Kitty Cat Weekend!

We get our kitties tomorrow! I'm so excited, I can't stand it. I have never had my own pets, just the small zoo I grew up with in my parents' house, so it'll be interesting to do it on our own.

In other news, Brian's 2nd post-surgery appointment was today. The doctor thinks he's doing well and healing properly, so everything's great. His vision isn't as good as he wants it to be today, but it can take a couple weeks to become "perfect" so he's waiting patiently. Light doesn't bother him like it did a few days ago, and his eyes aren't hurting anymore, so that's all good news. And as of today, he's allowed to drive again. I don't think he liked having me as a chauffeur anyway. :)

Pictures

I'm a little lazy when it comes to putting pictures in easily accessible albums. I need to make a shutterfly account or something, but once I load my pictures once (onto Facebook), I never wanna do it again. So... click here for our Rome pictures.

In other news, it's day number 3 for Brian and his new eyes. He's still feeling a little pain, and things are blurry. He's wearing these contact lens bandages that the doctor is supposed to take off on Friday, and we both suspect that they are the cause of the blurriness and the pain. Surely all the eyedrops he is putting in his eyes has some effect on the clarity if the lenses, and anyone who wears contacts knows that wearing them for overnight for several days in a row isn't the most pleasant feeling in the world. So hopefully, he's healing up perfectly, and on Friday, he'll have perfect vision!

No More Glasses

Today, Brian went to the hospital for laser vision correction surgery. He got PRK this morning, and everything seems to have gone really well. After a total of 34 seconds worth of lasers on both eyes, he should be glasses free! Right now, he's wearing sunglasses in the house, and we're keeping the curtains closed and the lights off, but he's happy with it, I think. He has painkillers and eyedrops, and he doesn't seem to be hurting much; he's just irritated that he can only listen to the TV, and can't spend more than about 30 seconds looking at his computer screen before his eyes hurt too much. :) I got to stay home from work today (and tomorrow, too!) to play nurse, and he's a very good patient.

Here's the last photo ever taken of Brian wearing glasses:

Wir sind Zuhause

Translation: We are home.

Rome was wonderful!! It was so sunny and warm the entire week. We avoided sunburn, saw so many sights, and we are absolutely exhausted! I will post more pictures after I sort through them, but here's a quick pictorial recap of our week...

Tuesday - First, we saw the Colosseum:

Went inside:

Saw some old ruins (Roman Forum):

Walked to the Trevi Fountains:

People-watched on the Spanish Steps:
Had dinner and called it a night.


Wednesday - Found the Pantheon:

Saw a gladiator on a cell phone:

Went back to Trevi Fountain:

Walked to the Borghese Gallery, then got some free water in the park:

Took some time to relax our feet, then called it a night, early:

Thursday - Vatican City


Inside St. Peter's Basilica:

Vatican Museum:

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (no pictures allowed; blurriness is a direct result of sneakiness):

Then, we went to a planetarium:

Friday - We woke up way earlier than we wanted to, rode a train to the airport, rode a plane to Frankfurt (which had a little turbulence and was a bit exciting), and now we're resting. After vowing to not eat Italian food for a while (pasta is an almost-every-day meal for us), we decided to order a pizza, and we've just been relaxing in front of the TV. Vacations take a lot out of you!

We hope to take it easy this weekend, doing vacation laundry and resting our tired legs and blistered feet. Then, on Monday, Brian is having laser eye surgery. He could definitely use some rest before that. A pretty exciting July, I think. :)

Sunny days

We're packing today for Rome, and I just checked the forecast for the week. It's going to be BEAUTIFUL!! The highs all week are in the upper 80s, the lows in the upper 60s, and not a cloud in the sky. Lucky for me, I just bought 70SPF sunscreen! (Seriously. My friends joked that SPF that high actually soaks all the pre-existing color out of your skin.) I am so excited about this trip. Expect tons of pictures when we get back.

Oh, by the way, Brian and I are about to become pet-owners. We claimed two Maine Coon kittens a couple months ago, and we've just been waiting for them to be old enough to come home with us. We get periodic emails of their progress, and I couldn't resist posting the most recent pictures, now that they are 10 weeks old:


Only the orange one in the 2nd picture is ours. We are supposed to pick them up in 2 weeks. I think we're driving there the weekend of the 1st to get them! Yay for kitties!! :)

BeerFest!

Last weekend, I went to Munich to play with my brass quintet.
We were part of a public exhibition day that the Bundeswehr (the German Army) was having on that particular training post, to let civilians come in and see what the troops do in that community when they are training. We got to explore beforehand, and we saw various stations where there was mock first aid/bandaging going on, a weapons tent showing off all their big guns, and an obstacle course. There were food and beer tents (of course) and I got some lovely chocolate dipped fruit on a stick. :)

Here's a couple videos of us playing in the tent:




Brian and I are both on leave, as of this weekend, and we leave on Monday to go to Rome. It's the first time either of us have been to Italy, so we're both really excited. Luckily, I found my camera the other day. It had gone missing since I came back from Normandy last month.

Speaking of cameras, my friend Amy just sent me this picture from the 4th of July. We played a concert at the Heidelberg Schloss (castle), which is very cool, and she snapped a picture of Brian and I afterwards.

She also gave me this one, of me and the other Brian (her husband, and the horn player standing next to me) playing The Stars and Stripes Forever.
Tomorrow, we need to clean up a little (it drives me crazy to go out of town and come back to a not-so-clean house) and get packed so we can leave for Italy on Monday morning. Viva Italia!

Finally!

A lot has happened since my last post. First, pictures from my Spring Concert Tour...
I'm going to be lazy here; I took a bunch of pictures, from our trip to Albania, passing through Slovenia, driving through (and riding a ferry through) Montenegro, into Croatia, back through Austria and eventually back home to Germany. Instead of uploading them all, here's a couple of links that should work:
Album #1 and Album #2

This is the only proof I have that we drove through Slovenia (this, and my passport stamp):

Since that trip, I also had a great experience celebrating the week leading up to D-Day in Normandy, France. It was a very interesting trip. We slept on cots in huge tents with Soldiers/Sailors/Airmen/Marines from all over. It was mostly Army, and at least where we were staying, mostly paratroopers. Soldiers were flown in from Ft Campbell, KY and Ft Bragg, NC to represent the 101st Airborne and the 82nd Airborne for the week, as well as other airborne soldiers from Ft Benning, GA and other units throughout Europe. I've never seen that many maroon berets all in one place!

We spent the week playing ceremonies, honoring the American, French, British and Canadian soldiers who participated in the events on and around June 6, 1944. Being the 65th anniversary, there were some new monuments being revealed, so there was plenty of work for us to do that week. Here are some pictures of that week:
My friend Dave and I at Mont Saint-Michel:
Our horn section (me, Rebekah, and Lewis), actually looking happy, during a very looong rehearsal. (That's a French men's chorus beside/behind us. They sang the anthems of the US, France, Great Britain and Canada):
Lewis (in the above picture) bought a really cool vase that was crafted from an old shell casing. Of course, we all had to model with it:

On D-Day, we played at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. We had to get there very early, I assume for security reasons, so we had a lot of time to walk around and take pictures before the ceremony started. Omaha Beach is in the background:
My friend Dave and I couldn't resist walking through all these flags and looking really official.

Of course, about an hour after we did that, President Obama, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, Prince Charles and the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown all walked that same path. :)

Before the ceremony, we saw Tom Hanks, and he was very kind to pose with most of the band:


In the meantime, while I was going on all these trips, Brian was holding down the fort and getting us ready for a move. We have since moved into a new place on-post, and we're still kind of getting settled in. I should post pictures, but that will be another post.

I'll finish with my favorite picture from the whole Normandy trip. On our last day in France, we drove to La Fière and played marches while every paratrooper in attendance took part in a day-long jump. I met some really nice men who are part of a civilian jump team (most, if not all, of them are former military paratroopers) who regularly come out to Normandy for D-Day and participate in other events like this to show their support and also their pride in their paratrooper history. It looked like this every five minutes all day long:

Leaving again

I'm home from my latest work-related adventure to Albania, Croatia, and Austria (Slovenia got cancelled). Where are the pictures? Well, unfortuantely, I've had zero time for that.

I've been home for a week, which has consisted of meeting with the (current) landlords, getting our keys to our (new) place, packing/driving small carloads of stuff from one place to the other, waiting for the Army's contracted workers to come pick up our washer & dryer, and formulating a cleaning strategy to get this house emptied on Monday and ready for final inspection on Tuesday. We've been busy. And it gets better. I'm leaving in about 4 hours to go on an overnight trip to France with my brass quintet to play at an American WWII cemetary for Memorial Day. I'll only be gone for about 27 hours, but that's very valuable moving prep time.

I'll post pictures from all my trips once we get into the new place (and get internet), but for now, I should load more stuff into my car. Happy Memorial Day!

I'm outta here

My trip to Albania and Croatia begins at 4 am tomorrow. I have to be at work to board a bus bound for the airport, and off we go. I am charging my camera batteries as I type this, my purse is packed with in-flight entertainment, and hopefully I can get to sleep a little early tonight and get some rest. I won't be back until the 15th, so hopefully, my coworkers and I can get along for the next 12 days! I just hate being away from Brian that long. :(

I should be packing...

but of course, I'm not. I *hate* packing, so I always save it until the last moment, then it seems to take forever. And I always feel like I'm bringing too much stuff, but I usually have less luggage than other people do on these trips.

We're leaving on Monday for our spring concert tour, and our first stop is a 2-3 day drive away. So, we have drivers taking our busses out on Friday (it was less expensive to fly everyone else out there than pay for 2 more nights in hotels), and the rest of us aren't leaving until Monday morning. That makes it especially difficult to pack, since my horn will be my carry-on, and whatever I pack onto our bus tomorrow, I'll have to do without it for the next 4 days.

I guess I should stop watching Lost, and get started.

Felsenmeer

Today, we went out for a hike at a place called Felsenmeer. That's German for "sea of rocks," and it was pretty cool. It was recommended to me by a co-worker, and his description to me was "Park and start hiking up a mountain of boulders. It's great fun." He was so right. This is our first view of the boulders:
Looked innocent enough, and once I convinced Brian to start climbing, we realized what we were in for: And there's so much more you can't see. These pictures don't really do it justice. I can't believe we live so close to this and never knew about it. It's great exercise, and it was cool to see so many people climbing with us. Teenagers were climbing, older people were walking on the adjacent trail, parents were coaxing and helping/carrying their children up the rocks. Very cool.

Here's the husband, taking a much needed break about halfway through our climb:


It was a nice day, and there were some nice views as we climbed. I thought Brian was capturing the view behind me and down the hill, but of course, he also got me, catching my breath. :)
We climbed for about an hour, but since we foolishly left our water in the car (we had forgotten to bring a backpack, and even having my tiny camera bag dangling from my neck was annoying), we thought we should turn back before we got too exhausted and too dehydrated. Here we are, just before turning around, celebrating our fun day out in the sun:
Then, of course, I followed the Happy Hiker back down to the car, this time using the trail. Something tells me "climbing" those rocks downhill would be much less enjoyable. It was great, and Brian's already asking me if we can go back tomorrow. :)

Please don't take him just because you can...

Not a lot of excitement around here lately. I have officially moved to my new unit, which is exciting. I've been playing with them since January, and that's the unit that sent me on the fabulous tour to Georgia and Azerbaijan, but now I'm really all theirs. Nothing new and crazy yet; I'm still wandering around trying to remember who works in which office, while finding out which area needs any info/records/paperwork from me.
In non-work news, I am learning guitar. :-) I've wanted to for a while, but never had one to really get my hands on, so of course, I never got anywhere. Brian's step-dad Paul (who, rumor has it, is quite the guitarist; maybe he can give me tips someday) mailed us one of his guitars last year, and it has remained mostly untouched. It hurt my fingers, so I quickly gave up, turning to mandolin last fall when I got one for my birthday. (I still can only play Ode to Joy and Jingle Bells on my mando, and I haven't even started to learn any chords.) Something made me decide to pick up the guitar a couple weeks ago, and I think I'm off to a good start. I committed to playing even when my fingers hurt, just because I knew it was necessary, and I don't think I've ever been so happy about calluses in my life! I mostly just noodle around with some chords (I only know about 6), but yesterday I learned my first song, and I performed it for Brian today. I am happy to say I can absolutely rock at "Jolene" by Dolly Parton. It doesn't quite sound like this, but it's getting there:

Long weekend

Brian has a non-traditional schedule at his work, consisting of various combinations of working 2 or 3 days, followed by being off for 2 or 3 days. It's plotted out very regularly, and the end result is that every other weekend is a 3day weekend. However, that means the weekends in between, he's working. Combine that with the fact that every 4 weeks, he alternates between day and night shift, and it's not fun. For me, anyways; Brian doesn't seem to mind working night shift, especially on the weekends, when it's much less busy. So, this weekend is a "work nights" weekend, it's just after 8pm, and I'm already bored. :-(

Springtime

Well, I officially believe it's springtime here in Germany. The weather got warm a while back, only to return to miserable and gloomy shortly after, but the recent weather pleasantries make me think that spring is here to stay. And it should be, it's April, after all! For anyone who hasn't lived in Germany, you must take into account that we are along the same latitude lines as the upper US/southern Canada. Warm weather doesn't hit us like it did the summer I spent in Ft. Jackson, SC (why did I ever think basic training in Jul-Aug was a good idea?).
Germans are, in general, very active and outdoorsy. All year round, you meet bicycle traffic on the roads (and this is by no means a big city I'm living in), and there are parks and trails all over the place. So, especially now that the weather is cooperative, more and more people are getting out their bikes, rollerblades (yes! Germans LOVE in-line skates! They're *everywhere*), children, and dogs, and making me feel soooo lazy! For someone who grew up in a somewhat rural area, the idea of walking down the street for groceries is unheard of, or knowing that I can just walk a few blocks to get on a train, which will take me to the city so I don't have to stress about parking is amazing! We will be moving in a little over a month, and I hope that once we are closer to all the things we use on a regular basis (we live off-post now, which is wonderful, but we do most of our grocery shopping on post at the commissary, like to buy odds and ends at the PX, see most of our movies at the on-post theater, etc.), we will count on our cars a little less and walk to a few more places, or at the very least, go downtown a little more and use public transportation. Now all the things that have been a half hour drive away will be practically in our backyard (and we'll have a yard! Even if we share it with everyone else in our building, it's better than the shady, concrete square we have right now.), including a gym. :)
The sunshine is making me feel like I need to get out of my wintry-hibernation-lazy mode. And now I'm just antsy to move into our new place!

Now the Azerbaijan pictures...

From Tbilisi, Georgia, we hopped on a tiny plane and made the hour-ish journey to Baku, Azerbaijan. Very different place. Baku is an enormous city, and walking down the streets felt just like being in any other big city anywhere in the world.
Our view of the Maiden Tower (notice the people on top; I climbed it later) from the restaurant where we had our first Azeri meal:

Our first performance was at a school for kids. We played a little, and between each piece, we talked to the students and told them a little about what we do, and gave them an introduction to our instruments, and then we gave them the chance to ask a few questions. They were very interested and had tons of questions.
Trying to teach the kiddies that horn is the best instrument in the world:

Afterwards, the kids wanted to pose for pictures. They even asked for autographs! (Yes, a lot of them, although elementary/middle school age, were as tall as/taller than me! And I'm wearing boots with heels!)
The 2nd half of that day took us to an Orphanage. That was the best gig we had the whole trip, in my opinion. We were met by a band made up of the kids who live there, and as we walked in, they played "In the Mood." They gave us a concert before we shared our music with them, and they were fantastic! Every now and then, they'd play an American march, like "Stars and Stripes Forever" and we always responded with wild applause. :) We were honestly amazed at the talent those kids had, and especially impressed with the director of the group. We were told that they have music teachers who come in and work with the kids sometimes (can't be much more than volunteer wages) and they don't even have funding to buy music. Everything they played was hand-written, based off of what someone had heard from a recording and tried to write down.
This is the horn teacher, myself, the band director, and one of our trumpet players, Dave, with some of the kids in the background:
After a long day, our wonderful interpreter, Samir, took us out to dinner so we could hear some live music.
And of course, we had the after-dinner visit to a hookah bar! (Don't worry, Mom, it was just flavoured tobacco!) ;) It was actually a really nice place; we had our own private room with tons of cushions and music and a waiter (?) who came in periodically to check on us, bring us tea and fruit, and check on the coals for us.
Our last day found us playing at one more school, this time for university-age students. We did our standard routine, where in between every piece, we say who we are and a little about ourselves, introduce the next piece, and play again. A lot of the students came up afterward for pictures/questions, or, if they were women, just to chat with our only single guy in the group :).
Here I am, explaining again, that yes, horn is the most awesome instrument in this group:
The remainder of the day was left for doing lots of sightseeing. Samir is very proud of his city, and if we'd had more time, he probably would have shown us everything! In only a few hours, he took us to lunch, for a ride on their subway system, on a ferris wheel ride, out for baklava, souvenir rug (flying carpet!) shopping, and up the Maiden Tower!
Lunch with Samir:
We trekked up the brutal, spiral stairs inside the Maiden Tower to see the view of the city on one side, and the Caspian Sea on the other. It was beautiful!
That evening we played a concert at the Baku Conservatory. Sorry, Mom, that's the best picture I have so far of me performing in my mess dress uniform.)
Following our performance on the first half of that concert, the woodwinds played the second half, while we walked down the road to perform at a jazz club. The only picture I've seen of that performance was in somebody's blog.

Overall, a wonderful trip! This job is incredible; I get to play my horn, get paid to do it, and go on cool trips for free! Just when I was starting to doubt this Army thing, I think I may have made the right choice! :)