November Happenings

The final pic is of Dad's tomestone. I realize I'm ruining the pic with my shirt not tucked in. What a slob.

Thanksgiving Day 2009 Football game. Man, was it nice outside. The key players in this game are...Don, Tyler, Gavin, Stuart, Kaye and Nate, Ross, Norma and William, and Kyle and Amy. Nate made some spectacular plays and while doing so he got a really good shiner. People are going to think he got in a fight but honestly, it was just some football. He even scored a touchdown. While I didn't score any touchdowns I did get the ball a few times. For a girl, it wasn't a bad effort.

So many things have happened in the month of November it's hard to keep up. Here are my best efforts.
Nate and Don playing football in Utah. Hard to believe this is Utah the end of November. Short sleeve shirts. Who would have thought?

Nate was pretty excited to get snow at least one night. Sunday night we had a swirling vortex of snow. Man was the wind blowing hard. Of course no one else wanted to go outside in it so Nate had to entertain himself. He lasted about 5 minutes before he came inside and got his snow gear on. It was really cold.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention another milestone that was passed in November. My 34th birthday. My Mom came out to Louisiana to help me celebrate it. It was so nice to have her out here. She cooks, cleans, and basically spoils me rotten. I had forgotten how nice it is to have a guest who takes care of herself and ME.

Nate got me a cookbook. I haven't had time to try out any of the recipes but I will.

Australia and Thanksgiving

About a week ago, we flew down and participated in an exercise off the east coast of Australia. I never been to Australia or flown that far south of the equator. Weather was pretty good on the way down there, we just had to avoid a typhoon on the way back, no problem. The first picture is of the Northern coast of Papa New Guinea. Really not much on the island, in fact flying back we crossed it at night and there were only a handful of lights. Most of those were camp fires. The second picture is of Australia and the turquios looking thing in the water is part of the Great Barrier reef. I can say I have seen it, although at 28,000 feet it looks like stuff underwater. Anyway, from the most northern tip of Australia all the way down the east coast you can see the reef. Hopefully I can get a closer inspection of the reef some day. Airline tickets can't be that much right?

We also hosted a Thanksgiving dinner block party and invited all of those from home to it. We planned on 200 but only got just over 100. There were 15 or so Turkeys, 5 hams and all of the sides. Really it was some of the best food I have had here on the island. The chow hall has become known as the Hall of Disappointment, cause all you get is plate after plate of disappointment. I heard there were left overs but never got any. Although I have two trays of Jell-O salad that were hardly touched. Guess I know what I will be eating for snacks.

From a different prespective

About a week ago I got offered a chance to sign up for a KC-135 ride. Since my schedule was fairly light this week I signed up. It offered a different perspective of what A/R is really like. Usually, I am staring at the underside of the tanker and trying to keep connected to the boom, needless to say, its hard work. Today, it was all about sitting there and watching the whole thing.

After level-off I wandered up to the flight deck to see what was going on. You can see the "glass" cockpit, glass meaning computer generated flight instruments, definitely high tech.

The planes start out in "pre-contact" about 50 feet apart. The "contact" position is at about 12 feet of boom extension. Yep, you are close. You have a "window" or "envelope" that the boom can move freely around in before it will kick you off. On a -135 the window is not that big and it takes a lot of work to remain there. Day time refueling is a little easier as you can see the tanker the whole time, night on the other hand, all you see are rotating lights until you are about 100 feet behind them and then you can kind of see some of the references you use in the day time.

Weather today was a little on the bumpy side so the pilots had to work extra hard to get the gas. Not like pulling up to the Shell station and filling up the tank.

Not sure if you can make out the maroon thing on the glare shield, but the co-pilot went to Alabama. Guess that is alright, they are having a good season, although not as good as Texas! Hook'em Horns!

About the only thing I would have changed about today was my camera. It's a little dated and the focal length of the lens doesn't really accommodate some of what I thought were cool pictures.

Flintstone Housing

You may have been wondering what they provided for housing on Guam, or maybe you haven't. Either way here it is. We affectionately call them the Flintstone houses. As you can see they resemble the greatest cartoon family home ever.

So these pictures are kind of hard to tell what you're looking at. If you double click on them they will get bigger and if you look through the reflection of trees you can see the water in our backyard.

This one is the back of Nate's school. That fence is the playground. The other one with the sludge floating. That's what I have in my backyard. I'm taking it from the road so it's pretty high

So what do you do when a flood is coming? Pick everything up off the floor. This is what you then get to live in for an indefinite amount of time till you're given the all clear.