It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

So I'm back in Pensacola, on my friends couch, nice and comfortable in my pj's. But it hasn't always been this way. I came back to P'cola to cover for my old boss while she's out of town for 2 weeks. She bribed me to come back by paying for me to take a training seminar I really wanted to go to. I waited too long to get my plane tickets because I was waiting for the money to buy them. So I ended up driving, which was a bad idea. I think if I wrote a book about my life it would be titled "It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time." What should have taken 11 hours, took 14 hours, due to gridlock traffic in Lake Charles, Beaumont, and Baton Rouge. Then, somewhere in Alabama, 11ish hours in to the drive, which was also about 11ish at night, I got off the interstate looking for gas. I got off at a couple of different exits looking for a gas station where I felt even remotely comfortable getting out of my car. Somewhere in there I got turned around and drove back to Louisiana. Yeah, I was just as shocked as you. Then, with 5 hours of sleep I throw myself together to go to the seminar that I was so excited about and not even thinking about what the speed limit could possibly be, I obtain a $130 ticket. I was also half an hour late to my beloved seminar. And now wine.

The Texas State Aquarium

Today we went to the Aquarium!! Every weekend my bf has to switch his schedule between days and nights. So every weekend we're either trying to go to bed early and get up early, which cuts out on fun time, or trying to stay up late and sleep in, which is much easier and much more fun. So today we slept in, made breakfast, puttered around the house, ok, so I putter around the house, while he plays video games, and then got ourselves together and headed out the door. On the way to the aquarium, my bf decides he's starving and gets uber cranky. The parking lot at the aquarium was full, so we pulled around to a public parking lot, which was $5 that had to be paid in cash. I only had a ten and 2 ones. So we decided to break the 10 at a restaurant next door. We had decided to eat lunch at the aquarium, but at this point I just wanted to get some sort of food, any food in this man's stomach. So we went in to Pier 99 and it was perfect. It was overlooking the water and the USS Lexington, which is an aircraft carrier that has been made into a floating museum. We had huge burgers and cold beer and I had a much happier boyfriend at the end of it. On to the aquarium. It had all your typical aquarium stuff, lots of fish, some sharks, and reptiles, even a few birds. But it also had tons of sea turtles, and dolphins, and otters! It even had an alligator. The sea turtles were very interactive and would come check out all the people, and the dolphins had an underwater viewing area where they would swim by inches away from you. They had a few petting tanks, we only ventured our hands into one of them. The sting ray tank. I had a very flowy sleeve that kept brushing the water. My bf was holding my sleeve when I reached a little too far over the tank to try to reach the nearest sting ray and my whole sleeve and arm dunked in. I got all flustered and splashed everywhere and the sting ray got all flustered and kicked up sand everywhere. It was only a small mess. I only had one soaking wet limb. We decided to get memberships so we could come back for free and bring guests when our families came to visit. Afterwards we got ice cream and walked on the beach. It was a beautifully sunny day. Not too hot, not too windy. Perfect for walking on the beach with ice cream.

The Beach

Thursday was the first sunny day since I've been here. For being so far south, it is not sunny here in the winter. It is surprisingly overcast and foggy, whether it's cold outside or 86 degrees. So I thought I would run over to the beach, which is a hop, skip and a jump from my house. I had to drive around Padre and Mustang Island a bit to find a place where I could park my car on actual concrete and not on sand. Because you are allowed to drive on the beach here I guess they decided to save the money and not build parking lots. I, however do not trust my little Genesis in the sand, the first week we were here, we saw some teenagers attempting to dig out a little 4 door that was not going anywhere anytime soon. I finally found a place where I could park on the road, hopped out and realized how windy it was, and a bit chilly, and actually quite foggy. So I guess it's not quite beach weather yet. I keep panicking that we are going to miss our small window of nice weather while it's still bearable to be outside and not in the triple digits. It was oddly beautiful, despite the wind tumbling peoples lawn chairs and towels, and the garbage that litters all the beaches here. I want to take a trash bag with me every time I go. There seems to be a plastic bag or some indistinguishable piece of unnatural rubber every few feet, it's pretty bad. But despite all that, the grassy dunes are really quite amazing and the wind made row after row of crashing waves, amplifying the ocean sounds. The water here is a green, almost a greenish brown. It's very dull

, unlike the bright blue of Pensacola. I hear it's darker because it is west of the Mississippi, and the gulf currents bring the run off this direction. The sky was very dark too, almost black on one side, giving the whole scene a very artistically muted feeling. The fog was very heavy, making people walking only 50 feet away from me disappear along the beach. It was pretty cool.

Dinner, Dancing, And The Movies

On Friday we decided to go country western dancing. There was a free 2 step and line dance class at a local country western night club. Our friend that transferred here with us came too. It was a lot of fun and the guys were running into each other and me during the line dance. There were a couple of younger women our friend got to dance with during the 2 step. We’re trying to get him out more. The bf and I have not danced together in such a long time and we kept stepping on each others boots. Afterwards we went to a very chaotic Applebee’s, but our movie wasn’t starting for a couple of hours so we decided to just camp out and wait. I talked our friend into buying me a beer at the very busy bar in hopes he would strike up conversation with someone there, but he’s kinda shy, although I did get my beer. The movie we saw was Act of Valor. It was very intense, I don’t even think I ate my candy. I have never been in a theatre so quiet and my boyfriend has never gone to bed so quickly when we got home. I don’t think he slept much.

Finally Getting Out Of The House

My first trip out was to a running club I found online. It met at someone’s house, which is different from the breweries I was used to in Pensacola. It was a small group, and I think I was the youngest one there. The gentleman whose house we met at has ran all over the world and was even on a poster for a 100 mile run in France. The neighborhood we ran through was beautiful, full of gorgeous homes and expansive parks. Green parks full of trees. They invited me to their weekly after run dinner at Jason’s Deli. Yesterday morning I went to a Zumba class within walking distance from my apartment and realized how out of shape I am. And this morning I finally got to Yoga! It was on the other side of town, so it took all of 15 minutes to get there. Of course, I was still 5 minutes late, I couldn’t help it, it was 6:30am. But I was welcomed in and had an awesome class that was a mix of Iyengar and Baptiste, my two favorite styles of yoga. I think people in Texas might actually be the friendliest people I’ve ever met. Whether it was running, dancing, or yoga, people are more than happy to tell me all about everything there is to do here, from restaurants to job opportunities. It’s been really great getting out of the house, I look forward to meeting more people, making new friends, and seeing what our life here is going to be.

Almost Unpacked

So I've been pretty productive these last couple of weeks

I still spent most of my time at home, still unpacking and discovering we have 0 storage space. We decided to rent a washer and dryer because the ones on property are always taken and are ancient. But that took the only storage space we had in the apartment. We can't leave anything in either of the TWO walk in closets in the barracks at the base because of inspections. So I did a lot of organizing, spent more money than I would have liked on cute storage bins, shelves, and racks at target, and fit both big huge moving bins and oversized suitcase in our one closet with all of our stuff. Every time I thought, "look how great it all fits" my boyfriend would bring another box that was being stored at the barracks. I think my stuff is multiplying. We have shoe racks everywhere, even by the front door, which is bf's favorite place to leave his shoes. Everything is organized and stacked on top of everything else, but it all fits. I need to make it all fit. No one needs this much stuff.

Our First Navy Social Outing

Today one of the guys from my bf's work crew invited us out to lunch and a movie. We met at PF Chang's for lunch and there were 9 of us total. 2 other girls besides myself. One was a wife and the other a new date to one of the guys and local. Which could be really cool if they stay hanging out, because she knows where stuff is. Got to talk to everybody a lot during lunch and get all the first names, which I don't remember. First names is something we kinda started in Chicago, it just feels more personal and the guys seem to appreciate it. Learned where everyone is from and what they did before the Navy. There are always so many interesting backgrounds in the Navy, something I really like about it. The married couple is from the LA area, but she is originally from San Antonio, also cool, because she knows a lot about San Antonio, which is only about an hour and a half away. The guy who invited us is also from California, from Orange County, so I'll probably refer to him as OC since he seems to be the social ringleader of the group with quite an entertaining personality and will probably be appearing in here from time to time. He smuggled chocolate cake from the restaurant into the movie, and even brought a fork. His roommate is actually from Washington, like us, but I didn't get a chance to talk to him as much. I can't remember where the guy who brought the date was from but I do remember he worked construction before the Navy because him and my sailor have that in common. And of course, the only member of our previous Navy family who transferred here with us was there. He's from Annapolis, Maryland and I have yet to get a nickname for him, because Annapolis is kind of long and doesn't really work as a name. I'll have to work on that. Everyone else has been here for a while, at least 6 months, which is a long time in Navy time, or a year or two. We're kind of the new kids. At the end of the day OC invited us back to Kingsville, we're the only ones that live in Corpus. They were all going back to their place to hang out and play games. It almost sounded like our usual back in Pcola, they even had Catch Phrase. But, we opted to stay home. I like everybody, but I miss my old friends, it all feels so different. It's gonna take some getting used to, but it was a good start.