The Storm and the Blackout

So two weeks later, I’m back to write up the next part of my story. In my defense, our hotel internet was spotty all week because of the storms and then when we moved into our apartment, it took a little over a week to get internet installed here. But let’s see, where was I?

Oh yes.

We left Georgia at about 3 in the afternoon to make what should have been an 8 or 9 hour drive. Everything was going smoothly until we approached Richmond – and then it started pouring, thunder, lightning, big gusting winds, and all that. We slowed down to a crawl and traffic backed up due to downed trees and low visibility. I don’t have any of my own pictures, but the Washington Post has a good gallery.

It looked like this – but this is not my picture. Credit goes to @RyHickey3 and the Washington Post gallery

My brother called to check in and mentioned – this is key for later in the story, so remember this! – that he was on my sister’s cell phone because his was dead, but hers was running low too.

We made it past the traffic and got on the 295 and things cleared up a little. Then Chris made a wrong turn (partly my fault, partly his fault, mostly the GPS’ fault) and we ended up driving through the middle of DC, where traffic signals and street lights were out, streets were closed with confusing detours, and cops were all over the place. Somehow, we got back on track and a little before 3 in the morning, we saw our exit.

Sort of. And by sort of, I mean that our exit was the one that had a complete black out. No lights at all, anywhere. We couldn’t see ANYTHING. And lucky us, our hotel was set off from the street, behind an office complex, so we just had to trust that would GPS tell us when to turn and be right. Eventually, we navigated to the front of the hotel and I ran in to check in. They had made the keys for us earlier when we’d called to request a late check in. Luckily we’d called before the power went down because otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to make us keys until the power came back and we’d have had to sleep in the car. She told me how to get around to our room and then offered me a glow stick to navigate because they were out of flashlights. In the meantime, Bones was outside scaring people by moving silently up to them, then putting her nose against them. She made at least 2 different staff members scream… glow sticks don’t provide much light

Anyway. Chris, Bones, Shecky, and I took our one backpack [best tip I can give for a move: put one to two day's worth of clothes and toiletries in a bag you can grab easily, so you don't have to dig for your suitcase and all that in the back of your packed car] and laptops and navigated through the halls to our room, ready to get out of the nasty humidity and hot rain and into some cool A/C.

Except I’m sure you see where this is going right? The power was out, so there was no A/C. It was at least as humid and hot in our room as it was outside – probably in the upper 90s for both temp and humidity. Gross. At that point, I didn’t care. I was just tired and glad to be out of a car, so I flopped down on the bed and pulled out my phone to tell my dad we’d finally arrived safely.

A picture of my brother to help break up all this text. And it’s even relevant, because I think he took this at a random gas station somewhere on the drive!

Then it occurred to me that my brother and sister had been ahead of us and I hadn’t heard from them in a while. I knew they hadn’t take the wrong turn we did, so where were they? I tried to call them and it went straight to voicemail. Uh oh.

I wasn’t sure what to do, so I fell asleep.

Eventually, my sister called me. What happened to them? She’d been using her phone for GPS, so when it died, she lost that. They’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and in the process of trying to turn themselves around, had looped around the entire Beltway again and ended up back in Virginia. They didn’t have a map or any way to call me until they stopped at a gas station and picked up a car charger for her phone. When I talked to her, she said they finally had directions and were back on track, so I told them to call me when they got there.

She called me at 5:15 AM. We’d left the day before at 3 in the afternoon. Ugh. She was (understandably) unhappy and when she realized there was no A/C in the room, she was even less happy.

Happily, the A/C (and lights) came back on the next morning at about 9 and the room instantly cooled off. We were super lucky though, because I knew people nearby who were without power for almost a week!

If you made it through this, you deserve a prize. And that prize will come very soon in the form of a post about Bawlmer, Philly, and DC that will be mostly pictures

GA to DC: Getting Ready to Move!

Hello! I’m sure you’ve all missed me, but I forgot how much work a PCS entails. Especially when you actually have stuff and own a house.

We spent the week or so before we left Georgia fixing up all the little things in our house that needed repair, throwing out stuff that wasn’t coming with us, and replacing the hardwood floor in our house with ceramic tile that looks like hardwood – I saw it on Pinterest a while ago and thought it looked awesome, so when I saw it in the flooring store, I was all over it. But a word of advice? You don’t want people in the house ripping up your floors the day you’re trying to clean everything and leave. Also, I don’t care how much money it saves to do it yourself: let someone else clean your carpets.

My brother and sister flew in two days before we left and they were a huge help with cleaning and organizing everything to get ready for moving.

As for the movers? Well… that was an unpleasant experience.

They sent two packers the first day to pack up our five bedroom house. We had more than that to pack up our two bedroom apartment in Monterey. But they seemed to do a good — albeit very slow — job.

And then the people came two days later to pick up the shipment and asked why our bed was still assembled. Hmm? Apparently, the first people who came to pack everything were supposed to disassemble and wrap everything that needed disassembling. And since that was supposed to already be done, the second crew didn’t have any tools. So they left and came back two hours later. And then they realized that their dolly had a flat tire and that the lift on their truck didn’t work. Sigh.

At some point, the operations manager came by to check out the situation and we learned that we were supposed to have a lot more movers, but only two of them showed up at work for the day. And we also learned that the girl making the inventory of our furniture was marking everything as scratched or dented even when it wasn’t. Worst part about that? She was a milspouse – and not just any milspouse, she was a Navy sub wife. Nice.

Anyway, The ops manager made her start completely over and we assured him that we fully intended to inspect everything ourselves before we signed off on the paper. Eventually, they told us they needed to come back a second day – not because they were out of time, but because the truck they had wasn’t big enough for all our stuff. The guy assures us that he will be there around 7 am, and definitely no later than 8.

So at 9 the next morning (yep.) two guys showed up to finish the job, along with the ops manager, who wanted to go over the inventory with me. Within five seconds of looking at the list, we realized how much the girl had screwed it up the day before. Things were missing from the list (she listed our washer, but not dryer; the King bed frame, but not the mattress and so on), things were mislabeled (she skipped a sticker at some point), and she kept listing everything as damaged even after the ops manager told her to stop (she wrote that our GLASS tv stand was gouged – how is that even possible??). I spent the morning correcting her list with the ops manager and finally signed off on everything, but I’m still paranoid that we’re going to end up missing something big.

But finally, they loaded everything and our house was empty. We finished cleaning the next day, packed up and weighed our cars (we did a partial DITY), and finally hit the road at about 3 PM.

Next to come: Driving forever through a thunderstorm and checking into a hotel with no power, exploring Baltimore and Philadelphia, and DC on the Fourth!

Close, but Not Close Enough

You may remember that we’re getting ready to PCS.

Stttrrrreeeesssssss.

We’re trying to buy a house in DC and we KNOW the house we want to make an offer on (and the price on it just dropped $24K yesterday!). Our Realtor in Maryland is ready to make an offer for us as soon as we give her the ok. We’re preapproved for a mortgage contingent on either having a signed lease for our house in GA or me having a nonconditional job offer.

If one of those conditions works out, the rest would fall into place – if I get a job, we don’t have to worry about renters (although they’d be nice) and we can still get a house. If we get can get renters, we’ll be ok even if I’m not working for a bit longer and we can get a house.

I’ve signed letters of intent with a company contingent on them getting a contract awarded to them, which they should find out soon. I’m also talking to another company that is very promising. But no firm offers yet.

We’re working with our property manager, prepping everything in our house, and showing our house to potential renters, but no lease signed yet.

I’m going crazy knowing that everything is so close to working out, but just not quite there. If some people would just sign a lease… if I could get just a job offer… if we could put the offer on the house… problems all solved.

No more stress.

But there’s nothing I can do about any of this.

So I’m just making my house as clean as I can, polishing up my resume, and hoping no one else likes the house we like.

And maybe I’ll magically get a job offer this week. Or renters.

Toss me some good luck if you’ve got any extra laying around please! We need all the luck we can get.

Tuesday Randoms

New Hair Phase 2: I finished new hair phase 2. She cut it shorter than I intended for it to be, but I like it! (Sorry for the bad quality of that picture… my camera battery was dying and the lighting was weird, so it didn’t want to focus. But you get the idea.)

Leave Shenanigans: Chris put in for leave before he deployed, and I was supposed to check on the status after a reasonable amount of time had passed. I waited more than a reasonable amount of time and when they did the weekly spouse call this morning, I asked about it. The seaman who did the call was clueless and told me he would transfer me to someone who could check for me. He did transfer me… but I still have no idea where. I told the guy what I was calling for and he said, “Petty Officer Who? I don’t know who that is.” So I asked him for the number for Chris’s division — since they just switched buildings and I only have the old number — and he told me four numbers. FOUR numbers. How many numbers are in a telephone number? Ten, or at least 7. I asked him what the rest of the number of was and he sounded confused (why didn’t I know the other six numbers?), but then he told me what they should be.

I called that number and the person who answered knew who Chris was, but said that Chris doesn’t have a leave request in. FAIL. I know that Chris did it, because I remember him calling to ask for my parents’ address and saying he would be home as soon as he submitted his leave request. Ugh. The LPO asked when Chris requested leave for and I told him the dates and he said he should have plenty of time to submit his request when he comes back. Hopefully the plane ticket prices to California haven’t jumped up a bunch by then :\ I guess if they have, he can use some miles, but the tickets are so cheap right now! Part of me wants to go ahead and get his ticket, but the other part of me is sure that if I do that, he’ll get orders to deploy again or something else that will keep his leave from being granted. What would you do in that situation – go ahead and buy or wait?

Fall Makes Me Happy: And last but not least, the weather is cooling off! Our high for today was 81. 81! When I took the dogs to the lake this morning, I almost wished I had a jacket And it’s supposed to be in the 60s until almost noon tomorrow! Summer is ending! I turned off the A/C and opened all the windows and it’s just gorgeous. Bones wants to be outside all day every day.

Bones is lazy.

Just a Picture: You Know You’re a Milspouse When…

Yep, that instructs me to take the medicine not with breakfast or dinner or with food in general, but with morning or evening chow.

First Care Package!

I’ve never been able to send care packages while Chris is deployed before, so this is really exciting to me! Chris isn’t being helpful with suggestions of things he wants/needs, so he gets what he gets. I think it’s a pretty good box though.

The snacks:

Chris is addicted to hot fries. I send him a bunch with him when he leaves, but he’s out now. The lady at Big Lots (the only place I can buy individual serving bags) now knows me as the “Hot Fries lady.” I’m also going to add some zucchini bread I made and probably some Guinness brownies

The fun stuff:

If you can’t make it out, that’s season 7 of the West Wing (he just finished Season 6), a home-brewing magazine, a book called F**k You Penguin based on a blog that tells off cute animals, and a book by Bill Bryson about the informal history of American English. If I can find something Star Trek to throw in, that’s pretty much Chris in a box. I would send him the Star Trek coffee cup they’re selling at Second and Charles, but he finally bought himself a mug on the boat, so he doesn’t need one anymore.

By the way, I know I posted a picture of this cake on Twitter when we made it, but I never got around to putting it on here until now. A couple of friends and I made this cake before Chris’s deployment (we’re always looking for reasons to play with fondant and buttercream):

[Isn't it cute? If I don't make it as SECDEF, I'll open a cake business ]

Anyway. What’s your favorite thing to put in a care package? Any must sends that I’m missing?

My First SpouseBUZZ Post

I don’t remember if I ever mentioned on here that I was invited to write for SpouseBUZZ. I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about for quite some time and after starting and trashing about seven different posts, I finally hit on one that I liked.

Please go check out my first post on SpouseBUZZ about the difficulties of communication during deployments and let me know what you think!

Georgia or DC?

I’m not going to lie. When Chris told me that we were leaving the heaven that is the Monterey Peninsula for an Army post in the middle-ish area of Georgia, I was not thrilled. I loved waking up to see the ocean out the front window of my apartment, wandering around the Farmer’s Market on Tuesday afternoons, and hanging out on Alvarado Street on the weekends with my friends. And year round semi-chilly mostly overcast weather is my idea of perfection.

Having to make that move in the middle of the summer just added to the inhumanity of it all. (Did I mention that I was born and raised in Southern California? Humidity and heat were completely foreign concepts to me.) Bug spray feels and smells nasty and I suddenly had to wear it every time I stepped outside the door. You could say that Georgia and I started off on the wrong foot.

For the past two years, I’ve dreamed about our next duty station. Most of my friends from Monterey migrated to DC post graduation, and I’ll be near them again. I’ll have a Trader Joe’s within a reasonable distance. My dog will be able to get off steroids (Yes, my dog is truly allergic to Georgia.) I’ll actually be in a real city again and that’s exactly what I wanted.

Except maybe it’s not.

In spite of my best efforts, Georgia has grown on me. When I went up to DC for interviews, the sheer number of cars and people overwhelmed me. People were moving fast, in a hurry, and some people were just plain rude to me. A meter maid was going to give me a ticket for parking somewhere five minutes before the sign said it was allowed! It’s a far cry from the couple who watched Chris and I try to load a rocking chair in a Ford Taurus at Cracker Barrel, realized we couldn’t do it, and offered to go out of their way to drop it off at our house for us.

I’m starting to realize that there actually are a lot of things I will miss about Georgia. I’ll miss having Chris be able to come home for lunch, taking the dogs to the lake on post, walking the canal, going to Riverhawks and Greenjacket games, working out with my gym buddy, meeting up with friends for dinner, seeing my friends who just moved back and seriously have the cutest baby ever, eating at Sticky Fingers, living in my house, having Charlotte/Atlanta/Savannah/Charleston all within a three hour drive.

But New York and Philly are good trade offs I suppose. And I know that DC will be a good place and I like it up there. We won’t even be in the city city which is what made me reconsider this in the first place – I’m a suburbs kind of girl. Northern Virginia all the way!

By the way, thank you Georgia for the sudden influx of mosquitos, heat, and humidity. It seems fitting that the things that made me hate you in the first place are making a reappearance to remind me why I’m glad to be leaving.

P.S. Navy, please contact me for a list of people you can transfer up to DC ASAP.

Logistical Problems and Geobachelorhood

I was so excited at the idea of going back to work that I didn’t stop to think about some of the logistical problems associated with my impending geobachelorhood.

Ok, I did. And then I felt a little panicked and changed to thinking about how I’ll be getting a paycheck, using my degrees, and living near lots of good friends instead. Ahh, panic gone.

So what are these logistical problems, you might ask? Well, I’m moving on my own in a few ways.

(1) I’m not getting any kind of dislocation allowances or movers to pack my boxes and take them to my new house. All costs will be out of pocket and everything I take with me with have to fit in the back of my Hyundai Accent hatchback. With the dogs.

Have you ever seen a Hyundai Accent? Yep, they're this big.

(2) Chris isn’t coming with me, which means we’re maintaining two households. Which means that even if I did have military movers, I couldn’t take our couch, tv, coffee table, bed, dresser, etc. The only thing I can take are the pots and pans, because he doesn’t cook and we actually have an extra set that his mom gave us anyway.

(3) When I move, Chris will be far away under the sea somewhere. My dad said he was never coming back to GA again in the summer, but I’m going to bribe him (tickets to a Nationals game maybe?). And he can take up some more space in my Hyundai. Or maybe I can rent a U-Haul and he can drive that… and my extra pots and pans. Maybe a few boxes of romance novels.

On top of those issues, there’s a few more things that make me panicky.

(1) We’re going to pretty much wipe out our savings paying for the move up there, setting up a new apartment, and putting down the deposit and first month’s rent. It’s not a huge deal, because we can build it up again quickly. We’re debt free and pretty frugal. But having no savings makes me nervous.

(2) Speaking of places to live… do you know how much more expensive it is to live in DC than GA? What we pay for our house will get me the top floor of someone else’s house up there. I wish I could live on one of the bases up there (Ft Belvoir has some awesome housing!), but since I’m not there on orders with Chris, that’s not an option for me. Luckily, I have found some affordable places (with yards!) that will consider dogs so once I have my actual start date I’m going to start emailing.

(3) Dogs. The idea of finding a new vet, new kennel, and leaving my dogs alone all day makes me nervous. On the plus side, our trainer from down here just moved up there, so that’s a bonus. And come to think of it, she has a dog so might have recommendations for vets and kennel. Nice.

Actually writing down everything that makes me panicky somehow made me less panicky. Now if I could just get my start date set in stone, so I can start crossing things off the list.

Anyone out there ever gone the geobachelor/ette route? Have any helpful tips for the move?

Chiefs ≠ Sergeants

I like to read books about Navy SEALs. (I think I’ve mentioned my unhealthy obsession with Navy SEALs before.) For the most part, I overlook inaccuracies in the same way that I do when I watch Army Wives. These things are for entertainment and not meant to be documentaries. But when authors make little errors that are stupid things that could be easily checked, it annoys me.

Examples:

A Sergeant is the equivalent of a Chief.
No, a Sergeant is the equivalent of a Petty Officer Second Class.

A Senior Chief is the king of Chiefs.
Really? I bet a Master Chief would be surprised to hear that. And if you want to get really technical, there’s only one King of Chiefs and he is the MCPON.

We’ll determine who sleeps on the floor by rank and rating.
Ok, let’s try that. You’re a CDR, I’m a CTI, and he’s an IS. Who gets the floor? Chris says, ‘One of the enlisted people, duh.’ Yes, but which one? Rating is a job. Rate is the enlisted equivalent of rank; only officers have rank. The terms are not interchangeable.

Yes sir, Chief.
Uh, have you ever called a Chief sir? They *hate* that. I called a Chief sir once when I was at OCS [because I had no contacts and could only make out khaki... figured it was better to assume officer since it was at OCS] and was quickly reprimanded and told “I work for a living; don’t call me sir.” So noted.

Anyway, I will get off my soapbox now. These are just basic things that should be caught if you have a military advisor (which this particular author did). I get caught up in the book and then I run into one of those errors and it snaps me back into reality. Way to ruin the book.

This must be how Chris feels when he watches movies about the Navy and says, “That’s not really like that. That could never happen. That’s so not realistic.” I always shush him because he’s interrupting my movie, but I guess those things are interrupting the movie for him too.

So what about you? Do things like that ruin books/tv/movies for you or can you overlook them?