[disclaimer: these are all public U.S. Navy official photos]

Just like last deployment, on this deployment we have been waiting for what feels like forever for our mail to catch up with us.  The problem is, the mail hops around trying to catch up with us and it generally isn’t until we get to our deployment location for us to get mail regularly.  So all those packages that our friends and family sent before we went on deployment back at the beginning of December have been sitting around somewhere waiting to catch up with us.  That makes for one very, very big mail call.

Getting the mail is only one part of the larger evolution.  Our replenishments at sea are a huge production involving many, many hands.  It starts before dawn with the mustering of a 175-person working party on top of all the regular workers in the air, deck and supply departments, as well as the squadrons flying the helos. 

One ship comes alongside us and we move things both by lines passed between the ships as well as by helicopters that go constantly picking up from one ship and delivering it to the other.  The two great things we get from these replenishments is 1. mail, and 2. “fresh” (that’s sometimes questionable) fruits and vegetables. And of course there’s all the other things like parts and supplies, but who needs that?  We need mail.

This past replenishment, we an incredible amount of mail to deliver, much more than usual since we’re finally operating in one place for an extended period of time.  We ended up receiving somewhere in the ballpark of 150 pallets of mail.  If you would like to know how much 150 pallets of mail is, I’d say one room in my house would fit anywhere from 9-16 pallets of mail.  150 pallets is A LOT OF FREAKIN MAIL. They moved it all down from the flight deck to the hangar bays and then it was sort, sort, sort.  Sort, sort, sort.  Sort, sort, sort, sort, sort, sort, sort.

 The Chief’s Mess all pitched in to help because there was so much mail.  We had a very efficient system set up; boxes would be opened, then bags would be opened, then secondary bags would be opened, then it would be dumped, it would be scanned twice, then written on, then passed down through about 10 people to the sorting location where it was given to the right department’s pile.  There were probably about 150 people involved, what with there being about 40 departmental piles and 2 lines of people moving mail. 

We had a lot of fun. 

I got all the big, bulky, heavy packages.

Our fearless leader, the Command Master Chief of the ship, she got all the little packages.

Oh wait. 

Really, there were so many packages of every shape, size, and SMELL.  There were ones losing rice, powdered koolaid, shampoo, mold, wet, rattling with broken packaging, busting at the seams, wrapped in Christmas paper, with stickers and love notes written on the outside, battered and bruised but they all made to their very appreciative Sailors.  It was nice walking around the ship seeing all the Sailors with armsful of packages and huge smiles on their faces.

I am generally a pretty happy person (really!) but there is one thing that makes me exceedingly grumpy, and that is hot and humid weather. Particularly the type found at the equator.

For several weeks the temperature climbed and climbed and climbed until it was unbearably hot. And the humidity just made it that much worse. Everything was slimy and slippery, and I was SWEATY. I don’t do sweaty. My t-shirt would be sweaty, my butt would be sweaty, my feet would be sweaty-er. WIth all that sweat comes much grumpiness, much ugly, nasty grumpiness that I have a hard time dealing with. Not only my own grumpiness but the grumpiness of thousands of other hot and sweaty grumpy people.

And then we turned north. You might have seen us? We sailed right up through the Strait of Hormuz and all of a sudden the temperature dropped from grumpy-hot to a cool and refreshing 65°!

It’s amazing what a difference the temperature makes. Everyone seems so much less crappy now, or maybe that’s just my optimism returning. Or maybe the sweat just stopped dripping into my eyes.

We went to Thailand last week for a port call, our first of only a couple of this deployment. I am glad we got to go to Thailand since I had never been and it is a lot cheaper than the other ports we pull into.

One thing that we do in almost every port is community service (COMSERV) projects. Usually it’s very hard to get a spot for them because with as many people as we have - and as many good citizens as we have in the military - they usually fill up before you can even get through the line.

This time, however, there was a COMSERV for the Chief’s Mess. We usually don’t get one for just us but in this case, no one was signing up for one of them so we took it as a group. We went to the Camillian Social Center in Rayong for children and adults living with HIV/AIDS. Most of the children were born HIV positive, many of them abandoned there because the center is known for taking very good care of the children. It was a very nice facility, very open and clean, and the kids were obviously well taken care of and well mannered. Nice to us, nice to the adults that worked at the facility, and nice to each other.

We thought we were going there to play with the kids for the day but when we got there we were sat down to watch a 83-slide PowerPoint presentation (that is not an exaggeration!) about their mission there that took for-e–v—-e——r, and then they ushered us to an area where they gave us lunch. Before the presentation started though, they gave us a couple of minutes with the kids.

One thing that everyone who knows me well knows, I love glitter. Glitter = happiness. You can have glitter on a bad day and your bad day all of a sudden isn’t so bad anymore. And on a place like a ship which is very grey and, well, blah, I of course had to BMOG (bring my own glitter). Last deployment I had a box of about 15 different containers of glitter that I got from my mom for Christmas a couple of years ago. It came in handy a couple of times last time, and this time I knew I needed some more so the day before deployment, I went to the craft store and bought a big collection of glitter. I got probably 20 more containers, which brought it to 1 metric shit ton of glitter. Because you never really know when you’ll need a metric shit ton of glitter. Well, actually, I do know when. You need it when you’re going to be hanging out with sick kids in an orphanage.

So I showed up to the bus with a box of glitter, which of course with a group of Chiefs you know is going to mean endless teasing. But that’s OK, I’m secure in my glitterinity. Yeah, that just happened.

When we were walking back from the slideshow, I had my box with me and this little girl saw me and her eyes lit up. “Glitter?” she said in Thai. I nodded excitedly and led her over to the side where I pulled out a stack of paper and a bottle of Elmer’s glue. After that, kid after kid came up and wanted to play with the glitter. Unfortunately, with only 10 minutes, by the time the glitter was out it was time to start cleaning up and head to lunch.

Lunch was fantastic - the food in Thailand is amazingly good. We had rice with vegetables and some sort of hot wing, with cucumbers and two sauces, one sweet and one spicy.

When lunch was winding down and I was sitting talking to my friend, I felt a tiny hand whack me in the back. I turned around and there was this sweet little boy with his eyes hopeful, asking me without needing words if I would let him have some more glitter.

So I pulled out my paper and glue and opened up the box, and it was like a magnet - before I knew it there were 15 more kids, all patting me, wanting to play with it. It was absolutely delightful to watch them draw and sprinkle glitter on their glue. The kids loved writing “Love” in English and in Thai. The kids were so well behaved, the older ones helping the younger ones, they were all very quiet but very obviously happy.

One of the Chiefs on the trip pulled out a guitar and sang for the kids, giving a nice soundtrack to an already wonderful day. This was the best thing I’ve done in the time I’ve been on here; I only wish we would have had more time to interact with the children, as well as the adults that were there.

The glue started running out so I diverted a few kids with my iPad. I have an app called Soundrop, which is a really, really neat little app where a ball drops and you draw lines for it to bounce off; each line makes a different sound so you can make really neat music with it. The kids loved that almost as much as the glitter. There was gum and glitter and slimy little fingerprints all over it by the time they were done - it was so much fun.

It was hard to leave at the end of the visit, I really would have loved to stay and play with the kids and meet some of the adults that were there.

I usually don’t solicit for anything on here, but if you are looking to make a charitable donation to a worthwhile foundation, please consider helping out the Camillian Social Center. There is such a high rate of HIV/AIDS in Thailand and these little ones are born with it and then abandoned by their families to be cared for by the kindness of this foundation. They have a hard time with non-monetary donations because the government intercepts those packages and by the time they make it to the kids, most everything worthwhile is already taken out of it at the hands of customs. It’s really frustrating for them there and they ask that if donations are sent that it’s in a non-descript package. I’m planning on sending some more craft supplies when I get home that ship flat and can look like documents being mailed.

I know I’ve already said it, but I can’t say it enough - that place is doing a really great job providing a safe, healthy, loving environment to those kids and I really hope to be able to help them again someday.

I was going to write a post about our port call in Thailand today but a big event just eclipsed that.

I got orders! We are going to Newport, Rhode Island for 3 years of instructor duty!

This is very exciting for me. Ever since I went to school there in 2002, I have wanted to go back as an instructor someday. And that someday is actually happening now.

And of course, besides the excitement of just getting the orders I wanted, this also means the countdown has begun for me to leave the ship. There are a lot of contradictory feelings involved in this - far too much to get into here, but suffice it to say, I’m ready to move on to my next assignment. With my family in tow.

Don’t worry, I’ll get around to talking about Thailand shortly!

I know it’s been a while.  Please forgive me.

Since the last time I posted, I have been gone for 42% of the days that have elapsed.  139 days since 7 February - and counting.  We’re once again on deployment, we had less than 9 months in between deployments.  With 3 underway periods in between. 

The good news is that the end is in sight - I’m leaving in a few months to transfer to our next duty station which is very exciting - shore duty here I come!

I’ve had a lot of things on my mind to blog about lately, as it gets closer to me leaving I feel like I’m regaining a sense of self that I’ve lost being here.  I am smart enough at this point not to make any promises of more posting but I will say that I am hoping that I’ll have a few more posts before I leave the ship, and I definitely plan on posting more when I’m gone from here.  In the meantime, here’s a picture of one thing that I absolutely love of being on the ship…the beautiful, vast, powerful oceans that we glide across on our way to do “the nation’s business”:

My ipod is set to go off every morning at 5:55am; it’s hooked up to my fancy headphones that I have hanging from a cord that comes out of the light that is mounted about 24” from my face when I sleep.  The headphones work kind of like speakers – you make do with what you have (or don’t have) on a ship.

Whatever playlist I had on the other day, there was a song on there that sounded like there were birds chirping in the background.  I realized then how much I miss that sound.  I am looking forward to birds chirping and otherwise silence that we get in our house up on the hill, instead of banging, painfully loud shrieking arresting gears, metal chains being dragged along non-skid, planes all but crash-landing over my head, shrill whistles preceding announcements over the PA system, jet engines roaring during test.

I also look forward to carpeting.

In (much) more positive news, we are finally on our way home - albeit very slowly.  We crossed through our first of many time zones yesterday.  Three cheers for going home!

Ever since my nephew peed in my foam Cheesehead way back in ‘97, I haven’t had the opportunity to go out and buy another one.  Generally, foam cheeseheads take up more space than I’m willing to allot in my luggage when I travel home.  But I couldn’t see my Packers go to the Superbowl and not show my loyalty to my home state, so I made one instead…jazz hands!

The game started at 3am (kickoff at 3:30am) so I woke up at 2:45am to watch.  That, my friends, is dedication.  If they hadn’t made it to the Superbowl, the Packers had planned to come out to the Lincoln to watch it with us - how cool would THAT have been?  Awesomely wicked badass cool, but not as awesomely wicked badass cool as them WINNING THE SUPERBOWL.

But Aaron Rodgers et al., you’re still welcome to come out and visit…and sign my paper Cheesehead!