Getting Excited!

Going home is so close now I can almost taste it... but that may be because Martin and I have daily conversations about what we are going to eat when we get there, lol. ;-)  I may not have mentioned this before, but even though Martin's deployment runs through late summer, he gets to come home for two weeks as a sort of "mid-tour" break, and it is scheduled for the two weeks right after I get home!  We are so excited and thankful it could work out that way, and it makes it way more fun to count down together than by myself.

So what am I looking forward to at home (other than Martin, of course)?  Here's a list of just a few, in no particular order:

1. Papa John's pizza.  This will happen immediately upon checking into my hotel at my first stop in the US.  (That's my favorite Buffalo Chicken Pizza, in case you were wondering!)

2. My pool and favorite lounge chair.  This also includes enjoying the warm AZ sun without the deployed dress code of T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers.

3. My washer and dryer.  I won't bore you with a picture of this, but I think I have hated sharing a laundry room here even more than I have hated sharing a bathroom.  I plan to hug my washer and dryer and never take them for granted again. :-)

4. My Mini!  I occasionally drive an SUV or pickup truck here, but I absolutely cannot wait to get in my baby car and put the top down, turn up the radio, and fly down the highway without a really annoying beeping sound anytime I go over the military's speed limit (um, not that I ever speed... okay, maybe just a little...) ;-)

5. Grocery stores.  This includes the ability to choose what I am going to eat every day and cook it how I like it in my own kitchen.  My first trip to a grocery store will probably resemble a kid's first trip to FAO Schwartz.

6. Oreo!  My little furball has probably barely noticed I'm gone since my friend Kat has taken such good care of her, but I can't wait to bury my face in her soft warm fur and listen to her little purr.

7. Steak.  Every Friday is steak night here, but the steaks are so thinly cut and overcooked that sometimes it just makes me sad to eat them and think about how much better Martin grills steaks at home.  I am so excited for the first time I can open the windows in our kitchen and smell that amazing scent wafting in from the patio, and then cutting into a beautiful, thick, juicy steak!

8. Baking.  Thanks to people like my college roommate Carrie, I have enjoyed a few baked goods while I've been out here.  But, there is something about pulling fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies out of my own oven and eating one while it is still warm... CAN. NOT. WAIT!!!

9. Days off.  My work schedule is not bad, and I do have reduced hours on weekends, but the fact remains I have put on a uniform and gone to work every single day since I arrived in Kuwait.  (Even on my trip to Qatar, I was in uniform every day for official duties.)  I'm proud to wear the uniform and do what I do, but I will also really enjoy the first day I get to completely relax, not do work, and just be Heidi for an entire day. :-)

10. Running with music and scenery.  One of many reasons I'm happy I got into Crossfit here is that the no-headphones rule and lack of anything to look at really took all the joy out of running for me.  I still did it, of course, but I never looked forward to it like I look forward to running in the shadows of beautiful mountains and cacti with my favorite playlists running through my head.

 

Spring has Sprung

Oops, has it really been a month?  Well, it has been a busy one and I have some fun pictures to share, so hopefully that will make up for my lack of posting...

Spring is officially still 5 days away, and you may wonder if spring is even really a season in Kuwait (I won't get too technical on that argument), but there are plenty of signs that winter is on its way out.  First of all, it's warmer!  We are back into the upper 70s to low 80s on most days, and the sun is rising a lot earlier and setting a lot later.  I don't have to wear sweats to walk to the gym in the mornings, and I'm starting to get the sunglasses/Tshirt/shorts/sock tan back that I had in the fall.  (I'll have to even that out when I'm back in AZ.)

Secondly, we are seeing less fog (a mostly winter occurrence here) and more blowing dust (more common in summer).  In fact, we had our first "haboob" dust storm this week since I have been here!  It was pretty crazy... a big thunderstorm collapsed near the northern border with Iraq, and sent a huge wall of dust flying south through Kuwait.  Lucky for me, the weather guys at a base to our north called to give me a heads-up so I had time to get the warning out to my base.  I was at work without a camera when it hit here, but here is a picture from the base to the north:

When I peeked out the door at work, ours looked even thicker than the picture... I couldn't see the building right next to mine, it was all just brown.  It smelled funny too, can't really think of how to describe it, but I realized pretty quickly that if I was smelling it, I was probably breathing it in, so I decided to shut the door. :-)  I'm pretty excited that I got the chance to experience one of these storms while I was out here.

Another reason it's feeling more like spring is that I'm getting pretty darn close to going home!  I can't say exactly how close, but it's close enough that I am allowing myself to get excited and think of all the wonderful things I will be able to do again in just a short amount of time.  Maybe I'll make a list in my next post, some of them are kind of random and funny (like I plan on hugging my washer and dryer). 

The time has also seemed to speed up because my two closest friends here have left in the last two weeks, which makes me feel like my time is coming.  The first to leave was Doug, the other half of the "weather duo" for my whole time here.  Doug was an amazing co-worker and became a very good friend, someone who made my first deployment a great experience no matter what issues we faced.  It was sad to say goodbye, but of course I was thrilled for him to get home to his family, just in time to see his son play in a college baseball tournament.  Here's a picture (taken last fall) of Doug and me by the HQ building on base:

Then last weekend, another good friend (I'll call her Jenn to avoid using last names, even though she outranks me, haha) headed home at the end of her tour.  She worked in the same building I did, and we bonded over Crossfit classes and Season 3 of Game of Thrones.  What impressed me the most about her was that despite her rank and amazing career, she always acted like a normal person... something that unfortunately you don't find too often in senior officers (especially females).  I'm really happy I got to know her and hope we run into each other again.  Here's a picture of our Crossfit class taken after Jenn's last workout with us:

The day before Jenn left, a bunch of us went out into the city for some shopping and a farewell lunch.  We went to the marina/beach to take some pretty pictures:

Ate some amazing Indian food (best chicken tikka masala I've had since England!):

And stopped at the Nestle Toll House Café for dessert, where I picked up these amazing little creations:

Sorry if the food pictures are boring for most of you, but when all you eat on a daily basis is DFAC food, a small deviation like this is pretty darn exciting. :-)

I've been invited to go into the city again tomorrow, and I'm leaning towards going even though I should be doing homework (which clearly I am avoiding right now by writing this post, haha).  But with such a short time left here, I hate to pass up the opportunity to see and do more in a city I may never see again.  I guess maybe I should get around to that homework tonight, since I'll probably end up being "bad" tomorrow and going on the trip... ;-)

Glass Half Full

Well, I could blame my long pause in blogging on schoolwork (which would not be completely false), but the truth is... I've been in a pretty bad mood for most of the last 3 weeks, and it was hard to think of something fun and happy to write.  But I think I'm slowly gaining perspective and realizing there really is still a lot of good to think/write about, and it definitely helped to get some very good news yesterday (which I'll get to in a minute)!

So why was I in a bad mood?  I can't tell the whole story, because you never know who reads things on the internet, but it had to do with a situation at my squadron in AZ.  Let's just say there were a lot of changes made without my knowing, my people got the bad end of the deal, and I realized maybe I can't trust someone I thought I could. 

I can't remember the last time I've been so angry about something, and I realized that I'm not very good at being angry, haha.  Maybe because it doesn't happen very often, I don't really know how to handle that emotion?  I don't know, but it definitely cast a shadow over everything, and I struggled to be my usual positive self.  But with time and a few reminders of the "big picture", I'm coming back. :-)

Here's one thing that constantly reminds me I have a lot to be happy about:

That's my desk (obviously, I guess, haha)... with all of the cards and pictures sent by my awesome friends and family!  If this was Facebook, it would be fun to tag everyone, but I will just say thanks to all of you who have sent me cards, pictures, packages, etc.  They are definitely appreciated!  I really enjoy the random moments when a certain card or picture catches my eye and makes me smile about what was written or the person who sent it.

There was one very funny moment last weekend, as Doug and I drove up to another base to say farewell to a couple of our weather friends who were heading home.  Here's how the conversation went:

Doug (driving): "Is that a camel?"
Me (in the passenger seat): "What? Where?" (scanning the desert to our right)
Doug: "No, in the truck."
Me (confused): "A truck?  What truck?" (starting to look for trucks off to the side of the road)
Doug: "No, right there!" (pointing in front of us)
Me: "Holy cow!"

Yes, sure enough, that is a camel in a pickup truck!  After my initial shock, I grabbed the camera and starting snapping pics, and got a few with him looking at me. :-)  This totally cracked me up... how many places in the world can you have an Audi R8 fly by you on the left (or right, Kuwaitis don't really follow traffic rules), and in the same minute see a camel riding in a pickup truck?!?

So now for my really good news... I mentioned in an earlier post that I was waiting to register for my grad school summer field course.  Instead of writing a thesis, I will spend 10 days in a field location working on research with a professor from the university.  There were a number of exciting projects to apply for, but my heart was set on the caves and fossilized reefs on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. 

A friend who completed the same grad program a couple years ago had gone on this project and had an amazing time, so I have wanted to do it myself ever since.  Also, though I'm trying to become a better "tourist" in the US, there's a thrill of traveling outside the continental 48 and seeing new places/things that just does something to my heart I can't explain.  So needless to say, with this being the only "off-continent" trip, I wanted it REALLY badly.

Registration opened at 5pm Central time last Monday, Feb 3rd, and the professor coordinating the projects stressed that it was "first come, first serve" unless there were extenuating circumstances.  5pm CT is 2am Kuwait time, so I set 3 alarms for 1:00, 1:05, and 1:10am.  This allowed enough time to make sure the internet was working and to run next door to work if it was not.  She had told us what questions would be asked in the form, so I typed up all my responses and comments ahead of time, ready to copy and paste.  We were allowed to open the form early, so I went to the page and transferred all my info.  I opened the US Naval Observatory Master Clock at 1:50am, and stared at it for 10 minutes, watching as it clicked agonizingly towards 5pm CT.  When the numbers finally showed 17:00:00, I waited 10 seconds to allow for her clock possibly being different, then hit submit.

And then 10 days of torturous waiting began!  We were told we would get our assignments the week of the 10th, but an ice storm closed the university for 2 days, extending the waiting period.  On Friday morning, I went to my Crossfit class and got back to my room around 10am.  I logged into my computer for my usual email checking and Facebooking during breakfast.  When I opened Gmail, the first message was from my professor, with the subject line "Field Course Selection - Bahamas".  I screamed at my computer and almost simultaneously started crying happy tears.  Good thing no one on my hallway came to investigate the scream, because they probably would have thought I was crazy, lol.

So I'm going to San Salvador Island at the end of June!!!  I'm SO excited to explore and "get my hands dirty" doing real field work.  And because it would be a crime to not post a picture, here is one I found on the internet. ;-)  Can't wait to take my own!

 

Back to School

As you could guess by the title, my spring semester of online grad school classes has started.  We'll see how this affects my blogging, but I'm already almost done with this week's assignment, so I decided I deserve a break.  Every semester, I have these great plans of doing all my assignments way ahead of time... and like a New Year's resolution, this usually lasts about a week or two. ;-)  Those of you who know me well are familiar with my procrastination habits, and I assure you I haven't changed in that respect, haha!  However, since I've managed to keep my grades up, I'm going to say it works for me. :-)

This is my 5th semester of the Masters in Geosciences program through Mississippi State, and I've really enjoyed it so far.  After this spring semester, I'll complete my summer field project and then graduate!  The location options for the summer project are supposed to be released this month, so I am anxiously waiting to see what is available.  They have had some really cool projects in the past, so I hope we have the same variety to choose from!

Let's see, what have I been up to lately that is worth writing about?  We sort of have a 3-day weekend for MLK day, which for me means I still work every day, but only go in for a few hours to put together and send out my weather forecasts instead of sitting there all day doing various briefings.  I didn't really do anything exciting this weekend though (started my classes and homework, worked out), maybe because last weekend was so busy.

On Saturday the 11th, I participated in my first Crossfit event.  It was sort of a competition, but I hesitate to call it that because the main purpose was to set goals for yourself for the next year.  Every January, gyms around the world host the event called "Resolutions WOD (Workout Of the Day)", and it is the same workout every year so you can track your progression.  I have only been doing Crossfit for 3-ish months, so I thought it was worth doing to see how much I can improve in the next year.  I'll have to write a blog sometime about starting Crossfit here, but I'll save it for later.

The event was 3 workouts in a row, and each one had a time limit.  Your score was based on how fast you completed the workouts (with a judge watching to ensure you did all the moves correctly).  If you're familiar with Crossfit, you can see the details of the workouts here (http://www.thegaragegames.com/events/world-wide-wod-gym-resolution-2014/), but I won't bore the rest of you. :-)  I finished 4th out of 6 girls in my division, which actually made me pretty happy - I just didn't want to be last!  Here's a picture of me doing jumping pull-ups:

That Saturday night, I started watching Game of Thrones Season 3 with a small group of people.  We decided to watch two episodes every Saturday night, so we can finish before one person in the group leaves in late February.  We watched in the dayroom of one of their buildings (my building doesn't have one), and it was really nice to actually sit on a couch and watch TV with friends like a normal person.  We're through Episode 4 after this weekend, and man this season is crazy!  I told Martin to start catching up so we could talk about it again, but he's pretty busy these days (working on his PhD, what kind of excuse is that?).  ;-)

On Sunday the 12th, Doug and I went into the city to meet some other weather people for dinner.  They chose a restaurant right next to the Kuwaiti Towers, so we got to snap a few pics of those:

Sadly, the observation decks you can see on the right tower are closed for renovation, so we didn't get to go up there, but it was cool to see the towers up close.  The food at the restaurant (a sushi and hibachi buffet) was amazing, but I was most amused by one of the desserts, which looked like a tiny Krispy Kreme donut.  You can kind of tell how small it is compared to other things on my plate (or the knife), but it was so funny to see in real life.  (In case you were wondering, it didn't taste like a Krispy Kreme, but was worth a try!)

That's it for now, I hope everyone is having a great MLK weekend!


 

2013 In Review

So, 2013... where did it go?  Looking over pictures to put in this blog, it seems like all this stuff happened in a much shorter time than a year.  It probably has to do with being in transition for so much of it... I lived in our house for less than half the year!  My plan was to find one picture from each month, and I was successful except for one month (so I cheated and put two in another month, haha).  Ready?  Here we go!

January:

Martin and I began the year with a furry addition to the family!  My cat Oreo, who I adopted as a kitten in Louisiana in 2008, had been living with my parents in Virginia while I was in England.  They drove across the country to visit for Christmas, and brought Oreo to live with us in Tucson.  She has been a lot of fun to have around the house, and has bonded with Martin to the point that she even comes when he calls or whistles!

February:

 

 

A few exciting things happened in February (so picking one picture was hard), but this is me (and an instructor) hang gliding in Phoenix!  Martin gave me the hang gliding trip as a Christmas present, and we scheduled it on President's Day weekend.  After hang gliding, we continued north to Flagstaff, where we learned to snowboard at the Arizona Snowbowl.  Martin caught on much more quickly than I did (he skateboarded as a kid), but by the end of the day we both could make it down the hill in at least a somewhat legitimate fashion. :-)

 

March:

 

 

With both of us leaving for deployments later in the year, Martin and I took a 10-day vacation to Maui for some fun and quality time together.  March is a great time to visit Maui, because humpback whales breed and give birth in the warm waters during that time frame.  We saw tons of whales, some of them very close to our boat.  I took a surfing lesson, and Martin (who must have a hidden talent for photography) caught my most successful moment on camera!  Now I'm going to cheat and post a second March photo (because I don't have one for May...).

 

 

Another one of the many, many awesome things we did in Maui was drive a 4-wheeler up into the mountains to a beautiful lake with "homemade" waterslides.  The water was cold, but the experience was totally worth it!

 

April:

 

 

Before Martin left on his deployment, we took a short trip to visit his parents and sister in Las Vegas.  We had a great time hanging out with them and playing with our 3-year-old nephew, Jason.  Vegas has special significance to us not only because it is Martin's home city, but because he and I first became friends on a TDY there in January of 2010!

 

May:

 

Apparently May was too busy for pictures, but that is understandable as Martin left on his deployment and I left for a 2-month TDY in Alabama.  If you are wondering about what happened to Oreo, I met a really awesome new girl in my squadron who agreed to house-sit for us while we were both TDY/deployed, so Oreo is not alone!  We are so thankful to have Kat living in the house so we don't have to worry about it (or Oreo) while we are gone.

 

June:

 

 

So maybe a 2-month TDY in Montgomery, Alabama, in the summer doesn't sound like too much fun, and there were parts of it that were not.  But, the awesome part is that one of my best friends from England was in my class!  I was so excited to hang out with Alex again (she moved to Boston a couple years ago) and spend time catching up.  We found a lot of cool things to do on the weekends, like go kayaking down a river, check out fun restaurants, see movies, and go to Destin, FL (Crab Island pictured above).

 

July:

 



 

While in Alabama, we had a 4-day weekend for the 4th of July holiday.  My parents had already planned to spend the weekend camping at Lake Junaluska in NC, a retreat center where I spent many summers with my youth group in middle and high school.  Since I was only 5 hours away from the lake, it worked out perfectly for me to drive up and meet them there!  Even though it poured rain for most of the weekend (note the clouds in the picture), we still had a lot of fun together and found some breaks in the rain to walk around the lake, go kayaking, and visit the beautiful Biltmore Estate in nearby Asheville.

 

August:

 

 

At the end of July, I traveled back from Alabama and did a quick-turn for another TDY in August, this one at Fort Huachuca (in Sierra Vista, AZ, just south of Tucson near the AZ/Mexico border).  I spent 3 weeks there and absolutely loved it.  Sierra Vista is about 2000 feet higher in elevation than Tucson, and running along the ridgelines at sunrise was breathtaking.  I also had the great surprise of having another overseas friend in my class, this time a girl named Lauren from Aviano Air Base in Italy, who I had hung out with at my last European Weather Conference in Germany in 2012.  Lauren is an even more accomplished traveler than I am, so naturally we decided to go on an adventure to the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley, in northern AZ and southern UT.  The long drive was totally worth it, as it was hard to pick just one picture from all the beautiful places we saw!  The shot above is me on the Bright Angel Trail, heading down into the Grand Canyon from the South Rim.

 

September:

 

 

As you can guess from the picture, September is when I arrived in Kuwait and had my first couple off-base trips.  I was pretty surprised at the number of American companies and restaurants that are well-established in the malls here.  There is a Cheesecake Factory, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Texas Roadhouse, Victoria's Secret, and yes, of course Starbucks.  I have not eaten at any of the American restaurants because we try to take advantage of the opportunity to try things we don't have at home, but I hear they are not bad.

 

October:

 

 

This picture is from the boardwalk near the beach where Doug and I went to see the sunset before dinner one weekend.  I don't know what the lit-up tower is, but I thought it was pretty with the city skyline at sunset.

 

November:

 

 

 

Some of you probably saw this one on Facebook already, but I'm limited in photo ops out here, so give me a break, haha.  The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Doug and I drove to another base in Kuwait to visit our "parent" unit and learn about what they do at their base.  A lot of the drive was empty desert, but then we found a pack of camels right by the road!  We were very excited and of course jumped out to take pictures.  We must have been exciting for the camels as well, because they were very curious and came over to check us out... so we had to jump back in the car really quick!  They eventually got bored and wandered off the other side of the road, but we got a lot of great pictures first.  I think camels are one of my new favorite animals. :-)

 

December:

 

I already wrote about the best thing that happened in December (visiting Martin!) and posted my best pictures from that trip, but here is one I didn't post: a C-17 landing at sunset, just before we took off to fly back to Kuwait.  Working with the Army is fun and interesting, but spending time at an air base reminded me just how much I love being around airplanes and working with air operations... guess I joined the right service! :-)

 

2013 was a busy year, and as always, I am thankful for the people I shared it with and the experiences I had.  I am looking forward to what will come in 2014... Martin and I will both return home to the US, I will finish my masters degree, we are going to Ireland to see Penn State's season opening football game in August, and hopefully much much more to be planned! :-)  Maybe 2014 will be a more consistent year for blogging too...







Heroes

I had good intentions of writing a New Year's post this weekend, but there is something else I need to write about first.  Just before the New Year, I saw posts on Facebook about the death of Air Force Capt David Lyon, killed by an IED in Afghanistan.  I didn't know him, but Facebook has a way of showing you connections you never knew existed.  One of my friends who is in Afghanistan had seen David's group just hours before the IED hit the vehicle.  Another friend from SOS (AF Capt training class) this past summer mentioned that David's wife Dana, also an AF Capt, had been in our SOS class.  Another friend had known both David and Dana at the Air Force Academy.

Here are a couple stories about David and Dana:
http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/467849/af-officer-former-academy-athlete-killed-in-afghanistan.aspx
http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20140102/NEWS/301020033/Fallen-captain-remembered-protector-athlete-loving-husband

The saddest part is, there are too many other stories like this.  When I started going to Crossfit classes here back in September, I spent some time on the official Crossfit website reading about the program.  I already knew that some workouts were named after military personnel who had been killed in combat, but when I got to the page listing these "Hero WODs", I had no idea there were going to be so many.  As I scrolled down the page of pictures, and kept scrolling, and kept scrolling, tears started flowing as I realized just how angry it made me that I was still scrolling.  Too many husbands, wives, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, friends who were no longer with those who loved them.

Here is the list of Hero WODs:
http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/faq.html#WOD1

Yesterday morning, our "parent" unit at another Kuwait base did one of these Hero WODs, in memory of a JTAC named Bradley Smith who was killed in 2010.  Only a couple people from the unit had actually known Bradley, but the fact that he was "one of them" is a fact that hit home for everyone.  I wish I had been there to do the workout with them, but his story impacted me all the same.  Here is the Bradley Smith Hero WOD: http://crossfitdrippingsprings.com/may-18-hero-wod-bradley/

Also, just a few days ago, Crossfit HQ posted a video on Youtube with the "Best Crossfit Moments of 2013".  Most of the video is fun or silly, but the middle part caught me off guard, as it was a tribute to military Crossfitters who were lost in 2013.  Some were pictures in combat gear, while some were smiling in pictures with kids or wives or friends... people who would have never guessed they'd be looking at their loved one in a remembrance video instead of making holiday memories.  I read an article a few days ago that mentioned both David and Dana Lyon were Crossfitters, so David will probably be memorialized in next year's video.

So why am I writing about all this sad stuff?  For me, I think it has been a reminder of how ungrateful I can be for the people and things I have in my life.  While I was sitting in a sports bar with my husband last weekend, Dana Lyon was sitting next to her husband's casket, escorting it home.  While I was laughing on a plane with my group of JTACs, I never thought about how Bradley Smith could have been one of them.  Yes, I'm deployed, but I'm so far removed from the real fight going on, it's easy to forget that we are still losing people, and we're going to continue to lose people as long as we are in this fight.

I'm not a political person, and I knew what I signed up for when I joined the military, but times like this, I just have to hate the reality of what we do and the consequences that come with it.  But at the same time, I believe in our country and what it stands for, and I believe we have to fight for it... just like David Lyon, Bradley Smith, and everyone on that list of Hero WODs believed.

I thank God for all the people I have in my life, and I know I need to work harder to show them how grateful I am.  I don't believe in living life in fear of losing someone, so that you don't enjoy the present for fear of the future.  1 John 4:18 says "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."  The only perfect love is God's love for us, and the love we show others as a result.  So my goal this year?  Think about showing that love in everything I do, so I don't have to fear what may come.

I hope that heroes like the people I mentioned are never forgotten, as well as what they stood for.  Sometimes I worry about where this country is going, but I have to remember that the real war has already been won, about 2000 years ago.  I pray that the families who have lost loved ones are blessed this year with the love of God, family, and friends... and that I can love others like I have been loved.