled my own tests because no one would listen. I continue calling Friday, Monday and Tuesday and got nowhere. I talked to the coordinator’s supervisor a few times and that did not help either. Thursday, I got frustrated and went down to the hospital. The nurses there had seen me quite a bit since May when all this started. I told them my latest issue. One of them helped set me up with my tests and the shots I needed to get. They could not get anything done about the screening; it was just one headache after another. Friday they had me get one test. Monday I went back and had it read. Tuesday I had a health exam. Wednesday I had the screening. Now mind you the hospital in Japan has accepted me so this is mostly a formality. The doctor does not feel comfortable signing off on some things and I think “ok I can respect that.” He was confused by the wording as he had never seen the form before. This was at 8 or 9AM. He did not however tell me that he had not checked whether or not I am suitable for overseas. I found that on my own at 6PM! If I had not looked at it, I would have sent in the paperwork incomplete. I took it back to the hospital, first thing in the morning with some further supporting evidence, most importantly documentation that the gaining hospital had accepted me. That was not enough so I went back later with further documentation that afternoon. I was told come back in the morning for the paperwork. Friday morning I returned around 10:30AM. My paperwork still was not completed and I was asked to not return until I had been called. I guess my camping out for the last 9 business days was not appreciated by him, the nurses and I got along fine. At this point I had also contacted Navy Personnel in Charleston, SC and Tennessee and had been given the distinct impression that this was the doctor being overcautious or overzealous. At 2PM on Friday I received a call that it had been completed. I picked it up and we now believe it is all complete, hopefully the sage will not continue.

Pictures from the Masters

2007 Masters

Here are the pics I took during the practice days. I had a great time and hope I some day get to go back and walk on those fairways, maybe even as a spectator. Otherwise I am content to know that I did it, even if just once.