Category Archives: Life

This weekend we headed downtown and visited Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum and Louis Tussaud’s Wax Works museum. Ripley’s was, as always, interesting. Full of the weird, scary, death-defying, unnatural and other just plain stupid things people have either the natural ability or took the time to learn, it’s sure to amaze. Add some of the interesting people who are naturally different and you can spend a few hours gawking. Of course, since I’ve spent so much time watching the TV show that some of the stories were already familiar.

The “odditorium” was much larger than it might appear, perhaps due to unique organization of the building and we traveled through several rooms seeing giant skeletons, locks of hair belonging to celebrities like Marylin Monroe, shrunken heads, tribal tools and weapons, lots of art made from matchsticks (like a 24′ Eiffel Tower), torture devices and more. Toward the end were rooms with information about the Titanic and Mars which seemed a little out of place. Overall, however, it was quite interesting.

On the other hand, Wax works was a little disappointing. I suppose because it was smaller and, by its nature, there’s less to do but to see the statues, figure out who they are supposed to be and determine if you think they actually look like the person. Unless your Ryan, then you do your best Tom Cruise impression and jump on the chair next to Oprah.

Toward the end was a section of horror wax works and I was a bit nervous because I didn’t know if anything was going to jump out at me or whatever. Of course, nothing did and I probably wasted the experience a bit, being a ‘fraidy cat.

Before that, we stopped off at the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch which was good but not great. It was a nice atmosphere and we enjoyed our time there, even if we were distracted by our new cell phones which we had purchased the day before.

Saturday we’d stopped at T-Mobile and signed up for a family plan. I had decided on either the Nokia 5610 or 5310 online and headed to those while Ryan like the Samsung blast. The staff were very helpful and brought out the purple version of the 5310 for me, which I decided on. After looking at the 5310, Ryan decided he wanted one also, only in red. The copycat.

So we walked out with new phones and have been enjoying them ever since, for the most part. It seems that the phone can lag a bit and I am having trouble using MSN on it now, even though it worked before. Hopefully that clears up soon.

Besides that, I’m very excited about moving into the apartment on Friday and on Sunday our bedroom furniture will be delivered! Yay!

We’re counting down the days, only 8 now, which are going more slowly than I would like but faster than the first 3 weeks we spent here. Ryan is back at work which keeps him away for about 15 hours a day. It will definitely be easier to spend time together once we are in our own apartment which is only 10 minutes or so from base.

We have had a chance to do some fun things recently, though. We went to The Incredible Pizza which is sort of like Chuck E Cheese but much bigger. Besides games and food they have a movie room, a 3D movie, mini golf, mini bowling and go karts. While it might have been intended for a slightly younger age group, it was a lot of fun. We mostly went to mini golf which was fun, even if it wasn’t 18 holes and I sucked. We found a bunch of tickets someone had abandoned, scarfed them up and wound up with enough tickets to get a stuffed Mickey Mouse prize. Woohoo!

Aside from that, though, life has been pretty quiet. My classes started this week and I’ve already done all my reading homework so I’m just watching too much reality TV, if you couldn’t tell from my other posts. Speaking of school, Samantha is in kindergarten now! Can you believe it? I didn’t think so! LOL

You’d think I would blog about something as big as moving around the world, back to my home country if not exactly in the same place as my home state. But, no, not me. There wasn’t a “bye guys” or even a “see you later.” I don’t know why but things like that sometimes become so normal to me that I forgot to mention them.

So “Bye” and “Hi” again. On Tuesday i flew for nearly 24 hours on 3 different flights, with my husband, from Misawa to San Antonio. We said good bye to Misawa, friends, Japan, great food, small roads, unusual customs and language barriers.

We were greeted by my in laws at the airport and have been staying at their place for the last few days. In just 3 days I have managed to become sun burned; I thought I could do without the sunblock but I now know better. We’ve also gone car shopping but haven’t done a lot of stuff that I’m sure we will have plenty of time to do.

During the journey we were bombarded with snooty gay stewards, bus rides across Tokyo, exhaustion, know-it-all Air Force entrants on their way to basic training and bad food. We also were unfortunate enough to spend twice as much money on perfume I’d had my eye on for some time as we would have here at Target. However, I did pick up a really cute lucky cat keychain.

So here I am, homeless and in a most awkward situation. Sun burned but alive and I’ll probably survive even longer.

I went out last night and got really super drunk. This is a first for me. Same with the damned hangover.

I do not plan to make this a frequent occurrence as I really don’t think I should be doing and saying all those silly things like I did last night.

A wet little Cole. Wonder where she came from? Well, I’ll tell you.

She was living in her apartment with no furniture save for an air mattress and all her belongings being shipped overseas. Then they kicked her out (in reality, housing came and must have decided the place was fine, so we handed over the keys) and she spent countless hours (more like 5) wandering aimlessly through the slums (having breakfast and reading at the library). Then she was forced into tiny accommodations without climate control (a room at the Misawa Inn; no A/C) with a crazy alien (Ryan).

And now she’s tortured by medieval devices (really slow computers) because the sadists (lodging personnel? Services?) don’t believe in magic (wireless networks).

In reality, I’m not horrible. The room was surprisingly ghetto and I’m disappointed but I’m sure you all know how critical I can be and anything is better than nothing, really. Our room isn’t even in the main building; I’m not sure if that makes it any worse but it seems like little more than a glorified dorm room (same set up and everything) with furniture supplied.

It is quite hot but – they’re so sweet that – they left fans in the closet. Only 1 of them didn’t work! They were also really thoughtful to leave us complimentary items like coffee and shampoo but those are complimentary only for the first night’s stay and after that any items we silly travelers have “forgot” are available for purchase at the front desk, or so says the signs everywhere. It’s quite rude.

The shower is really nasty. I mean, it’s not horrible but it’s not hotel quality by any means! The metalworkd used to have gold on it which has worn off and looks all nasty. The showerhead shoots you with water, not a nice spray, and although there is a knob to adjust, it goes from painful to fatal. The tub fauce also is connected to a pipe which sticks out from a hole in the wall so there’s a gap between the wall and the faucet.

On the plus side, there’s a kitchenette supplied with some dishes which will make life a little easier, and we have a dozen TV channels (that’s 11 more than we had in the apartment) to flip through discontentedly. I also have some Netflix we can finished up (which reminds me, I need to put my account on hold).

Interestingly enough, right after we got into the room yesterday, we lost power because of a lightning strike! When does that ever happen?