Delaying Sleep

*sigh* Its 9:10pm and I am absolutely exhausted after a day of preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. I was about to head off to bed (go ahead and laugh - I know I'm an old lady), when I read Mugs' blog and saw that she tagged me to do this wonderful survey. I am now blaming her for the reason I'm not in bed yet :-).

Where is your cell phone? desk
Where is your significant other? kitchen
Your hair color? blondish
Your mother? stubborn
Your father? spacey
Your favorite thing? traveling
Your dream last night? nothing
Your dream/goal? motivation
The room you’re in? office
Your hobby? quilting
Your fear? falling
Where do you want to be in 6 years? East
Where were you last night? home
What you’re not? spontaneous
One of your wish-list items? temperapedic
Where you grew up? Jersey
Last thing you did? cleaned
What are you wearing? pajamas
Your TV? off
Your pet? cats
Your computer? desktop
Your mood? homesick (have to agree with Mugs on this one)
Missing someone? friends
Your car? blue
Something you’re not wearing? makeup
Favorite store? Target
Your summer? nonexistent
Love someone? yup
Your favorite color? blue
When is the last time you laughed? yesterday
Last time you cried? today

Catawba on Broadway

Shortly after learning that I would be moving to Washington, I got a message from an old college classmate of mine. It turns out that she lives in Anacortes, which is just north of where I live in Oak Harbor. In fact, its so close that Navy people stationed here live in both towns. I was quite excited about this information because 1. It was totally random - a girl from Virginia who went to college in North Carolina, somehow ended up in the random town of Anacortes, Washington with no connection to the Navy. 2. I didn't know a single person up here and I was not happy about moving here so knowing that an old college friend was here made me feel a little better about the move. After arriving here I saw her within the first 2 weeks that I was here. We went to dinner at a great restaurant in Anacortes (I would post the name but I can't remember it offhand) and then watched Michael Phelps take another gold medal in the Olympics. We've kept in touch but both of our schedules have been busy so we hadn't seen each other again until last night.

To make things even more random, we found out that another college friend of ours was performing in the Broadway touring production of Hairspray , which was going to be coming to Vancouver, British Columbia. Catawba may have been a small college, but we had an amazing, large, successful Theatre program which has sent several graduates onto Broadway, TV and movies over the years. Anthony Johnson, a 2005 Catawba graduate was playing the role of IQ in Hairspray. My friend in Anacortes asked me to go see the show with her, so last night we were on the road to Vancouver, British Columbia to support and cheer for a fellow alumni :-).

I am someone who has been a huge Broadway fan for many, many years. I grew up very close to New York City and my mom has taken me to see over 25 shows over the years. I was always a person you could find standing outside of the stage door, collecting autographs and pictures of the cast. I always read the cast bios inside of the Playbill because I like to see where everyone has come from and how they ended up on Broadway in the first place. Imagine our excitment when my friend and I read Anthony's biography and saw that he wrote that he was a graduate of Catawba College. The school is so small, so I imagine that anyone reading that will either glance over it without a second thought, or they will wonder "where in the world is Catawba College?" However, for my friend and I, it was exciting to both of us to see our alma mater mentioned in a Broadway playbill.

Its hard to describe the excitement of seeing someone that I actually know, performing on a stage that to me always seemed so intangible. Granted, the stage was in Vancouver, not New York City, but a Broadway touring cast is still Broadway, even if its been taken out of NYC. My friend and I were both so excited and proud of Anthony. All night she kept saying "I am sooo proud of him" with a huge smile on her face. I shared that excitement with her. When the show was over, we went to the stage door to say "hi" to Anthony. It was the first time that I ever stood at that door, knowing that I was friends with the person who was about to walk out the door. While we waited for him to come out, we watched a crowd of people gathering autographs and it made my friend and I both giddy and excited that we weren't just fans. We were actually friends. It was an odd feeling to be somewhat starstruck with a person that we knew, but we were. When he came out, we were greeted with huge hugs and a kiss on the cheek and a grateful "thank you so much for coming!" He told us that it was exciting to be on the stage knowing that friends of his were out in the audience watching him. He also told us that we were his first friends to see him in this particular production. Between our excitement, giddyness, and being stupidly starstruck, we were equally happy to know that we were the first to see him in this role, and that he seemed genuinely happy to see us there.

Unfortunately, we didn't get much time with him, since we had to get back on the road to Washington, and he had to head off with the rest of the cast. The show is moving onto several other places in Canada, and many cities across the United States. I strongly urge anyone who has even a slight interest in musical theatre to go out and support Anthony, and say hi to him at the end of the show at the stage door. His role in the show may be small, but he is a talented, down to earth young man who I truly believe will go far in his acting career. When he's big and famous one day, I will be able to say "I went to college with him. I knew him back then."

So to close, I just wanted to say to Anthony, "Congratulations! You were amazing!" once again. I'm sad to say that today is the last day of the show in Vancouver, because I would have loved to have seen it again. Meanwhile, please check out the tour website and Anthony's YouTube page and please show your support and encouragement to this talented person!
Anthony Johnson - You Tube
Hairspray on Tour

Halloween in November

I realize its already November 20th, but I finally got around to putting my Halloween pictures onto the computer. For the past 3 years I have been dressing up my zoo in cute, adorable pet Halloween costumes. It started when a local pet store in Corpus Christi told us about their pet costume contest. To register, you had to donate something to the local animal shelter that was sponsoring the event. Donations could be anything from $1 to a bag of food - just as long as you donated something. I had 4 rabbits at the time, including a brown lionhead rabbit that looked like a lion. I am not sure how I suddenly got the idea to dress them up as the Wizard of Oz characters, but we went on to win 2nd place from the local pet store, 3rd place from the local Petsmart and 1st place at our vet's costume contest - taking home about $200 of prizes in the form of gift certificates, toys and rabbit food. You can't really beat that! Here's a picture of my rabbits from that year:

Its very hard to get 4 rabbits to sit still for a few seconds, so I realize the picture is hard to see. There is Lilly as Dorothy, Boomer as the Scarecrow, Ginger as the Tinman and my Lionhead Nala as the Lion.


This year we took the cats and my rabbit to Petsmart and Petco for their Halloween contests. At Petsmart we won 3rd place for all of the cats. Apparently, the judges were shocked and surprised that we managed to get cats into Halloween costumes. At Petco, my rabbit won 3rd place. So here are my 3rd place winners: (note: the footprints on the floor were glow in the dark Halloween decorations)


Wendy is a princess because she thinks she is a princess. We bought this costume to play along.








Patches is a pirate because it fits her personality perfectly.














Meepers is supposed to be a lion. Husband made his costume, and I think he looks more like a monk. However, my costume making skills are not that great, so I still give Husband a lot of credit for making this!





Oreo is simply dressed in a tuxedo sweater. I'm not completely sure what he is supposed to be. I only know that he looked cute in a tuxedo costume so we called him a Gentleman :-).



















Marmalade is a pumpkin. This was a last minute costume, but we decided that orange cat = orange pumpkin.





























Moses is a "Hairy Davidson" biker cat. He's so big and muscular so we decided that a biker cat fit him well. Husband also made this costume and painted the logo on the back. Its very hard to see in this picture, but the back is painted to look identical to the Harley Davidson logo. I was quite impressed by Husband's skills with costume.












Sheena is our "hunter" therefore we made her into what she hunts :-). She was very unhappy. Out of all of the cats, I think Sheena was the most miserable. I took all of their pictures in the same place, except her. Unable to get her to stay in one place, I followed her around and managed to snap this picture of her under the table before she frantically pulled the mouse head off.



And finally, this is Peter, the rabbit. Sadly, I only have one rabbit now, but I still have all of my Wizard of Oz costumes. I dressed Peter as a scarecrow because I found it appropriate for a rabbit. He loves to eat hay, so I stuffed his costume full of hay so he could snack on it and stay relatively calm while in costume :-). (He's a Lionhead rabbit for those of you wondering why he looks funny.)


And that was my Halloween this year. I am well aware of the fact that I am turning into a crazy cat lady more and more every day, but how can you not find these costumes adorable? :-)

National Parks

A few weeks ago Husband and I went on a nice day trip to the North Cascades National Park. Keeping in mind that I am from New Jersey and have spent most of my life on the East Coast, a National Park to me = a Civil War Battlefield, a Revolutionary War Battlefield, a monument, but NOT vast wilderness which has nothing there except vast wilderness.

When we moved out to Washington we stopped at several National Parks along the way. Husband and I are nerds and we carry around a National Park passport, stamping it at each park we stop at. En route to Washington we stamped our passports at Chichamauga Battlefield, Lookout Mountain, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (St. Louis Gateway Arch), and Ulysses S. Grant's farm. Once we entered South Dakota there was a new kind of National Park . We stopped at the Badlands National Park where I saw my first prairie dog (I couldn't convince Husband to add one to our already large zoo), my first buffalo, and experienced "the wilderness" for the first time. The Badlands is quite an interesting place. Miles and miles and miles of ancient dirt that has been baked into jagged mountains and hills was a site that I had never seen before. I was fascinated driving through and have 500 pictures of the place to prove my excitement.

Onward to Wyoming we stopped at Devil's Tower National Momunemt which was also fascinating to me. A random rock, in the shape of a tower with lines running straight up and down it, sitting in the middle of nowhere. Where the heck did this thing come from? Perhaps I really am a nerd, but I can't understand how someone wouldn't find Devil's Tower interesting. I also saw more prairie dogs here which gives the place another point in my book :-).

We then drove into Montana and stopped at the Little Big Horn Battlefield. My battlefield knowledge lies in Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields, so it was interesting to see one from a completely different era. Once again, I am a nerd, a history nerd to be more precise, so seeing Last Stand Hill, where Custer and his army were massacred by Indians was beyond exciting to me. I love standing in a place where history actually took place. I love trying to imagine what it would have been like at the time of the battle, and Little Big Horn is quite possibly one of the most "labeled" battlefields that I have ever seen. By this I mean that everything that happened during the battle is spelled out and placed right in front of you. Tombstones mark the areas where American soldiers and Indian warriors fell, in almost exact locations. The tombstones are so well laid out that you can actually look at them and see the path that the different armies and brigades took, and its very easy to imagine what actually happened (soldiers running/charging and falling as they ran).

Finally, our last National Park stop was Yellowstone National Park in Montana/Wyoming/Idaho. Since this was the country's first national park, dedicated by Teddy Roosevelt, my nerdiness was in full force here. The park is so large that its impossible to see the whole thing. We planned a day to visit the park and had to stretch that day into 2 days just to see the basic areas. We saw Mammouth Hot Springs, wildlife such as buffalo, deer, elk, and coyotes (Husband insisted on getting out of the car to get as close to the coyote as possible, while ignoring my cries of fear), and of course, the highlight of the trip was seeing the Old Faithful geyser. Seeing something that I had only ever learned about and seen in pictures or TV was amazing. We walked up to Old Faithful just in time to witness one of it eruptions and then stuck around to watch another one 72 minutes later (its amazing how they can time the eruptions within 5 minutes). Here is a picture of the second eruption we saw: (I'm posting this for no other reason, other than the fact that I love the picture [Husband took it] and am still amazed that I saw this in person.)


So after my brief synopsis of our National Park excursion across the country, we are now in Washington, surrounded by several state parks and a few National Parks. Which brings me back to the trip we took to the North Cascades National Park. And here is where I become confused. Perhaps its my East Coast upbringing, or perhaps its just stupidity, but when I think of a National Park, I think of SOMETHING. As in ANYTHING. A monument, a battlefield, a geyser, etc... What did I see at this particular park? Trees. Lots and lots of trees. Pine trees to be exact, and since this is the Evergreen State I wouldn't expect anything less, but I did expect more. After all, its a National Park, there has to be SOMETHING to see, right? Well, I also saw snow covered mountains. Lots and lots of snow covered mountains. And a river (at least I think it was a river, it may have been a large lake). And...that's it.

Husband was beyond excited because he also adds "Nature Nerd" to his qualifications. He wanted to hike every single trail and every single mountain. He wanted to camp in an area that requires you to get a backcountry permit. For those of you who don't know (I didn't), a backcountry permit is issued to you when you camp "off the beaten path". This way,if you don't come home, the park service knows you are out there somewhere and they will go look for you and send in rescue teams. Am I the only one who finds that prospect terrifying?

Before leaving for this trip I informed Husband that I would be ok hiking on short trails that were easy. He didn't like that so I even agreed to short trails that were a tiny bit hard. I camped back in the day and spent several nights on the Delaware River. I've also hiked pieces of the Appalacian Trail. Well surprise to me! Apparently "real" camping and "real" hiking is not what I did. Husband informed me that he wanted to hike on a trail that would take 6 hours to hike, and it would lead us.....nowhere (although he claims it takes us to a valley between the mountains, I was perfectly happy driving in the valley between the mountains). When I said no, he pouted, even though I had already said no prior to this trip.

So fast forward to this past weekend. Husband informed me that I need to get hiking boots and he was quite excited about a sale on boots this weekend. I am happy to inform you all that there were no hiking boots in my size! I did, however, find "hiking boots" (at least that's how they were labeled) that resemble regular sneakers with much better tread. The have pink laces, and are very cute. I bought them, much to the despair of Husband, who told me that I still needed hiking boots. I told him that my cute sneaker/boots with pink laces were considered hiking boots. He told me that we can't hike these hard trails that he wants to hike unless I get a sturdier, waterproof, "real" pair. This is the shoe that I picked out. The only difference is the blue in this picture is replaced by pink on the shoes I now own :-). I think its much nicer than a hiking boot.


For now, I think I'm going to stick with my love of National Parks where I can see something other than trees and mountains. I will drive through parks that have nothing but trees and mountains, but I just can't get myself as excited as Husband. Hiking in an area that is full of grizzly bears and freezing temperatures is not my cup of tea. Give me the East Coast, the Delaware River and the Appalachian Trail and I will be a happy camper once again.

Life in Washington

People have been telling me for quite some time now that I need to start a blog. I've avoided it for various different reasons, but I have realized that this may be the easiest way to get info about my life out to people. I find myself spending way too much time writing email after email describing the same thing over and over to several different people. I would send the exact same email to everyone at once but there always seems to be one little piece that just wouldn't make sense if I sent it to everyone. Now maybe people can find out about my life, and I'll just respond to the personal things in emails, making my time spent on the computer much less.

So where to start? I suppose I really went MIA to people around the time of my wedding, so sit back and relax as I recount the past 6 months of my life :-).

June 14th, 2008: I married my best friend in St. Augustine, Florida. I learned that it IS possible to throw a wedding together in exactly a month. Everything turned out wonderfully, with the exception of the photographer, which I will not get into because it will ruin my current good mood.

June 15 - July 10, 2008: This time was spent frantically packing up our entire apartment which was filled with everything from our entire lives since the husband and I seem to both be insane pack rats. Husband is a Navy pilot, therefore this frantic packing was done to pick up our entire lives and move across the entire country to Washington state. Husband also refuses to have the military move his stuff anywhere in the continental United States, even though they do it for free. He has declared that it is far better to do a full DITY move (Do It Yourself move for those who have no need to know military acronyms), which the military will pay you for, and then bank a good deal of money. I'd be all for this method if the packing didn't take 2 straight weeks and one day of panic because the moving company was coming to pick up our truck and we still weren't finished packing it. This has now been our second DITY move (1st was from Corpus Christi, Texas to Jacksonville, Florida) and I hated it and complained about it every bit as much as I did with the first move. I vowed to never ever move myself again, no matter how much money I make in the end. (That is, until we got the final payment from the military. I will now happily do another DITY move, although I am sure I will hate it and complain about it just as much. But that money sure is nice in the end!)

July 11-29: Amazing road trip across the United States. This is something that I have ALWAYS wanted to do and any time I have "I hate the Navy" moments I have to tell myself that this trip wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for the Navy. We left JAX and stopped in Georgia to visit my mom. We then drove on through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and finally Washington. We stopped at some amazing places such as Yellowstone National Park where we saw the famous Old Faithful geyser. We spent 4 days in South Dakota discovering a state that I tend to forget even exists, only to learn that it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Given the chance I would go back to South Dakota in a heartbeat and I feel like I should apologize to anyone who ever heard me rant and rave about how I wasn't going to have a real honeymoon, and instead would spend that "normal" honeymoon time in South Dakota. I have to admit - it was probably the best "honeymoon" ever. We saw some crazy, yet interesting things all along the way. We saw the official home of Superman in Metropolis, Illinois. We accidently stumbled across Metropolis on a bathroom break, and found a giant 15 foot statue of Superman in a historic downtown, along with a Superman museum. Apparently the state of Illinois actually voted and declared Metropolis as THE official home of Superman. I find places like this incredibly amazing and interesting because I would have never in my life thought to go to Metropolis, Illinois. Maybe I'm just a nerd, but I love stumbling across the weird and unknown places out there in this country! We saw a ghost town in Montana (Garnet) which involved a 2 mile VERY steep drive up the side of a mountain on a gravel road large enough for one car, but with 2 way traffic on it. The ghost town was very cool (history nerd here), but I will forever be mad at my husband for taking the 2 mile steep drive instead of the 8 mile drive on the other side of the mountain. Not only was the road too small, but it had no guard rails and my car was not getting good traction. When we got to the top I proceeded to burst into tears and have a full blown panic attack, while yelling at my husband and swearing that there was no way in hell I was driving back down that mountain. I am very thankful for the employee who directed us to the 8 mile, much less steep road on the other side. Husband didn't do very well with my anxiety attack and had the nerve to say to me "I thought you drove off the side of the mountain back there. You were behind me and your car was fishtailing and then I didn't see you anymore" BEFORE we found the alternative route back down.

I'm including links to the pictures of my trip because I could write for hours and still not tell the entire story. The final state of the trip was obviously Washington. I was less than thrilled about moving out here, but when we stopped at the Washington welcome center, what did we see? Rabbits! Everywhere!! For those of you that know me well, you know how much I love rabbits. The welcome center had domesticated rabbits (obviously the offspring of a rabbit that someone dumped outside) hopping everywhere. I of course took tons of pictures, fed them an apple and decided that my life in Washington was going to be good. In my mind, the rabbits were a good sign :-). I just chose to ignore the fact that as soon as we crossed over the Casade mountains, it instantly started raining, and the sky turned grey. I'd rather focus on the cute happy rabbits, in the sunny eastern part of Washington.

Anyway, here are the trip pictures:
Jax to Whidbey album #1
Jax to Whidbey album #2
Jax to Whidbey album #3
Jax to Whidbey album #4

We arrived in Oak Harbor, Washington on July 30. We set up residence at the "lovely" Acorn Motor Inn which was to be our home for the next 3 weeks. Husband checked into his new squadron on July 31st. Soon after getting there, husband was told that he was going to Hawaii for a week. So it was me and the cats and rabbit for a week, alone in a hotel. I was definitely worried about reaching crazy cat lady status at that point.

However, Husband came home without his plane malfunctioning, and we became first time home owners! We closed on our very own home on August 18th and have since spent the time from then until now unpacking, setting up, organizing, etc.

I'll update more at another time with all of the excitement that a small town like Oak Harbor has to offer.