It's Showtime

Hello from the beginning of the two-week inspection we have been training all spring, summer, and fall for. It officially began on Thursday, resulting in a 15-hour day, and an extra training session today (Saturday). We will probably be called in on Sunday too, but don't know what time yet. As frustrating as things have already become, all I have to say is... TWO MORE WEEKS!!! Then we are DONE. So that's what I'm thinking about. :-)
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What have I been doing since I last wrote? Mostly work, but there have been a few fun exceptions. The first weekend in October, Martin and I went back to Nottingham to see one of our favorite bands, Mayday Parade. We drove up there on Saturday afternoon, walked around the city and had dinner before the show, which was awesome. I have a video from one song where the crowd starts jumping and lights start flashing and it looks like an earthquake hit the building... will have to figure out how to cut the video into a smaller file to upload!

We spent Sunday morning and afternoon shopping and exploring one of Nottingham's unique attractions... caves! There is a network of caves under the city that were used for tanning animal skins in medieval times, as well as bomb shelters in WWII. Guess what my favorite part of the tour was? We got to wear hard hats!!! :-D Here is a picture (I think I might have been a little more excited about the hats than Martin was):

The next week, I went out on a school night(!) to see Lifehouse, my favorite band ever, in London. I met my friend Megan at the show, and we had a great time. We were pretty close to the stage, and Megan got Jason Wade's guitar pick when he threw it into the crowd! Here is a picture of us posing with the pick while waiting at a Tube station after the show:

I am planning to create a Concerts photo album on Facebook and upload all of the pics from Mayday Parade and Lifehouse, plus the next show on my list... Goo Goo Dolls in Norwich on Nov 15th! So excited. :-) I will post that link when the album is ready.

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The fact that I cannot wait for the next two weeks to be over goes without saying, but even more so because of all of the exciting things planned in November. The first weekend in Nov is a trip I cannot talk about yet because it is a surprise for my travel buddy, but I can promise you it is going to be an awesome weekend and there will be lots of pictures. It's hard to keep the secret because I am so excited!

The second weekend in Nov is a 4-day thanks to Veteran's Day and a Lakenheath day off on Friday the 12th. Sooo... I am going to Tenerife, in the Canary Islands!!! If you are unfamiliar with Tenerife, here is a quote from Wikitravel: "Tenerife is probably one of the last European paradise isles. It offers lush forests, exotic fauna and flora, deserts, mountains, volcanos, incredibly beautiful coastlines and spectacular beaches." Sounds like the perfect place to unwind after months of stress, doesn't it? SO EXCITED!!!

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And last but not least, the second 4-day weekend in November, courtesy of Thanksgiving, will be spent in... Rome! I feel like I should be pinching myself, but if this is a dream, I'm not sure I want to wake up. It absolutely blows my mind sometimes to think how blessed I am to be living here and having all of these experiences. God is so good... because I have definitely not done anything in my life to deserve any of this. Grace is a beautiful thing.
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Good List:

1. Countdown... 13 days! (Til the final ENDEX, of course)

2. Taylor Swift Fridays. I have established a policy of always listening to Taylor Swift CDs in the car on Fridays, and even the first notes put me in a better mood despite the craziness.

3. Pumpkin carving. Martin and I will be carving jack-o-lanterns this afternoon, and I can't wait to light them up outside my house! (Will have to post a pic later)

4. Arbor Mist Strawberry White Zinfandel.

5. Glee. I am 100% addicted. Only the season finale left to watch from Season 1, then on to downloading/catching up with Season 2!

6. Two legal and working (for the most part) cars.

7. Plants vs Zombies. It is a computer game, and it is amazing... and completely addicting. O:-)

8. People who make me laugh when I am stressed.

9. Soup in a sourdough bread bowl. Panera gets credit for the original, but reproductions turn out pretty well!

10. Sweatpants and slippers when it is rainy and cold outside.

Refreshed

I guess it was fairly obvious I was not in the best mood while writing that last post, which I will attribute to being completely exhausted. I am much more positive today, due to an excellent and relaxing weekend as well as working swing shifts this week... yay sleeping in on weekdays! :-) Also, the Mini finally passed inspection and the Cabrio goes in to get fixed today, so it will then pass as well. I finally posted pictures of Lisa's visit to England here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=546920&id=701905001&l=707f0d4650 (What? They're only, um, a month and a half late...)

I also posted pictures from Labor Day weekend in Spain, so I have the appropriate illustrations for my recap of the trip! We flew out early Saturday morning from Stansted, and spent a good portion of the plane ride laughing over a Spanish phrase book I bought to learn some basics. (If you are ever in a situation where you need to say "I had an accident" or "Can I smell it?" in Spanish, give me a call!) Alicante is on the southeast coast of Spain, and as we flew down the eastern coastline, my nose became increasingly glued to the window. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous... mountain ranges running right along picture-perfect beaches. It sort of reminded me of California.

We landed in Alicante just before noon and took a bus from the airport to our hotel. The hotel was the tallest in the city, so it was pretty easy to find. We had a suite on the 23rd floor, and when we walked in and saw the view, my jaw literally almost hit the floor. Here are views from both sides of our corner balcony:

So yeah, pretty sure we had the best view in the entire city! That afternoon we hiked to the castle, explored it and enjoyed the incredible views from the top, and walked through various parts of the city. By evening, we were exhausted and found an open-air restaurant on the marina to eat and relax in just as the sun was setting. Here is the view from our table:

We also enjoyed a local drink specialty... sangria! I had only had it twice before, but this was by far the best. After enjoying a pitcher (or two?), we took a walk on the beach and headed back to the hotel for the night. The next day, we logged some quality beach time, explored more of the boardwalk and town, then ventured down to a farther pier for dinner as the sun set and lights came on. I love this picture of the castle all lit up:

Monday morning, we had time for a little more sightseeing and an early lunch before heading to the airport to catch our flight back. What a perfect weekend... I literally felt like I was in a vacation commercial the entire trip. It was very hard to leave Alicante's 80-degrees and clear skies to return to Stansted in 50-degree pouring rain, but thinking about the weekend kept a smile on my face... well, at least until the base exercise began the next day. Here is the link to the rest of the pictures from the trip: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=547326&id=701905001&l=bad1538ab6

I'll skip more complaining about the two exercise weeks (you're welcome), and wrap up with my birthday this past weekend. After almost no sleep last week, I was super-excited to spend my 26th b-day sleeping til noon and being a college football couch potato all day. And I am not being sarcastic by any means. However, the day ended up even better than I expected when Martin surprised me by giving up a concert in London he had a ticket for and coming over with steaks for the grill and the first season of Glee on DVD! So, it wasn't a beach weekend in Alicante... but sleep + Glee + football + friend + perfect steak = AWESOME 26th birthday. :-)

I have a lot of other things rambling around in my head, but I think I'll stop here for now since I need to be heading for work soon. (How I love saying that at noon...)

Good List:

1. Sleep (How could this not be my #1 this week?)

2. Happy 1st Anniversary to my wonderful cousin Amy and her husband Jon! So happy I could be there for the wedding last year! :)

3. Funfetti cake/cookies.

4. Penn State beat Kent State! Yay for a 2-1 record now...

5. Living in a place where I can take a weekend trip to Spain on a whim. I've been here a year and it still blows my mind how blessed I am. :)

6. Glee on DVD.

7. Parents... and the fact I have two I can respect, talk to, and trust.

8. Fantasy football. It makes watching the NFL so much more interesting.

9. Facebook.

10. Fall colors in the trees on my drive to work.

Tired

I am tired of base exercises. I think we are lucky no one has fallen asleep while driving and died yet. Yeah, this week was that bad. But one more exercise down, only one to go until the inspection in November. Is it November yet?

I hate wishing away time like that, and I guess it is just because I am at the end of one of the longest, most stressful, most frustrating, and most sleep-deprived weeks ever. I still love my real job. But this week was ridiculous. And you know what? I don't think I'm going to talk about it anymore. Because it is over. :-)

I am ridiculously behind on posting pictures... still have not posted Lisa in England, and the Labor Day Weekend in Spain pics have not even made it off my camera. Maybe I'll catch up this weekend? So far my plans include sleeping, college football, sleeping, NFL, sleeping, maybe eating at some point... and did I mention sleeping? Yes, it is going to be glorious. :-) So maybe I'll find some time to squeeze in some picture-posting.

Spain was AMAZING. Alicante is absolutely gorgeous. I am not joking when I say I felt like I was in a vacation commercial all weekend. I'll wait til I have pictures to talk about it more... but believe me, it is worth the wait!

Last Saturday I hosted a college football party at my house for Penn State/Alabama. A lot of people came and the food was great, so I think everyone had a good time... despite my team losing. I guess it could have been worse... 24-3 against the #1 team in the country is a lot better than 50-0 or something equally embarrassing. We play Kent State this weekend, who I'm pretty sure is not even a D-1 team, so it should be a good recovery for us, haha.

That's about it for now, I'll try to write a longer post with pictures later this weekend when I have had more sleep. It should be slightly more coherent as well! ;-)

Fall

I feel like beginning with a comment like "Good grief, where did August go?", but it is starting to seem like I say something like that every time I write... so I'll try to refrain. Yes, it does feel like the summer flew by, and though it is officially not fall until September 21st, fall has arrived in England. Our weather has been cooler and cloudier for the last couple weeks, sunrises are getting later, and sunsets are getting earlier. It sounds like I am complaining, but I'm really not... just making observations. Driving to work the other day, I noticed orange tints in the leaves of trees lining the road, which was absolutely beautiful with the sun glinting through.

Another positive aspect of fall... FOOTBALL!!! :-D I am so super-excited for the college football season, and it starts this Saturday! I have been watching NFL preseason for the last couple weeks, even though I don't really care about the NFL, just because it is football (and there are some PSU alumni to watch). Penn State's opening game this Saturday is against Youngstown State, who is not even a Division I team. This is a good thing, because I will be in Spain and unable to watch the game, so I am happy to be fairly confident we'll start out with a W. The next week, Sep 11th, is the big test... we're playing #1 Alabama! I'm excited but also nervous about this, especially since I just invited about 20 people over to my house for a tailgate party that day to watch it. It will be a good time, I'm sure... it would just be so much more awesome if we could pull out a win!

This weekend was pretty low-key, which was nice after taking a trip to London during the week with a friend who had family visiting. We ate at the original Hard Rock Cafe and visited the Beatles studio on Abbey Road... even got a picture crossing the street at the famous crosswalk! (I don't have the pic now, or I'd post it). One thing I accomplished today was finally posting Paris pictures... here is the link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=482483&id=701905001&l=8c2e92ada8 I have more from Lisa's and my adventures in England, but will post those another day... figured one album was a good step forward. :)

This should be a pretty busy work week, since my boss is TDY so I'll be running things at the office. There is some training to take care of tomorrow, plus we are getting a new squadron commander on Thursday, so there will be plenty of events surrounding the changeover. On top of that, I have some car issues to deal with (with both cars, unfortunately). On the bright side, it is looking more like I will get to go to Spain for Labor Day weekend (has been in question due to a possible TDY for my travel buddy). Should know for sure by tomorrow, so I can't wait to make final plans! For now, it is bed time for me...

Good List:
1. My college roommate Jamie had her first baby!!! :-D SOOO happy for Jamie, Ben, and baby Alexis!
2. Catching up with geographically separated friends.
3. Homemade lasagna. Not mine, unfortunately, but I got to enjoy it :)
4. Forgiveness. Getting it and giving it.
5. Concert tickets. I will get to see three awesome bands in the next three months, including my two favorite bands of all time!
6. 6 days until College Football begins!!!
7. Yahtzee. Why is rolling 5 dice over and over again so much fun? ;-)
8. Slippers and sweatpants on a cool evening.
9. Living in England. Pretty sure I take this for granted entirely too often.
10. Sleeping in.

I'm still here!

Yes, friends, I am in fact alive. And I have not completely abandoned this blog... only for the last almost-month. Oops. I have good excuses, I promise! First, Lisa visited at the end of July into the beginning of August. We had a blast with lots of travels and adventures including Paris, London, Warwick Castle, Hunstanton Beach, and Cambridge, among other things. I have exactly 472 pictures from the two weeks of her visit and therefore have not even begun the task of sorting through them for a sampling to post online. But when I do... you'll be the first to know. :-)

The weekend after Lisa left, I went to Nottingham for my half marathon. Bad news first: I did not hit my goal of running it under 2 hours. This was really frustrating because the weekend prior, I had done a 10-mile training run in 1:31... on track for sub-2 with minutes to spare. The day of the race was hot and humid, and the start wasn't until 10:30am. To make a long story short, I couldn't keep my goal pace past mile 5, and ended up finishing 10 minutes slower than my current PR. So I was kind of grumpy after the race, but then we spent the rest of the day having fun in Nottingham, which was an awesome way to end the weekend! Lots to see and do, plus great restaurants and shopping... I will definitely be going to Nottingham again. :)

Then my life was taken over by work. We are finishing up a two-week-long exercise on base, plus the weather flight is going through a really important inspection this week. This translates to work days so long I stop counting the hours, exponential stress levels, working through the weekend, and running around in chem gear at all hours of the day and night. Sigh. ENDEX is by far my favorite word in the Air Force. (If you aren't Air Force, just trust me on this one...) The exercise officially ended yesterday evening, but I am working a night shift tonight to cover for someone doing a weather equipment display at an air show tomorrow. This means I should probably be getting some sleep first, so I'll leave you with...

Good List:
1. ENDEX!!! (I guess it's fairly intuitive, but just in case... this means end of an exercise) :D
2. Hooters Hot Boneless Buffalo Wings. Yes, Nottingham has a Hooters, and yes, that was our post-race reward dinner... and I was mega-impressed! I had only been to Hooters once before in the States, and this one was wayyy better, both the food and the atmosphere. I will admit I was surprised... most American restaurant duplicates in England are not very good, but this one was awesome!)
3. Shopping with Lisa. :)
4. New SSgt-selects. I can't believe how many I know on this list, so excited for all of them!
5. Diet Dr Pepper.
6. People who make me smile even when I am stressed and exhausted.
7. Driving the Mini again! (Well, almost... needs a few things fixed before it is entirely legal)
8. Making travel plans.
9. Digital cameras. I don't know how I ever lived without them, and I definitely couldn't have during all my traveling in the last year.
10. Old mix CDs in the car. Music brings back memories (good and otherwise) like nothing else.

Rainbows

England gets a bad rap for being cloudy and rainy. Yes, winters are fairly gloomy with standard cloud cover, fog, and only 8 hours or so of daylight. But summers? England summers are just bursting with beauty. It still rains off and on, but the rain makes possible the bright green fields and tapestries of flowers growing both in the wild and in perfectly tended gardens. The rain showers also bring rainbows, with incredible regularity. I have seen more rainbows in the last 2 or 3 months than I have in the last 2 or 3 years. Unfortunately, I see most of them while driving, so I don't get pictures... but a part of me is okay with that. It makes seeing one that much more special. I was lucky enough to arrive here during the summer (5 days until my one-year anniversary... can't believe it!), and I think that is one reason I instantly fell in love with this place.

It is Saturday after an extremely long two weeks. I was basically doing three jobs during this time... escorting and planning activities for another group of AFROTC cadets, filling a staff briefing position in the exercise on base, plus my real job in the weather station. It was a lot of long hours, but I'd say everything went about as well as could be expected.

Last weekend, a couple friends and I went to the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford. It was just over a 3-hour drive, and traffic getting into the event was awful, but it was definitely worth the trip. We got to see aircraft and demo teams from so many different countries, plus plenty of USAF assets. One of our Lakenheath pilot friends flew an F-15 in formation, and the F-22 demo was unbelievable. On the way back, we stopped in Oxford and had a really awesome dinner, though it was too late for sightseeing. Here is the photo album from the trip: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=465034&id=701905001&l=4d6cfd314f

Lisa arrives tomorrow!!! EXCITED!!! :-D It will be so much fun to have her here and go fun places and hang out with friends. Also, we passed "cancellation Friday" without a phone call, so I am hoping this means all systems are go for our Paris trip next weekend! We haven't decided exactly what we are going to do while she is here and when (except for Paris), but some of the ideas we've talked about are Warwick or Leeds Castle, definitely London for a day, Bury St. Edmunds, Cadbury World (chocolate factory), and Cambridge. Can't wait!

Training continues for the Newark Half Marathon (2 weeks away, yikes...). Last week's long run was not as good as I had hoped, so we will see what happens when I head out for another this evening. I just made hotel reservations in Nottingham today, so that makes it more exciting. We decided to stay in Nottingham for the weekend for sightseeing purposes, and just drive to Newark (about 30 min away) on race morning. I hope we get cooler weather for it... last week I ran in 80+ temps and it was not fun.

Good List:
1. Planning trips. Excited for so many options with Lisa, and the topic of a beach weekend (Spain?) over Labor Day has been brought up with friends!
2. My OCF Bible study. As tired as I am on some Friday evenings, I never regret the time with these wonderful people and hearing God speak through them. :)
3. Making progress on a goal.
4. Watching friends inhale my Reese's peanut butter cup cookies.
5. Running.
6. Peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
7. Job satisfaction. A couple of the AFROTC kids thanked me so genuinely for a couple of the things I did for them... made the long hours worth it.
8. New friends.
9. Taylor Swift. Go ahead and make fun of me, but that girl has the right song for every one of my moods.
10. Last but not least... Rainbows! :)

Events

A new friend asked me last week if I wanted to visit Brighton Beach with her this past weekend... the answer was of course a "yes", but I was on weather standby and therefore could not go outside of 1 hour from the base (Brighton Beach is south of London, about 2.5 hours away). My first thought was "how about next weekend?" But then I remembered we would be in the middle of an exercise on base and effectively on call again. The weekend after that, I am on weather standby again, and then Lisa arrives on Sunday. The last weekend in July, Lisa and I are going to Paris for her 21st birthday. The first weekend in August is the half marathon in Nottingham. Eek! How did my next month get planned already?

Yes, the last two of those weekends are fun things vs. un-fun things, but for some reason having weekends planned out (whether I like the plans or not) just makes it seem like they will come and go faster than if I didn't have plans yet. Does that make any sense at all? I don't know... maybe I'm just being grumpy about being tied to the base for 3 weekends in a row. I really shouldn't complain, the AF is the reason I get to live here in the first place.

Have I talked about the August half marathon yet? Possibly not, since I was so bad about blogging in June. I had originally decided that the Berlin rollerblade marathon on Sep 26 would be my fall event to train for after I recovered from the May marathon. But after Martin didn't get the time he wanted in his Memorial Day half marathon, he decided to pick an August half and train hard for it (since he hadn't trained at all for the May race), and try to break 1:30. (For those of you trying to do the math in your head, that is a 6:52 mile pace for 13.1 miles... craziness.) Well, I have been saying since my first half marathon over 2 years ago that I wanted to break 2:00 (a much more reasonable 9:09 pace), and the idea of reaching a goal like that proved to be too hard to resist... I signed up for the August half.

The race is in Newark, a smaller town just outside of Nottingham (yes, of Robin Hood fame). I'm looking forward to exploring another part of England I haven't visited yet... races are such great excuses to travel! The training is actually going pretty well so far. I haven't done long enough distances yet to gauge whether I can go fast enough for long enough to hit my goal, but my pace has been getting steadily faster on shorter 3-4 mile runs. It's exciting to think about having a great race and getting a time I want, after the disappointment in Edinburgh. And just in case you were wondering, I am definitely still going to Berlin for the rollerblade marathon in Sep. :)

Another fall event that I failed to mention in June (when I bought tickets) is... Lifehouse is coming to London in October!!!!!!!!!!!! (Deserving of more exclamation points, but I think you get the point.) I found out through a post from the band's Facebook account, and I literally half-screamed/half-squealed when I saw it. You can ask my dad, who was sitting across the room from me when it happened... I think I scared him. Besides the fact that Lifehouse is my favorite band EVER, that I've seen them in concert 5 times and met them twice, and that I have a major celebrity-crush on Jason Wade (lead singer)... I haven't been to a concert in forever!!! I'm not even going to try and figure out what the last one was because it will depress me, but I definitely have not been to one since coming to England. So excited!

I need to get to some house cleaning (more specifically, Mini-title-finding...), so I'll leave you with a Good List:

Good List
1. Cooler temperatures. It has been in the low 80s, which constitutes a heat wave for England... and with no AC, not so much fun to sleep in... tonight it is in the 60s and I have my windows open :)
2. Lazy Sunday afternoons reading a book in the sun in my backyard.
3. New blog posts from one of my favorite bloggers. :)
4. Pictures. Facebook and otherwise, they keep me updated on the lives of both old and new friends.
5. Fast customer service. Thank you SanDisk!
6. Naps.
7. Plans falling into place at the last minute. In the case of my next round of AFROTC cadets visiting this week, I really hope this continues...
8. Challenges.
9. Laughing so hard you can't breathe. :)
10. Buffalo Chicken sandwiches. Thank you Charley's!