Little Raindrops

Posts Tagged ‘Mel’s work’

I had to go into work this afternoon for my last (partial) drill. I haven’t been to work since the January drill and have been putting off my outprocessing in case I wanted to go back for some reason. Well, I figured this drill would be a good one to say goodbye to the traditional folk and outprocess the unit. I still need to transfer out of the Guard. This was my first time away from Rhino and I wasn’t quite as neurotic as I hear I might have been. It was nice to have a little getaway, but I really wanted to just go in and get out to be with him again. I enjoyed talking to my coworkers, since no one has seen me since January, and everyone wanted to hear about Rhino and give me advice. He was really the main thing on my mind though. I spent almost five hours away and was definitely ready to see him when I returned. I left some pumped milk, but apparently it wasn’t enough. So by the time I got home everyone was kind of anxious and he was pretty upset from being so hungry.

Yesterday the sergeant in my squadron’s orderly room called me up to see about going to lunch in the near future. She and I didn’t really see each other much last drill, which was my last drill with the unit, so I figured she just wanted to say goodbye or something. And I’m always up for lunch. I picked the place: Sugar Magnolia’s (one of my two favorites in town!) I invited Matt along, which I had hoped was okay and this wasn’t just a “girls lunch out”. When we showed up, about 7 other people from work were there anyway! I haven’t been at work for over a month and figured they all just missed me! We ordered and sat down and my supervisor starts in with “I guess you wonder why we’ve all called you here today”. I’m pretty dense sometimes and hadn’t really wondered. Well, L was sitting next to me and we were chatting and I hadn’t even realized he had a new stripe on his arm. He and I both had promotion boards in November and were just waiting for our paperwork to go through. So it wasn’t anything formal, but we had a small little promotion celebration ceremony! So now when people call the house and ask for Airman Conklin, there will be no confusion!! I feel a little silly getting promoted, then leaving the unit and the guard a month later. I can’t be in the guard in Japan and had looked into the reserves IMA jobs, but they aren’t recruiting anybody new right now. I don’t really see this as the end of my military career, so whenever I can get a reserve slot or go back into the guard when we move back to the states (or if I get called up from the inactive ready reserve, which I’ll be in soon), I’ll be a sergeant! Apparently Matt got a call last week and was in on the plans the whole time anyway — the stinker! It was a nice lunch and it’s always good to see people I work with socially. I was getting pretty stressed out working, doing school, and being pregnant, but I did like the job and enjoyed working up there. It’s doubtful I’ll show up for the February drill (just a couple days before my due date), but I’m planning on going up for a half day on the March drill to do my outprocessing and say final goodbyes.

I have been working for a few months with a couple other coworkers to put together the one of the best Christmas parties our squadron has had! We’ve had a few so-so ones over the years and the attendance is usually very disappointing. We did a whole bunch of fundraisers, asked business for donations, and got a great place to throw a holiday bash. We off-set the $42 ticket price for guests (Matt and I only paid $15 — hooray for being low-ranking!!), had all sorts of cool door prizes and raffles (and I’m shocked we didn’t win anything!), ate an excellent meal (my whole week’s worth of calories, probably), exchanged White Elephant gifts (Matt and I gave a cute mint-chocolate fondue for two pot/kit), played a kind of goofy but fun game, and just schmoozed with other guards guys and their families. It was a great time, though it went a little late and I was a zombie most of the morning (and of course, I wasn’t even drinking!) We walked away with very full tummies and a very pretty gardenia-scented candle. One of the better gifts, I believe! We could have ended up with a box of Clorox, a summer sausage & do-rag, or Air Supply’s Christmas Album! I’ll gladly keep the yummy candle!!

Today was my last day at at work as a full-time technician. As I was driving in this morning, about half-way to the site, I saw the oil light flicker and began to hear loud chunking noises. I was right between work and home, out of cell-phone range and far from any other business, and decided to continue up the hill to work. A coworker checked my oil to find that the dip-stick was bone dry. Someone ran to get me some oil and it took 4 quarts to reach the fill-line. I turned the car on, didn’t hear any odd noises, and we decided it was safe for me to drive.

About half-way home in the afternoon I heard very quiet, occasional ticking. Matt and I had our Bradley class in Santa Maria and we decided to risk the drive. A little past the base, about half-way to our class we heard even more disturbing, loud clunking noises. We pulled off to the side of the highway, let the car rest for a bit, before turning it on again. Even worse. We called our Bradley instructor to let her know we weren’t showing, then called AAA. Of course, we’re out in the middle of nowhere, 15 miles from any business establishment and it seems they had trouble determining whose area of service we were in. An hour and a half later, a tow truck from Santa Maria showed up to take us to our Lompoc mechanic. AAA will only pay for the first 7 miles of the tow trip, then we had to pick up the remainder of the ride at $10/mile. I guess the primary tow company was busy, so they dispatched this guy, who usually hauls large trucks, mobile homes, and construction vehicles. The truck was huge — overkill for our puny Saturn. Matt got a kick out of the many bright lights and beeps and the cab which felt like a cockpit. “We should do this again sometime!” Right. We got to the mechanic right as the last employee was driving away. She got out to talk to us about what happened, and to inform us that they won’t reopen until Monday due to the holiday.

So we are without a vehicle and trying to decide what to do. We only needed it another 3 months, then we were going to get rid of it anyway. 3 months is a little too long to rent a car, though. We’ll be looking into leasing from a used-car lot or asking around at our church to see if anyone has an unused junker they’d loan us. Maybe the repairs will be worth our while, though. We’ll just have to wait until next week to see if our car is worth saving.

I went to a Halloween party tonight with some work friends. Matt had to work, so I went alone. It was a drinking party, so I pretty much just ran around and took photos of my intoxicated coworkers, but it was still a good time! It was a costume party and I spent all week trying to figure out some cute way to incorporate my growing belly. There were quite a few people there I didn’t know, so I didn’t want to just be “that fat girl”, I wanted something that would explain it! ;-p Well, most of my ideas were pretty dumb. I kicked this one around for a while, but thought maybe it was too sick. Well, I got over that and decided it was cute! I got some comfy yoga pants and a long sleeve t-shirt and some white puffy paint and viola! I’m a pregnant skeleton!!

I returned to the clinic today to fill out some paperwork and pick up my vitamins. I know they’re just pills, but I was awfully excited receiving my prenatal vitamins! I also got a referral to an off-base doctors office of my choosing (from their approved list) and will make my first appointment tomorrow. I had to deal with Public Health and Bioenvironmental Engineering to do a work center assessment and put me on a profile. It was a little frustrating because of my status. They only do this for active duty personnel, but my unit has a Fetal Protection program where it calls for an interview. I’m a dependent, but I’m on active duty status right now for a short time, but I’m up at the unit regularly, so I thought I should have an assessment accomplished. The guys upstairs argued this amongst themselves for a bit and then cleared me “unofficially”. I have a profile, but they wouldn’t sign off on it, it was just for my unit’s information. No lifting more than 20 pounds, no ladders, no hanging out near the antenna, no fitness testing, no more than 12-hour workdays in my first trimester, and no more than 8-hour workdays during the remainder of my pregnancy. I just got certified today to work shifts when the regular crew guys need replacements, but I’ll really only be able to work a full shift for the next two months, then I suppose I won’t be of much help. A few people at work know, such as my supervisor and maintenance officer because they had a need-to-know. The Major wanted to make a PA announcement, but I’d rather not make a big deal out of it yet. People at work don’t really know me all that well yet.

Since my last post, of course more has happened. Here are plenty of pictures to show you all about it.

D and I went to the La Purisima Mission and took a lot of photos. We had just missed the guided tour, so we went around and made up our own stories about the olive presses and the hospital and the snazzy roof. We hiked around the sandy hills overlooking the mission and took more photos, mostly of plants. This was my first hike with Danielle and it was much like a botany field trip. Being that she has a degree in horticulture, she is chocked full of interesting plant information.

The following week, Danielle took Matt and I hiking up Madonna Mountain in San Luis Obispo. It was a nice, short hike right in the city. More plant information and a tasty lunch at the top with a hiking dog. And of course, Matt is a goof with the pretty cacti.

The next week, Matt and I took a nice hike by ourselves in Los Padres National Forest from Red Rocks up to Gibralter Dam. We hung out with a friendly snake, took more plant photos, attempted to cross the river and I fell in, and hope to return soon.

Danielle and I hung out a few more times. We went back up to SLO to go camping-supply shopping, to meet some of her plant-nerd friends, and to watch the movie Miss Potter. I heard this movie wasn’t well-received, but I really enjoyed it. We went to the Lompoc Fine Arts Festival where we fell in love with so many cute, knitted, animal finger puppets. We met up with her friend who was doing some plant research in Los Osos and walked around a lovely grove of oaks, where she believes we contracted some icky poison oak. I think it was from a later adventure on base.

I took a last-minute trip out to Colorado to see Mama for Mother’s Day. Matt didn’t come, but it was only less than 5 days away from home. I just recently went on active duty status at my guard unit and will be working full-time for quite a while, so I saw it as my last opportunity for quite some time to just pick up and take a trip. And it’s Mother’s Day and I wanted to see her new puppies. It was a relaxing few days gabbing with Mama and spending a lot of time at the dog parks. I cooked a little bit for her and Ron every night, which I feel very privileged to be able to do. After all, before I moved out I had been permanently banned from the kitchen for my incompetency. It’s nice to prove myself! I made desserts, of course, including the scrumptious baked pear pastries that turned out fabulously! We did a bit of gardening, which was wonderful, and I took plenty more flower photos. I’m obviously getting fond of taking pictures of plants — thanks, Danielle! Since Delilah, the dog I received for my 11th birthday, passed away in the winter, Mama had her cremated and held on to the ashes until I could return. We played the Grateful Dead’s “Samson and Delilah”, said a few words, and scattered her from the balcony, her favorite lounging spot.

Little Melissa and I are still spending time together as well. Next week she’ll finish her first year of high school! All ready! This month is our 3-year anniversary and things just keep getting more fun! We went to a BBBSA bowling day, ate a lot of pizza, (re)met another great match of girls, and took home certificates for our most amazing bowling forms (under the legs, backwards, lying down, etc. etc!) We also visited the Santa Maria Strawberry Festival, where we spent too much on sugar and dizziness. I also bribed Little Mel into getting on a ride that goes upside-down for the first time. Ohh, it was a blast! We have done a little hiking of our own, as well. We planned on taking this loop trail in Gaviota State Park. I guess we missed something very early on in our hike because we traveled far from the loop. It was still a nice, 2-hour hike through tall weeds, drenched in sun.

During the May guard weekend, I got to talking to an ex-I-Labber who had extensively explored the abandoned missile sites all around base. He drew me a crude map marking all the great spots to crawl through tunnels and down silo ladders. Matt, Danielle and I set out one day to find all these amazing sites. We all ready knew about the Titan site that exploded in the 70’s. I learned the real story of how that happened, dispelling all the more interesting rumors I had been told over the years. I think we hit every road and dead end on this huge base, but we didn’t find any of these great old missile sites. I blame the map, of course. So we went back to the Titan site to crawl around it a bit more and see if there’s anything interesting we’d missed. We saw a badger, a wonderful spiky lizard of some sort, lots of pretty bees on ice-plant blooms, and I think this may be where we got our case of poison oak. Just like last time, but not as bad. I got medicated early on. I learn.

Since then I’ve been at work filling in for a bunch of people. I was almost on my own, but it went pretty well. I like my unit and I think the work is interesting. It’s fairly quiet and not too stressful. They’re unsure exactly how long I’ll be on orders, but I’m told they’re hoping until at least the end of September. The paycheck really will be nice. It’s been too long since I’ve really contributed financially! Danielle and I go to the gym whenever we work at the same time and get a little exercising in. I’m starting to stress out about that a little more, as my annual fitness test is this Thursday. I’m not as lazy as I had been last year, but I think I’m still not up to where I’d like to be for this test. We’ll see how it goes on Thursday, I guess. Friday Danielle and I went to a great Total Body Conditioning class on base with her friend, Stephanie. Boy, did that surprise us! The instructor had absolutely no mercy! It was a great time, but hard work. Stephanie seems like such a great gal and she and her husband live here in town (and he is a World of Warcraft junkie … I’m sure the men will get along fabulously once they meet!) The there of us and Matt went out that evening to see the local grandpas pickin’ country tunes on their guitars upstairs in the Lilly building. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but it was a good time! We didn’t know too many of the songs and I think the old men got a kick out of us. I took some horrible videos of Danielle and Stephanie singing along to some songs. It inspired Matt and I to actually pick up the guitar we bought last year. Hopefully we’ll be strumming out something soon. Danielle had told me this get-together would be bluegrassy, but it wasn’t exactly. What I love most about bluegrass music is the mandolin. I struggle with forming chords on a guitar, which I know is my own fault which I can overcome, but I’ve convinced myself that I’d have a much better time with a cute little mandolin. I’m watching eBay for them this week. Danielle has a fiddle, though wants to learn the upright bass. Maybe someday we’ll have a little band of our own!

That’s all for tonight. Matt will be on nights this week, so he will be coming home from work right as I wake up, then I’ll take the car and get home just in time for him to leave for work. It will be a long week, but that’s just what we have to do. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to myself to blab to this blog. Be expecting it!

So I’m emailing this post to my blog and hopefully it posts it correctly. Of
course, plenty has happened since last October. The problem is that I’ve
gone back to pen-and-paper journaling, so I’ve had little desire to blog.
We had Thanksgiving at home, Christmas in New York with Matt’s family, new
Year’s in California with my mom and Ron, Matt turned 24, I started school
in January, we started attending a new marriage-related Bible study, I
dropped all my classes in February, Matt’s sister (Jen) moved out to LA and
she and Matt’s dad came up for a few days to visit, Matt started a new
3-on-3-off 12-hour work schedule, my father came to visit at the beginning
of March, I’m doing web design work for a creation science traveling
home school science course, I turned 24, I’ve been doing temp work as a
coupon printer installer/retrofitter technician at grocery stores, and
that’s pretty much the gist of what’s been going on in our lives. More on
some of that a bit later.

It always goes this way — I’m never loyal to my journals. I’m just so lazy.

I’m sitting in the school parking lot, wiping sour cream off my Taco Bell order, and waiting for my computer science class to start. School is going pretty well. Next week I have my first exams in math and physics. Physics is pretty tough, but Mr. Jorstad says it gets much easier from here. Math is extremely boring. I took this class (particularly) with spastic Mr. King before dropping last semester. Now Dr. Mesri very slowly over explains everything. It’s better than being too difficult, I guess. My programming class is just an introduction to C and it’s not too tough. some of my days are long (M/W: 9a-7p; T: 830a-3p; R: 830a-930p), but I never have classes on Fridays.

I met a girl at work named Danielle who recently moved to Lompoc (the same street as us.) We’re going to the gym together Mondays-Thursdays before class/work. She picks me up at 4:40 and we do weight training or spinning until Matt picks me up on his way to work. Danielle used to be a Marine and loves to work out, so she is the perfect motivator. This is only our second week into it, but I feel fantastic all day long! I’m very sore and hopefully soon I’ll start toning up. I’ve put on entirely too much weight over the past year.

We also started going back to church after about three months. We were going to a small group at Jim’s on Thursday nights, studying Acts, but we hadn’t been able to attend since school started up. He found a group for us on Friday nights at Wayne & Rena’s, studying marriage. They live right across the street from us and are so great! All of the other four couples in the group have children older than us, so it is interesting to hear about their experiences.

Last weekend Answers in Genesis, a group that teaches creation backed by science, came to Calvary for a two-day conference. We took in a few lectures about apologetics, astronomy, and our foundations. Matt had heard Ken Ham, the founder of AiG, speak many years ago. He believes in intelligent design, a six day creation, that we are the center of the universe, that there was a worldwide flood, and that dinosaurs lived at the same time as man, to name a few. Some of it still sounds pretty out there to me, but some of their evidence was pretty convincing. And science aside, there’s a lot said in the Bible that I never knew about. We picked up some DVDs and a book to research these ideas further.

Andrea sent me a really cute new journal the other day, which I suppose inspired me to pick up the pen again. I’m not letting myself start new journals without finishing the old ones anymore.

Last month we decided what we’re going to do when Matt leaves the Air Force. The plan was: I’d move out to Colorado over Christmas ‘07 and go to CSU in the spring. At the beginning of March he’d follow and find a job around Fort Collins. I have two years left in my physics degree and we would try to buy a house. The last time I went to work I learned that many people in my shop will be leaving, another squadron is moving out with us, many full-time positions will be opening up, and they want to promote at least one SrA. The full-time job will be a GS-11 position and we’re getting new equipment that someone needs to learn and teach to everyone else. It’s extremely tempting to stick around for another two years after signing on full-time

Not too much of interest has happened since my last blog. Jason’s still here and workin’. Matt just got off an exercise, during which he had to work the 11pm – 7am shift. Today was his first day back working a normal schedule, thankfully. I had my first math exam last Monday which, after 7 hours of straight studying prior to the test, I think went pretty well. Really, for not being in class for half the material I think it went all right. It’s a good thing there are 4 more exams this semester, though.

I finally had my investigation interview for my clearance (after completing the paperwork over a year ago!)

Matt, Jason and I went to a BBQ at my friend Brian’s last Saturday. Brian was in my math and physics classes for the last couple of semesters, but is moving to San Diego this week. We had a blast playing a few crazy games of croquet and hanging out with friends.

We’re getting ready for Matt’s parents to come out a week from Friday. We’ll head down to Santa Barbara to pick them up on Friday evening, then they’re leaving us on Monday morning, so there’s not a lot of time. I’m really looking forward to it, though!

Matt and I gave up our WoW addiction last month for a new one: Guild Wars. I’m enjoying it more, though. Our main characters are level 19 (out of 20) right now and got up there pretty quickly, but there’s still so much more to the game, not just leveling. He has a ritualist/necromancer, I have a monk/mesmer. We also have rangers which we haven’t been playing as much. I’m having a blast and it’s always nice to run around with Matt.

Melissa came over last night and we made dinner and baked cookies. We tried these awesome sloppy joe turnover things (just sloppy joe filling scooped into a rolled out biscuit, then folded over and baked) that everyone gobbled up and she made peanut butter cookies. While I was working on the sloppy joe meat, I saw her pouring salt into a 1/4 cup. Wondering what she was doing, I checked the recipe and saw that it only called for 3/4 teaspoon both salt and baking powder. I missed the part where she added 3/4 cup baking powder, and she was almost finished with the salt! We tried to salvage it, but it just wasn’t happening. It was a good laugh, though. We’ll never forgot to pay attention to measurements. :-p I’ve really just been hanging out with Matt during his off-time while this exercise was going on, so I haven’t spent too much time by myself. That’s started back up again, so I filled today with chores and crocheting.

I collected a lot of cheap practice yarn when I first taught myself how to crochet, but didn’t use it all up. Now I have baskets full of yarn I never really want to use. I gathered up eight skeins to make an afghan for charity with or something. I’ve done a few rows on it now and it’s grown a lot on me. I’ve been wondering what on earth to get my brother’s girlfriend for Christmas and haven’t really come up with anything. I’m sure it gets pretty cold in New Jersey, and an extra afghan can’t hurt. That is, unless Matt really wants to keep it (I think he likes it more than I do!) I also finished my Stitch My Square trades. Unfortunately, it’s not going on this month, so I don’t have any squares to stitch. Here is my community post with photos of all my squares, sent and received.

Well, Matt should be home from work soon, so I’m off to figure out dinner!