Friday Flashback

I've been on a de-cluttering binge lately. My latest victim was my external hard drive. I deleted thousands of blurry pictures and pointless files. In the midst of all those terrible pictures were some really great shots that had me taking a long walk down memory lane. Would you like to see a few of my favorites?




December 2006. Still one of my favorite pictures of us, when I was visiting Jeff in Naples, Italy.




March 2009. I visited my brother in Phoenix, AZ and we went to a Cubs spring training game. We were 10 rows back. The whole trip was a blast.




June 2008. Outside the courthouse just after we said "I do"!


Have a great weekend!

Next week my house will be bombarded with boxes, so I'll be spending weeks unpacking and organizing. I'll update about that adventure soon!

The View from my Empty Apartment

Good news! We're officially living in Japan! We've signed a lease, moved into an apartment, have an address and phone number, even a car. We're quickly settling in to our new home :)

Of course, that calls for a ridiculously detailed and photo-loaded tour of the empty apartment before I lead you through another ridiculously detailed and photo-loaded tour of the apartment once it's filled and decorated. Part of that is because a lot of people who are curious will never be able to physically walk through our apartment; part of it is because I like to share pictures and am entirely too detail-oriented.

First up, a floorplan. It probably helps orient where the pictures are in relation to the whole apartment. If you look closely, the words are flipped. The floorplan posted online is reverse of how my apartment is laid out.



We're on the 8th floor of a building called "Pennsylvania Tower". The towers are named after states, although there aren't 50 towers on base. We're right next door to "Maryland"



Come on in! When you walk in, there's a nook to your left which will eventually hold some kind of small table to dump keys on and room underneath to stash your snowy boots. After that nook is this row of closets.



If you look to your right as you walk in our door, there's a little pass-thru into the kitchen. It's handy for dumping groceries and is currently housing all our keys and odds and ends that don't have a table on the left to hold them yet. The end of this entryway opens up into the living/dining area.



See, big empty room. This is the living/dining area. I'm super happy with the ceiling fan, since there is no air conditioning here in Misawa. Summers don't get hot for very long, but for those few weeks I'll be best friends with this fan, as well as the one in our bedroom. Also, new carpet. I'm not a huge fan of the milk chocolate color, but it conceals dirt much better than the light beige of our last place.




If you turn around and look back to the left of the entryway, there's the kitchen. It has new or refurbished everything. The cabinets are light enough to make me happy (I'm not a fan of dark kitchens). There's more storage than in Lemoore, although I have to adjust to an electric stove/oven. Not a fan.



The counter tops are some type of stone and it's one big slab, so no cracks or seams to get annoyed with. The sink is also one of the undermount types, which I've always liked. It's also huge. And a lovely dishwasher! I didn't have one until we moved into our house in CA, and I'm hopelessly in love with them now. I didn't think we'd have one here, and I was mourning that loss for months. Jeff doesn't understand my excitement at one measly appliance, but he doesn't do that many dishes either. Spoiled.



I've always been a fan of open floor plans. While I wouldn't pick this type of layout for a permanent house, it works for us right now. I like that I'm not isolated in the kitchen. I also like that I can watch TV while I'm cooking.



And the selling point of this apartment: the view. First off, these sliding glass doors are lovely. It's basically a wall of glass, and I love having that much natural light and nature in my living room every day. It's two sets of sliding glass doors, so the cold is blocked out relatively well. And of course, the view is to die for. Water and, when it's clear enough, mountains peeking out behind the water. Heaven. Especially for someone who grew up in the Midwest. I'm going to stop and let you drool over the view for a little bit. I tend to do that when I'm sitting on the couch during the day.











See why we jumped at this place?

Once you tear your eyes away from the pretty view, you'll come down to a bunch of doors. If you go to the left, there's the laundry room. Complete with brand new washer and dryer, small cabinet storage, and sliding door to combat the noise.



If you change your mind and want to go to the right instead, there's the bathroom. It's small, but how big does a bathroom really need to be? It's much better than our bathroom in Lemoore, which was about as wide as my hips. Seriously, it was tight. We hated it. This one is much more comfortable, and also has brand new tile floors and shower walls, as well as ample cabinet space and the same lovely countertop as the kitchen.



Both the bathroom and laundry room have sliding doors as opposed to normal, swinging doors. It's taking some adjustment to remember to slide the door closed, but the doors take up no space and disappear when you want them to. It's a pretty smart space saver.



If you go through the door just to the left of the bathroom, you get the main bedroom. It's not really a master, just bigger. But it has a ceiling fan and enough closet space. It also has a sliding glass door to a tiny balcony. Although the balcony is for the fire escape, it's pretty and provides a good view.




Both bedrooms share the balcony to have equal access to the fire escape stairs, so if you step out from either bedroom you get pretty pine trees peeking out from behind a neighboring tower.



The 2nd bedroom, which will be our office, is slightly smaller and has an actual door to the balcony instead of a sliding glass door. Nothing exciting, but it doesn't need to be when it will just be a room to stash the computer, all of Jeff's uniforms and work stuff, and an air mattress for visitors.



If you hit just the right angle in the 2nd bedroom, you can peek all the way back to the kitchen.



If that kind of openness bothers us, we have a door to close. There's another door in the little hallway between the living/dining area and everything else. So if one of us is sleeping or needs quiet, the other can watch TV without disturbing them. It is a small space, so this door will come in handy.



So that's the tour of our empty apartment! It's nothing extravagant, but we love the renovations and the location. It's far enough away from Jeff's work to feel like he's getting away from work at the end of the day, but it's not so far that it's a pain to get back to the main part of base. It's close to the water, which I absolutely love. I've never lived in an apartment building before, and I've never lived above the 2nd floor, so going in an elevator to get home is a new experience. I could take the stairs, but let's be serious.

We did get some loaner furniture when we moved in. Along with our small shipment of necessities, we've been living with a tiny TV and very small set of cooking tools. But it's been nice.





We just heard today that our large household goods shipment has arrived and we've scheduled delivery. My place will be overwhelmed with boxes and packing material in no time. At least unpacking will keep me busy for a good chunk of time!

The Adventure of Getting to Misawa -- Part Two

Part One: click here.


So last I left you, we were checked into the USO in the Seattle airport awaiting our AMC flight to Misawa, Japan.

We were originally planning to stay in the USO, since they had beds and showers. But the sleeping room was full. They had huge leather couches, so we cuddled up on the couch and tried to get some rest before our flight. Except that Jeff had been fighting a headache all day, and it just kept getting worse. And although almost everyone in the USO was asleep, there was so much noise that neither of us could get to sleep. We finally gave up at 2am. We got all our luggage (which was a lot! We each had 2 suitcases and a carry on, which equals a pain in the ass to carry anywhere), went down and tried to find a taxi to a nearby hotel. We got to the hotel and crashed. It wasn't much sleep, but it was sound.

Although we were both exhausted the next morning, we packed up all our stuff again and made our way back to the USO to check all our luggage back in. We then trekked downtown to get a glimpse of Seattle. We shared the train with a bunch of Seahawks fan on their way to the game. We wandered around, enjoyed some local coffee, had a surprisingly delicious lunch, and got some decent exercise on all those hills!





It was a lot of fun, but we'd both like to go back to Seattle again when we're more awake, more energetic, and on a looser time schedule. Anyways, we got back to the airport and impatiently waited for 10pm so we could check into the flight. We got checked in and made our way to the gate. The flight was set to board at 3am, so we settled in to wait. We enjoyed an episode of Burn Notice while we were waiting at least.

About 12:30am, they announced that the flight was delayed and they'd be giving out hotel vouchers. Awesome. They gave no reason for the delay, but it was delayed until 11am or something. So we waited in line forever to get the voucher, then waited in line forever to take the shuttle to the hotel, then waited an extra long time at the hotel while the overwhelmed desk clerk tried to check us all into rooms. We didn't get into our room until 2:30am or so. We crashed again, then got back up and back to the airport at 8:00am.

We had our boarding passes and our luggage was still on the plane, so getting back to the gate was really simple. We settled down again to wait for the plane to board. We got on the plane and the entire plane breathed a sigh of relief that we were finally taking off.

That's when the real trouble started. Somehow, the plane was over the weight limit. By 300kilos. They had to solve that problem, then fill out new paperwork and wait for the military to approve the new paperwork, since this was a military flight. I don't even remember all the details, but it was a three hour delay. We were all sitting on the plane for three hours just waiting for it to take off.

Fiiinally, we get off the ground and are on our way. They serve breakfast, they play a movie, we all relax Then the pilot starts talking. "Folks, I don't know how to tell you this...but... we're going to have to turn the plane around". Seriously. There was a leak in the cockpit. Although it wasn't dangerous, it was making communication with the ground nearly impossible. So they decided the safest route was to turn back to Seattle. We were almost to Anchorage, Alaska, about 2 1/2 hours into the flight. After dealing with some of the rudest comments and rudest behavior I've seen in a group of supposed "adults", we landed in Seattle again and they handed out hotel vouchers. Again.

This time we thankfully got to the hotel around 7pm. We ate a pretty decent dinner at the hotel restaurant with the meal voucher from the flight, and got some sleep. We were up at 2:30am the next morning to get back to the airport, since the flight was boarding at 5am. We had to wait in line to get new boarding passes, but because they kept our luggage again (which made showering and dressing fun! Thank goodness Jeff and I packed just enough clothes), the ticket counter line went smoothly. We were at the airport so early only one security line, one Starbucks, and one little convenience store were open. The lines were all military, so we got back to the gate pretty quickly again. We loaded up on coffee and food, and waited even more impatiently for our flight.

I'm sure our wing of the airport was a lovely sight. A plane-sized group of military impatiently waiting to get to Japan and Korea after more than 24 hours of delays, hotel vouchers, and planes turning back. We were all a little crabby. I was a lot disgusted with how rude and disrespectful some of these people were acting. Since most of the plane was Army going to Korea, I kept joking that I couldn't wait to get off the plane in Misawa and happily let them board the plane again and never see them again.

Luckily, third time's a charm.

We boarded the flight with no problems, took off on time, and had a smooth flight into Japan. We landed in Misawa at around 9am on Tuesday, January 11th. We were exhausted, but hung in there to get checked into the hotel and start checking-in. Jeff's sponsor met us at the airport and helped us get all our luggage to the room, then took off to start showing Jeff around. We somehow hung in there until around 7pm, then crashed hard.



It's safe to say that this was the most frustrating and tiring traveling I've ever done. I couldn't have been happier to land and start filling out customs forms. Now that we're here, I'm glad we're stationed here for 3 years and I don't have to see another plane for quite some time. Well, I'll see a ton of planes since I'm on an air base, but I don't have to see the inside of a plane!

So.

That's the exciting, exhausting, and exasperating tale of our journey to Japan!

I hope our travels within Japan are much more exciting and much less exasperating ;)

The Adventure of Getting to Misawa -- Part One

My husband and I have done enough traveling to rack up some interesting travel stories. For example, back in 2005, I flew to Naples, Italy to visit my husband, then boyfriend, and the airline went on strike. Then lost my luggage in Rome.

But nothing compares to the hell we endured just trying to GET to our new home.


The drive from California--Illinois went smoothly. Little traffic, beautiful weather for the most part, and relatively calm cats. We ended up making it home in two days, partly to avoid freezing rain in IL. The cats were freaked, but managed. They even adjusted pretty smoothly to my parents' rambunctious dog. We had a wonderful time with family and friends through Christmas and New Years.





The first hiccup came when we got bumped off our original flight on January 5th. We got moved to a flight on January 9th, which was cutting it close for Jeff's orders but not a huge problem. American Airlines charged reasonably to change our commercial flight from Chicago to Seattle, and we were okay.

To fly with animals, the pet needs a health certificate within 10 days of travel. To travel overseas, it needs a special seal which is most easily found on military bases. So we traveled 2 hours to Great Lakes Naval Station to get the cats cleared for travel. We expected no trouble, since the vet in Lemoore had prepared us. Or so we thought. First, the cats were terrible in the car. So we were cranky when we got to Great Lakes. Because Japan has rigorous importation requirements, the paperwork is extensive and detailed, so we were waiting forever for it to get filled out. We also found out the cats' microchips were not compatible with the type of scanner Japanese vets use. We bought the cats from the local shelter out in CA. They were microchipped within the shelter, so we had nothing to do with the process. The vet in Lemoore failed to inform us that although our cats were microchipped, when we got to Japan and had the vet scan them for microchips, they'd read as if they have none. Our options were to re-chip them, then fulfill the two rabies shots and blood tests on each all over again, or to buy a scanner compatible with their chips and bring it to Japan to prove they are in fact microchipped. Both options are expensive and impossible when we had days until our travels began.

To top off that wonderful news, the vet was unwilling to change the weather acclimation certificate. The airlines will not board pets if the weather is below 45 degrees, but a vet can give a certificate with a temperature as low as 20 degrees. Considering we were being stationed overseas, we figured the vet would be understanding and change the temperature as low as possible so the cats could actually come to our new home. No go. She left it at 45 degrees. I don't know if you've ever been to Chicago in January, but we don't see 4 or 5 unless they're single digits.

After 2 hours of frustrating setbacks and totally freaked cats, we drove home with the knowledge that we'd have to leave our cats behind. Luckily, my parents were willing to keep them for us if need be. We just hoped it wouldn't come to that.

A few days later, we packed up as many of our things as we could cram in our suitcases, sadly said goodbye to family and our furry friends, and boarded the plane to Seattle. We were delayed slightly while the airplane's engines were de-iced, but we got to Seattle smoothly and checked into the USO since we'd be there for a little over a day. The USO had complimentary food, a movie room, comfy couches, and even beds and showers, so we settled in to relax and restore before our long flight to Japan.

And that's when it all went downhill...



Since this is such a lengthy adventure, I'm splitting it up into two posts! Stay tuned for the second part of our tumultuous travels to Misawa!

I'm Ready to Nest!

No, I'm not pregnant. Although everyone around me seems to be, and everyone keeps asking us when we're going to start our family. Since we've gotten here, I swear, everyone keeps telling us how great Misawa is for starting a family! It's a little crazy. No worries, we're not planning on babies for quite a while.

I am, however, impatient and excited to get back into our own space. We've been given a perfect little apartment on base and we move in this week! I've got a lovely 8th floor 2 bedroom with a view of water. It's newly renovated and every appliance looks brand new, or very gently used.




<sub>(From Misawa AB's website)


(From Misawa AB's website)</sub>



After almost 2 months of hotel living and staying with family, I'm so excited to have my own space back. Although all our household goods haven't reached Japan yet, we'll have the essentials and some loaner furniture. And I can put the suitcase away!!

I can also start cooking again! I'm even looking forward to domestic chores like cleaning...maybe I'm not thinking straight from jetlag? I've been happily looking up new recipes to try out in my new kitchen. Although I have a plan to start cooking healthier, I can't resist some delicious looking home-cooking.

I've found piles of recipes I'd like to try over at The Pioneer Woman, including some delicious-looking smashed potatoes. I'm a sucker for anything made from a potato!




_{(From The Pioneer Woman)}


I actually don't have much of an update otherwise. We've been hanging out in the hotel trying to adjust to the time change. We're hoping to adventure out to actual Japan after we get settled into the house and get a car. I'll write out our interesting travels to get to Japan soon. As well as many pictures of our newly renovated apartment once we move in!

We Made It!

After some of the most tiring travel delays and complications (which I'll detail later), we've made it to Japan!!

We're exhausted, jet lagged, and I'm still a bit shocked that I'm actually in Japan, but we're here. We're in the hotel and starting the checking-in process.

I'll write more when we get settled in our house. Just wanted to update that our adventure has officially started!

Happy New Year!

Want to know my New Year's Resolution???

To enjoy every minute of our adventure in Japan.




_{We should be settled in our new home in Misawa by the end of the month!}
Stay tuned for more from this soon-to-be world traveler ;)