Me, Annie, Laura, Gizelle and Lauren
Laura and Kelly and Gorilla Adventure Day?
Hil and I usually manage to see each other randomly and in various cities depending on where we are. Here we are at breakfast in Minneapolis the weekend of Megan and Nate's wedding. She had just returned from the Peace Corps in Ukraine a few weeks before. Hillary is the second from the left. I can't wait for you to get here Hil! I'll come visit you this fall!Sunday was my wave day, which went really well. I got a full period on the pickle both day and night. Having a night period my first day is a bit unusual, but my team lead said I did well.
Yesterday was busy because we did an HCA (Hummer Controlled Approach). This was for training, but the purpose is in case the ship has problems and can’t control the recovery, we do it airborne. It was a CBATS sign-off for me so I wanted to make sure I did well. The boat controllers came to the ready room afterward to tell us how impressed they were.
Not much else going on here. The meal situation is abysmal. It’s a battle the entire airwing is fighting. First the meal hours were still set to import/boat time, which doesn’t really fly. Now, midrats (which happens to work out to be most aviators’ third meal since we miss breakfast) is leftovers from lunch/dinner. And the grill is never open, so we are at the mercy of the hot line. And there are no sandwich fixings out, so if we miss a meal there is nothing to do but wait. It's frustrating.
Not much else going on. Hoping to get my CBATS done in the next couple days.
They have a photographer that takes pictures at various points along the way and then of course sells you the photos, but they got some good ones. Here are my favorites:
After rafting we had lunch, a celebratory chu-hi and then hit the road again back to Zama. We got lots of info so that we can go back when the guys get back from deployment. Most of the instructors were from New Zealand so there is no language barrier. They had lots of other tours you could do like canyoning, parasailing, caving, etc. Can't wait to go back!
Last Saturday a big group of us headed to Nissan Stadium to check out the Yokohama F Marinos! The F stands for football. Why they abbreviate it? I don't know. The stadium was huge and not even half full- perhaps because it was one of those cold-looks-like-it-might-rain kind of days, but we had a great time and lots of beers and chu-his.
Glenn in front of the stadium.
The super-fan section with their giant jersey. Probably my favorite part.
Love you Mr! The Marinos ended up losing to Tokyo 0-1, but it was still a good game. I can't believe after all the years of playing soccer, this was the first professional soccer game I had been to.
Some day I would love love love to own a table like this. Although perhaps not 12 feet long.
I found this company on one of the other design blogs I read. I've been telling Glenn that I want a reclaimed slab table for awhile now, but it's so hard to spend that much money on a table and not know if it will fit in our next house, but we can only furnish our house with IKEA for so long. (Although I am going again on Tuesday to purchase this) The Uhuru website doesn't even list prices on the website, but I emailed them for a quote. We'll see what they say! Here's to hoping they have a military discount- yeah right!
Hey babe. We made it safe and sound. I miss you already. Luckily, my email is still set (as you can see). Love you.
G
Afterward, we walked around Shibuya (a neighborhood of Tokyo) and went in to some fun stores. Many stores were closed because last week was Golden Week (three separate holidays that fall on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the same week) so everyone in Japan has a nice little 5-day weekend. But we did manage to do some shopping including finding a fun wine store (in English no less). Buying two bottles of wine while shopping may not have been the smartest thing cause they are heavy, but we did discover that if we buy a case they will deliver it for free. Next time!
Expensive wine shock face. 298,000 and 198,000 Yen. That over $3000 and $2000. What?
This is the song sheet. Each player has a chant/song that you sing the entire time they are up to bat. We sang along with the ones that had english words!
Glenn enjoying Japanese baseball snacks. His dumplings even came with a tiny tiny bottle of soy sauce. Tiny things are cute, what can I say?!
After the game we went to a restaurant in Chinatown called Mr. Navy. The restaurant barely held the 12 of us it was so tiny. The restaurant is filled with CVW-5 paraphernalia from the past several decades which was fun to look and and find names of Ltjg's at the time who are now back in Japan as skippers.
You can see that we barely fit in the restaurant, but the food and beer was delicious! Thanks Mr. Lee! 
This picture makes the table look really thick, but it is only 3/4" but probably weighs about 100 lbs. I won't be standing on it, but it's really sturdy. I'm so excited!
Why does the Navy insist on everyone looking sad and/or pissed off in "official" pictures. I think it's funny. I do love those summer whites though. :)
Me and Gizelle, we're pretty much BFFs
Laura, me, Heather and Gizelle at the O'Club
Miss you already, Mr. Here's Glenn getting dunked by the squadron just like this weekend.
2. Put the trimmings in the glass vase and microwave until mostly melted.
4. Once the candle is mostly melted, put the trimmed candle down in to the melted wax so that the liquid fills the spaces between the candle and the vase.
5. Ta da! New candle! It looks better as it melts down a little because it fills in the spaces.
I actually think I like it better now because yankee candles always come with that stupid lid and don't really match my decor. Glenn would call this a prime example of me being cheap. Hello?! I just saved you $18. Frugal people, never cheap.
I don't expect to learn kanji, but at least understanding the romanji would be nice. Romanji is when the Japanese is spelled out with roman letters. It would be nice to know hiragana and katakana too, but seriously, how many different written languages can you really learn? If I could speak some more Japanese, I'll be happy.
Our commissary is closed on Mondays so I headed over the Camp Zama Army base to find the last few ingredients. They had fresh sage surprisingly, but the label just said "Herb" and then had kanji on it. Good thing I had my Japanese/English dictionary so that I could look up the kanji for sage and buy the right thing. I had never bought fresh sage before so I couldn't go based on looks!
Christene, Cassie and Shannon from Kingsville, TX and Virginia
Amy, Marcy, me and Megan from Kingsville, TX and Virginia
Annie and Laura from Kingsville, TX, Virginia and now Atsugi, Japan.
Heather and Nicole from Kingsville, Norfolk, VA and Japan.
Angela, Laura, Amy, me, Susie, Shannon and Heather. We're now all over the place! This picture is from my last night in Kingsville!
Me, Gizelle and Mike in Japan
Last week while Glenn was gone I tried something new for dinner. I made butternut squash ravioli but instead of the butter sage sauce, I made it a sage cream sauce. I'd give it a 6.5/10. The ravioli was good, but a little sweet so I think the sauce needed to be a little more robust. I have more ravioli leftover so I'm going to try one of the user reviews and make a gorgonzola cream sauce. I think this will hold up better to the sweet ravioli.
New cooking tip I discovered: Baking a squash in the oven takes forever. After an hour, I gave up, put it in a bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and microwaved it for 5 minutes and it was done. Should have done that from the start!
His desk and drawers are behind him. 
Sink/mirror area
Here's the Liberty Bell ready room. This is where my giant cruise calendar will hang- somewhere. They might have to make some space on one of those wall. Hopefully it fits!
The countdown continues...
