Ahoy all ye landlubbers!  As every black-blooded pirate-wannabe knows, Friday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  To celebrate, a friend of ours threw a Pirate-slash-Let’s-Celebrate-Oktoberfest-While-We’re-At-It party and invited us to dress in either pirate attire or German digs.  Despite my German heritage, I needed to release me inner pirate.  Besides, lederhosen never seemed too comfortable.

What does a pirate do to relax?

They go on ARRR and ARRR!

We’ve been in possession of 5 cars in 3 weeks’ time.

Car #1: First, we had our trusty 1999 Ford Windstar. We bought the van when we lived in Iceland, when Isak was only 7 months old. We drove it all around Iceland, we drove it from Seattle to Milwaukee…we had great memories with that van.

Then, 3 days after I got off the USS Abraham Lincoln, we were sitting at a red light by Boeing when we got rear ended by a Toyota Tercel. And that little Tercel hit us so hard that it TOTALED our minivan. Now think about a minivan vs. a Tercel. Our van was a whole heck of a lot bigger. The back end was smashed in, and the right rear quarterpanel got smushed up so far that it pushed up the back door AND the front passenger side door. Here’s the only good picture I could get of the damage to our car (I didn’t have my camera with us at the time of the accident, which was probably good since everything flew around in the car, including B’s hat which flew from the front passenger seat all the way back to the trunk from the impact, and our quarters that went from the ashtray to the second row of seats.)

Car #2: So…the day we got in the accident, we were on our way to drive, for the first time, the Corvette I won playing Bingo on the ship. Lucky me, yes, but I never got to drive it because we were tied up with the accident and they ended up having to move it without us. So I never got to drive it. And we sold it shortly after the accident, so now it’s gone altogether. But! I did get to get pictures of it Nevermind that they spelled my name completely wrong, or that I only got pictures of it in my uniform (PR stuff for Chevrolet)…

And this one is me with the XO of the ship and the Corvette guy:

Car #3: Well, once the van got smashed, we had a Volvo station wagon rental car for a couple of weeks while we waited for the check for the car from the insurance. That was a cool car, but ridiculously expensive ($34K for a STATION WAGON??). It had all sorts of nifty features that we had fun with…but no thanks. I don’t like wagons, and I’m certainly not going to pay that much for one! We didn’t get a picture of that one, but that’s OK because it was ugly.

Car #4: So then we had to buy our own car. While dropping I off for school back when I was still on leave, I saw a cute little car on my way home and when we were online shopping for cars, it came back to me: a Scion xA. We looked at the website and the price was right, we liked the reviews, and it seemed to fit us. Small, definitely, but we don’t need as much room as we used to when we had strollers and big carseats and all that stuff. So we went to the dealership, test drove it and loved it, and bought it. Unfortunately, we needed to get it immediately and so we didn’t have time to wait for the stuff to be installed in it (stereo system, Scotchguard, HUBCAPS, lol, looked funny driving around a brand-spanking new car with no hubcaps). And that brings us to…

Car #5: We had to return the car a few days after buying it to get it all finished up, so they gave us a rental car - a Toyota Matrix. It was pretty nice! We had actually looked at that since it was a little bigger, but it was quite a bit more and the gas mileage wasn’t as good - with gas pushing $2.50 a gallon in places, we can’t afford another guzzler.

We finally got to pick up our finished car, and now we have it home and it’s a great little car. We love the color; it’s very roomy inside despite its small size; it gets 38/32 MPG and only costs $20 to fill up; and the dealership erroneously installed the upgraded stereo system so we got a free 6-CD changer! Yippee.

What more appropriate thing to do on Christmas than…visit a gigantic Buddha?

LOL

We pulled into Hong Kong just before Christmas and left the day after. I went out with some of my friends from work and from another department.

The buildings were decorated with gigantic, extravagant light displays. One of my favorites was a car flying over a bridge, but I don’t have that one here (better to let you imagine it, anyway). This was taken from the ferry that took us from our ship that was anchored a mile off land:

The rest of the night was spent wandering the streets - we took mass transit, ran into beggars on every corner as well as a giant anime figure (it wouldn’t be Asia without anime, now would it?):

The next morning, we set out early for some Christmas-day sightseeing to the giant buddha at the Po Lin monastery. The monastery itself was jaw-dropping beautiful, but it was requested not to take any pictures in the monastary so I didn’t. However, I took lots of pictures at the Tian Tan buddha statue.

Me, in front of the enormous hill of steps - I had horrible calf cramps the next day!

The statue is surrounded by Bodhisatvas offering gifts to the Buddha:

All around was beautiful scenery:

And finally, on our way back through the grounds, we stopped for a traditional dinner (delicious!! I even ate mushrooms and they were gooood!) Just before we got to the eating area, my friend that I went with pointed out this beautiful wall that was in such a serene spot:

K

We stopped in Hawaii three times. The first time was for Thanksgiving. Rather than do something traditional for Thanksgiving (since I wasn’t with my family anyway), I opted to attend a luau. It was fun, but I’d have rather been with my family. I had a great time in Hawaii but I only got pictures at the luau - didn’t want to bring my camera along on events where alcohol was involved for the fear I would lose track of it. God forbid!

Anyway, on to the luau:

When we first got to the luau, we saw tables where people sold their wares, or just walked around entertaining:

There was much hula-ing done by the performers at the luau:

I particularly enjoyed the dancer who used fire in his performance - very exciting!

Beautiful Hawaiian sunset:

K

Thanks to my FREE WiFi, I just realized I can finally move my pictures from the ship onto my blog!

For those of you who didn’t/don’t know, I just returned from a depolyment with the USS Abraham Lincoln from October to March. I kept a chronicle of my adventures on the ship, but I was never able to include pictures because I couldn’t get them from my laptop to the internet (and no, I couldn’t burn them to a CD and put them on the internet that way; photo-sharing sites were banned on the ship.)

But now I can put up the pictures! Yes, I could’ve burned the pictures to a CD since I’ve been back and put them on the internet that way, but my computer’s CD drive has been wonky and my computer is running slower and slower lately (I wonder why…could it have something to do with all the pictures on the hard drive???) so I haven’t gotten around to it. Now I have, and here they are:

The ship: The USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CVN 72).
The date: 14 October 2004 - 4 March 2005
Navy’s first Surge Deployment
Among the first to respond to the Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami disaster.

Haze gray and underway…well, anchored, but still…

We’ll start with a sunset:

On the other side of the sky (the same sunset) was this huge cloud that looked just like a gigantic wave!

Our living space is extremely limited. I got a “coffin rack”, meaning the mattress lifted up and storage was beneath; I got a small locker as well (basically, I could fit my small laundry bag and some shoes and a hat in there):

One of the first things we did on the ship (besides pulling into a port; I will post those separately) was a “steel beach” picnic. This is where they clear off the flight deck and set up grills and have lots of stuff to do, like kites, a cigar pit, football games, a basketball court, soccer, inflatable pools, etc.

Our office had fun on Halloween and, with the permission of the Executive Officer, we had a “haunted p-way” (hallway) where we decorated, turned off the flourescents and turned on the red lights, had spooky music, candy that we bought on a port call in San Diego…it was a great time! This is a typical sized passageway on the ship, but atypical in that most p-ways are full of panels, knobs, etc., on the walls, most of which I knocked into at one time or other and probably resulted in one of many black bruises…

We also dressed up in costumes:

(this was mine):

We had game night in our office where we played “Battle of the Sexes” (the women won, of course):

Also in the office, we had a couple of very talented guitar players who would play during our occasional down-time:

The mess decks (cafeteria area) was a big social area in the evenings after chow hours and every week they had karaoke night, or you could “rent” one of many games and play at the tables:

The coolest part of being on the ship was watching flight ops (operations) on the flight deck. It’s incredible to watch these jets launch, going from 0-180 in 3 seconds, and then get hooked on a relatively thin wire rope. The people who work on the flight deck work often under the intense, hot sun, in the cold, blistering wind, in the pouring rain, in the high humidity, during the day, and at night, all to safely launch these jets.

At the end of the cruise, there was a “tiger cruise” where we could sponsor civilian friends and family. During the tiger cruise, there was an airshow:

We celebrated New Year’s in the hangar bay, which was quite a disappointment but at least I had friends that I made on the ship to enjoy the occasion with.

Stay tuned for port pictures!

K

I’m home, and it’s all pretty much summed up by this one little picture that ran in the Everett Herald yesterday:

Photo © Julie Busch

Back in America!!!

We’re finally here! We moored in San Diego this morning, and right now they’re mustering all the new dads. I’m crying already and I’m not even leaving yet. I’m so excited that we’re almost back to Everett.

Today I am volunteering at the USO at the airport to greet Tigers for the Tiger Cruise, and then tonight we set sail for Everett! Hooray!!!

K