In search of Interior Decorator

Wanted: One interior decorator to tell Mason and I how to lay out our living room. (Jill, are ya interested?) Mason and I acquired in the last two days, a new couch in addition to our old one, a coffee table, and two large end table, as well as two smaller end tables...still no lamps. Our living room has become quite crowded, and Mason will still not let me purchase the BBQ from Walmart that I want for a whopping $29.96.

In addition to our home decorating skills Mason and I have been learning to play racquetball. Overall pretty fun...somehow short people (aka me) have a harder time, but with practice comes winning.

Keyboard jockey

The Air Force caught up with me and now I'm flying a desk 0730-1630 M-F!

Another casual Lt and I got called up to help out across the base. The other guy got protocol, which is fine by me since I really don't get into that. He was gone for the two days that we had a two-star visit the base though, so I went with that group in his place. It was pretty interesting since I got to see whatever they were showing off to the general. It was a little sad watching some of the colonels or higher-ups grobble at the general's feet at some of the meetings. He seemed like a solid leader though; gave some good words at the commander's call. And it was neat sitting in on conferences where everyone was field grade officers or generals. But two days of that was enough.

Now I'm working with a group that plans emergency practice scenarios for the base and evaluates how well people respond. Unfortunately, the job normally requires a lot of training and expertise. But since I'm only here until October, when I start UPT, I can only get so deep into this. There's a few other people in different offices who know what they're doing so I just do my best to support them. I am lucky enough to have an actual office with desks, chairs, and a computer. So that's cool (at least as cool as it can get for a casual Lt).

So in the mean time, lots of studying for pilot training. I got all my books, regs, and checklists, so I've been trying to read through the important ones. I'm again, very very glad that I majored in aviation so I can at least somewhat understand what these checklists and manuals are talking about, before I even get to the actual plane.

For any Air Force people reading this, Sheppard got the new Airman Battle Uniform. So that's been gradually popping up all over base. Apparently everyone rushed the uniform store so much that they've had shipments coming in daily and still can't keep up. I'm probably going to hold off on buying a set since with the boots, it comes out to a little over $200. And in a couple months, I won't need it much anymore because I'll be in a flight suit. From what I've heard and seen, the ABU isn't too much different. Heavier material, but breathes better because it's not starched. It seems silly too that you're only allowed to wear the specific slate blue socks and sand t-shirt. Seems to me like black would work just fine. FYI, the new green boots are authorized with the flight suit.

Insomniaaaaaaaah

Things have been a little out of the ordinary in our household lately...Mason has been busy with work. Thursday and Friday he spent the day with a lot of Colonels, and Generals touring the base with a visiting General. He mostly had to make sure that everything was all set up by the time the General arrived. Today he was back to work, and wrote some reports and spent the afternoon somewhat bored. Hopefully his work will become somewhat more guided, so he doesn't feel like it's a complete waste of his time being in an office all day.

After a relaxing, work-free, weekend it was tough for me to head back to work too. Our store Air Conditioning is broken (since last November) and so it was hotter inside than outdoors which was a borderline 100 degrees. The long days of standing on my feet all day is quite tiresome...Mason and I are quite a mess at 8pm deciding who gets to make dinner. (Guess who usually gets to make it...) We had a simulated robbery at work today, that was pretty interesting, made some customers angry, but in the end it's for their safety.

Mason and I are looking forward to planning a camping trip in early October, and having some time off before he begins pilot training. Meanwhile we're just working on getting our sleep cycles on track. Although tired, I can't seem to get to sleep at a normal hour, and Mason has trouble sleeping when I'm up and about...so we're working on it.

Reality Check

Well...Mason got found. After hiding under the job radar for so long, they finally snagged him and put him into a nice Monday-Friday 7:30am-4:30pm real people's job. Basically he is in charge of planning and running different attack scenarios on base. Sometimes they have fake gunmen, robberies, bomb scares etc...on base and so he's in charge of coordinating all that. I think his big project is going to be running a practice air show accident, since supposedly there is going to be an air show here is October. So, he's busy busy busy now. He should be able to stop work on October 5th, 10 days before pilot training. He also brought home a large box full of study materials. Welcome home Mason.

And the training Begins

Yesterday was a pretty nice day here in military land. With Mason on casual status we have lots of time to work on household projects and just hang out playing games and stuff. It's kind of like adult Kindergarten: eat, nap, play games, read books, study some things, and mostly chill. I hosted an afternoon get together for our spouses group and about six women came, and Mason hung out for awhile; so that was really nice. Mason was happy the rest of the afternoon because he got leftover brownies and cookies, and we went to the bank to get some change rolls, and we counted up all our spare change. The smile on Mason's face while he counted over $100 in change was priceless.

In the evening we went to Petco to use up some coupons on food and shavings for Rembrandt and we bought him a race track that his rolling ball goes into. Petco is having a hamster race in 2 weeks..so we'll see if he can train fast enough for the race. We joined some of Mason's friends from his class, that he went to IFS with at Chili's for dinner which was pretty fun. And we ended the evening with the Simpsons and a monopoly re-match (still in play.)

Never a Dull Moment in our House

As we were all heading to bed on Friday night (Mason, Keith and I), Mason and I noticed that we heard a running water sound. This is sometimes common because our toilets run for awhile after being flushed...however, this was not the case at 12:30am. Our water heater, had sprung a leak and was flooding our water heater closet. After sopping up much of the water with towels, Mason began using a bowl to catch the water and put it into a bucket, thus began the bucket brigade. We called our 24 hour maintenance, and the gentleman was out around the corner helping someone who had a lockout so he came over within the hour to make sure we had turned the water off properly. Meanwhile, we found a better water "faucet" to empty water out of the heater into the bucket. This sped up our process. By the time Ray, the maintenance man came, we had emptied most of the 40 gallon tank. He finished it off by leading a hose from the tank, outside. We were unable to do much after that, except mop up the hallway floors and remaining water. A nice 2am bedtime before the GRE...

Continuing with the water heater saga, another maintenance man came over late Saturday afternoon and replaced our water heater, but was unable to sodter (sp?) the pipes together. Did I mention that the water heater had filled up again...even though we had turned it off! So, we still had no hot water. Sunday a plumber came and after most of the day without any water we were back in business. All is good so far. Fingers Crossed.

Meanwhile, in the middle of all this, Keith left on Saturday morning for Austin, TX; and I took my GRE. I passed the verbal and math sections; ironically my math scores were significantly higher that the verbal, so I might eventually take the verbal over. I should find out about my written in a few weeks. So, that's done with.

Saturday evening was pretty exciting. We had rain storms most of the day left over from the Hurricane in southern Texas. While Mason and I were enjoying a classy Mac & Cheese dinner around 7:30pm the tornado siren went off, and Command Post came over the base intercom warning that a tornado was within 5 miles of base, and that all personnel should take cover. Of course everyone was outside trying to catch a glimpse of the storm. Once Mason and I realized that the tornado wasn't going to hit base we headed out to storm chase. We chased the storm about 40 miles Northeast of us, and got caught in a great deal of rain, and saw some great lightening and clouds. There were so many frogs out on the road too, that was exciting, but sad because I think we ended up smushing several. Pictures are included below.

Sunday wasn't too exciting. We spent it mostly with the maintenance man. We have been trying to get scardy-cat Rembrandt to get used to us, so we put him into our bathtub (no water). He was scared at first, mostly because he couldn't jump out of the tub. He was eating from our hands and letting us hold him somewhat. More of that tonight. (We're glad to hear that Gus, Jill's Hamster survived the flooding at my parent's house.)

Mason was checked out this morning by the dentist, and had his stitches removed. He's still a little sore and swollen. He managed to eat Papa John's last night, and Chicken Parmesan tonight. I must also mention that after working all day and coming home exhausted, Mason had made dinner. What a great husband!

Check out our tornado photos:

http://neiu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012692&l=17b4f&id=77800450

Today we started out at the flight medicine office. The Colonel over there made Mason get checked out since he heard about the passing out incident. They did a basic exam will all sorts of close your eyes and touch your nose tricks. They also gave him an EKG which turned out fine. While on base Mason checked his AF e-mail and we stopped by an event the spouse group was having.

Later in the day we met up with my cousin Keith at our house, who's been traveling around the country the last few weeks. We took him on our famous base tour, and hung out playing pool, and then relaxing back at the house. Mason decided he'd try some real food for dinner so we went to the only Thai place in town, turned out to be pretty good. It's been pretty stormy here today, an effect of the hurricane in southern Texas; so we're letting Keith sleep indoors instead of his tent in the back yard.

Currently the men are watching the Simpsons movie, and I just made cookies for our new neighbors. I'm contemplating doing more studying for the GRE tomorrow...but the motivation level is low. Hmm...maybe if I sleep on the book it will all soak into my brain, and I'll wake up with new found math skills and a great vocabulary!

Breaking News...

...this just in...I, Ellen have just won (legally) the first game (full game) of Monopoly ever in my life!!!

The most popular house on the block

Mason's oral surgery went well this morning. We were at the dentist by 7:45 and he was getting doped up by 8:15. Lots of rules and instructions to go over. I spent most of my time at the pharmacy waiting for his drugs. They gave him Percocet and Motrin to help with the pain. He was a good sport. We got home around 10:00 and shortly after he was feeling sick to his stomach because he had swallowed so much blood (he's not allowed to spit) and so while trying to throw up some of that blood, he ended up gagging and passing out...I think he's going to fire me as a nurse since I jump to call 911 when he passes out and isn't breathing...he came to while I was on the phone with the 911 operator, but they came anyways to check him out. He's okay, they said it was just the effect of the meds they gave him when they knocked him out, plus the swallowed blood, and then standing up...he's on couch arrest most of the day today.

He spent some time icing his mouth with some frozen vegetables, and we changed his gauze earlier. His bleeding has mostly stopped, although he's still not feeling to good. After a long nap he tried some water and (is supposed to be taking more medicine) doesn't feel too well. He managed to take eat some applesauce before, and he's going to try to have some soup and mashed potatoes for dinner.

While he did have a restful afternoon, we did receive many calls from his squadron commander and other people in the support squadron, just seeing how he was doing, since the 911 call was reported. I don't think many of them realize that he is not on flight status...but they've been very nice to us. We have to go into the flight medicine doctors tomorrow morning, now sure what that's about...but we shall see...

On a completely other note- Mason finally saw the prairie dog (we think) that we have in our yard, so that gave him a smile. Rembrandt has been quite timid today, most likely due to that fact that he thinks we are trying to kill him. After the whole couch incident we thought we'd try to leave him alone but we really needed to thoroughly clean his cage. Yesterday, Mason swooped in and grabbed him out of the cage and put him in his ball to run in. We placed him in our standup shower, which has a ledge around the bottom so we figured he'd be safe in the confined area running around. We didn't want him unsupervised in the house, because we have Boric Acid around for the other critters. So we clean the cage and then go back to get Rembrandt and his ball had split into two. We figured that he must have banged into one of the walls, and it came apart. Needless to say we then had to go on a hamster hunt in our house. We saw that he hadn't gone too far, was only playing under our bed, but the whole act of getting him back into the ball and into the cage was quite comical. A good laugh for all but Rembrandt.

I've included some random pictures from August...so you too can have a chuckle.

http://neiu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012635&l=a3edb&id=77800450

The Surgery: Part 1

Mason and I had an enjoyable weekend. I worked on Saturday, most of the day, and he caught up on much needed sleep and previous weeks of "Hell's Kitchen," one of our favorite TV shows. Sunday we went to see "License to Wed" at the base movie theater. It was a pretty funny movie. Mason and I both agreed that it's worth seeing movies on base these days since it only costs $7 for the both of us, and to rent a movie is almost just as much. Although, we just heard about a $2 movie theater in town that we might check out next.

After the movie I went to the gym and Mason ran at the track. Mind you, this is all in 106 degree heat! After running, and Mason thought he was removing a pebble from his shoe, he soon realized that crickets liked his shoes to hide in. That was a gross one! So far, no other crickets or critters in the house.

Mason had been getting along quite well with Rembrandt. Rembrandt has been eating food from Mason's hand, which meant the next time I put my fingers near him, he thought I was food...but, I supply him with celery and carrots which he really seems to like. Last night, Mason finally got him into his ball and out rolling around the house. Rembrandt seemed to like it. Then came "the incident." While sitting on the couch Mason opened the ball and Rembrandt peaked out and the proceeded to fly out of the ball and dash into the couch. He is fast! It was quite a trip to get him back into the ball...nonetheless, all are okay, but I think we'll leave him alone today.

Mason has had the privilege of attending the dentist twice this week (note it's only Tuesday) and found out that he has to have Oral Surgery Thursday morning. They are going to remove all his wisdom teeth (which are all still below the gums) because they are concerned that once he begins flying jets they may pose a problem, and it's better to fix now then when he begins flying. So, Mason will be knocked out, drugged up, and on bedrest for the weekend. Fun date, eh?

Life's Good

The earlier half of the week I spent cleaning the house inside and out before Mason came home. Mowed the lawn, washed floors, all that jazz. (Not too thrilling) and then Wednesday and Thursday I had work training. I am working on base for a national company called AAFES (Army Air Force Exchange Services) so we spend most of the days learning the ins and outs of the company policy. I was even informed that I could deploy to Afghanistan for a year if I wanted to go there and work...I think I'll stick to Texas, thank you. I have my second day of work tomorrow, which should be decent since I hear Saturdays are pretty slow.

Mason arrived home around11pm on Wednesday night. He got a ride with his friend Ed who also lives here, and was at IFS. He was pretty tired after the 9 hour car trip and had a headache because he was not used to seeing the sun for such a long time. He survived though, and it's great to have him home. Today he was back to work, working at a change of command ceremony on base. Other than that it was pretty much low key day. We got to look through our wedding photos, and then we walked to the gym and worked out. We're having a friendly who can lose the most body fat % by Sept. 30th. I've lost more inches, but he's lost more pounds, so we'll see how this all turns out. So far so good.

So there I was...

...asleep in my bed Saturday morning, when at 7am (a time when everyone should be sleeping, on a Saturday) the most awful cricket noises began somewhere inside the house. Well, I rolled over but could not ignore the noise. I suspected that the enemy was in the closet with the furnace, as I have caught them there before and the sound emanated from that area. I took my trust mop, aka the cricket killer, and went on the prowl, alas I could not find the enemy. I tried to go back to sleep, and remained there for a few more restless hours with the sound coming and going. I forgot about the "enemy" for the rest of the day, and then Sunday night while watching some evening TV I heard that horrid noise again. (This is also not to say that additional crickets weren't heard or found in the house). Then I saw the sucker. Somehow he had managed to climb into one of the light fixtures on the ceiling, I'm guessing he came in from the roof somehow, anyways...I did what any normal person would do...roasted the sucker! He still remains in there, due to the fact that I don't know how to remove the glass around the light, but pest control comes tomorrow and he can handle the pest.

Despite our animal "troubles" things are going quite well down in ole Wichita Falls. Rembrandt and I have been making some breakthroughs. He let me open the top of hie tower to sniff my hand, still no more contact than that. I'm sure he'll be happy to meet Mason. Mason by the way, is hopefully going to be home on Wednesday. He has his final check ride tomorrow and then if rides work out he should be home sometime Wednesday.

Friday was my first day of work at the base. It was constant work, if there were no customers, you were stocking the shelves, and because I was the new girl I got to "learn" how to do all the cleaning of the store. But, they tell me I make the ice bags faster than anyone else, so I guess that's a compliment. The whole ice thing must be in my genes. Friday night I attended Assignment Night with some of my friends. That is where the graduating ENJJPT class finds out what planes they get to fly, and they always have some funny way of finding out which plane they get. This time there were shots placed on a table by the name of each type of plane that they could get (A10, B1, B52 etc...) the shots were water shots, except for when they got to their plane and then that was an alcohol shot. It was cool. No one got an F22 but it was listed. There were lots of F15s and F16s so that was good. At least hopefully it will be good when Mason graduates.

Working backwards I guess, Thursday night I went to a new spouse meeting sponsored by the ESSG (ENJJPT student spouse group) and that was really helpful. The wing commander and his second were there, along with their wives and they gave us a lot of good information, plus a cookbook. After that I went to the ESSG meeting, with all the spouses, there were about 35-40 there, so I met lots of new people and there were many others there who I already knew so that was lots of fun.

Today, I went to base to register the Highlander since we finally got our license and registration, and worked out a little. Made a trip to Walmart. Some of you future visitors may be happy to know that we now have a Cracker Barrel right near base, and I've heard they are building a Hooters nearby also. The lawn is mowed, and I've got a list of things to tidy before Mason gets home. So I think for now I'll tackle the laundry, and that's only to avoid studying for the GRE I take later this month.

some more pics from IFS...
http://uillinois.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2267849&l=922bc&id=1913937

Almost done with "the dirty P"

0500 Hrs at the Doss ramp. We've been getting up for the last couple weeks for our 0420 morning formal brief. And then after that, we head out and push the planes out of the hangar. Awake before the sun, wheels up as it rises. However, 10 hours later when the last round of flights are getting back in at 3 in the afternoon, the sun has scorched Pueblo, Colorado and the air is wild. Airspeed needle is bouncing from 100 to 70 and back to 90 in less than a minute. Altitude is jumping a hundred feet in a second and all you can do is keep the airplane pointed shiny-side up and fiddle with the throttle.



This past week has been a tough one for the class because some people are transitioning from their first checkride and solo onto their very last flight. Others are still spending hours in the cockpit trainer getting ready for that first checkride. Today, we had one student fail his third chance at the first checkride (three swings your out) and is headed home this weekend with his home base working on finding him a new job. We had a different student decide that flying wasn't making him happy and he didn't want to do this for the next 10 years, so he did a self-initiated elimination and will be going home shortly with a new job as well. And then also today, we had our first two people finish their final checkride. So four people going home this weekend, half happy - half not knowing what to think. As for our hero of the story, me, I'm about in the middle of the class. Keep in mind, progress is based mostly on luck of the draw at scheduling. Some people have flown twice everyday, others have never double turned. I've been doing pretty well on that. I passed my solo checkride on Tuesday (with an IP who I REALLY did not mesh well with). Now I'm at the point where I've got my second of two solo flights to do tomorrow, two more instructional sorties after that, and then my final checkride. So assuming weather is good for us (which is not a great assumption), I should be finished at the end of next Wednesday.



This afternoon's flight got a little hairy. We started off staying in the traffic pattern practicing different types of landings. We knew the weather was supposed to get fouled up based on forecasts so we were keeping an eye out for it. Sure enough, clouds moved in about 1,000 ft above where we were. I was starting to get nervous that the IP (instructor pilot) would decide to call off the flight. But this guy was in a pretty good mood (and he's an AF pilot; not a civilian instructor) so he said let's find our whole in the clouds and get out to our area. So we climbed around, found our hole in the clouds drove it up through and then waited until we got to the practice area and dropped down through another hole. It was a good challenge and a lot of fun to be doing something other than straight and level snooze flying. And the instructor thought I did a great job so I've continued my trend of good scores on my flight debriefs (with the exception of my checkride which wasn't a good day).



So tomorrow a joy ride and then we're having our solo/graduation party in the evening. In fine Air Force style, keg and many bottles will be on ice with some burgers on the grill. I'll be enjoying some classic chocolate milk I think. Just another few days or so and I'll be done with this place, back on my to the bug-infested Sheppard AFB. I definitely feel a lot more ready for UPT (undergraduate pilot training) after going through this program. It gave us a lot more insight on what to expect and how briefings will go down, etc. Plus I got to know the other 8 guys or so from ENJJPT a lot better so it'll be good to have the study/support group from the get go. All I have to do now is learn Italian and get some shirts that emphasize chest hair so I can fit in with the foreign pilots. Also pick up smoking and buy a porsche...



This was me getting introduced to the Air Force tradition of dunking the student in a water tank after their first (sorta) solo. No tanks around here, so trash bins full of ice water it is....

Feels kinda nice on a 100* day

Still Learning

I had to go on base today around 9am (not a frequent event) and it was a surprise to me how crowded the roads were. Many of the various flights were out doing their PT (physical training) for the day, and due to the massive amount of people in the roads, many were blocked. Note to self: don't go on base early in the morning and expect to get anywhere fast. I had my meeting and returned home where they were digging up some electrical wires for the gate into our housing area. On the first of each month they change the gate codes, and inevitably something always goes wrong. After going out and running some more errands I return to try to get on base around 1pm and the gates to base were closed so for about 15 minutes. There was a huge pileup of cars trying to get onto base due to this gate closure; needless to say that was a waste of time, and no word yet on what was going on.

In the later afternoon, I enjoyed a late lunch of homemade soup and watched a big thunderstorm go through. (Someone left their poor dog outside...he was not happy) I've been told this is an extremely odd Texas summer, rain usually stops in May and by June it's 100s everyday. Guess I should be lucky that it's 90s with humidity that makes it feel like 100 and not 100 with humidity. I was also warned that the heat should be coming soon, and that due to this "bad" summer, autumn will only be about 3 weeks if that, bummer...

Anyways, I returned to base around 4:00pm so that I could go to the library and post office, and workout. Another bad idea, I should know by now that between 4-6pm is the worst time to go to the gyms on base because there are tons of people there after getting off duty...yet on a raining day I still went at 4pm. The full parking lot didn't stop me, but even though it was crowded I still managed to get in 45 minutes.

Now I'm home and ready to make my garlic shrimp pasta dinner (have to consume all fishy products before Mason returns.) Mason, is quite busy, he had a checkride and his solo flight yesterday, and passed, and was supposed to fly twice today, leaving him with only four flights left...so let's keep our fingers crossed that maybe he'll come home a little earlier than expected.

As for my job situation, I filled out the paperwork today and begin work at the Shopette on base Friday. I was also immediately hired to be a substitute for the Wichita Falls School District in addition to the Bright Ideas Charter School. I am told that there are always openings in the WF school district, so I am hoping to sub 3 days a week, and work at the shopette 3 days a week, making things decently balanced. So all continues to go well thus far in our somewhat busy lives.