Our First Winner

And you didn't even know there was a contest, did you?

Catherine Lefere Sykes should start checking her mailbox for 10 boxes of mushroom-shaped cookies when the weather cools down, probably early October. We don't want those little mushroom caps to melt in transit. Cathy was the first - and, so far, only - relative/friend to request our stateside/Skype telephone number.

In other breaking news, Mike cut short his leave (vacation) by two weeks because the housing office can't let us have a house until he reports for duty. He donned his uniform this afternoon and caught a bus to the USS Blue Ridge to check a bureaucratic box then immediately went back on leave (vacation), carefully hanging that uniform back in the closet under close supervision.

Tomorrow we'll complete the paperwork (including a checklist of loaner furniture we'll need until our stuff gets here in late September) and Friday we'll move out of the Lodge and into #13 Gridley. We'll either be rolling 12 pieces of luggage across the base, crossing our fingers that the Base Taxi dispatcher learns how to answer the telephone between now and Friday, or tossing broad hints at the Brenyos when they get back from Nikko Thursday night.

We waited two weeks for a house the last time we came to Japan. This time we expected to wait up to a year for base housing and landed a place in less than a week. Life is full of so many interesting plot twists, isn't it?

P.S. Have you noticed how upbeat and uncomplaining I've been so far?

Jet Lag

Let's get the time thing straight right away. It's 2:30 am Sunday here and 1:30 pm Saturday in the Eastern Daylight Time states. Well, that's what time it was when I started writing this but then several other insomniacs invaded the patio and started passing out beers and exchanging life histories in loud voices beneath a quite specific sign . . .

I've slept for a record 10 hours and we have all managed to sleep through dinner two nights running. In the 36 hours since we arrived in Japan, we've checked out used cars in the Lemon Lot twice, walked a couple of miles, visited the Navy Exchange for haircuts (Mike and Matt), and bumped into a number of acquaintances and friends.

We are staying at the Navy Lodge, a new experience for us. They have penciled us in to stay in Room 420 until August 16 but my goal is to move out of here and into a house either off or on the base by August 9 at the absolute latest. During his run yesterday morning Mike spotted two possibly vacant houses -- the signs identifying residents were blank -- but we'll just have to wait until the housing office opens tomorrow morning to discover our options.

This Navy Lodge is noticeably less upscale than the one in Bethesda but I can understand why the Navy would choose to pour money into the place housing families of sailors and marines injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. I intend to keep my complaints to a minimum -- or at the very least re-title them "constructive suggestions" -- in deference to the Navy's generosity in bringing us back to the Land of the Rising Sun.