A Tropical Christmas Season

No pictures to share this week. I have been having some trouble with the SD card in my camera. Trouble, as in, my camera will not save pictures on it. I did go for a dive yesterday, a great easy dive near a tourist attraction where people go down with big bubble helmets on because they are not scuba divers. There were tons of fish!

I put up my Christmas tree today so that it will be up when Tom gets home next week. I discovered in doing so that I only brought my tree and the tree decorations and nothing else aside from some Christmas placemats. I suppose that in the rush of moving, it seemed silly to bring it all to Guam... Similarly, it appears that I also decided it was a better idea to store wrapping paper for two years rather than bring it to Guam. Honestly, I just do not want to see what comes out of that storage move when we get all of our stuff back. In any case, if you are wondering, Christmas in the tropics is just not Christmasy. This year should be better than the one I spend patroling outside Honolulu Harbor at least.

We had some difficult news this week. Tom's Grandmom is unwell and in the hospital. He is still underway, but has been able to talk to both his Mom and Grandmom, and she is doing better now. It is very hard to be many thousands of miles away when things like this happen, not to mention thousands of miles away and floating around the Pacific. She is in our thoughts and prayers, and ask my readers to keep her in theirs also.

I want to wish a very Happy First Birthday to one little Mister Robinson Meuse. I can not believe he is a year old already.

I will get some pictures up soon. I promise.

Oh, that Tommy...

I thought everyone would appreciate the following story, relayed to me this evening by Tom on the phone. The story will be particulary amusing to those of you who know his long history of losing wallets etc.

The ship is currently at a small atoll in the middle of the Pacific (I will not say which one, since I do not want to violate OPSEC, especially since Tom is the XO, and I can not even claim ignorance of such things). There is very little development except on the main island where the ship ties up. The locals live on neighboring islands and commute via ferry to work and shop for supplies on the main island. That should pretty much set the scene for you. I do realize that most people have not been to obscure atolls in the middle of the Pacific, and it is hard to picture if you have never been there, so here are pictures of two different atolls:




So, today, Tom went to the local "thrift shop" where they reportedly sell a variety of odd things. He bought several books for a fee ranging between $.25 and $1.00. As he returned to the ship, he realized that he had left his sunglasses on the counter, and turned around to go back. He returned to the store a few minutes later, and asked about his sunglasses. The two women at the counter seemed dismayed, and told him that they had just sold his sunglasses to a local woman on her way to the ferry. Now, Tom's sunglasses are prescription sunglasses, and were not exactly cheap. He informed the ladies of this, and they replied that the sold the glasses for $2.00, along with the very nice case he had them in for $1.00.

There is very little chance that the sunglasses will be returned since:
1. The woman does not live on the main island, and
2. The shop is only open when the volunteers work, and there are no posted or expected hours.

Tom's theory is that the woman stepped onto the ferry in the glaring late afternoon sun, pulled out her new sunglasses, put them on and decided that they made her head feel funny, so she threw them overboard.

So, that puts the thrift shop up $3.00 and us down $200.00 or so. C'est la vie.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I was in Hawaii this past week at another conference. I got back last night, Thanksgiving here. So, I spent my Thanksgiving crossing the International Dateline... However, my neighbors are celebrating Thanksgiving today because of some trouble which called for a hospital visit for their two year old yesterday, so I will be joining them for dinner later on today.

I had a nice time in Hawaii. I was there for four days, and spent the time I was not working revisiting some of my favorite places from when I lived there. The pictures are of Kailua beach (formerly known as Amy's beach) where I lived for two years and of the view of the Windward Side of Oahu from the Nu'uanu Pali Lookout. I had forgotten how breathtaking it really is there.





I wish I could be spending this holiday with family. I like Thanksgiving, because it is really all about being grateful for the people you love and being surrounded with family and friends. I have spent a lot of holidays away from family, some by choice and some not by choice. I was thinking today of all of my Thanksgivings since 1997. The first two (1998 and 1999), when I was on WIlLOW in RI, I took duty on the ship, so I could be sure of having Christmas off. My first Thanksgiving in Hawaii (2000), Tom flew out to visit me for the week.

Thanksgiving in 2001 was the first Holiday I spent with Tom's family. I flew in from Hawaii, we saw my family in PA for a few days, then went to NJ to have dinner at Tom's grandparents' house. Thanksgiving was their biggest holiday, Nanny and PopPop always threw a huge celebration for family and friends. It was not as big as when Tom was a kid, but the spirit was there. In 2002 and 2003 we drove from Seattle to Spokane to spend Thanksgiving with my brother Chris and his family.

Three years ago (2004) Tommy and I went on our honeymoon in New Hampshire for Thanksgiving. In 2005 we had Thanksgiving with just the two of us at our house in New London, Carla came over for dessert. That was a nice, but I think we both missed being with more family and would have liked to be able to host our families at our house. We decided that we would spend either Christmas or Thanksgiving each year without traveling to see family, to establish our own traditions. Last year, we spent Thanksgiving at my sister Jennifer's house in PA. We traveled to Italy over Christmas, so Thanksgiving was for family.

That brings me to 2007. Thanksgiving was yesterday (or today, depending on your orientation to the Date Line). Thanksgiving 2007 was in an airplane, with my husband somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, my families in PA , NJ (or traveling for the holiday actually, I think), Chicago and Spokane, our friends spread all over the country and my heart with each and every one of you.

I believe it is important in life to be grateful for what you have and not long for what you don't have; to be in the moment and not live in the past or future; to be appreciative for the blessings of one's life. So, on this Thanksgiving, when I am far away from everyone I love, I want to say that what I am grateful for is that I know and love so many beautiful people, even if I can not be with you. My life is rich with friendship and love, and for that I thank you all.

Happy Thanksgiving.
love,
Amy

Snorkeling

I went snorkeling today at the Tumon Bay Preserve. I got some pictures to share. It is surprisingly difficult to take pictures underwater! I talked to Tom this weekend, the ship was in Kwajelein finishing up buoy work, and now they are back out in the middle of the Pacific somewhere. He did some diving on WWII wrecks while in Kwaj, so hopefully he will have some pictures too when he gets home.


This is the beach in Tumon, looking towards Two Lover's Point.



What kind of fish is THAT???


A sea urchin, this one came out sort of blurry, but I still like it. This makes a good arguement for why not to walk on the reef, not only does walking kill the coral, you could end up with this in your foot!


There is a really bright purple and yellow fish hiding in the coral here. He was hard to get a picture of, must be camera shy...



This shot gives you an idea of all the fishies under the water.



This guy looks like a painted clown. He was also elusive, but I got this one shot that came out pretty well.



People must feed these little blue guys, because they swam right up to me.



An action shot of Sylvester... he loves to play!


I went diving yesterday, but we were too deep for my camera. Hope you all enjoy the picutres!

Some more pictures

Some pictures that I had not gotten around to posting. The waterfall pics are from our hike to Tarzan Falls.




...and one of sunset from the pool at our house.

Travel

You may be saying to yourself..."I did not know there are giant redwoods in Guam!". Well, there are not redwoods in Guam. I spent last week in Alameda, CA. I flew in on Monday morning, and did not have an obligation until Tuesday, so I drove to Big Basin State Forest. Absolutely beautiful. It is healing to my soul to be among such old trees, ancient really. Here is a picture of the base of the treen known as the Mother of the Forest. It is the oldest and largest tree in the Basin. The second one is of two trees that are grown together, there were a lot of those in the forest.



I am back home in Guam, ready for more Guamanian adventures. Hopefully I will get out hiking or snorkeling or diving this weekend, and I will get some more pictures up for everyone. Tom is still gone, he will not be home until the middle of December. I am going to start going to a yoga studio tomorrow night. My goal is to have some new friends when Tom gets home.

I will get more pictures of Sylvester and put them up too. Everyone loves pictures of cats!

Gone Again...

I am back. Following a whirlwind almost three week stay at home for Tommy complete with diving, the new cat and the end of my big work project which honestly usurped every waking hour of last week (and most hours of the week before), I should be back to a more regular posting schedule. As I type, Sylvester has his nose between my hands, trying to figure out what I am doing on the keyboard. He is a very curious cat.

Tom's ship left today for a seven week trip. He is due back mid-December. We had a fun weekend before he left. We went diving again and also visited some tourist spots and new places on Guam. Unfortunately, my new camera decided to take a vacation and turn itself off every time I tried to take a picture... very disappointing! Don't worry though, I will figure out what is wrong with it, and be back in full picture posting force soon.

You know, it is amazing how there seem to be so many more hours in my day when Tommy is gone. It does not make sense, I am not sure where the time goes when he is home, but I do know that it becomes much harder to get online every day, and to do a lot of little things I am in the habit of doing when he is gone.

Anyway, I will be traveling to Alameda, CA next week for an After Action Report writing conference following TopOff4. Sounds exiting, doesn't it? Well, it is exciting to me because it means that TopOff is over!!! Hurray!

That is all for now, I will be back soon. I should send some more pictures of Sylvester. He actually carries his toy around the house lobbying to be played with.

Diving and Waterfalls

First, my apologies for not keeping up more with the blog this past week. Tom and I spent every evening last week at dive classes from 6pm until around 9:30 or so. It kept us busy, but we are now officially certified open water divers. We had our four open water dives in class on Friday and Sunday. It was amazing! I did not take my camera because we were learning skills, but we are diving next Sunday, and I promise to take pictures.

In other exciting news, we got a cat. His name is Sylvester. He is about a year and a half old, and he is very sweet. He is also very vocal, but hopefully he will stop that once he gets accustomed to his new home. Here is a picture of Tom and Sylvester. As you can see, he is very cuddly in the morning, before we are ready to get up.


In addition to the diving, we also went on a short hike to Tarzan Falls. The trailhead is just up the road from our house. It was a beautiful waterfall, but the trail was very muddy and somewhat steep.



I have more photos of the hike, but this is running really slow right now, so I am going to post these, and come back to it tomorrow.