Winter in the Pacific Northwest

Guess I've been a little delinquent in updating the blog ... but I think I can sum up the last four months pretty quickly.

We spent the month of December living in the camper.    After looking at lots of off-post rental houses, we decided to live in on-post housing, but had to wait for one to become available. 

We went all out at Christmas!

It was worth the wait.  On New Years Eve, we moved into our new house on post.  It doesn't look like much from the outside, but its a very comfy 3BR/2BA house with a big fenced backyard and a view of the lake, and most important -- one-level living for aging pups!

Even though we moved in on 31 December, our furniture or personal items didn't arrive until February.  We made do with the lawn chairs and the tiny TV from the camper (Hell, we were just so happy to not have to walk outside to get to the shower, anything remotely resembling a house would have been luxury!)  Happy to report that we are now fully nested in our house. :)

In general though, I gotta say, I'm not loving the pacific northwest.  It literally rains here every single day, and when its not raining, its cold and gray and depressing.  We've only been mountain biking twice since November, and both times were a messy disaster of hub-deep mud and impassable bogs.  People keep saying it will get better in the summer, but given that we're half-way through April and I have yet to see the sun, I have a hard time believing it.

The one redeeming thing about is that we are close to Doug's family.  We've been able to spend a lot of time with Doug's sons, Patrick and James, and James' wife Brookes, who all live in the Seattle area.  Doug was also fortunate to be able to serve as the best man at James & Brookes' wedding earlier this month. 

(yes, that's the same uniform he wore when he retired in 97!)

As far as work goes, there isn't all that much to write about.   I started out as a Complex Litigation Attorney in the Criminal Law Department, where I was responsible for overseeing & coordinating 85 separate financial fraud cases, that were all connected by the same stolen account number.  I hit the ground running, working the kind of hours I used to work in private practice.  The other JAs in the Crim Law shop were all really busy and stressed with a lot of high profile cases (perhaps you've read about them in the New York Times?) so there wasn't much fun to be had at work.  In January, I was promoted to Captain, and was thankful that Doug was able to participate in the ceremony, pinning (actually, Velco-ing) on my new rank.

Sometime during the winter, I learned that I would be deploying to Afghanistan in June/July.  That started an intense period of learning as much as I could about the country, the people, the politics, the legal issues, and the current command structure.   Our mandatory reading list was 3 pages long, and we attended several weeks of live training at the JAG school in Charlottesville and here at Ft. Lewis.   Next week, I head to CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, FL for one more week of training.  I have learned a ton, and am loving every minute of this new challenge!

Thankfully, one of the Army's pre-deployment rituals is "block leave", which is a set period of time when all deploying personnel are given a few weeks away from work to spend time with their families.   Doug and I escaped to the Big Island of Hawaii for 8 days to spend some quality time together.   Despite the fact that it rained almost the entire time (I'm cursed!!), we had an awesome trip! 

 

Well, that pretty much wraps up the last four months.  I know you all want to know more about the deployment, but that's for another post.