Little Raindrops

Posts Tagged ‘Carol’

I see that my last post date is in October. I’ve been stopping by to write something for weeks, but really, I’ve just been intimidated. So much has happened in the past three months, I’ll never find the time to write about it all! Well, now that I’ve gotten down to it, I’m giving you the extremely abridged version!

I’m really not remembering much about November! A few things stick out, though. Rhino started crawling around, we got our first Misawa snow (and Rhino’s first snow ever!), we had two nice Thanksgivings (one with the church, then a second in our home with our friends), and we discovered we’re going to have another baby in July ‘09! This of course is very exciting and just the age spacing we were hoping for. Thanksgiving was nice, too, and not very hectic at all. Liz, Nicole, and I split up the responsibilities. Really, all I had to do was make up some cranberry sauce and veggies and provide a clean home. The food was all wonderful and we had a terrific first Thanksgiving in Japan!

December will take a while to describe. I had my first prenatal appointment and we saw the ultrasound of our 8 week-old little bean! Heart’s beating, there’s only one in there, everything’s looks fine, that was about it! Two days later we began our trip back to the States to visit with family for Christmas. This was wonderful, but tiring! I’m so glad we got to see all our family (though not as many friends as I had initially hoped. Everything was getting too hectic!) and have Rhino meet the rest of the folks that didn’t get to come out when he was born.

Matt wrote up a big post about the horrible details of the travel itself. He pretty much covered it all, though he didn’t mention how uncomfortable a 9 or 12 hour flight is for a pregnant woman with morning sickness. Airplanes definitely were not my friends. I won’t take this space to complain further about travel and how we never want to step foot on an airplane again (we can stick out Matt’s career here and retire in Japan!) All our destinations made the flights more than worthwhile.

We flew into LA, so we decided to rent a car and drive up to Lompoc to see our friends and recuperate for the weekend. We left at 10pm on a Friday evening and it’s an overnight flight across the international dateline to California. When I booked this flight, I just assumed: leave Friday evening, overnight flight, land Saturday morning. I know, now that I think about it, it doesn’t make any sense. When we landed in CA and the captain said that it was 2pm on Friday, I was so confused! I hadn’t planned to arrive on Friday! So, it was my first time going back in time! We picked up our car and, 3 seconds off the lot, Matt almost gets into an accident! We’ve gotten quite used to driving on the left side and very slowly in Japan. When we got on the freeway, Matt felt all nervous that he was going so fast! Well, “so fast” is 45mph and he definitely needed to kick it up a bit, as everyone else was going 80! It was scary interesting watching him get used to driving in the US again. We arrived in Lompoc, called everyone we knew, didn’t get through to anyone, so we stayed in a hotel. It was nice to just relax and decompress from the long trip by ourselves. On Saturday (the real Saturday, not the Saturday in my confused head) we met up with Wayne and Rena, the wonderful couple from church that took us in as their “kids” (theirs had all moved out) and led the Bible study we attended for 2 years. It was nice to spend the weekend with them, have a little group reunion with some other church people, and show Rhino off. We also met up with our friends Denna, Adam & Ty. We went out to for an Italian dinner to catch up and gab. They ordered a plate of pasta for Tyler (2), but we discovered Rhino is nuts for pasta, and pretty much ate Ty’s whole plate! That was the first we saw of Rhino vehemently demanding table food and it was quite amusing, though slightly embarrassing to be out in a restaurant with a baby who yelled for food as if we hadn’t given him any for months! After church on Sunday we went over to Jody and Roy’s to see their sweet baby girls, have some lunch, and catch up. The weekend was so short and we were fighting to stay awake during the day, so we didn’t end up doing all that I had planned. I couldn’t get a hold of Danielle and would have loved to stop by work (it was drill weekend), but it just didn’t happen. We drove back down to LA on Sunday night, got another hotel (oh my, another whole big terrible story, too!) and caught a flight to Dallas the next morning.

These descriptions will probably get shorter, now, as there’s still plenty more. Texas was nice. Papa was the only one to have met Rhino, back in March, so it was wonderful that all my uncles, aunt, grandparents, etc. got to meet him! Unfortunately, Rhino hadn’t gotten used to the time zones yet and had just started teething again, so he was pretty grumpy a lot of the week. We kept busy, though. We had a nice Mexican lunch out at the Tupinamba, a restaurant that my family always goes to when I come to visit! We got to see my brother, Matthew, who also lives in Dallas and finally meet his girlfriend, Adria. The five of us went to Ripley’s Believe it or Not, had lunch at Chili’s, and went over to their apartment for dinner and board games. Over the week we got plenty of gaming in — Sequence, Clue, Phase 10, Scattergories — and watched a couple of movies (Eagle Eye, The Other Boleyn Girl, As Good As It Gets). I also went with Grandmother and Aunt Pattie to a quarterly ladies’ luncheon at their church, which was really great! We had a delicious lunch, browsed through second-hand goodies to buy to support their Friendship House, and listened to a wonderful pianist and singer perform Christmas songs. Then on Friday, Papa took us out to the Granada, sort of his second home, with Matthew and Adria to see Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis. It wasn’t exactly our style of music, but it was nice to get out and see the theater and hang out with my dad and brother. We couldn’t bring Rhino, so it was his first time with a babysitter, Papa’s friend Kay. I was really worried that I’d get him to sleep at her house, leave, then he’d wake up and cry and never go back down for her. He did wake up a couple hours after we had left, and he cried for a little bit, then fell back asleep — I was quite impressed! Rhino got a few cute gifts from the Texas family. Papa got him some clothes, including a cute Dallas Cowboys onesie. Rhino also got a Bible stories book and a 2008 coin set. It was a nice time visiting with all the family and I’m glad they finally got to meet Rhino! We left Sunday morning for the next leg of our trip: New York!

Okay, so these aren’t getting much shorter! Well, not to New York. We flew into Buffalo and Matt’s parent’s were there to take us down to Obi. Matt’s sister, Jen, was waiting at home for us and everyone was so excited to see Rhino (and us, I guess!) We got in pretty late, so we pretty much went straight to bed. The rest of the week was filled with a lot of family (Matt has a lot of family close by!) visiting and staring at, taking pictures of Rhino! We went over to Mom-mom and Pop-pop’s one night to meet up with lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.! Rhino got to meet Mitchell, a little boy just 3 weeks older than him. They were so cute together! Another night the church pastor and his family came over one night for dinner and games. Jen and I got a “sisters only” afternoon one day to go get lunch and tea and browse Jo-Ann’s. Jen, Mom and I had a cookie-decorating day! Matt’s brother Jason and his fiancée came over so they could meet Rhino and we could meet her! Later that week, they were married!! I got really sick the night before and couldn’t go to their wedding, though! It was tough, I spent about 36 hours curled up on the sofa or huddled in the bathroom. Rhino pretty much had a full day without Mommy, but he did really well with Grandma and Aunt substitutes! I was bummed to not be able to attend the wedding, but at least I recovered before our flight out. We also watched some movies (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Wall-E, and lots of MST3K.) We also had an early Christmas on the 17th. Matt got more MST3K, some anime, books, cross-stitching stuff; I got some great knitting books and some others; and Rhino received so many cute clothes and toys! They’re all wonderful, but the thing he definitely loved the most was Jen’s gift: a very cute little baby piano! Rhino had recently started really enjoying music and dancing anytime any song started: a commercial jingle, someone singing, 3 notes on a piano, someone whistling, etc.! So he would stand up at the piano, bang out a few notes, dance to his music, play a few more, dance, and on and on! Everyone loved watching him play! It was a fun early Christmas! We did it again a few days later at Aunt Ginny’s with Aunt Connie & Grandpa, too. Rhino got more wonderful outfits, toys, and books. Thankfully, Mom and Dad shipped everything to our home so we didn’t have to pack all the gifts out! We left for the airport Saturday afternoon, but our flight out of Buffalo had been canceled. We made the long drive back home to sleep, and got on an early flight Sunday morning for Colorado.

Originally we had planned to arrive in Colorado two days early, rent a car, stay in Mama’s condo in Denver, and visit with friends in Fort Collins and Denver. By the time we got to Colorado, we were running out of money, car rentals were really high, I was lazy and hadn’t recently been in touch with any friends, we’d lost a day due to our canceled flight, and we were feeling pretty run down. Mama and Ron just picked us up from the airport and took us down to the Springs. I feel like a terrible friend, but it was nice to just relax at “home.” Plus, my sister, her husband and daughter were flying in just a few hours later so I’m glad that we were around to spend more time with them. We had planned to spend time with our friends Carol and Derik, who live in Omaha (and we used to work together. Matt went to tech school with both of them.) They drove down to the Springs for the weekend to see us, but it only turned into an hour that they came over and chatted after dinner on Monday. It was so nice to see them and of course I would have liked more time, things just didn’t quite work out. I’m so glad we at least got to visit for a little bit. Hopefully we’ll have another opportunity before too long! So with my sister in town, I finally got to meet my niece, Amelia! She’s 8 days younger than Rhino and I was so excited to see the two of them together. It was so interesting, they are such different babies! Rhino is a lot more vocal, interested in music and crazy about food. Amelia is all ready running around!! She likes to do her own thing a lot. They both play so differently, sleep differently, eat differently, cry differently — it was quite an experience! She is so beautiful and such a sweetheart. At 10 months, the babies weren’t really interested in playing with each other, but they did play next to each other! We joke that Amelia is sort of a “bully” — they would both be playing with toys, but she would always want to take whatever Rhino had instead! Rhino was very laid back about the whole thing and never really seemed to mind, haha! I wish we could have spent more time with Andrea and her family, but hopefully we will get to see them next year (when the babies won’t be babies anymore — waah!) Aside from watching babies in Colorado, we did actually spend time with Mama and Ron, too! Their dogs, Jack and Tilley, are very high-strung little wild dogs (but so sweet!) and we were nervous about how they’d act around the babies. We were all very surprised though, they were SO good! Whenever a dog would come up to Rhino, we’d say “dog” a lot and eventually Rhino would look at the dog and say “dauh” — he just wouldn’t say the ‘g’. I’m not counting it as a first word, but it was really close and he would do it everytime he’d see a dog! One night we were there, we went out to the Golden Bee, an English pub at the Broadmoor hotel. It’s sort of a Christmastime tradition that my Grandpa started years ago. The babies were really well behaved and loved eating crackers. We drove around afterward and looked at the light displays. We spent a lot of time at home, just relaxing, chatting, hanging out in the kitchen, watching TV, etc. Mama made some great meals that Andrea and I tried to help out with! Andrea made a delicious spinach tofu lasagna one night and Mama and I made a copy of the Olive Garden’s Zuppa Tuscana soup (my favorite!) Andrea and I made multiple visits to the Whole Foods — it was like Grocery Heaven for us! I wish we had more than our crummy commissary selection and expensive Japanese produce out here. Andrea found a Buddha’s Hand and was so excited, she bought it as decoration (I thought it was more appropriate as a Halloween decoration!) We never did use it for anything, but in the future she wants to make candied peels out of one. I found a kiwano that I had wanted to try since I found this sorbet recipe on one of my favorite foodie blogs. Well, we didn’t make a sorbet, just ate spoonfuls from it — and it was less than enjoyable! Matthew and Adria flew in on the 23rd, so now all us siblings were together with our significant others! It was quite a full house, but tons of fun. We had a great, salmon Christmas Eve dinner and filled up on Christmas cookies (Mama went overboard with the date rolls, oatmeal chocolate chip, pinwheels, hazelnut cookies, ricotta cheese sugar cookies, etc, etc.!!) before heading off to the candlelight service at First Pres. It was a beautiful service and I was so glad Matthew and Adria joined us as well. When we got home we opened all of the “grown-up presents”. Mama and Ron got each couple an awesome digital frame, which I love! We did stockings and “baby presents” Christmas morning, which was lots of fun! The babies got some adorable clothes, wonderful books, and some very cute Little People toys! Andrea, Michael and Amelia flew out the next day, so we got some time with Matthew and Adria. We all went to Cave of the Winds, which was amazing! With all the time we lived in Colorado, none of us had ever been and it’s just a few minutes from home. We left from Denver early Sunday morning for our long flight back to Japan.

The whole month was filled with such nice visits with family. I’m still getting all the photos from each location together, then I will post them to the gallery and include links in this post. I didn’t really take many pictures at all, though! I guess I was too busy with Rhino and visiting that I just didn’t think much about photos. Thankfully, other people got a few! The whole trip was very tiring and expensive (see Matt’s post!), but was definitely worthwhile! Unfortunately, it very well may be our only trip back to the States while we’re stationed in Japan. Mama and Ron, Jen, and Matt’s parents are all planning trips out to see us within the next 18 months, though!! I can’t wait to show them all the wonderful things out here!

Edit: Here are links to the vacation photos from California, Texas, New York, and Colorado!

Yup, still alive. It’s been a pretty hectic month. School is stressful as usual. Had my second math exam, which I know didn’t go nearly as well as the first one. It’s tough stuff and I just need to study harder.

Since my last post a few things have happened. I had my birthday. It wasn’t really all that exciting, but it doesn’t seem like 23 is supposed to be. It was the weekend my best gal pal Carol left town for Nebraska. It was all sort of bittersweet, as it’s an exciting adventure and she’ll be back with her love, but sad that we got really close just recently and now she’s gone. I should be used to seeing friends come and go by now. We had a really nice going-away / birthday dinner at a cute local cafe. I had to go to school on my actual birthday, so it was fairly uneventful.

So Matthew’s out in New Jersey now. I’m excited for him because it seems so romantic to just drop everything and set up in a completely new place to be with someone you care about. I know he’s struggling some with personal issues right now and I hope she’s the influence and encouragement he needs. My only concern is his lack of employment. Hopefully his restaurant prospect will work out. It’s just sad that he’s now that much farther away. I’m way out here with the Pacific Ocean in my backyard and my two siblings are way out as east as can be. I just miss ‘em.

So Matt and I have been trying to plan a first anniversary trip for this June. We figured we’d drive out to Colorado and see my mom. We were thinking about IndieFest, which is in beautiful and relaxing Pagosa Springs, but I guess we both just aren’t feeling it. A lot of the bands are pretty cool, just no one we’re passionate about. Then we were considering Wakarusa, which isn’t that much farther of a drive and would be completely cool because there’s a bunch of bands there that we would absolutely love to see. It’s just that we’re driving the whole way there and back and are all ready short on leave, so it seems like too much of a hassle. Last summer we did the High Sierra Music Festival and next summer we hope to do Coachella, which seems like the only reasonable festival to attend, since it’s within a 5-hour drive. Next month Dave Gilmour will also be in San Francisco for his On an Island tour … hmm.

So we moved into this new apartment. It’s only about 5 miles from our old one, but it’s “in town”, which I suppose is better. We can walk places now, if we were to go anywhere. The place is so much nicer than our old one. It’s a lot newer and cleaner and has a second bedroom and a dishwasher, woohoo! We got bedroom furniture (finally) and a new couch yesterday and have completely moved everything, so we’re starting to settle in nicely. Pictures to come soon! A driving factor was being able to get a second cat: our old place only allowed one pet. So of course last weekend we went out and adopted a kitten. She’s a four-month old gray tabby with three legs (had to be amputated earlier this month after she got caught in a car belt). At first I thought that was kind of creepy, but she’s so pathetically cute and I just love her to death. We named her Gabby because she’s a Gray tABBY (hah yah, I know, lame), but mainly because we were looking for someone to name her for and we decided to go with Gabby La La (one of our new-found favorite artists … and playing in Santa Monica during my spring break … hmm …) She and Tal were really hesitant and curious about each other at first (a bunch of pictures here). Gabby just sort of sat in her house and Tal would stare at her and slowly approach. He whacked her on the head a few times and I think that ticked her off. For the next two days they’d hiss a lot and swat, but now they snuggle together, hang out, wrestle (and she makes the most horrible quack/groan things when she wrestles), and share everything. I think they’ve adjusted to each other really well, which makes things a million times easier. I’m glad Tal now has a playmate, since we’re at work and school most of the day and he just hangs out alone at home. So we’ve just been spending a lot of time with the kitties the past few days.
So I’m skipping school today because Jen, Matt’s little sister, flew in from New York for her spring break. She spent yesterday in LA and is on a bus on her way to Santa Maria right now. She’s staying through Sunday, but I can’t get out of school tomorrow (physics lab and I tutor … kind of important) and I have drill all day Saturday and Sunday (and this weekend is mandatory, unfortunately). So today is really the only day I’ll get to spend with her, which is a huge bummer because she is one awesome chicky and I’m so glad she’s traveled all the way out here to see us! At least Matt will have Friday – Sunday to hang with his sis. We don’t have any huge, exciting plans. She just spent a few months at an internship at Martha’s Vineyard writing songs and performing, then just had a trip to Nashville to hang out with all sorts of cool bands, then hung out with hot guys in LA, so I kind of feel like our visit is the low-point of her vacation. Ahwell, we’ll take her out to a nice dinner and play video games. Matt will be the entertainer really, so he’d better come up with something fun to do, hehe.

Well that’s about all for me. I need to move some of the cardboard boxes out of the way and make the place a little more presentable for our guest. Ciao!

Edit: I snapped some quick apartment photos for your viewing pleasure. The place is still somewhat messy, but we’re working on it. Enjoy!

So much going on … Last Saturday Matt and I went to check out a new apartment. There’s one on Lompoc that seems a thousand times nicer than our current apartment, so we went by to check out a tour and pick up an application. Quite nice and exciting.

Monday I was off school and Carol was off work, so we decided to hang out at Six Flags. Matt doesn’t care much for the park, so we left him home and made a girl’s day of it. Roller coaster mania! We hardly waited in line at all until we got to the park’s newest coaster, XTreme, which was exactly that. A two hour wait in line for a minute long ride, but I’d still say it’s worth it. Scariest thing I’ve ever been on. Six Flags has an old-timey dress-up photo place and we thought that would be fun to do. We got all decked out in huge Civil War era hoop dresses, put on silly hats, and were photographed. So classy! We had a very awesome time.

School was okay this week. Had a chemistry test on Tuesday and a conceptual physics test on Wednesday. Both of them went well and it was no big deal. I have a math test and a physics test early next week, which is really what I’m more concerned about. Tutoring was okay. I tutor one guy in calc 1 twice weekly and another guy once for physics and once for calc 2. They’re older men and are really great to work with. This past week was a little weird. The one guy for physics and calc 2 showed up each time and either hadn’t slept the night before or didn’t have any questions and just wanted to leave after 15 minutes. So I get paid for half of the hour, which is sort of a bummer, but I didn’t have to work the whole hour either. I met with a new tutee this week for algebra 2 that I’ll be working with every Friday. This was the first time I really got frustrated. It’s his fifth time taking the class and he sort of has a weird attitude about it. I thought I was pretty patient and tried really hard to explain things he wasn’t getting, but he’d get mad and not really communicate with me, just roll his eyes, turn the other way and fidget with something. I didn’t really know what to do because sometimes I felt I couldn’t possibly explain anything any simpler than I was, and he was still looking at me like I was speaking Greek. Or he’d try to argue with me about how you solve an equation. I tried not to get flustered, but I just didn’t really know how to handle. He said he didn’t need a tutor who thinks he’s stupid, so I stopped there and we had a little discussion about it. I don’t think he’s stupid at all; I just want to help him understand his math and pass the class this time around. We parted on good terms and he said he’d focus this week and try to come up with questions for me next Friday. I’m going to keep in touch with his teacher about what they’re covering during the week and try to prepare myself a little more for our sessions. I think it will be a challenge, but that’s a good thing.

Since Matt and I were considering moving into a nicer apartment, we figured we’d look at all our options. I looked up adds for condos, townhouses, and rental houses. I was surprised to find a handful of houses that are much more spacious and well within our budget. We drove around and looked at about a dozen houses around town the other day, marked some down because well, some of them were just way too dumpy. I don’t mind a place that isn’t pristine or needs a little work, but some of them were just too disgusting. We passed by one that we knew would be a manageable price, but we’d be eating ramen every night. It was gorgeous and in a really pretty neighborhood and the owner happened to be mowing the lawn when we stopped by. He let us take a look around the inside and it was marvelous! A brand new home that hadn’t been lived in, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, amazing walk-in closets, fireplace, vaulted ceilings … it was just beautiful. But way more than we need! We got all excited about it, which was silly. When we left and sat back in the car, reality sunk in and we had to admit it would be silly for us to get such a nice place. So we went to check out our second choice. The house looked fine on the outside … icky paint and a nasty lawn, but that’s okay. We arranged to take a tour and were pretty taken aback. Not in a good way, though. No dishwasher or refrigerator. Tiled living room (and half our bedroom — the other half was bright pink carpet). All the ceilings were stained. The other bedroom was linoleum and just gross. There was a phone jack in one room connected to a splitter with nasty frayed phone cables feeding into ragged holes in the other rooms. The garage was completely dilapidated. It was just really disheartening. So today we put in an application for the apartment we were initially looking at and should hear back about if we can move in by Tuesday. Our move-in date would be March 18th and we already picked out the one we like. Pictures soon!

My mother called me today with news that my brother had dropped all his classes this week and is moving out to New Jersey to live with his girlfriend and her parents. Last I heard from my brother, he was going to stick out the semester, hang out with her in the summer, then she’d move out to Colorado and they’d see about moving in together. I guess I’m just a little shocked at this decision. A little disappointed he didn’t even try to finish up his second semester. I know it’s his life and these are his choices, I’m just bummed out because maybe I don’t think his are always the best. But then I remember I didn’t always make the best choices either. And no one knows how this will work out for him. I really just want him to be happy and find his place, but sometimes I feel he doesn’t know what he wants and it just seems sudden for him to do something like this. I hope he’s happy and things work out for him. I do hope he continues his schooling sometime, though. I guess it’s sad because I failed out of CSU, Andrea didn’t succeed in college, and I was just hoping Matthew would break the trend. I wish I knew Adria better; I’ve never met her. I know her from Ragnarok Online a little bit and from what I hear from Matthew. I know he loves her and I think that’s great, but maybe I’m just a worry-wart, overprotective sister. And I really wish I was more a part of his life. Selfishly, I wish he had decided to move out here over the summer like we were discussing. He talked about how he wanted to work and do school and have some time to grow up, mature, and gain some responsibility. Maybe I’m just skeptical that he’s going to achieve that in New Jersey. It hurts me that he doesn’t talk to me about things like this. I’m going to call him and I know he’ll talk to me about it, but I never hear the news from him. I feel like all our phone conversations about his future or his goals is just him humoring me; saying the things I want to hear. It’s not about that. I love my brother despite his choice, and I know they are his to make. I’ll let him know my opinions, but I don’t feel I guilt him into choosing one way or another. Sometimes I feel that my siblings mean more to me than I do to them. They have their own lives and friends and work and whatnot, and I have mine, but I feel so completely detached from them. I don’t need to baby them or see them every day, I just wish I’d get a phone call or they’d want to let me know what’s going on in their lives or ask what’s going on in mine. I’m just crying about it, I know. I am a bit perturbed with my brother’s latest choice, but I haven’t heard anything from him yet, so I’m not getting too worked up.

With all that said, I’m going to break now to study. Yes, there’s more going on, but no one (if anyone reads?) wants to read a mini-novel about the things that are stressing me out. Ciao!

I don’t really usually celebrate Valentine’s Day. I didn’t send out gifts or cards or anything this year. I feel kind of bad, because today we received all sorts of stuff in the mail. Our friends and family are just too sweet! Matt’s cooking me dinner right now; I love it when he cooks for me. We’re going to eat our romantic dinner on our brand new china dishes (wedding gift from Papa) that are so gorgeous. Carol stopped by and brought us gifts, which is unnecessary but so sweet of her! She brought us our favorite chocolates (cherry cordials for Matt and Ferrero Rochers for me) and awesome treaded socks to DDR in! (Because we have metal pads that we can’t wear shoes on, but socks get really slippery and bare feet are painful, so treaded socks seem to be the answer!) I baked a red velvet cake for Matt (his favorite, I’ve never had one before) in the shape of a heart. My cake decorating skills are disgraceful, but it’s still sort of cute. I baked cookies too (with equally horrible decorating), but they burned a bit. My baking never really turns out, but Matt seems used to it. It’s turned out to be a really sweet Valentine’s Day! <3

So things are going great! School is awesome. My Mondays and Wednesdays are crazy long, but I’m getting used to it. I have a chemistry lecture at 9:00, three other classes throughout the days, then wrap it all up with a two and a half hour calculus lecture until 9:20. Chemistry is with the same prof as last semester and I don’t care for him much, though I do feel I am learning more in this class than Chem 1.

I picked up an intermediate piano class twice a week to do something fun, and I’m one of two students enrolled. The teacher has a beginner’s class at the same time, so she just sets the two of us in practice rooms by ourselves to do our own things. It’s fine with me because now it’s more of an independent study sort of course. I play whatever I want, I just need to perform a piece from each of four different music eras. I played for a long time when I was younger, but it’s been so long since I’ve touched the keys, I really wanted to brush up. It’s all rushing back pretty quickly, thankfully. My teacher is also the director of the Lompoc School of Music, a nice little academy in town where people to go learn piano and whatnot. Well, I guess they have a shortage of instructors and my teacher asked me to come on down and teach beginners. I’ll pop in sometime next week to check the place out and fill out some paperwork, but I told her this semester is so busy, I won’t be available much. She thinks this semester would work out if I were a substitute teacher, then began the full-time thing with my own students in the summer. I’m psyched! I figured someday I’d like to teach piano, but I envisioned myself much, much older. This would be a great experience and I’m really looking forward to giving it a shot!

My Physics 2 class is pretty much all the same students from Physics 1 last semester. We have a grand ol’ time. Right now we’re studying thermodynamics, which crosses over with some of the material presented in chemistry last semester. It’s not so bad, but I don’t find it all that interesting either. Physics 2 at this college is sort of a hodge-podge or random topics fit between Physics 1’s Mechanics and Physics 3’s Electricity and Magnetism. I love my teacher so much though! Same woman as last semester. I think she’s great.

I had a six hour break between my physics class and my math class, so I thought it would be a good idea to pick up something during that time. I decided to go for a general education Concepts in Physics class. Everyone in the class are liberal arts majors of some sort and are taking the course to get a science credit out of the way. It’s neat because they’re people I don’t have any other classes with (unlike all my other classes where I see the same faces all the time). It’s all non-math based, mostly just talking about, well, concepts and playing with toys. Right now we’re still doing mechanics and motion and all that, which is super-dull since I just spent a whole semester on it. The cool part is I get to sort of play assistant, though. I get to work with the other students and help out with experiments and explain whatever they didn’t get during lecture. My teacher (the same woman that teaches my other physics classes, so she already knows and likes me) is going to set up an honors course for the class that I can take to get a 2 credits of honors in. All I have to do is continue to play assistant and do a presentation on whatever I want (physics-related) at the end of the semester. Woo!

Math is … interesting. It’s at night at the end of a long day and I would have thought I’d be too exhausted to sit in a two hour math class, but I was wrong. My prof is so completely hyperactive and writes notes a million miles a minute, I spend the entire time just trying to keep up with my notes and comfort my pen-blistered fingers. It’s fun, though. He’s really a super math geek. Last class he put a problem on the board and told us to take a few minutes to work it on our own, then changed his mind, “no, never mind, I’ll do it for you!” like kid who just couldn’t wait another second to open his present. The material is a little heavy, though, and I think it will be the class demanding the most studying. Half the semester is multivariable calculus, then the other half is linear algebra. It has me a little intimidated, especially because a good portion of our class is students that didn’t do so hot in his class last semester. We’ll see!

I also picked up a tutoring job at the college. Since I have tons of time that I’m hanging out at school waiting to go to class, I figured I’d get a job. My calc 2 teacher last semester recommended me to the tutoring department, so I went to see what it was all about. During my little interview I was signed up to tutor Algebra 1 and 2, Trig, Pre-calculus, and Calculus 1 and 2 as well as Intro to Physics and Physics 1. So any student that comes in looking for help in any one of those classes puts in for a tutor request, and if we have compatible free-time, he’ll get matched up with me for some session throughout the week. So far I only have two appointments, an hour with a guy on Thursdays for Calc 2, and the same guy for an hour on Fridays for Physics 1. It’ll be great because it will keep me fresh on all that stuff and I’ll also gain some more experience sort of teaching. And get paid a little bit, hehe. Right now I only have two hours a week to my name, but I’m sure after the first exam, students will start looking for tutors.

Anyhow, now that you’re bored to death about school stuff … Things are going well at home. My crocheting has suffered some since I’m always busy. Matt and I (well, mostly Matt right now) are playing Ultima Online instead of World of Warcraft now. Matt’s been really nostalgic for the game, since I guess it was the first MMO he played and he’s always comparing everything we play to it. We both got a little tired of WoW and he seems much happier now with his gaming choice.

Work is still sort of boring for him. They just don’t have anything for him to do until he gets his clearance. The wait for an interim clearance is still a year, too. I guess his supervisor came to him the other day and said that since his freeze code (he had a 3-year hold put on him when he got to Vandenberg) expires in February, he’ll be reassigned as early as March this year. We were told that he would have another code placed on him once he came to this new job. I’m not sure where the misunderstandings began; Matt just thinks his supervisor’s kind of a putz and this whole thing was poorly planned. We aren’t packing or anything yet, but Matt had to update his dream sheet (base of preferences … he has three Colorado bases, a Wyoming base, and four California bases on it now) the other day to help his chances of getting somewhere he wanted. I guess we could hear any day now that he has to up and go. If he has to go before the semester is over, unfortunately, I’d probably have to stay here. There’s no way I’d get through months of these classes just to either get Fs (probably not since we’re on military orders) or have them deleted from my transcripts (most probable). Hopefully that’s not the case and if he does get reassigned soon, they’ll give him more time and I can finish up this semester. It’s still sort of a bummer, though. The guard unit I’m at is almost completely non-deployable since we have a real-world full-time mission and can’t afford to have people go. We have a sister unit in Colorado that’s in the same boat. But pretty much every other guard unit is highly deployable. Now I don’t mean to sound like a coward or anything, I’d just rather serve my country at home than in the desert at this point in my life. If we stay in California or Colorado that’s okay, but if he gets sent anywhere else, who knows what will happen. And to him. Right now he’s not in a deployable situation either, and that’s ideal. I guess we don’t have a lot of control over it right now, so we’ll just have to see how things shake out. As of right now though, we aren’t looking at moving into a larger apartment in March for either the luxury or to accommodate Matthew if he moves out here. It would be silly to pack up and move to another place, just to move out again shortly thereafter.

Carol’s moving to Nebraska on my birthday. I’m a little bummed out, since she’s the coolest (only?) girl I really hang out with around here and we’ve grown pretty close over the past year. Our schedules rarely match up so, so we don’t get to see each other that much anymore. Now that she just has a few weeks left, we’re trying to plan all sorts of “dates” before she goes. Going out to eat at places she won’t have in Omaha, seeing movies, going to Six Flags. All my weekends will be Carol Weekends! It’ll be such a bummer to see her go. We can e-mail and call and message on MySpace, but it will be a while before we see each other again. Friday we went out for Thai food and crocheted together. I’m working on a cute crochet scarf for her right now because I know it’s cold out there. I know she’s excited to get out of the Air Force and be reunited with her husband and all, so I’m glad for her for that. I hope she finds a girl buddy or a nice couple or someone to hang out with out there, too.

Melissa and I have been hanging out a lot more lately, too. I was so terrible while I was working about hanging out with her. Last semester and so far this one has been great, though. We see each other at least once a week (unless some visit or holiday interrupts) and are getting to know each other a lot better! I’m going to pick her up here in a few, so I’ll be wrapping this up. Today I think we’re going to be all crafty and bead necklaces and earrings and work on her crocheting. It’s fun and she’s getting a kick out of it. She’s meeting weekly with a woman from church now too, and when she told me I turned just a hint of jealous. This lady takes her out to do all the cool things that she and I do or that I want to do with her. I have some big-sisterly competition! I know, it’s silly. It’s for this woman’s school project, she has to get to know a teenager and write a paper about her. Now I just feel like I have to keep Melissa as entertained as she does! It’s all good, though, I’m glad she’s having fun with another cool adult.

Anyhow, I’m off to get all crafty with my sis! Ta ta!

Last night was Girls Night Out. Missy and I had a little belated birthday bash for Carol. We went out to AJ Spurs for some yummy steak and pasta, then went out to see Last Holiday. It was a cute, fun girl movie. It’s good to hang out with Missy, since we don’t get up her way much (she lives almost an hour north of me). At least I’ll see her at school starting on Monday (I think we’ll have three classes together). Unfortunately, Carol’s counting down the days until she leaves California for Nebraska. I’m happy for her that she’ll be leaving the service and reunited with her husband, but I’ll miss having a friend around.

Melissa and I hung out today. We found a yarn shop listing in Lompoc on the internet, so we drove around town searching for it today, just to find it had empty window. Oh well for outdated websites. We went back to Walmart anyway and went on a little shopping spree. We picked out yarn to make our own crochet tote-bags, yarn to make a baby blanket for her 1-month old niece (though she’ll probably be much older by the time it’s finished :-\), a set of hooks and a case of her own, some cute buttons, and more random yarn, as well as more beads and a set of earring wires to make more jewelry. We spent way too much money, but it should keep us super-busy with craftiness for months! Melissa’s been practicing her chain stitch this week and today I taught her to single crochet. She’s catching on. I loaned her a beginner’s book with good pictures in case she gets confused practicing this week. We’ll be making awesome projects in no time!

Melissa got a laptop for Christmas, so she brought it over today and we played around on there. She’s never really been on the Internet before, but had heard of MySpace from kids at school. She was all excited about finding people online and putting up her picture and all. I think it’s cool she’s getting interested in the Internet, but we had to have that “there are creepy guys out there that like to talk to little girls” talk, because no one’s really had it with her. We just got back from the theater; we went to go see Hoodwinked. It was goofy, but cute. She loved it.

So Matt and I are heading out to Santa Maria to visit Best Buy and Michael’s and have some dinner. Ciao!

Today I just woke up weird, I think. I had another dream I was married to Smallville’s Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). It wasn’t creepy or weird or anything, just matter of fact. Sorry, Matt. :-\ Something strange must have happened though, because I woke up cranky. Matt’s been super-sweet though. He got me all cozied up on the couch with the comforter and my crochet in front of Aladdin and ordered me just to relax. So that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m making Melissa a cute little blue purse. She picked out the pattern and the yarn and I told her I’d try to whip it out as soon as possible. It’s uhm, tricky for me. The pattern claims it’s easy, but maybe I’m just that much of a beginner. It’s starting to shape up, though!

I’m going out with “the girls” tonight (Carol and Missy). Carol had her 25th birthday while she was on vacation in Omaha, so we’re celebrating late. I couldn’t find anything tangible to give her, so I’m treating her to dinner and a movie in Arroyo Grande / Pismo. We’re going to see Last Holiday and she hasn’t yet decided where we’re going to eat. I’m looking forward to a girls’ night out (and Matt is stocking up on chips and soda for a WoW-fest tonight!)

I got a notice in the mail today that my calculus 2 teacher last semester had recommended to the college that I tutor this semester. I can have however many hours of paid calculus tutoring I want up to 20. Not that I’d be able to work 20 hours a week. Maybe six hours a week, split evenly between Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. It’s a little bit of extra cash, and some experience. Math tutoring sounds like a nice, second part-time job for an aspiring science teacher. I at least feel honored to be recommended.

So my brother and I talked last week. Well, we talk more than that, but we talked about important life plans last week. He’s in his second semester at Colorado State, where I went for two semesters before, well … going broke and failing out. He did so-so grade-wise last semester, but says he’s just not happy there, living in the dorms. I can’t at all say I know what’s best for him or what he should do, but I found that I wasn’t quite ready for the whole University experience right out of high school. Joining the Air Force, working, and going to school part-time helped me mature and really want to work at going to school. It made my first semester back as a full-time student much easier. When I failed out, I didn’t have many options. I didn’t have any money, my car had just broken down for good, my parents didn’t have any space for me (in either Colorado or Texas), so I felt desperate and joined the Air Force. If Matthew finds himself in a similar situation, I just want him to know he has many options, to include coming to live with me and Matt. Matthew and I talked about it before Matt and I ever got engaged: how cool it would be to roomie-up together and go to school. Well, Matt and I have been talking about it a lot and offered the option of Matthew coming to live with us out here in California, work full-time, go to the same school I’m attending part-time. We wanted to move to a new apartment anyway (they have dishwashers, tennis courts, and allow a second cat, hehe) when our lease is up in March and the cost of adding another bedroom is negligible compared to what we’re spending on rent right now. Matthew got all excited on the phone and practically gave me an affirmative, but I told him to think about it and see how school goes this semester, then we’ll see about a summer move. Selfishly, I think it would be really cool. I know Matt and I would be sacrificing a little privacy, but Matt and Matthew get along well and I love my little brother to death. I miss him a lot and worry constantly about him (not that there’s too much to worry about, I’m just that way). I know he feels alone out in Colorado, and I feel like he doesn’t have many people to trust or look up to. I like to think I’m one of those people and that we could help each other out if we lived closer together. I talked to Mama about it first and she didn’t seem to think it was a stupid idea. Papa doesn’t think it’s the best idea. Hey, if this semester goes great for Matthew and he feels more comfortable and at home, I’m all for him staying out there. He complains about not being able to work and never having any money, and his grades aren’t terrific, so I think maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to move out of the dorms and do the work/school thing. Matt and I are going to look at these other apartments anyway. Even if Matthew doesn’t move in with us, it hardly costs us any more to get a second bedroom and we would appreciate the extra space. So we’ll see what Matthew chooses and maybe we’ll have a roommate this summer!

Phew! I guess I just had to get that babbling out. I made two more crochet hats yesterday. The blue one came out horribly goofy; I think I added an extra stitch in there to make it keep growing. I’ve yanked most of it out and restarted, minus one stitch per round, to see how the new version turns out. I kind of free-styled
a grey beanie for myself. I was surprised at how well it came out. I changed the stitches up a bit to give it a few ridges and it fits my head perfectly. I don’t think I look so great in hats, but I’m getting kind of used to this one. Hooray! So anyhow, I’m going to head back to the couch to tackle this cute blue purse. Ta ta!

I closed down my Xanga account and my MySpace account. Just tired of all that. I’m back home, now. It’s just you, LJ. (edit: When this was posted on LJ.)

Well, Christmas was pleasant. It our first married Christmas together, which is special. We were both a little homesick, though. It’s just hard to get in the Christmas spirit when you’re wearing shorts and a tank top and haven’t seen family in months. It was fun, though. We got a nice plastic Walmart tree and picked out cute ornaments for it. We went out with Carol on Christmas Eve to church and out to dinner. Matt and I debated whether to open gifts on the 24th, my family’s tradition, or the 25th, his family’s tradition. We ended up opening them very late on the 24th, but it wasn’t due to any of my coaxing! My mother broke Matt down. :p Carol came over on Christmas day to exchange gifts and cook a feast with me. It was all very nice. I’m thankful to have such a good friend as Carol. We’ve just recently grown closer, and now she’s about to move away in a few months.

Our Friday night parties have fallen apart; I guess it’s mostly my fault. I suppose I just feel that we’re being used by our new friends. I don’t know if I expect too much from my friendships that they’re hard for me to find, or if friendships just aren’t important enough for me to want to keep. With the exception of Carol and Erick, I feel everyone here has disappointed me. I feel like we just haven’t found the “right friends”. Maybe other married couples? Getting together with 18/19 year-old boys for movies and video games is fun for a while, but really shallow. I guess I’m just happy to hang out with Carol … I don’t need a gaggle of superficial friends.

My mother is flying in on Friday morning and I am just too excited! She and Ron are coming up to Lompoc that morning to see our home, hopefully meet Melissa over lunch, some golf, and a nice dinner. They aren’t staying up here because Tal would drive my mom crazy (she’s allergic), so they’re staying in Santa Barbara. We’ll drive down there Saturday morning to stay with them for a few nights and celebrate New Year’s Eve / Matt’s birthday / Ron’s birthday.

It’s been quite a relaxing break. Matt pretty much got two weeks off work for free without having to take leave. He’s on standby, but nothing really happens (except an early morning, random urinalysis today) where he needs to go in. It’s been nice to just hang out with him and not do much. We started new characters on World of Warcraft that we got up a little bit (he’s a druid, I’m a hunter, both night elves). He’s been playing Dragon Quest VIII, one of his Christmas gifts. We got weights and tennis rackets to play with. I got a CD from Matt’s parents, Gabby La La’s “Be Careful What You Wish For …”, that has pretty much been on repeat for the past three days (Matt really like it, hehe). I’m learning how to crochet (goofing around, I made a pretty blue bracer/arm-warmer/sleeve thingy). I’m going to attempt an afghan on this break.

Aside from all that excitement, I’ve just been burning a lot of CDs and dinners. Well, I guess the dinners aren’t so bad, but I’m still learning. Today is just cleaning and tennis and watching CSI Season 5. Woohoo! I love Christmas break! Just two more days before until family visiting, woohoo!

I don’t know why, today is just sort of a down day. I skipped school today, half because I feel crummy, and half because I’m just not in the mood for it. I really wanted a day to be alone. It’s not that I don’t love Matt’s company, or that of my buddies at school, it’s just been a while since I had some time to myself. Granted, I’ve been doing housework and all day, it’s still nice though.

Tuesday I got my third calculus midterm back. I’ve taken the class before and I’ve done fine up until this point. I don’t know if I’ve psyched myself out or what. My first two midterms averaged a 98%, but this one dropped my average a whole letter grade. I think I get the material; I did fine on all the homework and I studied. Maybe my brain was just saying “hey, you always fail at this point, so why should this time be any different?” It’s silly and my grade is still fine, but it frustrated me so much. Classes are just getting me down a lot right now. I was looking forward to going back to school so badly when I wasn’t able to, but now that I’m here, I just can’t wait for the semester to end.

So registration for the spring opened today. I had the choice to apply to transfer either in the spring or wait until the fall. I chose to get one more semester in at the junior college and just transfer in the fall. I’m looking at my classes for the spring though, and I don’t have many options. My Mondays and Wednesdays I can all ready tell will be draining. I have a classes 9-10, 12-1, and 7-9:30 … What long days those will be. I have no choice though, I need them.

Matt and I went out to dinner on Tuesday with “the gang”. It’s nice having a group to hang out with. Marc’s introducing us to new people every week at our “Friday Night Thing”, which is turning out to be way more fun than I had anticipated. Carol and Ian went with us to see Chicken Little afterward. It was cute and all, but I wasn’t super-amused. Matt and I just got Mystery Science Theater 3000’s 8th collection volume in the mail the other day. I haven’t seen any of them yet and he’s seen one, so I guess we’re picking on that no one has seen for tomorrow night’s MST3K showing. Hopefully it’s a good one.

I guess that’s enough whining for one day. I’m off to bake a cake and do some physics. Mmm.

A bunch of people just left. It’s amazing; we actually have semi-regular visitors! On Halloween we had a little party (games, movies, and grub) for my buddy Marc, two of his friends, Carol, and Erick. Matt and I were the only ones to dress up, though. Matt was an 80’s rock star and I was his groupie! It was much more fun than I had anticipated! We decided to have a regular Friday night get-together for the crew. Tonight Marc and his buddies and a sister of one and Carol hung out for an MST3K and an episode of UCB. A blast! It’s good to hang out with people … I’ve missed it.

The spring school schedule came out today, so I’ve been figuring out what classes I want to take. I want to apply for Westmont, a small Christian college in Santa Barbara, and it’s not too late to get in for the spring semester. I have my application, but I still think I want one more semester at the community college to prepare for transferring in the fall. So one more semester in Santa Maria and a little more time to save up for tuition (private school, ugh). School is getting a little bit tougher. Next week I have a quiz and two midterms, which I don’t feel 100% ready for. I still have time to study, though.

This weekend is a guard weekend. Hopefully it’s not too boring. If so, it’ll give me a little bit of time to study while getting paid. Speaking of which, this will be my last weekend as an A1C (woohoo, SrA!)

That’s all for tonight. More to come later. Ciao!