i heart 13 hour flights

I'm writing this post from the Narita, Japan airport as I wait to board my flight to Guam. Today has been a day of traveling. My day started at 4am Eastern Time. I spent most of my morning at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport as my flight that was supposed to leave at 7:05am was pushed to noon. Luckily, I was able to get on a 9:45am flight to Atlanta where I spent time in their fancy international terminal. Next came the 13 hour flight from Atlanta to Narita.

When I made this trip 10 days ago, I lucked out and the seat next to me ended up being empty... except for the weird guy two seats down from me throwing his legs all over the place and farting. Today was a different story. I had a lady next me that smelled like cold cream and halitosis and she kept getting all up in my space. I hate people sometimes.

So here I sit praying that my flight doesn't get cancelled because a tropical storm is going to hit Guam about 6 hours after my flight arrives. My husband says it is already getting windy and rainy. There isn't enough Dramamine in the world.

picking up our own balls and lies about apples

Last weekend the husband and I decided that we were going to do a bunch of adventurous things - driving range, snorkeling, hiking. The only thing we managed to fit in was the driving range. The weather did not cooperate for the rest of the weekend's activities. Hopefully, we will try snorkeling this weekend. It should be interesting since I've never been snorkeling before and I have a SLIGHT fear of underwater wildlife.

Anyway, so we decided to go to the driving range on base. The husband needed a golf glove and apparently I needed one too since he wouldn't let me wear my gardening gloves. Hahaha! So we stopped at the NEX on base first to buy some supplies. After we left the NEX, we headed to the driving range. There was not a soul in sight. We parked and walked over to the golf hut to get some balls. There was a sign on the hut that said buckets of balls were available for purchase at the fitness center. Augh. We got back in the car and headed to the fitness center. After we had an unnecessarily long conversation with the guy working the desk at the fitness center about what size bucket of balls we wanted, we found out the fitness center had no balls left. I was super annoyed at this point. SO, we left the fitness center and went back to the driving range. After checking to see whether there were keys in the ball truck, we decided we had come to far to turn around and go home, so we both picked up a basket and went out on the range and picked up our own damn balls.

We ended up having a great time as I normally do with my husband. He cracks me up. At one point, he lost the grip on his club during his back swing and sent that bastard flying into the top of a palm tree behind us. Oh my gosh, I was cracking up!!

Speaking of cracking up, we went to the grocery last night to get some apples (that's not the funny part). Ever since J and I have been grocery shopping together, I thought he told me he preferred Gala apples so we've both been buying that kind for months now. Well, last night we're standing in front of the multiple choices of apples and J asks me what kind I want. I said to just get Gala because I know that's the kind he wants. I said that I was more partial to Red Delicious but that I know he likes Gala so that was fine. He said that he liked Red Delicious and that he'd been buying Gala this whole time because he thought I liked Gala. SMH. We were laughing so hard at each other and talking about how our whole marriage has been a lie. Sometimes I wish there were cameras following us around just to witness our hilarity. I love my bear.

wait... what?

So as some of you may know, I've been working a fancy admin job for about 2 months now. Since it's an office job, I do tend to get dressed up for work. I had a few work appropriate outfits with me in Guam but I had to have my mom mail me the rest of my work wardrobe because, let's be honest, there was no more room in my suitcase when I moved here. I also didn't see the point of bringing work clothes with me as getting a job here is like a shot in the dark.

Anywho, so my mom mailed me my work clothes (thank you, mother) and, after being shipped over here on a slow boat to Shanghai, basically everything needed to be washed. Most of the garments were accepted by my washer & dryer but a few had to be dry cleaned.

The dry cleaning pile sat around for a good couple of weeks until one day I decided to get my act together and take my clothes to the cleaners. Unfortunately, I had not seen any dry cleaners in my neighborhood so I googled "dry cleaner guam." So simple, right? Wrong. Totally wrong. Every damn result was for places that sell industrial dry cleaning equipment. It's like everything on this island is a well kept secret.

My husband mentioned to me awhile ago that there might be a dry cleaner on the Navy base. Neither of us had any idea where it was or if it even existed so I started searching the internets for some sign of a dry cleaner on base. Once again I came up with nothing. I finally text my friend to see if she had ever seen any signs of this cryptid dry cleaner. It was a miracle! There is a dry cleaner on base and it's located in the........ furniture store?!!?! WHAT?!

Not believing my friend for a second, I picked up my dry cleaning pile, drove straight to base, and went in the furniture store. Mind you, I left my pile of clothes in the car because, not believing my friend, I wasn't about to walk into the furniture store like an idiot with a pile of clothes. Lo and behold there was a dry cleaner inside the furniture store! I walked over to the room and went in to make sure it was open before I went out to get my clothes. Just as everything is in Guam, there were a bajillion signs all over the place with random instructions and warnings and "we have the right to refuse service to anyone" crap. Every business and government office pretty much looks like this from Harry Potter:

There was no one at the desk when I walked in but there was a sign that said "Ring Bell for Service" but, alas, there was no bell. Just as I was giving up and walking out, a girl came in to help me. She probably thought I was furniture shopping since I didn't come in to the store with a pile of clothes. Sheesh.

my life is a series of merriments

Today I had to drop off something for work at a business, or area of town for that matter, that I had never been to before. The thing about Guam is that pleasantries like Mapquest don't exist and you really can't Google an address. You MIGHT be able to pull up an exact address on Google Maps and get a satellite view but never a street view of anything. Street names change randomly here, some streets have multiple names, house/business numbers go up and down without explanation if you can even find a number in the first place. You really just have to drive to the area of town and hope for the best.

I finally found the building I was looking for today after making myself carsick from trying to drive and read and look and turn around and drive and read and look some more. I pulled into the parking lot of what looked to be a two story office building. There were two doors, one on each end of the building. I chose the door that I parked nearest to. I knew the office that I was looking for was on the second floor so I headed for the stairs.

I got to the second floor and there was a door in front of me that led to an office (not the one I was looking for) or I had the option to go right and walk around the back of the building. So I headed to the right. I arrived at another set of doors that were locked. To my left were stairs going back down to the parking lot. I headed down those stairs. Unfortunately, there was a gate and it was locked (from the outside apparently because that makes sense). Son of a bitch. This same set of stairs continued down another flight so I went down another flight and ended up.... in the underground parking garage. At this point, I was pretty sure I was about to be murdered. I scurried over to another flight of stairs to my right. I took those stairs up to ground level and then continued up to the second floor. And whattya know?! There was the office I was looking for!

Whomever designed that building is an asshole.

dreams

I'm going to start posting about some of my dreams. Not my aspirations but my actual crazy ass dreams. So last night I dreamt that J had five children. (In real life he has no children.) I was having a conversation with one of them, a blonde haired, blue eyed boy with glasses, who was telling me that he didn't like J's last girlfriend and that he was happy that I was the one J chose. The weird thing about all this was that his kids were never all in the same room together so I didn't know who was who. I was worried because J was getting ready to go on a trip and I was going to be responsible for the kids but I didn't know who any of them were. I wanted to ask J for pictures, descriptions and names for each kid but I was too embarrassed. One of the girls, who was also blonde, was named Ivan. Yea, a girl named Ivan. Alrighty.

I have the weirdest, most vivid dreams. Last week I dreamt that my cousin Ben invited to go get pizza with him and Justin Timberlake. I wake up most mornings like what in the hell was that about?!

just a little update

So I quit my retail job today. I managed it for two months. Although it did make the time go by fast, no minimum wage job should stress a person out which is exactly what this job did for me. And having a discount at said retail job wasn't even a benefit because I never wanted to be in the store when I wasn't working. Anyway, so that's done and the job search continues....

We got a new restaurant opening on Guam! Applebees! Right next door to a Chili's and right down the street from a Ruby Tuesdays. Seriously? Whose idea was this? So gross. J and I did visit a newly opened restaurant called Papa's. The restaurant is beautiful and the entire back side of the restaurant is windows so there are incredible views of the island. They had a fancy lounge with a bar that smelled of mahogany and leather. Unfortunately, they also had some lounge singers that reminded me of The Culps from SNL:

Not only that but "The Culps" decided to let an old man sitting in the lounge sing a song. What is this? Karaoke? The man sounded like he had been smoking Marlboros since birth. Thank goodness our table became available just as this man was on the second line of "Georgia On My Mind." So while the atmosphere of this restaurant is super fancy, the food may be a little too quirky and fancy for the island. J's whipped potatoes tasted like pudding. My short rib ravioli seemed to come with a side of cat food. Criminalities!

a pox on your house

So I started working a part time retail job just to pass the time. Never again did I think that I would be working in the world of retail but, alas, here I am slinging for minimum wage. It does make the time go by faster and I've also lost weight from standing and moving around so much so there's a bonus.

Unfortunately, what comes hand in hand with working a retail job is that inevitably you will be dealing with disgruntled customers at some point. I made it a month before dealing with such nonsense. I had a lovely woman who became completely enraged with me. Why you ask? Is it because I punched her in the face? Or because I called her an old, fat hag?  No, no, no. It's because I asked her for her ID in order to process her return. Apparently, this is a strenuous activity. So, captain happy pants, hands me her ID and makes a comment about how she's never had to show her ID before. Riiiiiight because the store just started this policy yesterday. Which prompts her to say, "Oh, you must be new. This is just great." Like seriously, lady? During our interaction, there was nothing, absolutely NOTHING, about my temperament that warranted any nastiness from her. I was bubbly, then patient, then apologetic.

I get her return processed. Unfortunately, the computer puts part of her credit onto a store credit and, as a lowly sales associate, I can't tell the computer what to do.  It didn't make sense why the computer was doing this so I had to call over a manager who then called over another manager who then had to call a third manager. And do you want to guess who is taking the brunt of captain happy pants' frustration during this whole ordeal?  Yours truly. I was so angry that I was shaking by the time she shuffled away into the store to do some more shopping. Unbelievable.