it’s the final countdown

Ok, so maybe it’s not the FINAL countdown (which will come once we leave our last port visit), but I don’t ever count down any earlier than 60 days- because before that, it’s just too many days! However, today marks our 60 days out from HOMECOMING!

Are you counting? If you can count to 60, then the answer is yes, you should be! Cross off the dates on your calendar, make a paper link chain, do the funky chicken dance every night at midnight, whatever floats your boat- count it any way you like, but get excited!

We’ve had some historic past few days. Saturday marked our final OEF fly day, bringing our total air sorties in support of Operation Enduring Freedom to over 2,600 since September 17th. Sunday we were “eastbound and down” and today we officially turned over with the strike group who is replacing us. Tomorrow we begin to shift our clocks forward as we move east. In an ironic act, we will actually be FARTHER away from San Diego time for awhile, eventually getting almost a full day (vice the 12 hours we are ahead right now) until we cross the International Date Line, when we will re-wind our clocks a full 23 hours, re-living whatever day it is when we cross.

I guess technically we have 61 days left then. But, whatever, from where I’m sitting (or sailing) right now, we’re 60 days out!

Top Chef

It turns out, 4 months is a long time. Yesterday I reflected back on all that has happened in 4 months for me out here. But, no matter how much I try not to think about it, a lot has happened back at home too. As much as I want life to stand still in my absence, I know it does not. Dan found a new job, traveled to the East Coast a few times, hosted many visitors (including both of our parents and some siblings) and traveled to Mexico, LA and New Mexico. One of our good friends (Clark & Becca) celebrated the birth of their baby girl, Isabelle Grace on New Year’s Day. My best friend Rachel got engaged. And countless other things. So yeah, a lot has happened.

However, despite all of the things that I missed and won’t be able to travel back in time to experience myself, something has happened that time will only make better and is something that I will be able to enjoy and experience for many years to come. What you ask? Well, that would be my husband’s new found joy in COOKING! From baked goods such as rugalach, to the family’s delectable hummus to local fresh produce and catch from the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market in Little Italy, Dan is definitely America’s Next Food Network Star (ok, maybe not quite that level, but certainly the West Coast Laufer’s Next Food Network Star).

I thought that maybe it was just every now and again he would cook. But recently Dan has definitely been expanding out and trying new ingredients and techniques. After reading his last email, I couldn’t help but smile at this phrase: "I picked up a piece of fresh mahi mahi (a really nice, tender fish) and then I picked up some roasted anaheim chiles. I'm planning to bake the mahi with just some lemon, olive oil, and lemon pepper seasoning, and then make a reduction sauce with the peppers and pour it over the top of the fish.”

I didn’t even think my husband knew what a “reduction” was! And he even included these pictures of his meal. I’m so proud! Sounds like he’s been watching a little more Food Network than he’s led me to believe this whole time J For so long, I was so excited to come home to my kitchen and all of our great cooking utensils and tools. Now, I can’t wait to come home to those things- and Dan using them to cook me delicious dinners!

Dijon pepper sauce

Left: Baked Mahi Mahi and below is the complete meal

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

Today, I am going to cheat a little bit (and no, I’m not talking about the fact that I ran at 6.8 today instead of 7.0 on the treadmill and ate at least 10 of the delicious and homemade rugalach that Dan sent me :))

Today, not only will I introduce you to a blog of one of my very good friends, but it should also hopefully make you smile, at least a little bit, as it made me. This is the blog of Elizabeth Steel, a very dear friend and one of my sisters in Chi Omega. Lizzy has an INCREDIBLE blog, it is very creative and artsy and updated at a MUCH greater frequency than I update mine.

I am very proud to have been Lizzy’s “shout-out” in one of her recent blog posts. She posted some very funny pictures and told some funny stories about me and it made me laugh and smile and cry (just a little bit, goodness knows almost anything makes me cry these days J) and I am so honored to be her first shout out. So thanks Lizzy, for making my day and bringing back some good memories and reminding me once again how grateful I am to have so many wonderful friends & family supporting me from afar.

http://thebeeandlee.blogspot.com/2010/01/shout-out.html

And for my readers, hopefully they too enjoy her post and perhaps you will grow to be a loyal follower of Lizzy’s blog too!

Well, that’s actually about it for me too. Not much to write here. The internet has been down the past few days, which has made it less fun for me because I have not be able to surf the internet or catch up with what is going on in everyone’s life on Facebook. I’ve been reading a lot, as usual. I am just about to finish ANOTHER patricia cornwell novel. For those of you that have not read her books, she writes about a woman named Dr. Kay Scarpetta who is the Chief Medical Examiner for the commonwealth of VA and works in Richmond. It is all about her work, usually in criminal cases as a medical examiner. But she was also has a law degree and works with the FBI and her niece goes (or went to, depending on at what point in the series you are reading) to UVA so it’s like CSI meets Law & Order meets awesomeness, all set in VA. I highly recommend her “Scarpetta” series to anyone that enjoys these types of books, they’re very interesting and surprisingly educational- I’ve learned a thing or two about criminal medical investigating now. Thanks mom, for getting me hooked on these books :)

As for me, I think about Homecoming/Tiger Cruise at least 39,583 times a day. No seriously. At least that many times. More if you count everything I’m excited about after Homecoming too. Then it’s more like 154,398 times a day. Like the fact that Dan just suggested a 3 night Carnival cruise out of San Diego the weekend after we get back, making a stop in Mexico. But, since I will have just spent like 6 months on a boat where I see the sun like twice a month, I am begging for a room with a balcony, so I have no problems finding the sun once I get home J (and preferably it’s the ship with the water slides too). And I’m excited for yogurtland. Every.Single.Day. And a million amazing Italian restaurants just outside our apartment. And San Diego weather. And exploring our new city (ok, my new city, dan’s been there awhile). And going to the Farmer’s Market on our block every Saturday. And trying samples of everything humanely possible at said Farmers Market. And cooking dinner. And going to Balboa Park. And a Padre’s game. And San Francisco. And Napa Valley. And driving my little baby Civic. And my iPhone. And 3G. And making our wedding album. And planning our trip to Hawaii. And FINALLY decorating/unpacking/organizing/getting settled in the apartment. And red wine + sunsets from our balcony. And seeing family and friends. And taking a shower without wearing shoes. And to not having planes crash over my head. And yeah. I’m ready.

I have to tell myself to not get TOO TOO excited- 2 months still is a ways away. I don’t want to burn out too soon. I think this excitement for heading home will last long enough til we get to Thailand and then after that I will just keep looking ahead to each port visit.

I finally got to talk to Dan today (we have an outside line phone in our office, but the past like week it hasn’t been working. Well, turns out, it wasn’t that it hadn’t been working, but rather, I had been dialing the wrong combination of numbers for a week! Today I asked someone why the phone wasn’t working and they were like “well did you dial 9 first?” and I was like “nooo….”) and Dan and I discussed that 2 months doesn’t seem so long when you say that we’ve already done FOUR months. And wow- what a lot can happen in four months! In four months I’ve:

• Flown to the Middle East
• Lived on an off-shore Iraqi Oil Terminal
• Spent the first two months of my marriage on skype
• Worked with Iraqis
• Ate schwarma and bought Persian rugs in Bahrain
• Landed (puke bag in hand) on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean
• Went sandboarding and hookah smoking in Dubai
• Found my way around a carrier
• Went to the world’s ONLY seven start hotel with my HUSBAND (!)
• Qualified in 2 new watch positions.
• Learned my new job with no turnover.
• Overcame my 6 year fear of running on treadmills to a point where I run 3-4 miles a day
• Made new friends
• Kept in touch with old friends

Wow- what a crazy 4 months it has been! Looking back, if I only have to do half that much, well, then I’m ok with that! As for me, it’s off to sleep. Tomorrow is our first “non-5th fleet Sunday”- in 5th fleet (aka- the middle east) their “holy day” is Friday, so our “holiday routine” as well is on a Friday. Tomorrow is our first Sunday since September 17th that we rest on Sunday, with the rest of the Western world :)

Well, bye-bye Middle East! Bye-bye Operation Enduring Freedom. Bye-Bye dhows. In the worlds of the song played on the 1MC tonight as the last plane landed- “Eastbound and down”- we’re heading HOME!!!!!

Taking PBS to a new level

I wasn’t really sure I could continue my pointless ramblings for yet another night, but alas, our current lack of internet has given me a little freed up time (basically 23 minutes that I would have spent catching up on the world). Speaking of internet, let me introduce you to a little thing we on the Nimitz like to call “Internet Hours.” Here on the Nimitz, we are not blessed with 24/7 3G (oh 3G, oh iPhone, how I miss you so!!!). We have a limited amount of bandwidth, much of which must be used for work-related and tactical information. So, from 0900-1300, internet is only available for Navy-websites (anything with a .mil) address. From 1300-1500 is what we call “High Tiered Access”, which means only O-5 and above have access to any websites that they want, pure, unfettered, quick internet (and by quick, I mean, not dial-up speed). This is what we call in the military “RHIP” or “rank has its privileges” (unfortunately for me, my rank does not provide for me good internet speed privleges J) From 1500-1700 are “banking hours” which means you can only access banking websites. Then, from 1700-midnight are “open hours” aka- everyone and their mother tries to access ESPN and facebook and amazon.com and whatever else suits their fancy. However, with all of my 5,000 BFF’s trying to use the internet, it is really only quick enough to do ANYTHING from about 10:30pm until midnight. Midnight to 0200 is for banking hours and then 0200-0300 they take down the internet for “maintenance and updates”, which really probably means the IT’s in the radio shack are streaming live football games from ESPN.com. Then from 0300-0900, the internet opens back up again for all hands all access. I’ve heard you can surf facebook and online shop at amazon at like 4AM. My friend steve who has a nocturnal schedule due to the fact that he stands watch until 2am, swears by the 4am internet surfing.


So, yeah, like I said, I only get about an hour a day of internet that is at all reliable. Which I suppose is a marked improvement from the SAMMY B, where I got zero hours of internet a day. I suppose I should be happy for what I do have, right?


So anyways, that leaves me with our great and mighty news source- AFN (aka- Armed Forces Network). AFN, for those of you who are not familiar, is the military’s TV channels. Here on the Nimitz, we get 3 AFN channels: “primetime TV”, “news”, and “sports”- all of which are a mix of random TV shows of that particular variety, shown at random times. This results in people having to watch the playoff football (or any other big) game in the middle of the night (and then the next 2 days is the same game, over and over and over again on replay. No matter how many times I watched the National Championship College Game, Texas was always going to lose b/c their QB was always going to get hurt. Even by the 5th time it aired. And by the way, that is WAY too much than I have EVER known about football, only b/c it was on for like 24 continuous hours). I actually watch the “Today” show every “morning” at 4pm after I shower while getting ready for dinner. I think you can also watch Jeopardy at like 5am. Awesome. The other “great” thing about AFN? No real commercials! However, you don’t know what repeating commercials are until you have watched AFN! Corporate/capitalist TV channels actually have a plethora of commercial varieties compared to AFN. I swear, if I have to see the commercial of the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff and his wife (I think her name might be Barbara?) standing in front of their pretty Christmas tree and politely and cheerfully reminding me to get my flu shot this year, I think I might just lose it! (for the record, I got my flu, regular AND H1N1, in November, so don’t worry about me, ADM Mullen!)


In addition to the “don’t forget to get your flu shot” commercials, here are a few examples of the other great AFN commercials:

• The difference between general and special power of attorney
• How marrying a person from overseas might not immediately make them a dependent and how it affects your tax returns
• Ensuring you check with your legal department before changing your state of residency
• How gambling can affect your career
• Don’t drink & drive
• How to help get your children excited about a PCS (“permanent change of station”- basically a move. To use in a sentence “Last August, Dan & I PCSed from Mayport to San Diego)
• That there really is life after deployment, but you’ll come back a different person
• “Voices from Home”- which are “interviews” of people from various cities across America saying “Thank you for serving”- I get a little weepy when they interview people at the Baltimore Inner Harbor J

Speaking of “Voices from Home”, some of the greatest are when they interview “pretend” war-heroes. You know those people that dress up & do the Civil War reenactment? Well, basically that, but also from the Vietnam War, and WWII and any other old war. They video these guys dressed up in old-fashioned war get-ups at their little camp sites and they say things like “from our battlefield to yours- hooyah- thanks for service!” oh, it’s so cheesy. I mean, there are no words for the cheesiness.


Getting to the main point of this post (actually, let’s be honest, this post has no main point J)- they often have commercials from some random, small town in America. Usually it is some teeny tiny town in Arkansas or Minnesota or Kentucky- some town that no one has ever heard of. And the commercials looks like one of those ones that a local business does themselves, with a faint sound of guitar or fiddle in the background. It’s usually the Mayor, walking around saying “welcome to smalltownville [insert name of town here], USA!” and takes the viewer on a little walking tour of their rinky-dink “downtown” and whatever else they’re known for (Cheese, mountains, hiking, etc). Then at the end they take the viewer to their town’s local veteran’s memorial and say something like “here in smalltownville, we’re really proud of our veterans. So thanks for what you do. And if you’re ever in Kentucky (or Wisconsin or Oklahoma, or whatever), come on down and see us!”


These commercials are like 3-4 minutes long and I see at least 5 a day (I keep the TV on all the time whenever I’m in the room, anything to help try and cut the sound of those damn airplanes). Well, the other night, around 2am, I was laying in bed reading and I hear “Greetings from Havre de Grace, Maryland!” and I was like “WHAT!?!” and draw the curtains of my rack open in surprise. After months (well, years really) of AFN commercials, I have never even HEARD of any of the towns featured, much less grown up like 15 minutes from one! I was so excited, it brought tears to my eyes- I literally cried! The Mayor of Havre de Grace took me on a tour of HDG, a small town on the Susquehanna River, not 15 miles from my house growing up! I got to see the lighthouse and the Tidings Park and of course, what HDG is known for- their Decoy Museum of DUCKS! In fact, in 7th grade, we did a whole lesson on HDG and how to “Save the Bay” and the different types of boats that sail on the river and all about the ducks that they make decoys of at the Decoy Museum. I smiled as I thought about the “slideshow” my group did in 7th grade, a “lesson” about Havre de Grace. This was back when to make a slideshow, you actually drew the little pictures on teeny tiny slides with permanent marker to project up onto the screen. And we spent WEEKS practicing and recording the audio that went along with it. (during which one of the main characters, Chloe, the stuck up “popular” girl looks with disdain at one of the girls who is giving a tour of Havre de Grace like a travel guide by saying “Thanks for the history lesson, Mrs. Travel Guide!” in one of those bratty voices that was only a 7th grade girl could properly emulate. Katie and Amberly- I sincerely hope you are reading this, because literally all of these memories flashed through my mind as I watched this commercial on AFN!)

Anyways, so that is AFN. One of the many things to help keep me less bored. We have also been fortunate for the first time since the earthquake hit Haiti, to see news of what else is happening in the world. After watching about 45 minutes of the news, here is what is going on in the world/the US according to AFN. I sincerely hope that there really is more going on than this, that there is much more that we AFN watchers are not privy to:

• A GOP candidate won the MA Senator seat belonging to Kennedy (I saw his acceptance speech no less than 20 times)
• It’s raining in SoCal
• The economy sucks

Will someone please tell me there is actually more in the world going on that this?

Speaking of Haiti, and all of the great work that the US military is doing there (sorry had to give my service a plug!), please keep the Sailors and their families in your thoughts as well with the people of Haiti- one of our ships was about to head through the Panama Canal from a 6 month deployment who was stopped and is currently serving tirelessly off the coast of Haiti now, providing worker-bees on the ground, corpsmen, water and medical supplies. They were supposed to return home in 4 days, now there are out there for an undetermined length of time. And please remember those Sailors on the Bataan who just returned home from a 7 month deployment last month who were recalled and sent down there with a 48 hour notice. The work they are able to provide from the ocean with their medical personnel and helicopters is incredibly important to the mission there and I know I am so very proud of all of them. The destroyer, USS HIGGINS that is there with no sign of returning from deployment is one of the Little Beaver’s own from DESRON 23. we are incredibly proud of her work and mission and while I know all of her Sailors and their families were anticipating a happy reunion, they should all be so proud of the good that they are doing for people who so desperately need it. I read today that a women and her newborn baby are now being treated on the USNS Comfort- she was airlifted from Haiti to a carrier, where she gave birth to her baby son on the USS CARL VINSON, an aircraft carrier. One of the parachute riggers (a rating called “PR”- they sew all of the rescue and survival gear into the flight suits and airplanes) took a yellow flight deck jersey and sewed for the baby his first newborn outfit from the yellow jersey. The woman announced that she named her baby “Vinson”, which brought tears to my eyes. I kinda wish that we could be there helping too, but I know that the people of Haiti are going to benefit immensely from the hard work of the military, and all of the aid that is down there in Haiti. It makes me very proud to be part of a service that can deliver so much (firepower, maritime security, airstrikes, close air support, supplies, humanitarian work and rescue medical services) all over the world with so little time to plan.


Well, on that note my friends, it is time that I return to my night routine of reading. Today I swung by the library and checked out my 2 allotted books (you can only check out 2 books at a time, for one month). I always get 1 “educational” (aka- non-fiction) and one for-fun book. I’m already bouncing back and forth in between one of the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell and Flags of our Fathers, an outstanding non-fiction book about the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima during WWII. I think it’s a movie too, but so far, the book is outstanding.


I sincerely hope at least someone (other than Dan who posts this J) is back to followig, and I haven’t lost all of my loyal readers after my 3 week hiatus from blogging. My good friend Amanda just emailed me, saying that I seemed happier when I was regularly blogging and she glad I figured that out again. She’s right too- even when I am in a bummer mood, blogging is fun, as I write narratives of my day or random things about life on a carrier. As I write, I quietly chuckle to myself, thinking how funny or clever I sound. (I don’t think I will ever cease to crack myself up, something which is always well summarized by one of Dan’s favorite quotes: “Molly Harris is the funniest person in the world, according to Molly Harris” J Thanks Dan!)


Speaking of Molly Harris, it was brought to my attention just how long I have been gone, so long in fact, that apparently my own mother has forgotten that I got married & changed my name, as evidenced by the fact that when I received her registration form for Tiger Cruise, she listed me, “Molly Harris” as her sponsor. While I know my own mother did not REALLY forget my name, it is evidence to the fact that I have not spent but 3 days in the US as “Molly Laufer”, none of which were around any friends and family other than Dan, so I think no one is used to saying it. Haha, I REALLY need to come home.


Well, off to my only other friends, my books J I miss you all so very very much. I can’t promise a daily blog (besides, tomorrow I need to get caught up in my internet-ing, if it is working for once) but I will do my best to go off in search of something on that carrier that would be considered interesting and blog-worthy for my readers. Maybe I’ll even try and get a few pictures too. Til then, goodnight!

“I am aware of the fact that I am a terrible person”

… as evidenced by the fact that I have not blogged in well over 3 weeks. I’m sorry, I really am. But I have a good excuse. Well, maybe not, but I will pretend that I do.

No seriously, I’m really sorry that I haven’t blogged in awhile. First of all, there are only 3 unclassified computers (aka- computers that I can actually use to email any “normal” people in the outside world). So this makes it very difficult to even get on an unclass computer during the normal work day, much less spend time idling and writing a blog when people probably have to use the computer for work. The main reason though, is that work has been VERY VERY VERY monotonous. Like seriously, the exact same thing. Every single day. I will illustrate:

0900- Molly wakes up to the sound of the first launch cycle for the aircraft. No matter how much I try and grumble and push a pillow over of my head, the rumbling of the F/A-18 gearing up its engines to full power a mere 2 decks above my rack makes it difficult to cease back into a gently slumber.

1030- finally actually wake up and get out of bed, mainly because I have to pee so bad I must wake up, whilst still grumbling at the 2nd launch cycle rumbling over my head

1130- to go the office, check email, sort into piles of “should get back to, really need to take care of this, this can wait til later, and delete”

123o- eat Special K

1300- go back to the office and actually get started on the “really need to take care of this” email folder

1400- staff meeting

1500- gym/errands (yes, on an aircraft carrier you can actually run “errands”- the post office, the ship’s store, the library, the MWR office to check out movies)

1530-1600- sweat out 3.4 miles on the treadmill with my 34 other best friends on their treadmills all in a row of mine in a room built no bigger than for EXACTLY 35 treadmills. Imagine running through the amazon, which is like 120% humidity. Now imagine that the amazon smelled like big, sweaty, navy dudes. That’s what my workout is like in the “gerbil gym”

1600-1700- shower and clean up for dinner

1700-1730- dinner

1730-2200- watch

2200-2300- back to work to sort email into “should get back to, really need to take care of this, this can wait til later, and delete”- get started on getting back to some of those things that I “put off until later” and make phone calls back to people in SD that are in their happy little office jobs, as it is 11am SD time when I get off watch, so a perfect time to get in touch with people for work back at home.

2300- go to midrats (aka- midnight rations, which is only the best meal on the ship. I’m minorly disappointed that my 2 Tigers for Tiger Cruise will most likely unable to make it til 11pm every night to eat a delicious and amazing breakfast. This truly is their loss and I hope that I can somehow convince them that to become REAL Tigers, a midnight omelet is required of them. We’ll see what I can do). At midrats, debate between special K and grilled cheese. Usually remember my amazon-style run earlier in the day and go with the grilled cheese. Turn away when CS3 puts the melted butter on the grill (“If I don’t see him do it, it’s like it’s not really there!” right?)

Usually I spend about an hour at midrats, sinking my teeth into the most delicious grilled cheese on this planet (sorry mom, yours are good too, but much healthier J) and hanging out with those guys in the green suits, who actually are not as intimidating as I thought and I have since become good friends with many a pilots onboard (don’t worry Tigers, I have ulterior motives, I’m hoping to make friends so I have some sweet hook-ups in the Air Wing for Tiger Cruise so we can get cool personal tours of the Ready Rooms and the jets. I might hold out though and only arrange these tours if you promise to accompany me to midrats, at least once :). While sinking said teeth into said grilled cheese, silently curse the amazon-run I will have to do tomorrow. The grilled cheese are also awesome because (in addition to the butter) they are made on the same griddle that CS3 does all of his made-to-order breakfast orders. Any sort of breakfast egg scramble, omlet, or sandwich you could imagine, so the grilled cheese always has a faint taste of grilled onions for an omlet or bacon for a breakfast sandwich. It’s seriously amazing and pretty much the only good part of my day. That and emails from friends and family. If I could eat a grilled cheese while reading emails, well, I might just die happy. Oh, and at midrats- they have little bowls of anything you could put in an omlet- onions, tomatoes, olives, peppers, cheese, ham, turkey, ANYTHING!- and you scoop out whatever you want on your plate and give it to CS3 and he makes it to your exact specifications (he knows that whenever my plate is up there with morsels of onion and green pepper goodness my request is always “2 eggs scrambled with a LITTLE bit of cheese and the vegetables extra grilled”- at first I thought I was being picky but by day 2, he knew EXACTLY what I wanted. And not just me, but ANYONE who’s a regular at midrats!

Anyways, I digress. After midrats I go back down to the office to surf facebook for approximately 23 minutes, which is just as long as it takes me to catch-up on what’s going on in the real world and get utterly and totally depressed about all of the fun things that I’m missing (even 12” of snow on the east coast and major rain drainage problems in SoCal would be better than this!)

So I turn back to the work that simply must be accomplished before tomorrow and I wrap this up around 1 or 2am, usually interspersed with some laundry (as the middle of the night is the best time to do laundry since most people are sleeping). Then I go to bed and read until 2 or 3 in the morning (depending on how good the book is). Repeat again. EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. there is seriously NO differentiation day-to-day, other than that every other Friday we have the fancy brunch. Thank goodness for the fancy brunch or I wouldn’t know how to count my days.

Anyways, wow, that was a lot. Although, looking back on this post thus far, I realized I haven’t said much (I think I may have won “Talks the Most, Says the Least” for my High School superlative, now I’m starting to understand why….). I feel like I have a lot more to say too (it only took me 3 weeks to drum up something to say!)--- guess I’ll have to blog tomorrow too!

Speaking of blog, our wedding photographer, Sarah Cramer Shields was nominated for the 2010 “Bride’s Choice Award”, which is very very exciting for such a talented photographer. Her blog announcing her nomination featured a picture of none other than yours truly (and yours truly’s handsome hubby)—check her out at www.blog.cramerphoto.com! Congrats, Sarah and thank you for giving us such wonderful memories!!!

Well, I guess that’s all I have time for now. I’m really sorry I didn’t write, but as Dan will attest, the past 3 weeks (basically, since I’ve seen him :( ) I have been utterly miserable and homesick. Month 4 of deployment has hands down be the hardest. I felt like I did when I went away to summer camp when I was like 10. Complete with the crying myself to sleep at night. but somehow worse. I was hoping this would get easier, this being my 3rd deployment and all, but alas, I guess it never does. What is so hard about this deployment is that for the first time, I know that when I come home, I’ll never have to drive 5 ½ hours to see Dan or won’t ever have to plan my weekends out to see him, what hurts the most right now is for the first time in 5 ½ years (wow, that’s a lot!) I could be living with him right now and getting to do all of those things that I hear you get to do when you’re married- hang out and go for walks, watch TV, cook dinner, explore and grow together. I know Dan feels the same way (at least I’m pretty sure he does!) but he is doing a great job staying busy with work- his job at Mitchell is going exceptionally well (did you really think he would have it any other way? :) and I am so very proud of all of the good stuff that he has accomplished!

But so that’s why I haven’t really written b/c I’ve been too sad and blue to get in the spirit of writing. However, in the spirit of being less sad and less blue, I’ll wrap up with a few exciting things. In just a few days we’ll high-five our friends on the new carrier who is going to take over all of the roles and responsibilities that we’ve been filling for the past 5 months and start heading east! Soon we’ll be fast-forwarding our clocks an hour, gradually, until we cross the International Date Line and get back to the same day as San Diego. I am looking forward to the month of February- which brings port visits in Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong (February’s blogs are sure to be good, with a new port visit blog every single week- I swear!!!). I am looking forward to seeing my mom & Dan’s mom in two months from TODAY in Bremerton, Washington for Tiger Cruise. I can’t wait to have Miss. Molly V be one of the first people I see back in the good ol’ US of A. Dan and I are already planning our big post-deployment trip (aka- our “Third Honeymoon”!)- which involves San Francisco and a few days in the wine country of Sonoma and Napa Valley, which I cannot WAIT for and Dan has done an AWESOME job of planning so far! So, as I look back on 4 months and try and gear up for the next 2, I am looking ahead that all those next 2 months hold- hopefully some incredible new life adventures and places and experiences. I close with a quote from one of the books that I just finished reading (I LOVE reading, I read for like 2 hours a day, hence why I have to run errands to the ship’s library, because I have run out of books!). if you’ve never read The Alchemist, I suggest that you stop whatever you’re doing (ok, wait first til you finish reading this!) and go get it. It will change your life, I swear. Every single sentence is deeply profound and “meaning of life” kinda stuff, but not in the “greek philosopher, this is too hard to comprehend way).

“Don’t think about what you’ve left behind,” the alchemist said to the boy as they began to ride across the sands of the desert. “Everything is written in the Soul of the World, and there it will stay forever”

“Men dream more about coming home than about leaving,” the boy said. He was already reaccustomed to the desert’s silence.

“If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return”.

As for me, as I continue on this journey nestled in between the waters of the same deserts where The Alchemist is set, I’m quite grateful to have so much pure matter to return to :)

Kisses & Hugs,

M

Dubai (from Dan's perspective)

So I've kind of been in the dog house for taking so long to post about my jaunt to Dubai. I've been really busy at work, so that's my excuse!

In short, Dubai was amazing and a neat place to see in person. The quantity and ostentatious-ness of construction was remarkable to witness and the obviously high vacancy rate makes me wonder how sustainable all of it really is.

In any case, the travel from San Diego was quite long (24 hours of travel time each way)! One cool note is that I got to fly on the Airbus A380 with Emirates Air from London to Dubai, which is the world's largest commercial plane!

Flying on it was a real pleasure and the service on Emirates is second to none. The plane was quiet (and I was right over the engine) and the in-seat entertainment system offered more than a Best Buy (perhaps a slight exaggeration, but you get my point).

The first 2.5 days were on my own. If you know me well, you know I hate to travel by myself, so I was a little apprehensive. I had two activities pre-planned: going to a tailor and doing a desert excursion.

With the tailor, I received a recommendation from Jamie, a friend of ours, who knew the name of a tailor she used in Dubai but couldn't remember exactly where it was located. I consider the task of finding it like a challenge on the Amazing Race (my favorite show). Armed with google and concierge service (just like on the AR) I was able to find the shop. On day 1 I picked out fabric and was fitted and the clothes would be ready for me to pick up on the last day.

In the end, I got 3 dress shirts and a pair of dress pants and am pleased with everything!

From there, I meandered around old Dubai where I was generally the only westerner to be seen. It felt much like the old arab markets I had seen while in Israel (although fortunately sewage was not flowing down the middle of the street). Everyone in this part of town was dressed in traditional garb and felt like could be almost anywhere in the Middle East with Mosques and their accompanying minarets everywhere.

All in all, I was pretty comfortable, but I did make a point not to take any pictures of people just to be sure I didn't offend anyone.

Day 2 was saved for my desert excursion. I was going to go dune bashing and sand boarding. I'll keep the description light since Molly described it well in an earlier blog. The one anecdote I'll share is that I was hoping there would be other young westerners for me to hang out with on this (since you go in a caravan). Well the rest of my car was an Indian family (grandparents and 7-year old kids included) who mostly spoke Hindi and the rest of the caravan was ~75% Indian and no english speaking westerners. Not quite the experience I had in mind.

Finally day 3 - I meet up with Molly. We had a pre-determined meeting place in the Mall of the Emirates and fortunately everything was smooth for both of us and we met up ahead of schedule! We immediately went for lunch at a nice Lebanese restaurant overlooking Ski Dubai (indoor ski mountain in the middle of the desert)!

We noticed everyone at Ski Dubai was wearing the same thing, which looked kind of funny. Of course, everyone had to rent their ski gear since no one packs for it in the middle of the desert but it was pretty comical to see everyone so uniform looking.

That night we had to meet up with the rest of the Desron staff for Hail and Farewell. It was a great opportunity for me to get to meet everyone and put some faces to the names I'd been hearing. I did a double take when Molly was introduced as "LTJG Laufer"... for some reason "Molly Laufer" sounds normal to me but "LTJG Laufer" hasn't sunken in yet. And being a new spouse to the squadron I was hailed as well and made an honorary "little beaver". Perhaps most importantly, some of the chiefs declared that I was the best spouse in the Navy! Although the Deputy (#2 to the Commodore) said his wife might take some offense at that comment :)

Day 4 was focused on our afternoon tea at the Burj Al-Arab, the beautiful "7 star" hotel that's shaped like a sail. We toured around the beach area which was beautiful and everything still very much under construction.







The burj (seen above right) was stunning from the outside and just as much so on the inside. You have to have some reservation to even walk in the door and room rates (its all suites) starts at $2,000/night and runs as high as $30,000/night!! The white pad jutting out in the front of the building is a helipad/tennis court and tennis great Andre Agassi has played up there before.

The hotel lobby was stunning complete with a beautiful water fountain (seen here on the left) and impressive golden columns. Like many other hotels there were retail and souveneir shops in the lobby. The souveneirs here however were well out of our price range! This included a "bargain" of a cell phone that was $4,000 and made only with precious metals. As Molly said, that's not a phone you want to drop!

We finally made it to the Skyview bar on the top floor for our afternoon tea. Our view was stunning and all the food and drink we had was simply amazing. We had tea sandwiches of all kinds, cakes, elegant pastries, salmon, champagne, wine, coffee, and oh yeah, tea. They would refill anything you want except for the champagne, which is a shame because it was really good champagne!

When making the reservation, I had mentioned that we were celebrating a special occasion. At the end of the tea service our waiter gave Molly a rose and another waiter came by and asked what the occasion was, which was a little hard to explain. I had wanted to say I was celebrating "the best spouse in the Navy" award, but fortunately Molly answered more diplomatically.

By Day 5 I got sick... probably some combination of jet lag, drinking the local water and eating the local food caught up to me. I was sluggish all day, but we still managed to make the best of it by touring some more of Old Dubai and the souks and hitting up some of Dubai's newer malls (where Molly got another hair cut).

It was a great adventure that I am so happy I took. I can't imagine when Molly and I will ever be in Dubai together again! And now we're over the halfway point of the deployment with (hopefully) less than three months to go (I think I can, I think I can...).

Hope everyone had a happy New Year!

Dan

Christmas on the Nimitz

Hi everyone! Yes, yes, I am aware that I haven't written in over 2 weeks. But I have a pretty good excuse- seeing Dan in Dubai got my routine all out of whack and I got too excited about seeing him to write. I guess it's a good thing, because those 2 weeks that you didn't hear from me when by super duper fast. So, on that note, I will go back and rewind to around the 25th of December and talk about Christmas & Dubai and New Years and where we are now. Luckily, I have a few more weeks of nothing-ness out here on the ocean blue to get caught up on all of the excitement before we start making port visits again.


But, for those of you who were asking, Dubai was a-ma-zing. It was the BEST vacation we have taken and I wish it could have lasted forever! Dan promises to do a blog on this though for me, but I will probably throw in a few stories. But really, nothing else of note has been going on so we'll re-wind back a few weeks and get everyone all caught up. Below is something I typed up a few weeks ago, but it was while Dan was flying so I couldn't get it posted right away:


So Christmas was alright underway. It pretty much felt like every other day to me; complete with the sound of planes taking off and crashing over my head. Turns out all the troops on the ground in Afghanistan wanted for Christmas was some more Nimitz firepower so we spent another day flying, delivering close air support.


I did my usual routine, my usual work. I’m pretty busy right now because we have a bunch of awards that our ships have nominated themselves for, and our recommendations for them are due to the next in our chain of command by 01JAN so I’m trying to get everything done before we pull in, since I obviously do NOT intend to come back to the ship once I leave since Dan will be here. I didn’t really do anything outside of my usual routine. But that’s ok with me. It’s really just another day, the only the significant is that we’re now 3 months out til home exactly. We did have lots of Christmas music planning in the office, for the few of us that were working. I got to hear some of my favorite songs that I hadn’t heard in awhile.


The past few weeks there have been lots of decorations (mini-tree), stockings hung everywhere, lights, people have all decorated their doors with wrapping paper and cards, etc, etc. I wish that I hadn't had to fly out here, I would have gotten underway with a plethora of Christmas lights and other stuff for our office. Today I saw a jolly big santa walking around. There were like 10 different Christmas church services held yesterday and today. The big meal was this evening- it was of course over the top like everything else that the Nimitz does. They had multiple carving stations- prime rib, turkey, a pig (the head and all! Kinda creepy looking...), and a cow’s hip/thigh. I’m not 100% sure if that’s what it was, but it was huge, with a big bone thing sticking out from it. There was also lobster tails, shrimps cocktail, stuffing, mashed potatoes (not real though), vegetables, cakes, ice cream, and pies. It was all quite delicious. Not as good as at home, of course, but not bad. I stuffed myself silly. Now I am ridiculously thirsty because there were probably a lot of preservatives in it, so it was very sodium-laden. The stuffing was good though. I had seconds!


Then I went on watch, which was uneventful, as to be expected. Now I am just doing a little bit of work and typing this! 2 of the wives of guys on staff make us these cute little goodie bags for everyone that arrived today. They were like little Christmas goodie bags with a big plastic candy cane full of reese pieces, microwavable popcorn and goldfish. Yum. It was super cute of them.

So a little Nimitz holiday humor. Every day we have a cartoon in the air plan (the schedule that says who’s flying when, where and with what). It is like a political cartoon of the Nimitz, usually poking fun of someone or something; usually witty and always a little bit mildly inappropriate. Well of course, the past few days have been all about santa making a night trap (a “trap” is what it’s called when someone lands on the carrier- they are “trapped” using the catapaults) on the Nimitz. I swear, if I have to see another air plan cartoon of reindeer impersonating people on the air wing staff and talking about what they’re going to bring to Nimitz I’m going to scream. Although some of them were pretty funny. (“we hear that the Chief of Staff needs a new spine and something about a nice warm glass of ‘shut the @$#& up’ for the USS SAMPSON because they’re really starting to annoy everyone and maybe a new radar for the CHOSIN since they haven’t tracked an air contact in almost a week”)


Well, last night, on watch, right before taps (basically “bedtime” at 10pm), the TAO gets on the 1MC (our announcing system). He was like “onboard Nimitz, this is the TAO, we are seeing an unusual radar return bearing 150 degrees true, 1,000 feet at a high speed!!! Contact is not responding to international queries. Air contact does not look like a normal commercial air route. Recommend engaging with Nimitz’s missiles- Captain to Combat!”


And everyone was kinda like … “huh? What?” then, from somewhere else on the ship, the CO gets on the 1MC and was like “Oh calm down TAO, that’s not the enemy- that’s SANTA CLAUS! And I heard you all have been good this year, so I asked him to make an extra stop this year. Air Boss- keep the flight deck open. TAO- stand down the missiles!”


And the TAO said “This is the TAO, roger, out [sounding like a little kid who just got told he couldn’t have another cookie]. Good night, Nimitz, and Merrrrrry Christmas!”


It was cheesy, but pretty fun. The TAO comes running into the module (we’re a little annex right attached to Combat) with his santa hat on and was like “did you guys like that? Did you guys like that? I’ve been practicing all afternoon!” it was pretty cute. Thought you’d like our Nimitz Christmas humor. Attached are 2 pictures, one from when the COD brought a ton of Christmas care packages yesterday (that’s all the mail sitting to be sorted in the Hanger Bay) and one of one of the “Shooters”- the guys that do all of the calculations and mathematics to determine how much pressure of steam is needed on the catapults to launch the planes and give the signal to launch- dressed up like Santa on the flight line!


Well, nothing much to report other than that. Dan should be landing any minute now in Dubai! And only 2 ½ more days til I’m there too, yayayayay! Some of you may have seen this but President Obama made a few person phone calls to servicemembers (I think based on some sort of award nomination process) and one of the people picked was from one of the ships that is in our strike group. Navy.mil news media featured the story, and then CNN picked it up. Here is the story:


http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/25/obama-makes-christmas-call-to-sailor/


Also I am including some pictures of our celebration. I ran into Santa in the hallway! I swear my short hair (made even shorter by the fact that I got another TWO inches cut off this most recent trip to Dubai!) normally looks better but I had just woken up. There is also one of all of the presents that came in on Christmas Eve- SO.MUCH.MAIL. Santa was good to us! The big jolly Santa also hung out on the Bridge in the CO's chair and a skinnier Santa wandered out onto the flight deck to help run the operations up there.
I am so sorry that I haven't written much but I promise to catch you all up from Dubai and New Years and now here. Miss everyone a lot! I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season! Xoxo!