Mood:  chatty

          When we last heard from our heroine, NikiRose, she was about to have her car taken to the dealer for an estimate due to a mysterious fluid found dripping from the drive shaft.  As it turns out, the fluid ended up being factory oil, and Saturn had released a memo referencing the said phenomena….

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Hey ya’ll! Flyboy here, giving this blog a much needed update.  Niki is under the weather again.  We have just returned from a visit to Mississippi Mom and she is having an allergic reaction to all the pet hair, dust and pollens that she is not used to.  So that leaves me with the task of updating a month’s worth of activities; which I happily take on.

I decided, of course (as logic dictates), to pick up the tale right where we left off.  With the car problem identified, we were able to have lunch with Radar and his girlfriend.  We went out and had a Vietnamese noodle dish called Pho’.  Now, the dish is basically noodles, beef, and beef broth, but Radar showed us that it was highly, highly customizable.  We were able to add things like green onions, basil, lemon or lime wedges, bean sprouts and cilantro.  It was tasty, though different.  We then travelled to the Asian market and browsed around there for a while before having something called Boba Tea.  It is a tea that comes in all sorts of different flavors, but it comes with nickel sized tapioca balls inside it.  It is very, very good, but a little different when a tapioca ball comes thru the straw and suddenly you are chewing on a sticky thing the consistency of caramel. Overall, we had a good time with Radar and girlfriend.

After that, I started to get ready for a TDY to Florida, and Niki was getting ready to make a solo trip to Mississippi to visit.  At the last minute, the TDY cancelled due to lack of funding and suddenly we had a planned trip to Mississippi that I could go to as well.  I quickly rushed to submit leave, where I discovered that they had completely changed the process again and I had my request rejected 3 times because I had no idea what I was doing, and prepared for an 8 hour journey. 

The trip itself was fun.  Mississippi Mom had gotten a new puppy.  The puppy is a chocolate lab mix and is adorable.  Unfortunately, the puppy was a stray that had somehow ended up getting its head bumped by a car, but there doesn’t appear to be any lasting effects of that.  Also, we found out that the dog has mange.  When we got to MM’s house, the puppy would just start uncontrollably scratching itself and start howling in pain since it couldn’t get the itch.  After 3 nights of this (and nearly a week for MM) we finally took the pup to the vet, who confirmed: we had found ourselves a mangy mutt. After we applied the gel to heal the mange, the pup ended up becoming a real puppy again. 

While we were at MM’s, we found that Niki’s brother is going to be deploying to the middle east in only a couple of weeks… which meant especially that he couldn’t actually come to MM’s for an early Thanksgiving (the whole reason we were there in the first place!).   Then, he gets a call from the doctors that they found some “abnormalities” in his blood.  MM tells us that they found low thyroid activity, which explains his inability to lose weight.  We have yet to hear from N’s brother, so we don’t know if he is still up for deployment.

We got home yesterday, slept, then we went shopping this morning.  The only detail of note is that we found a 20 pound turkey for 69 cents a pound… that was a $15 turkey! The commissary is full of so many great deals, it is just amazing.  We had shopped for MM while we were there and everything at Wal-Mart cost $4-10 more than the commissary… which really surprised us.  It just is amazing.

Meanwhile, I received a really awesome offer for a house from one of my buddies at work.  He is offering a newly refurbished house (2 bedroom) to Niki and I for only $53000, with no money down and he even offered to pay all of the closing fees! So we may be getting ourselves a house!  We still need to look over the place, of course, and fully investigate it for termites, foundation problems, and other things that would keep us looking elsewhere…

Next year we are looking at the possibility of making a trip out to California.  That all depends on the gas prices.  As it is right now, the trip looks like it may cost somewhere between $1000-300, as opposed to $4000-600 as we originally estimated.  Regardless of whether we make the trip or not, we are bringing one of Niki’s friends out here to visit: BluEyez.  Niki and B have been talking about it nonstop for several weeks now and they are both very excited… if we make the trip to Cali, we will end up driving back to OKC wit B, and even if we can’t make the trip (if gas prices go up over $2.75), we still will fly her out.  All this means that I will be getting another vacation, which is always a plus!

Well, this blog is winding down… we are going to be sending out Xmas gifts soon, so watch your mailboxes.  Hopefully, Niki will be feeling better soon…

Till next time!

~Flyboy out.