Ive been hanging around this town on a corner
Ive been bummin around this old town for way too long
Ive been hanging around this town on a corner
Ive been bummin around this old town for way too long

Really, relaxation hasn’t been key these past few days. Friday we finally moved into our apartment, after I finished a paper for my psychology class and submitted it to my teacher. both things provided a bit of excitement for me. Of course, I had been waiting quite impatiently to move and it seemed like the day would never come but it finally has! I also shared some of those same feelings when it came to going back to school but I am no longer not doing anything with my life! yay!

Really, we didn’t have that many belongings to move in so after planting my luggage down, I continued to read. I recently finished The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan so I have begun to reread The Death Gate Cycle by Weis/Hickman. I’d forgotten how fast reading those books were (and short compared to the Robert Jordan books) and I’m really glad that I enjoy them as I did when I first read them in high school.

Sunday introduced the presence of our brand new bedroom set which is still gorgeous and I will be enjoying for many years to come. Unfortunately, lack of mattresses has been a bit of an issue so we’re still using the air mattress until tomorrow night.

Yesterday left me exhausted and sore after unpacking most of our stuff that was delivered. Save for a few boxes I still need to go through, the only thing left packed are things were don’t yet have space for. I have a neat little idea for furniture that will really make the dinging room wall more useful for us. I definitely need more drawers because the kitchen doesn’t have nearly enough.

Today wasn’t much better when it comes to exhaustion. I put together our desk without instructions, from memory; I called and requested them but didn’t find them in my e-mail until well after I was done. with a little logical guessing, I think I did a decent job. Ryan was quite surprised, I believe “awed” was the word he used for my workmanship. Hehe.

But today was also a blessing as cable, phone and internet were installed all relatively quickly and without hassle even if we do have a big cable box and the workers didn’t come until 2 hours after they told us. I’m grateful to be back online even if I still have to deal with the laptop for a couple more days.

Thursday, when our unaccompanied baggage arrives, will be the last shipment and we will definitely be able to relax and enjoy our home. It’s not quite as nice as I remember it from viewing but it certainly beats out other apartments we saw and it’s really shaping up as we add furniture. After the staples are taken care of, I can’t wait to tackle the decor; I definitely have some ideas!

I love how large my bathroom is and all the storage space in there. It’s been too long since I actually had drawers and counter space but the shelving is really the icing on the cake! Plus, 2 closets in the main room as well as a walk in bedroom closet are something I didn’t find in any other apartments we looked at and I knew we’d need a lot of storage space because we had 4 closets and an extra bedroom in Misawa.

Things are really going to quiet down soon and I’m not sure if I’ll be relieved or disappointed. I guess you’ll have to hang around. ;)

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

When I have time on my hands, such as I do now, I have a relatively ‘bad’ habit of watching reality TV. Now, I don’t especially like anything Survivor-esque where everything is staged but, rather, the shows where the crew seems to more follow the lives of real people, even if the final production is edited for affect.

Nevertheless, I still cannot believe how some people act when the camera is rolling, on a show that will be broadcast to thousands. For example, I frequently watch Bridezillas which is, as you can imagine, about horrible brides. Granted, planning a wedding is difficult and costly and can cause even the sweetest person to be in a bad mood but some of these women (Can you say Megan?), are so difficult, rude, selfish, mean, unreasonable, bitchy, and out of touch with reality that they are almost difficult to take for real and it’s fully impossible to think anyone would want to marry them.

Actually, in Megan’s case, it appears she bullied her boyfriend into proposing. She proceeded to threaten to marry someone else – on screen – and her catch phrase seems to be “shut the hell up” as she loved screaming it at her bridal party at times – like when she listed of her rules for the reception and ceremony which included forbidding the females to remove shoes and the males were not allowed to remove their tux coats no matter what.

Of course, a few other people shocked me, like Tanesha when she demanded her fiancee buy her a knew “3 and a half” karat ring after she misplaced it. Turns out she had left it on the floor and he had hidden it to teach her a lesson. I forget, was this before or after she told him she no longer had a job because she couldn’t work full time and plan a wedding at the same time?

Celinda was also no piece of cake, showing up 1 hour and 15 minutes late to her rehearsal and refusing to apologize to the officiant. Instead, she had a few glasses of champagne which helped her bumble through the night. It’s now surprise that she’s such a bitch when you consider the hissy fit her mother threw over having to serve herself at the buffet.

As these monstrous brides-to-be start to overlap in my mind, I forget which one it was who demanded her new husband take her home after she wasn’t getting enough attention when her nephew turned up missing.

Predictably, many couples who have been on shows like these quickly separate, divorce or find themselves in counseling to address problems that have long festered beneath the surface but what I think might be a better solution is a nice slap across the face, on their wedding day, on national TV.

I know I am not an easy person but I could never, ever be as horrendous as these people! And they’re on TV. I’m sure there’s editing and staging to make it look worse than it is, but I hope these women see themselves on the show and feel bad for their behaviour – I mean more than just a cringe; I hope it motivates them to call every single company and guest involved in the wedding and apologize.

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.