WE PASSED!!!!!!!! Thank you, God. I'm not sure it has entirely hit me yet. I'm writing this in my office on Friday afternoon. After sending my people home early on this gorgeous weather day, I'm just hanging out before OCF tonight at Mildenhall. We got the results of the inspection last night, and the official outbrief to the Wing Commander was this morning. So throughout the afternoon, I have had various levels of leadership wandering into our office grinning from ear to ear and congratulating us, but I'm still kind of in a daze. I'm not sure I'll believe it until I have time to relax this weekend and realize I don't have a dark cloud over my head anymore, that I don't have to constantly stress and worry about work.
Martin left yesterday for a month-long TDY, so my plans for the weekend include sleep, chick flicks, and more sleep. Yay! I should probably also get a run in, since my half marathon training has been up and down so far. I'm really excited to start the spring-summer travel season, because I already have so much planned! Looking forward to these trips has been one thing getting me through the last couple months.
The weekend after St Patrick's Day (18-20 March), I am headed to Dublin with a group of friends. I'm interested to see how differently the day is celebrated in Ireland, and I have heard it is beautiful there. We won't be close enough to the Blarney Stone, so I'll have to plan another trip there to kiss it! The next weekend... Martin's TDY is in Spain, a short train ride from Madrid, so we are going to meet in Madrid for the weekend! I scored a pretty awesome deal on a fancy hotel in the middle of the city, so it should be a great experience with hopefully warm weather. Then the first weekend in April (Martin comes home 31 March), we are running the Prague Half Marathon! We are taking leave the following Monday to give us an extra day for sightseeing after the race on Saturday. The second weekend in April is a 3-day thanks to a Family Day for school Spring Break, so we are tentatively (as in tickets have not been bought yet) heading to Sintra, Portugal. Never heard of it? Type it into Google and hit Images, you'll figure out pretty quickly what the draw is. :-)
Last but certainly not least on the "already-planned" list is a trip home to the good old U.S. of A. in May for Lisa's graduation from the University of Virginia. Still haven't bought those plane tickets (amazing how it will probably cost more than all of my European tickets combined), but I'm getting more confident that I won't be short notice deployed, so I'll probably get them in the next couple weeks. I'm also hoping for a reunion with college roommates Carrie and Jamie on that trip!
Let's see, what else is going on... I think I found a Master's degree program I am actually interested in, which is a pretty big deal I guess. It is from Penn State via their World Campus program, which is awesome because even if I deploy or move while I'm in the program it won't affect my progress. It is a Masters of Education in Earth Sciences, so the courses are mostly a variety of earth sciences with a few education courses and a capstone project. I've talked to two professors via email who lead the program, and I was really excited by their responses about how the program would work for me as a military member. The only hurdle now is financing, because there are a few different options for getting money from the AF, and I have to figure out what is the best combination of those... Penn State is not cheap! I have an appointment at the base education center on Monday to get some advice.
That's about it for now, except for the tragic news of the Lakenheath airmen shot in Germany. It's a very sad and scary thing for everyone on the base, so please pray for the families of the airmen and the Lakenheath community.
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