Aloha

Well, in case you're wondering, I'm currently sitting in the USO at BWI (Baltimore-Washington International). The flight from Offut fell through when I called to confirm the flight for the next day. I was informed that the past three flights to Andrews didn't accept any passengers, and if they did this time, I would be allowed only thirty pounds and one bag- no carry-on. Umm...I think my suitcase weighs thirty pounds when it's empty. So I went to plan B. Which was to break down in tears because I didn't really have a plan B. I got over it pretty quick and immediately got online to see what else was going to Ramstein. Which led me to BWI, so Mom quick called the travel agent (who got us a better deal than Priceline.com, thank you!). I booked a flight for the next day, and there's a flight leaving for Ramstein this evening, so everything is working out better than I could have expected! When I got to Baltimore last night everything was already shut down, which was surprising considering this is a large airport. I had no idea where to stay the night, but they had a big board full of nearby hotels and a toll free phone to check vacancies, so I did that for a while with no luck. I was taking a break to call the off-duty number at the AMC (Air Mobility Command) terminal to check flight statuses when I spotted somebody with a rifle case and a toughbox on a cart. I quickly hung up the payphone and stalked him to his airport shuttle (I figured he had to be staying somewhere). The guy kept turning around just in time to see me dart behind the nearest pole or trash can. Finally he stopped his cart and demanded to know why I was following him. Okay, that didn't really happen, but I did ask him where he was staying and if they had a shuttle, so he let me tag along to the HILTON (all along I was thinking I can't afford this, but I also can't afford to not shower before an overseas flight).

They didn't have any vacancies at the Hilton, but there were several hotels in the neighborhood (You know, like Sheraton, Marriott, other places I can't afford...where's the Super 8 in Baltimore??). I walked across the parking lot to aloft (no capital A!) and was greeted by a cheerful Aloha! I booked the room and yes, it is the most expensive hotel room I've ever paid for to-date. For any City People reading this, pardon my country-girl wonder at fancy, big-city hotels... because yes, I took pictures, and yes, I'm even going to post them on my blog.

Fancy lobby at aloft

More fancy lobby/bar area

Fancy room with cow hair on the wall...

She asked me if a King-size bed was okay, and I said sure. Now, why would you ask that and then give me two beds?? Not that it matters....

Fancy room with flat-screen tv on the wall. And a cordless phone. I can't decide if I'm really that impressed, or they tricked me with bright colors and cow hair on the wall.

Fancy bathroom with....I don't know...bowl sink? big clear shower doors? Eh. I think I'm just upset because I can't see the tv while I put on my makeup. Oh, and the big curtain is the closet, with the coffeepot next to it, and the safe/microwave underneath.

After I put my suitcase in my room, I wandered back downstairs to find some dinner because all I had for lunch was two packets of peanuts (FYI, Delta: 2 packages of dry-roasted peanuts does not make up for the fact that you're giving us dry-roasted peanuts. Where's the pretzels?). I asked the front desk where to go find some food and she said there was a restaurant at the Hilton next door. I wandered over and ordered a beer and some cheese sticks because that's all I could afford on the menu (seafood lasagna for thirty dollars, anyone?). I sat and waited...and waited...and finally my waitress came and said, "They didn't bring you your drink yet?". Well, yeah, they did, I drank it really fast and put the bottle in my purse. Duh. So I waited some more and then a little more, and then I looked around and when my waitress wasn't looking I ran out the front door.

So there I was back at aloft (no capital A), and I decided to ask for the delivery menus. The front desk lady, Tina (with a smiley face :), told me the bartender had them. The bartender, Raymond, is a TV star. I should've gotten my picture with him. He's on Guiding Light, All My Children, and Nike commercials! So anyway, I was staring at Raymond and trying to read the pizza menu osmotically when the guy next to me asked if he could order something at the same time. I said, sure, why not! Then another guy sat on my other side and announced he was STARVING. I told him we were about to make a delivery order and he jumped on board. Right about then Raymond must have started to get uncomfortable with my ogling and suggested (much too strongly if you ask me) that we could take the shuttle to Ruby Tuesdays. So me and my two new friends called the shuttle and went to Ruby Tuesdays. Raymond said he couldn't come. I think he just wouldn't.

Once we got to Ruby's my friends and I started chatting over California Quesadillas (my first time eating avocado in a food, ever- and I liked it!) and started to get to know each other. Chris is a father of two college students who works in the automotive paint industry in Detroit. His wife is a nurse in oncology, they both were born and raised in England, and only moved to America nine years ago. Dan is a transporter of frozen biological research, like from hospitals to the CDC, etc. He lives 3 blocks from the beach in L.A. We chatted and ate and had a great time, and Chris (whose flight had gotten cancelled) bought all of our dinners and would not take no for an answer! He said his night would have been crap without our good company. Only he said it in a very deep accent and there may have also been a reference to Rugby in there. Isn't that nice?

Anyway, we got to talking about our hotel. aloft. Do you call it The Aloft? As in, I'm staying at The Hilton, or The Aloft? That sounds stupid. Or you can say I'm staying at Aloft. We decided that didn't sound much better. We thought they should have just named it Loft. Then you can say I'm staying at The Loft. Doesn't that have a nice ring to it? Although I guess the front desk would have to say "The-loha" when you come in, instead of "A-loha." Hmmm...

Speaking of the front desk, when we came in from Ruby Tuesdays, there was a tall, ditzy looking blonde standing by Raymond. We heard her ask, "Ummm....is the front desk, like, on break or something?" Raymond told her they would be right back. She said, "Well, I have a huge problem. I need to move rooms. There was a cockroach on my face."

Wow. That is a big problem.

We laughed at her expense for a very long time. Not in front of her of course. We think it was probably just her hair tickling her nose. We were chatting with Tina the Front Desk Lady about it, and she told us plenty of other stories about how people would call down and ask if it cost money to use the TV remote. Umm..yeah. Two dollars for every button you push.

Last week she had someone call down and say the microwave wasn't working. Tina was quite confused because there are no microwaves in the rooms. Turns out, he was using the safe to warm up his tea. In his defense, the safe is built into the wall right beneath the coffee maker, and it does have large buttons... People.

So anyway, that's where I'm at up to now. I have several hours of waiting ahead of me, but the USO here is very nice. They have a luggage room so you can leave your bag here all day while you wander around. There's also a sleeping room, a tv room, and free internet, so I should be good to go. Plus I got to spend last night in a fancy hotel, where it doesn't even cost anything to use the remote control. :-)

Next time you hear from me, I should be back in Germany!

Dog Days of Summer

I tell ya, it's pretty rough to be a dog around here.

You have to drive around all afternoon with your head out the window....

Then you're forced to putter around the pond in a paddle boat....

Sometimes you get left behind...

But at least there's always someone to haul you on board.

Maybe life isn't so bad after all....

I suppose a dog could do worse.

Little Red Buttons (Written by Ted)

My mom's been saying for years that I would get us blown up by pushing buttons. Today I thought I'd proven her right.

So there I was inside the cab of a humvee. We had just gotten this one from another FOB, and it had some equipment on it we'd never used before. Mostly counter-IED stuff, electronic doo-dads. Most of them had been disabled or removed before we got it. But there was this curious looking control box sitting up front.

My supply sergeant was picking at it, and asked me for my multi-tool. The control box had two red buttons on it, both of which were tied down with wire. There was a green light on the box that was lit up, says "AFES ON". I have no idea what AFES is, but thats okay. We were thinking that whatever AFES was, it might drain the batteries. Thought it might be a counter IED device of some kind. "CREW" is the acronym for these devices. CREW devices on? That has to be draining the batteries. I didn't bother to read any further.

So, i cut the wire off the buttons. I flipped the red button up, and hit the switch underneath.

Bad idea.

What happened next is a bit of a blur. Turns out AFES is some kind of system that puts out a fire in the vehicle. And this case, CREW means it puts out a fire in the crew compartment. Explosively.

As soon as I hit the switch, I thought the freaking humvee exploded. It damn near knocked me down, and my ear was ringing like nothing I've ever experienced. First thing I did was feel if my right eye was still there. Because for a second I thought it wasn't. For a good 30 seconds, I was pretty much in shock. After I went and washed the dust and powder off my face, I came back to check things out.

Meanwhile, SGT Cooper (the supply guy) is in a state of total panic. Our maintenance guy assumed that it was a battery in the humvee that exploded. He came running out of his offfice yelling "LITHIUM!", thinking it was a lithium battery. This sends SGT Cooper into an even deeper panic. He goes running for one of our trailblazers, and tears out of the motorpool to the clinic.

He told them a battery exploded on him, and they made him take a shower. If he'd waitied another 5 minutes, he would have realized that it wasn't that serious.

But for a second, I was pretty sure that pushing the little red button had caused my own death. Or at least blindness.

Just thought I'd share.

Photo Entry

Look at this. You probably thought I would never post another entry. I had some very unhappy readers, come to find out. So....maybe I'll give it another shot. Spread the word, as I'm sure lots of people gave up checking the site!

As everyone knows by now, I'm back in Iowa (though not for much longer). I thought I would make this a photo journal, so to speak, of what I've been up to. A lot of you have seen these on Facebook already..... you'll just have to wait for the next entry to see new stuff. At the rate I've been going, that'll be....September 20th.

My trip started at Ramstein Airforce Base. I decided since I had the time, I would take a military hop home and save some money. It turns out every flight leaving for the states got pushed back or canceled. For quite some time. The USO was filled with the same people every day, starting at 2:45 a.m. and leaving at 11 p.m. You just never know when a flight might come in that has seats available, so nobody really leaves the terminal until they have to! Our lucky break finally came, and there was a flight leaving to Maryland. All the active duty soldiers got on that one, so instead of waiting in line to see if I would get a seat, I hopped over to the next line, which was a flight leaving for Dover, Delaware. I got right in, and it turned out we left before all those people who wanted to go to Maryland. The only catch was that we had to stop in England for the night. Aw, shucks! An hour later we were in Mildenhall, U.K. The weather was gorgeous and nobody minded the one-night layover. The next morning I climbed up into a cargo plane for the ride across the ocean. I sat next to my forgetful friend, who was an 86 year old retired flight surgeon. He had lots of stories to share, including The Plan of Salvation that he intricately drew on the back of my box lunch. That took up about 2 hours of the flight, and after about 75 minutes I finally realized we weren't discussing Greek mythology, but Mormonism. Oops.

We got to Dover in the afternoon, and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do next. I had priced tickets from the Philadelphia airport (an hour away) and thought I could get something to DSM for about $200 bucks, so I was going to try and make my way that direction. My new friend Bjarne saved the day when he saw me standing in the customs line with a puzzled look on my face. It turns out he had a cargo van there at Dover that he was driving back to Minnesota, and offered to drop me off in Coralville, Iowa. So I hopped in the back along with another couple that we dropped off in Ohio. I was treated to a seafood dinner somewhere along the way (Maryland?), and slept for most of the rest of the way to Iowa. It was a very nice gesture on Barney's part, and we still keep in touch through Facebook.

Barney and his Van

The next part of the story is just in pictures. Enjoy!

Sam & Tex

My fat boy, Grover

Matt, Kara, Me, Liz, & Ross at Liz's Graduation Party

Sam

Summer

Liz & Fred at a show on Memorial Day

After the Storm

Sweet Cori

Here's one from Ted:

Red Air

Okay. That oughta do it for now! Maybe I'll write a story or two later. One step at a time! ;)

Hello, family. I'm back.

First of all, I'd like to say thanks for all the packages and letters I picked up from the post office today! I had to check the calendar and make sure it wasn't my birthday....

My Army course went well. I came out in one piece and did everything I was supposed to do. Mother Nature was kind enough to send snow and plummeting temperatures for those two weeks. And for those of you who worried I wouldn't make it off the land navigation course in three days, let alone three hours: I made it just fine. Granted it was probably the easiest land nav course in military history.... but that aside, I am confident that given a map and a compass, I can find North and walk in that general direction. And that aside... Lets be realistic. I won't be doing anything crazy, like leaving my GPS at home. They invent modern conveniences and market them to people just like me for a reason.

After today, Mother Nature and I are on good terms once again. I ran outside in SHORTS for the first time this year. I could've kept running all day (if I wasn't so out of shape). Only one person was blinded by the glare of my white legs, so I consider the excursion a success, overall. The thermometer says it is currently 61 degrees. I've been watching it like a hawk all day. At one point it said 82, and even though it was a false reading, my heart did a happy little flip-flop. I think you'll all agree with me that it has been a LONG winter. I just hope it's really over.

Today was also the day I had to start the four-wheeler so it still runs when Ted gets back. Okay, easy enough. Luckily for me, with the choke open it started right up and stayed running when I closed it. Since everything was going so well, I thought I should just take it for a spin. I kid you not, people lined up on the side of the street to laugh at me. Apparently I don't really know where the gears are. I made it back to the garage in one piece, and went upstairs to put my helmet away. I went back down to close up the garage, and somewhere in that short period of time, I lost the key to the quad. I would say don't tell Ted, but he reads this, too. I'm sure it'll turn up, but honestly- I'm starting to wonder about my current state of mind.

I was frantically searching the garage for that stupid key when Karl decided to make amends for yelling at me the last time we spoke. He's still creepy, but I had a normal conversation with him. For the first time. Ever.
I called it a conversation, but really there was no dialogue. I think I make him nervous, because once he opened his mouth it was like he's been waiting to talk to me for the last 15 months and finally got it out. Now I know his son goes to school in Weiden one day a week, is a mechanic the rest of the time, and just got his driver's license. Little Andreas looks like he's twelve, but he's always been nice to me, and maybe the little squirt will find the key to the quad and save my butt. Karl has a new car coming in April, because it was cheaper to buy a new car than keep the old one. I could go on and on.... He talked AT me for twenty minutes. I decided to be really charming, you know, batting my eyelashes, flipping my pontyail...
maybe next time we'll revisit the topic of AFN. And the leaky hatch window. And what he could do about that mustache.

Love you and miss you.

Ash

Farm Fresh

Well, I got to it and made my chocolate cheesecake. It's out of the oven, cooling on a rack and everything. We'll see if it sinks or cracks or does some other thing I've never even heard of. I would take a picture, but there's a mysterious bubble right in the middle of my precious cheesecake. I'm trying to remember if I dropped something in the batter.

Now that it's made I'm just going to pawn it off on other people (pre-cut, to disguise the bubble....those that don't read my blog think I actually know how to use an oven and a spatula...I'm perfectly willing to keep up that false notion). I'm pretty sure the only cheesecake dessert I'll lick the pan over is the one my mom makes that has cherries on top. I don't know why I didn't try to make that one. I just got it in my head that a girl should make a chocolate cheesecake at least once. Just in case. Besides, whenever I try to duplicate anything of Mom's, I'm always disappointed.

I promise I'm done talking about cheesecake. Probably for forever. Wipe your tears, there's always layer cake, lemon cake, red cake, angel food cake... But for tonight I want to leave you with a pearl of wisdom I learned in animal science class. You can tell the color of egg a chicken will lay by the color of its earlobe. It's true. Brown or red earlobes mean brown eggs, and white means white. Look it up if you don't believe me. And this, my friends, this is how you know your eggs are Farm Fresh:

They come this way at the commissary now. Buyer assurance that this particular egg was very recently "nestled" somewhere else.

A Taste of Spring

Well, blogging isn't really my style lately, if you haven't noticed.

I'm not really sure what is, but I'll think long and hard about it and get back to you.

Really nothing has happened since the last time I typed a blog. I can either start making stuff up, or dig into the archives and tell stories, or just not write any more. We'll see.

Today when I woke up it was raining. I knew I wanted to go to the gym- mainly because I had a whole host of things I wanted to consume. I'm sure I would've been better off NOT going to the gym if that meant not eating all that junk... Hindsight is 20/20, you know.

I also had a hankering to make a chocolate cheesecake. Not really because I wanted to eat it. I just wanted to make it. This is generally not a good idea. Inevitably wanting to make it and wanting to eat it converge. Regardless, I am pleased to report that my prowess in the kitchen has reached an all new level.

Hang on a minute.

Okay, I'm back. I had to check to see if the eastern wall of the house had blown in. Never have I heard such a fierce wind in Germany. Which reminds me of what happened last night....

Last night I was dreaming. I was at Mom's house, and I was sitting with a few cowboys on a tube gate watching some horses in an arena. I remember them telling me I needed to get some new boots. It wasn't an unpleasant dream. The next thing you know, I was jolted from my slumber by a very loud siren. Before I could even open my eyes, I was up with a blanket and headed for the basement. Luckily I woke up enough to realize that the fire siren was going off next door, and there was no reason to be out of bed running around in the dark. In that split second between being awake and asleep, I was sure that it awas a tornado siren, which is interesting, because where I grew up on Rural Route 2 there is no such thing. Apparently if you're born in Iowa you just instinctively know what tornado sirens sound like.
Tornadoes and I have a bit of a history. It's a pretty uneventful history, especially since I've never seen one or lived through one (I contribute that to conscientiously seeking shelter each and every time Steve Karlin told me to). I have many memories of sitting directly in front of the television counting the counties on the news screen to see if ours was the one with all the tornadoes (it always was). Three up, five from the left. I was always the first one to the basement, too. Thank you kindly, Mr. Weatherman, you don't have to tell me twice. Of course, I would have preferred it if my family joined me there, but shoot, I sure wasn't going to blow away. If Mom sent everyone down, that's when things got serious. I made sure to set my supplies around me and holler weather conditions up the stairs at Mom every three seconds while Matt and Liz played legos as if the end of the world wasn't near. But if worrying could save us, I had it covered. It seemed the weatherman was always drawing a circle right over our house. Which is why I would not have been all that surprised to find myself in my pajamas in Karl's basement (possibly more frightening than a tornado).

Anyway, back to my prowess in the kitchen. That darn chocolate cheesecake got the best of me in step two. Pitiful, I know. I started those chocolate squares melting on the stove and went about making the crust. I was quite pleased with myself and enjoying some of the extra Oreos when I remembered the chocolate. Too late, of course. The odor of burnt chocolate will never be in Yankee's Spring collection, that's for sure.

Maybe that's a sign that there's no Earthly reason that I should be making a chocolate cheesecake. I'll probably try again tomorrow. If the kitchen burns to the ground, I won't be upset. What's that they say? No use crying over spilt milk. Or burned down pathetic excuses for kitchens.

The sun came out this afternoon, right about the time I got done at the gym. I like to walk if it's not for exercise, so I figured this was as good a time as any to get some vitamin D. After the winter we've had, I could actually feel my face drinking it up. Being an Iowa girl, I know that first taste of Spring is usually just a tease, so I won't keep my fingers crossed. But my, if a little warm and sunny spot can't go a long way.

The snow has melted off the fields and the drainage ditches are running (and not frozen!)