Back To Normal...

I'm back in the United States! 237 days ago, I was on deployment. I traveled to Greece, Turkey, Bahrain, Dubai, Oman and France. It was a tough one for a lot of reasons this time in consideration of my first deployment. I'll have to say, the best of it was because of my bride to be. Lor was always a phone call away. She emailed me on the regular. I couldn't imagine life with snail mail being the main point of communication.

Otherwise, life back home has been great! Great company with Lor. We literally picked up right where we left off. With the added addition to our family is her best friend Manda-Panda whom moved into the apartment while I was gone. I think the biggest change was having to adapt back to my normal life. 237 days of NOT having to feel rushed is alien. 

I mentioned a long while back how it's really difficult to write your Vows for your brides wedding. I'll go on record to say at this point planning a wedding is not only spendy, but also sometimes stressful. Example, just yesterday we bought the invites to the party. A couple days before, and it was like looking at a really tall hurtle. +sigh+

I'll say for the record weddings and wedding planning for nearly a few hours of life does take nearly a year to plan. Holly cow!

Side step on the wedding plans, Lor and I have been looking for apartments and houses for rent in Washington. At first, this was clearly just my responsibility. Till we all came to the understanding Internet at the speed of slow is miserable. Trying to figure out your future home isn't ideal on deployment. Just last night we had spent hours dedicated to a couple of website and outweighed the pros and cons. We made a few phone calls till we realized, "oh, yeah... It's a Sunday." But leaving a voice message is at least nice too. We're just at this point crossing our fingers.

A couple of days of work was well worth it for finally being able to just let my hair down and chill out for a while. I literally worked a total of three days in consideration of "work." However, I'll go on record to say one of them I pulled a double shift and slept in for one. I phoned in and asked if they need me. They said no and I was just doing normal house work till I realized I go on vacation the same day! FUCK YEAH!

The other day a friend of Manda-Panda and Lor's came over and we had dinner. Talking about just stuff and then it hit me their friend had NEVER seen a Rocky movie. This, I can not let stand. So I invited her over to the house and said, "I'll provide beer, popcorn, chips and the movies." Yes, I own all of the Rocky movies. The only problem I had at one moment or another was how I was going to figure out how to play the movies off my external. Apparently my XBox doesn't like the format of my external. Nor will the thing pop up. Well, thank you TV for having the HDMI cord. I'll just connect it to my computer and go it from there. LOL! Meanwhile, our friend Ash came over this morning and dropped off her dog Alex. So while I'm going to be watching Rocky in all his Rocky Epic-ness, I'll be dog sitting too. Sounds like fun!