One day weekend

WARNING: Very lengthy venting ahead...

I've been feeling a little stressed this past week, which is a little unusual for me. Brian might tell you otherwise, but I don't think I get all that worked up about things on a regular basis.

The week started (on Wednesday, due to our 4 day weekend; thanks Army!) with a mock promotion board. I am set to go to a board next week to determine whether I should be promoted or not, and my unit does a very good job of coordinating a practice board to see who's ready, and what you need to continue to prepare for the real thing. So, that means that I spent my 4 day weekend studying, shining shoes, measuring and putting all sorts of pins and ribbons on my uniform, and worrying. The board went well, and that afternoon was completely taken up with a somewhat unorganized rehearsal, which has unfortunately become somewhat of the norm around here. Music was passed out to us as rehearsal was going, so nothing was prepared, everyone was trying to decide who was playing what, etc. It took a lot longer than it should have, and I'm not sure that in the end, it was any better than when we started. The commander is especially stressed about this gig, because we are involved in some sort of hoopla celebration next week to say goodbye to our deputy commander. By the time I got home, I was mentally exhausted, so it was a good thing that I had already decided to give myself a day off from studying.

Thursday, I got picked to go to some sensing session where the current state of our unit's sexual harrassment/sexual assault training was discussed with women from other units throughout the community. That wasn't bad, except for how misinformed we were, and that we went to 3 different buildings before we actually made it to the right place. Not to mention, the women leading this discussion were a half hour late, mostly due to them receiving the same wrong information, and not knowing where to find us. After a shortened lunch, the afternoon was filled with a *very* unorganized rehearsal, this time for a gig we have on Sunday. Nobody likes sitting around and wasting time, especially when you are in the midst of a rehearsal, when it's impossible to leave and do the things that you know you need to do, but can't, because you're waiting for whoever's in charge to figure out what's going on. Very disappointing. Due to all the wasted time, I made it to our admin office after 4pm (I was supposed to see someone in there about my promotion packet), where I was informed that he was missing some things, one of those things being something that I have to get from another office on post. That wouldn't be a problem, if I wasn't going to be out of town for one gig on Friday, and gone for another one on Monday, somehow getting the stuff he needs prior to the 8:30am board on Tuesday. Ugh.

Friday comes, I go to work at 5 in the morning, so we can ride a bus for 4 hours to get to a ceremony, play said ceremony, eat lunch (during lunch, a fire alarm went off in the food court and we all had to leave), and spend the next 4 hours on the bus to come home. Those are the easy gigs, but spending 11 hours away, when I have things I needed to take care of, is annoying. Not to mention, I got put on that gig at the last minute to replace someone who had to go to a different rehearsal. For the record, that rehearsal didn't actually happen, so she just got out of it for no reason. Thankfully, Brian went to the education center to get a memo for me (one of the things our admin office needed) while I was gone all day. Unfortunately, they had no idea what he was talking about, so he left empty-handed.

Today's Saturday, my one day weekend. Today I must study, pack for a trip tomorrow, and iron my uniform for Tuesday. I leave in the morning (this time at 5:45) for a day's worth of playing, somewhere in France, and we begin our return trip on Monday, with an expected return time of late afternoon. This trip requires a dress uniform, which means I have to prepare a second one, so that I don't run the risk of dirtying/wrinkling the uniform I'll need to wear on Tuesday for the board. Following Tuesday's board, we have more rehearsal time scheduled for the Wednesday/Thursday deputy commander extravaganza, and it will all finally be over Thursday evening, when our 4-day Labor Day weekend begins! Then I can relax. After I finish cleaning up the house for our visitors. :)

Kitties!

I realized today that I haven't posted any pictures of our little gentlemen since we brought them home. We picked them up 3 weeks ago today, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite pictures so far. :)

Their look of confusion and uncertainty on the ride home:


Exploring the new furniture:


Lazy boy:


Somebody loves the camera:

Isn't he lovely?:


Darwin likes the tank:


But Clevenger prefers the airplane:


This wasn't an action shot; he really sleeps on his back like that. :)


And finally, a picture of Brian's hand, after losing his first fight with Clevenger:

I'm a Recording Star!

I'm not, really, but I spent this past week in a recording studio with my unit, making a Christmas CD. We did some band stuff, the chorus is recording, the dixie band, the jazz band, and a small brass group are all contributing, and I think it's going to be nice. Here are a few pics of our brass group recording Joy to The World (I'm the only girl, besides the conductor) :)



In other news, our kitties are *loving* their new home, and we can't get enough of them. They are very lovey-dovey (especially Darwin), and of course, playful. It's been a little too hot to play much this week, though. Unfortunately, this week, according to the news, has been the hottest it has been in Germany since 2003. Having not lived in Germany in 2003, that means nothing to me, but apparently, that was an incredible heat wave, and people here aren't really used to the kinds of temperatures we are having right now. So, the kitties have started a play-strike, and they spend most of the daytime hours laying on the cold(-ish) kitchen floor, sometimes playing with ice cubes.

Unfortunately for me, and the rest of my unit, we had a ceremony today that, for some stupid Army reason that will never make sense to me, was changed from 10am to 2pm. That's right, at the absolute hottest part of the afternoon, some General insisted on having all of his soldiers stand a parade rest in the sun for an hour while listening to speeches that nobody there cared about. That's what I call "Soldiers taking care of Soldiers."

Anyway, now I'm going to put the hot laptop away, so I can lie on the couch with the fan aimed right at my face, and try not to pass out from heat exhaustion. :) Why, oh why, don't Germans believe in air conditioning?

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. :)