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?