Mood:  suave

Froggy here (previously known as Flyboy)!

Today, Niki is cooking her awesome chicken wing recipe for our friend Radar.  He was going to have a party and he ordered a couple batches from us.  Of course, late last night, he wrote and told us that the plans had changed, the wings needed to be delivered 4 hours earlier and that there was no longer any party.  So Niki got up at 0630 and started cooking the wings.  That is about all that is going for today. Updates later.

Mood:  hungry

Hey there everyone!  Flyboy here! 

Ok. So I got the day off today for getting up at 0430 yesterday to work the City’s Marathon.  It is very nice to get some days off when we work on the weekend.  Sometimes I feel as if I work in a very thankless work environment.

For the past couple of months, I’ve practically been the only scheduler, and it had fallen upon my shoulders alone to take the task of keeping my office operational.  I will admit that I had gone in over my head, and I began to make mistakes.  I suppose that I had protected myself from repercussions with my integrity; I owned up to the mistakes I made and pointed out the things that were out of my control.  Finally, over the last several weeks, I made several suggestions to Leadership to hire some new schedulers and get new people trained up.  I am now the Scheduling Trainer, and am on the backburner to schedule.  In a way, I am glad to have the break, so I can refocus on managing my weight issues, but at the same time, I can hardly handle the idle time that happens on a daily basis.

Now, normally, when things start going like this, I would take some leave, get some R&R and come back to work somewhat refreshed.  But right now, of course, I am saving up my leave for a big, true vacation; our trip to Cali. I have some reservations, however, to the trip.  I suppose that I can’t help but be critical, I suppose that I can only handle so many of the troubles in Niki’s past.  I just get the thought that I need to vent all this out, because Niki is extremely stressed and struggles with a very deep depression and general distrust of everyone.

It bothers me to hear of all the manipulation and downright childishness that had occurred when Niki’s father passed away; his death occurred in a very vulnerable period in both Niki and Soldier’s lives.  This was a time when they needed a family to cling on to, but I feel that in all of the emotional distress that occurred in the aftermath of his passing, my wife and her brother were almost forgotten in the feud that waged on.  I can see that her dad was truly a gift to all of you, and the void that he left behind is a reminder of how much love he had for all of you.  The problem, however, is how divided the family became in his absence.  I can understand the frustration, the disappointment and the sadness that filled all of your hearts.  I can understand how you felt when Mississippi Mom moved on so quickly, but I can assure you that she too was grieving, and that is the path that she turned to; I feel that she had fallen into a deep denial that she is just beginning to recover from.  She has admitted to me that she regrets some of her decisions as she was blinded with pain.  On the other hand, I must say that the way that she (and my wife and her brother) was shunned away from all of you is a very unfortunate choice. Mississippi Mom was left with no one to lean on, and the choices she made were an attempt to find some comfort and peace in the absence of her family. I understand that you all felt betrayed, that you felt, “this is too soon”, but to turn it into a feud has created deep emotional scars in my wife; scars that I will end up spending the rest of my life trying to heal.

What saddens me the most is that the rift in the family continues even today.  While I can see that many of the negative feelings have faded, I sense that it still rages underneath the surface, a raging fire that burns all of your hearts.  This fire has consumed much of the family: it has divided where love should have conquered.  It breaks my heart.  What’s worse, I know that this rant of mine may not even begin to heal the wounds.  I know that this will also take the entirety of my life to repair, and I may also be isolating myself.  But I feel that I must take a stand: for the sake of my wife, for the sake of her brother, for the sake of everyone involved.  All this resentment without forgiveness is sin in its finest…

I don’t mean to be rude about all of this, I just want to make this family whole again.  I am really concerned about all of it; to have Niki partially dreading a trip home speaks much about her pain.  It says to me that things are dysfunctional, especially when she was raised in a Christian home.  The fact that a family has broken apart so badly tells me that Niki’s father was an especially great and loving man.  I can see this in Niki’s gentle determination to make things right in this world; in Soldier’s desire to protect the ones he loves; in Niki’s dad’s own writings and teachings about the bible and how we all should live as Christians.  They all speak to me, and tell me that this would not be the way he wanted things to be.  He lived a peaceful life, an example of who we should strive to be.  I think that he would tell us all that it is time to forgive each other, and remember how he lived, and love each other with the same passion that now burns in his children’s hearts.

I guess that I have ranted enough for one day… after all, I do have the day off! Lol…

Flyboy out.

Mood:  a-ok

Hey there everyone!  Flyboy here! 

Short post today... Niki was making dinner and cut her finger, a nice long and pretty painful cut, and I had to run to the store and grab some super glue to help seal the wound... it is just another thing that superglue is good for.  The wound is now securely shut and we shall be heading to the store later to get a more appropiate bandage.

Other things in my life are going rather smoothly; the rest of my squadron has returned from deployment and they are now on their R&R Compensation days... meaning that begining in February I get new leadership, get to schedule a lot of people for flights, etc.

So... Niki has moved to cutting the onion and asked me to get my gas mask so she doesn't cry from the onion...

 

"Onions are no match for me!!! Huah!" -Niki

Silly niki!

Hm... we think that we have solved the problem with our car. Our car has an anti-theft system called Pass-Lock.  Now, the Pass-Lock system operates by having a piece of silicon that detects whether a given key is the correct key that is placed in the ignition.  All is well during warm weather.  However, the silicon contracts during cold weather; which means that it cannot detect the key as well as it would.  It actually does not recognize the key as the same key!  Now, there is a procedure to reset the recognition for the key; however, it would be rather stupid to do it here, where we go up and down temperatures daily, so that procedure would be ineffective.  So, rather than having trouble with the system daily, I have discovered a rather simple way to bypass it all. The Pass-Lock system is activated by the remote lock.  So, we just need to manually lock the car, which does not activate Pass-Lock and therefore the silicon does not even check to see if the key is correct.  I tried out this theory by starting the car without warming the key or the ignition switch.  The car started the first time! (In 18 degree weather, I might add!)  Of course, I will continue to try out this theory and will update on the end results.  But so far so good!   

Ah well... everything here is pretty fine.  I think that should conclude today's post.

~Flyboy out. 

Mood:  accident prone

Hey there everybody!

Flyboy here with a short update on today's happenings.  Niki is in bed resting, not feeling all too well.  We had gone to the doctor and found out that she has Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which basically has disrupted her cycle of periods, among other things.  While it is a relief to finally know what is going on with her, it is also distressing because PCOS makes getting pregnant a little more difficult.  However, as I was quick to point out to Niki, that does not in any way mean that she is unable to bear children! It just means that her ovaries don't always produce an egg, and with no egg comes no 'spark'.

Other than that, we have recieved a cream to get rid of our itchiness, which I say has come almost a little late... itchiness is very annoying, I must say.  

Well, I must get back to my crew rest.  I told you that this was going to be short! 

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….

-------------------------------------------------

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.

Mood:  accident prone

Hey there everyone, Flyboy here!

It would appear that Cad is going to have me blog once a week… although I wish that I had a little more preparation time than just “Hey Flyboy, you should go blog.”.  Hmm…

So I am on the last day of a four day weekend.  This weekend has been great!  I won’t repeat all the details, as Cad has beaten me to the punch.  I had fun though, and that is what really matters.  Sure, after the 8^th thrift store, I was really sick of thrift store shopping, but I made sure that my time was properly compensated.  That is why we watched the movie “An American Carol”. 

Today, however, we have done pretty much nothing.  I made some Chinese for lunch. I am getting pretty good at frying chicken, I think. I still don’t like to fry chicken legs, since they take quite a long time, but I am mastering the art.  I have found just the right combination of spices, flour and cornstarch.  I have found that flour alone doesn’t quite do the trick, since it doesn’t stick to the chicken properly.  Cornstarch, a chef’s glue, does complete the formula.  Anyway, I take my special combination and dip the chicken in a mixture of eggs and milk, followed by the flour mixture.  I then fry to perfect, crunchy deliciousness.  The Chinese, unsurprisingly, was pretty darn good.

Cad and I followed lunch by sitting in the bed for about two hours going over the reasons why we don’t get the best sleep in the world.  It turns out that we begin by cuddling, but shortly after I fall asleep, I tend to turn in attempt to alleviate some of the pressure on my neck.  That leads to Cad moving to a more comfortable position.  Usually, this means that she has actually moved away from me, so I move closer to her.  She responds by pulling me really close to her. In which I immediately move into a more comfortable position.  She then finds a position which she finds comfortable for both of us.  Then, she decides she is too hot and throws the blanket off of both of us… I get cold, put the blanket on myself.  She gets cold, takes the blanket from me, where I pull myself extremely close to her.  She gets hot… lather, rinse, repeat.  So by the time the alarm goes off in the morning, we are both exhausted.  I would suppose that is why we tend to rest better when we get over 8 hours of sleep, because when we subtract the amount of time we spend trying to get comfortable, at 8 hours, we receive only about 6 hours of actual sleep.  I suppose tonight, I will try to head to bed earlier, to confirm my theory.  I’m sure Cad will post the results tomorrow.

I’ve been spending some time drawing a picture of one of my characters in the story I’m making… at the moment, she is doubling as Cad’s character for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that we are members of.  The most current draft of her is attached in following.

The character is not complete quite yet.  I am still going to add a background and add some lighting effects, but that is pretty close to the final product. 

Tomorrow, I go back to work again.  I work Thursday, and then I am on another four-day weekend.  I lucked out with the types of comp days I have been getting. I am getting a nice little mini vacation without taking any leave… I may just add some leave at the end of this month just for good measure.  I grow so weary of my work… it has been nothing but sitting around day in and day out for the past 8 months… there is only so much that a man can take before it gets monotonous, you know?  Sure, I get to fly every now and then, but the sitting around just twiddling my thumbs is aggravating.  After these mini-vacations, I can get back to my goal of losing another 20 pounds.  I have already gotten down to 220 pounds from 240 pounds, but I’m not stopping yet.  I admit that I took a little break from working out in September, but now that I have finished off my birthday cake, that vacation is over again.  It’s time to put the pedal to the medal, so to speak.  I didn’t do much (if any) damage to myself thru September, which I am glad about, and now I am looking back downwards in weight.  Cad and I have devised a nifty little workout plan that adds a little monetary compensation as motivation.  The rule is: if I want to go out to eat or get any cool things, I must use money that I earn for myself by working out.  Once a week, Cad will sit me down and count out how many push-ups, sit-ups and other various exercises and pay me according to how well I do.  I believe that the payout is somewhere like 10 cents a push-up and sit-up and the maximum payout for this program a month is up to $150 (that is what we can afford.)  I came up with this idea because of my bad habit of wanting to get fast food or candy… I figured that as long as I was working out to gain that money, I could get the treats and mitigate the damage. 

Hmm… mind drifting off into fantasy land… time to complete blog.

Flyboy, zooming his way into another day!

Mood:  mischievious

“Hey! Flyboy here! I just wanted to thank everyone for the cards and phone calls that I received for my birthday…they were most appreciated!  I have taken control over the computer for the time being… Cad is making me flash cards so I can study later. But at the moment, the computer is under my command… ha ha ha! (Insert a more maniacal and devious tone to my laughter, please.)

For those of you who haven’t had the chance to meet me yet, I should point out that I don’t like to be very serious unless there really is something serious happening.  There is a time and place in which to act serious; but, as I see it, those times are (and as should be) few and far between.  It is my philosophy that we should never be kept down by bad situations… if you only view the negative, that is all you will ever come to see. True, as I have found out, this philosophy may make me naïve at times, but I find that this outlook can really enhance a life. As a friend of mine once said, “Life is nothing without a smile.”

Hm… I seem to be babbling more than actually saying what happened today… Cad dropped me off at work, where I spent the morning trying to schedule flights.  I am afraid that I can’t be more specific.  I can’t have terrorists or anybody like that know what is going on with my job, you know? 

While I was at work, Cad worked on the aforementioned flash cards.  She is currently eating a salad and is preparing the ribs for my dinner. Those ribs were originally for consumption yesterday night, but, as Radar and I had wished to get some hot wings, Cad had no time to actually make ribs; especially since after Radar and I returned to work, we had to stay there till 1700 because some old guy had to get promoted. Blah.

This whole week, Cad and I are celebrating my birthday little by little.  Most of the festivities are planned over the upcoming four-day weekend that I have earned at work.  We are going to be driving down southward to have some Jack in the Box.  There is only two JB’s in the entire state, and one of them is four hours away. Bah. I am not sure about the rest of the time… Cad seems intent on surprising me.

In other news, I am enjoying our new apartments.  They really are so much more peaceful than the old ones.  I can’t tell you enough about how nervous it made me to walk down the stairs at my old place, in my uniform and coming face to face with exactly 20 gang members, with their pants hanging low and their pounding music. I was afraid that I was going to be shot!  Not to mention that there were several shootings right outside our window, and that when we moved in we found quite a few bullet holes patched up in the walls.  Hm… it didn’t take much logic to figure that we weren’t particularly safe in that neighborhood.  We considered living on base for a little bit (police have bigger, better guns!), but we decided against that.  Better financially to live where we are at. Now, the only riff-raff that comes along are the few that sneak into the gates after someone has entered.

The ribs are looking delicious!  We just checked on them and, well… yay me!

I am really looking forward to visiting California.  Cad has really spent a lot of time describing it to me, and it sounds like a really fun trip!  However, the only problem with the trip is the expensive price tag… it will take a lot of money.  Heading to Washington would also be nice, as well.  But, as things go, it will also be expensive (though not quite as much…).  It would appear that I need to work on getting a promotion.

Cad is playing Final Fantasy 8 at the moment now.  The aroma of barbequed ribs drift into my nose.  A sense of peace…

Well… my mind has exhausted all useful information… I doubt that anyone will want to hear my ranting on nonsense, so at this moment, I will bid adieu.