Hi folks!  Yup, you heard right!  We’re going to grow by one.  Nope, I’m not pregnant.  We’re getting a new puppy!  We’re getting a black lab.  He’s 5 days old today!  We’ll get to meet him for the first time on the 4th of July weekend and he’ll come home to us on August 9th!

Rob and I discussed it this morning and he said if he had his druthers about it, he would prefer to the black lab puppy to the yellow.  I didn’t think we were going to be able to get him because he was kind of being held for someone else.  The breeder said that she had been trying to call him since they were born, but he wasn’t returning her calls so she told me that I could have him if wanted it.  She also told me that the bitch is a Chocolate lab and the sire is a yellow one.  She had all yellow puppies except for the one black one.  They were also all male!  What are the odds?!  I was thinking we should get a yellow one, but Rob said that too many people would confuse him with a Golden Retriever!

I gave Rob a list of names, but he didn’t respond to it, so when I found out that we were getting the black one I made a hasty decision with his name.  I could probably change it if I wanted to.  I wasn’t very creative.  The name HAS to start with a “c”.  It’s how they name the litters.  Litter one would start with an “a” and the second with a “b” and so on and so fourth.  So, my not-so-creative name for him is Charcoal.  I had other names, too.  Caesar, Cogsworth, Cadillac, Chance, Cinder (which now that I think about it, I can’t name him that because that was Rob’s ex-wife’s name for their black cat), and Constantine.  I think Charcoal will be okay.  I had to pick a name that DOESN’T sound like Casey–I don’t want to confuse my dogs, now do I?

Now, when Rob and I decided to go ahead and get this dog, the thinking was this: I am home NOW and I can spend some time training him.  I might not have this much time on my hands again.  Casey is my dog, but Rob named him.  Charcoal is Rob’s dog and I named him.  He will basically be my dog until we move back to the states.  Charcoal will require a lot more exercise than Casey does and Casey doesn’t do well on walks.  The only thing that worries me is that Casey will pass his bad manners on to Charcoal.  I really hope Charcoal is an Alpha dog!

I don’t know if Casey really understands the magnitude of this whole thing, but things are going to change for him.  No more sleeping on the bed with us and no more free-feeding.  Apparently, labs are prone to over eating and I don’t want him to get overweight.

I’m also trying to get Casey an appointment to get neutered.  I have to make two appointments for him.  One for an exam and then the neuter.  I love animals and I’m really glad that I married someone who doesn’t mind!  My ex had fits when I bought Dolli.  I wasn’t allowed to have a cat or anything with fur because he was deathly allergic to the dander (if I had used my brain a little more…no, I’m kidding!) I ended up with 3 parakeets, 1 cockatiel and a Siberian Dwarf Hamster.  My dad has my dog now.  It was never intentional that my dad get her, but when I joined the Army, my dad agreed to keep Dolli.  When it came down to it, I couldn’t ever ask to take her back.  That had been his companion–with me stationed in Germany, my brother stationed in Japan and my mother had divorced him the year prior.  He lived for her and she was is spoiled!

Well, I’m going to get going for now.  Hope everyone is having a lovely day and we’ll talk later!!

Heehee!  Just kidding!  The new header is the panorama I took of Pest.  There are two sides to Budapest.  I took this on the Buda side overlooking Pest.  I wasn’t actually sure that this picture would come out as great as it did.  I’m definitely getting this one framed!!  Yes, I took this with the $125 camera…which just goes to show you–you don’t need an expensive camera to take great photographs!  No editing (except the stitching) required.  Speaking of photos, I’ll post some here in a minute, but first, I wanted to share some of my stories with you.

The first night we were there, we didn’t do much.  We pretty much hung around the hotel for the better part of the day.  That was just fine by me.  We just wanted to relax a little bit.  Later that evening, we decided that we wanted to experience a little bit of the culture, so we headed to a cute little restaurant downtown.  I’m not sure what they called it there, but translated, it means The Rooster-something or other.  We were told to try some goulash.  I never realized it was traditional Hungarian.  It was very good.  Rob got the fish soup for his appetizer, which is also traditional.  I liked the fish soup better.

Then, the meal came and I got pork tenderloin with beef tongue and potato balls.  SO GOOD!  Huge portion, I couldn’t eat it all.  I’ve only had tongue once before and it was because my mother fixed it.  My parents only did special meals once in a while.  I can’t remember which one liked it and which one didn’t–but I remember liking it.  I thoroughly enjoyed it in Budapest.  My main course was definitely better than Rob’s (and I don’t remember what it was he ordered).  Then, we had some dessert and that was extremely yummy, too.  After our meal, we headed back to the hotel and we went to bed pretty early.

The next day started off pretty early and we headed off to get some breakfast.  Then, we went down to the spa and took a few laps in the swimming pool.  After all that, we got on the hop-on, hop-off bus where we were given a two hour tour of Budapest (pronounced Budapes(Hs)t).  We walked around for a little while and saw several weddings taking place.  The first wedding party we saw was near the overlook where the panorama was taken.  I wanted to get pictures of it, but we weren’t in a good position and all you could see was the wedding party’s back.

After we went to St. Stephen’s Basilica, we headed back to the hotel.  We weren’t quite ready to go back, so we stopped off at McDonald’s to have a quick bite to eat.  I can say that I’ve had McDonald’s in every country that I been to.  I’m not sure that gives me any bragging rights, but it’s still fun to say.  The funny part of that statement is:  I don’t even LIKE McDonald’s!!!  Don’t ask me why we always end up at one!  Perhaps it’s the familiarity of seeing one or that I’m still so American (even though I’ve lived in Europe for the better part of a decade) that we eat there, I really don’t know.

After all that, we went to the Danube Symphony Orchestra and then on the night cruise on the Danube River.  It’s one of the most important rivers in Europe and is the 2nd largest.  It starts in Germany and goes through 10 countries before emptying into the Black Sea.  Yes, to answer your question, I have seen the Danube in Germany–never been on it, but I’ve crossed it several times.

The next day, we slept in until 10.  We left the hotel around noon and went to Hero’s square.  There are tons of squares in Budapest.  Hero’s Square has a fine arts Museum and an art gallery in addition to tons of statues.  The Hungarians are big on statues.  We took a tour of the museum and there was a special temporary exhibit on photography.  So, you know I wanted to go see that!  That was an amazing exhibit.  There were some famous photos and some famous photographers featured there.  It was truly awesome.  After that, we started to walk back to the hotel so that Rob and I could have another spa treatment.  Rob got his first-ever massage.  I think he was a little disappointed because the woman who gave him the massage didn’t get all of the kinks out of his back and neck, but I think he enjoyed it all the same.

After that, we got dressed for a night out on the town.  The concierge recommended this place called “Old Man’s” where they have live music until dawn.  He didn’t mention that the drinks would be $22.00 a piece either!  The tiny pizza that we ordered was like 28cm and was about $18.00.  We nursed our non-alcholohic drinks (Rob ordered a Cuba Libre and I had a Long Island Iced Tea) and they should have had a good bit of alcohol in them, but they tasted more like flavored water.  We ate the tiny pizza and finished our drinks and we actually couldn’t get out of there any faster, if we tried.  The music was good, though.  My toe was tapping the whole time, but I was so put off by the price of the drinks that I simply couldn’t enjoy myself anymore!  We walked back to the hotel and called it a night.

The next day was check out and we had a leisurely breakfast and then headed to the airport. All in all, a very good trip, only two complaints–(1) the trip wasn’t long enough and (2) the bar on our last night.

And now, I present you the pictures:

Hi-Low all!  Well, we made it back…in one piece!

It sure was an interesting weekend.  It did not go completely uneventfully, but I’m gonna blog ALL about that tomorrow!

I just wanted to let everyone know that we’re safe and sound back in Germany.

Also, on a completely different note, Casey was so glad to have a buddy this weekend, Rob and I are going to check out a few dogs.  I won’t have too much to report until this weekend when Rob will have a moment to go and look at the dogs with me–but we do have a couple of prospectives 🙂  Adopting dogs is a lot like adopting children.  You have to find the right one!

Have a great day!  Thanks!

Hi all!  Coming to ya from beautiful Budapest!  I can’t stay too long.  Still need to get some breakfast.

I wanted to let you know that my fear of coming to Budapest was completely irrational.  I got all freaked out when I read the travel.gov website about it.  I mean…why do they post stuff like that?  I know that they want to keep you informed about stuff, but putting stuff like that out there can cause people to think the wrong way about traveling to certain places!

We arrived at noon on Friday and then we headed to the hotel.  We’re staying at the Cornitha Grand Hotel Royal.  It’s really, really nice.  It’s a 5 star hotel.  If you’ve never had the opportunity to stay at a five star, I recommend this place.  We paid an addition 50-60 per night, but we get executive treatment.  We walked up to the registration counter and she said that we had to go the Executive lounge where they would check us in.  We didn’t have to do anything and they offered a glass of wine while we were being checked in.  We made it up to our room and it’s just lovely.  There’s a shower AND a bathtub (extremely rare in Europe) and a king sized bed.  In the Executive lounge, we are offered breakfast until 11:30 and free drinks all day long.  There’s a small computer lab (where I’m at) to access email for free.  In this room, there is also a plasma TV and 3 couches.

Yesterday, we decided to go down to the heated pool, jacuzzi and sauna.  After the sauna, we each took a sensory shower.  There was some scent, lights and a variation of hot and cold water.  After we did that, we went and lounged by the indoor pool where Rob read a magazine and I was reading a book.  After about 15 minutes, I walked upstairs to the Spa reception and scheduled a massage.  It was a mistake to do it before we made it around town.

After that, we came up to the lounge again and had a light lunch.  Then, we headed downtown to find our Hop-on, Hop-off bus.  We took a 2 hour tour of the city and I got some pretty neat pictures.  I can’t wait to get home and see if I can get a panorama or two put together 🙂  We went to St. Stephens Basilica and we witnessed a wedding and got to hear for the first time since we’ve been in Europe, the pipe organs in use.  It was magnificent!

After the tour, we came back to the Hotel and got dressed because we were headed to the Danube Symphony Orchestra.  We were, of course, the youngest people there.  We tend to be the youngest couple most places that we go.  We have older tastes, I guess.  We both love plays and symphonies and other cultural things.  We were talking about how all the people that were in attendance were our parents age.  I’ve always been interested in stuff like that, but my parents never really were.  They took us to those places, but I think it was just to give us (my brother and I) a taste (to pretend that we’re cultured–yah, know what I mean?)  The concert was AMAZING.  At the end, they got a standing ovation and they gave us an encore!  It was an interactive encore!  The conductor was telling us how to clap, when to clap and he even cut us off.  There were a few people who didn’t follow his lead very well and continued to clap and he gave the audience a crazy look.  During the performance, there was this Viola player who seldomly looked at his music and he was very animated.  He was fun to watch.  He most certainly was playing to the audience.  It was obvious that he loved his job.

During the intermission, I went and got a glass of wine and downstairs from the symphony, there was a wedding reception.  The Mother of the Bride came and interrupted the dance that she and her husband were having in order to fix her dress.  The bride stopped dancing, the groom did not.  This act did not please her, either.  She grabbed her husband’s shirt and made a gesture for him to stop.  He did momentarily.  He started again.  I chuckled.  She just kept giving him looks! 🙂

Well, I’ve just been warned that I need to get something to eat, if I’m going to.  So I will bid you fair ado and I look forward to telling you about the rest of the trip!  Thanks for reading and have a great day.

Oh, and HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

Well, it’s nearly 6 in the morning and I forgot to blog yesterday.  I was busy packing and stuff.  Rob got home at 9:30 and we had to drop off the dog at my friend’s house.

Rob got me up at 5 and I was not happy about this.  I decided that I’m not going to be taking my nice camera with me.  Apparently, Budapest can be pretty dangerous and I just don’t want to risk losing my camera.  I mean, if something happens to the little one, at least I won’t be out thousands of dollars and unable to replace the thing!

Gizmo is up stairs sleeping and he cuddled with us all night.  I think he’s liking the fact that Casey’s gone.  He gets undivided attention from us 🙂

Well, we’re off to hit the money machine and put gas in the car, so I hope that everyone has a great weekend and happy Father’s day if I don’t get a chance to post the rest of the weekend!

No, not really.  Just kidding!  I’m in a strange mood today.  I’m not sure I could describe my mood, even if I wanted to…

Today, Rob leaves for work at 8:30 and says, “I’m going to Hanau, do you want to go with me?  If you are, I’ll be here at noon to pick you up.”

He’s here at noon, sharp and I’m still wearing my bedroom slippers!  So, quickly I change shoes and we’re out the door in 30 seconds flat.  We have 9 miles to empty in the gas tank, so Rob says, “Let’s go get some lunch at Taco Bell.”  I’m perfectly agreeable to that.  We’ll get gas afterwards.  So, 30 minutes later, we’re headed to the shoppette to get gas and every pump has an orange cones in front of them.  So, Rob parks the car and says, “Well, I can at least get my gum.”  We haven’t even finished crossing the street when some employees tell us that all of the systems are down and the store has been closed down.  5 miles to empty.

We quickly walk back to the car and I reach for the fuel coupons (which we were saving since we bought them when gas was still under $3 a gallon) and I say, “Will 100 liters be enough?”  “Yeah, it should be he says.  We’re only going to use half of them though.”  We drive to the next gas station and end up having to circle three times because someone was hogging all of the Super premium pumps.  2 miles to empty.  He fills up the car with 50 liters.  If we had paid full price (German prices) we would have paid 80 Euro or $125!  That’s outrageous!  How do the Germans do it?  We were getting cheap gas.  We only paid $3/gallon!  The gas tank wasn’t even full, though it was close.

So, we get to Hanau and we see about 10 Soldiers standing around, blaring their tasteless music.  They aren’t doing anything but chatting.  How annoying!  I quickly offer my assistance, but no one wants to take me up on the offer.  I came because I thought they could use my help.  I stood around for the better part of the afternoon.  I ended up cleaning up this warehouse.  It was the nicest thing around, but dirty as all get out!  Yuck!  There were 5 Soldiers standing around doing nothing.  I’m a nobody and since I don’t wear a uniform, I don’t get to tell them anything, so I walk by the warehouse and start cleaning it, thinking that they would come in after me and start helping, but no…they just watched me walk by and whisper something.  Then, the NCO who is probably 100 feet behind me, follows me and tells the Soldiers standing around to get in there and start cleaning up.  They follow him grudgingly as I am beginning to clean stuff up.  After they all walked in, they went to where I was working (picking up the trash and throwing it in a bin) and they start doing what I’m doing.  I walked away and grabbed one of the 7, yes 7 brooms and start sweeping.  That’s when a couple of other guys grabbed brooms and started.  Well, you can’t sweep very well if there is furniture in the way, so, I start moving furniture to the front of the building.  After that, I finished sweeping, but by the time I finished the rest of the room, everyone was in the front standing around again and there’s still sh!t on the other side that no one’s taking care of, so I start moving all the nasty oil to one corner so that it can be disposed of properly and start to pick up these really heavy dividers and after I said, wooh, this is heavy did one of the guys come over and move them.  There’s still junk all over the place and it’s filthy so I start sweeping it.  They have taken the dust pans and done something with them and so I call them to help me.

It literally took us 15 minutes to clean (all of us together) but I had to start.  Even the NCO really didn’t motivate those guys to start working.  It was because I took the effort to start it.  I’m not going to stay in the same place that someone else has taken over, why should I–it doesn’t make any sense!  My husband had told the LT about that area more than an hour before I started working on it!  Madness!

So, then, we went to go see another area that needed to be cleaned up.  It was alright, but I ended up doing a lot of stuff there, too.  After my husband released everyone, he drove by the warehouse that I had cleaned and he said, “Yes, that is what it is supposed to look like.”  I didn’t tell him that I ended up doing most of the work.  And these privates were saying that “Uncle Sam had gotten his pay out of him!”  Yeah, whatever-lazy, good-for-nothing…

So, after we get done there, we have to go get more gas (yes, we used over a half a tank of gas getting from here to there) and some dinner.  We don’t want to drive on the roads at  rush hour, so we stop at Burger King and get some dinner.  In the middle of our dinner, Rob gets a call from his Supply NCO and they had a 25 minute conversation during our dinner, so I walked in the PX and ended up getting more printer ink.  I need it.  I need to be teacher-like and decorate an FRG/BOSS board.  I’m not sure how I’m going to accomplish this as it is supposed to completed by Tuesday next week and we’re flying to Budapest on Friday morning and I have no supplies to do such decorating!

On another interesting note, every single commander, except my husband will change over by the end of this year!  I don’t know why that is, exactly because there were two commanders that took command AFTER Rob did, so we’re not even sure WHEN he’s getting switched out.  There are many more changes coming in the next few months.  We’re FINALLY going to be getting another 1SG after the 4th of July.  Phew!

Anyway, have you had enough of my rants?  I’m sorry, is there too much military talk here?  If you don’t understand some of the acronyms that I use, let me know and I’ll enlighten you 🙂  If you made it this far, thanks!

I almost forgot to blog today!  Been rather busy.  I got my passport situation taken care of (Phew!) and I had the FRG meeting today.  If you’re wondering how it went…it didn’t!  No one showed up!  I brought 2 pizzas, soda and hot wings and NO ONE showed!  What a huge disappointment.

Then, after about an hour or so, I’m still there because my husband still has work to do, I stand around and do nothing.  I mean, literally nothing.  Rob needs his concentration, so I couldn’t talk to him and I wandered around pacing.  Then, one of my ladies comes by to bring her husband food because he has to be there overnight for CQ watch and it turns out that she’s most likely pregnant.  The funny thing was, I was thinking on the way to what I thought was going to be a meeting, all the women in this battery are fertile-myrtles!  And then I see her and she tells me that she just was in the ER because she thought that she might be pg–and she is!  I just know it.  I’m rarely wrong about these sorts of things.  I usually know *someone’s* pregnant, I just don’t always know who exactly.  Take my cousin for example, around the time she found out, I had that feeling again.  I’m not saying that I’m psychic–but this sort of thing I’m attuned to.  My mom is pretty much the same way.  She’s not good at guessing genders though.  Bad track record for that.  If my mom thinks it’s a boy, it’s almost always a girl and visa versa.

Well, anyway, I was just upstairs reading and Gizmo came to cuddle with me.  When he left I got up to go to the bathroom and then I remembered that I didn’t blog yet–so here I am!

Anyway, tomorrow, Rob may head to Hanau and I might go with him.  I think he needs help getting that place cleaned up and I offered, so we’ll see if he takes me up on the offer.  When I offered this evening for the first time he was like, “Well, it won’t make a difference” and then I mentioned it again and he said, “I don’t have enough people” and then I told him a third time, but this time I got pissy about it and said to him, “Another pair of hands WILL make a difference and if you don’t have enough people then why don’t you let me go and help you, then you will have one more person to help get it taken care of.” I did not say this nicely mind you (but that’s pretty much what I said).  So, he says, “Alright.  If I go down tomorrow, you can come with me, if you want–if there’s time”  GRRR!  Men!  I know that this move has been hard on him, but he won’t even let me HELP him.  All he does is complain about stuff not getting done and then I tell him to get mean and nasty with these people and he STILL won’t.  That’s the most frustrating part.  He wants to be nice and stuff, but I don’t know why he doesn’t threaten a little bit more.  It doesn’t make any sense to me!

Oh well.  Enough ranting.  Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Today, Rob and I took a walk with the dog and I decided that I was going to take my new camera for a test drive.  I am LOVING this new camera!  The colors come out vivid and beautiful.  There’s little to no touch-up necessary.  I was doing a little bit of research on it yesterday (after I bought it…yeah, I know…) I wanted to see what kinds of potential problems I could be facing.  Apparently, several people have had trouble with the monitor going out suddenly (and they say that they didn’t do anything to it).  I find that hard to believe because in 2005, I bought a pretty nice camera, stuck it in my purse, unprotected and I dropped my purse (about 2-3 months after I bought the camera).  Yeah, the camera broke.  Completely ruined the LCD screen.  Totally my fault and not the camera’s…it would have cost me more to have it repaired than to buy a new camera–which is exactly what I did–bought a new camera.  But that camera is seriously out of date and I can’t find the battery charger so it’s useless anyway.  The nice thing about this camera is I don’t have to worry about forgetting to charge the battery; it uses AA batteries.  It’s easy to replace AA’s!

Anyway, thought I would show off a few pictures that I took on our walk today.  Absolutely beautiful!  It’s not perfect, by any means, but for what it is, it did the job!  The controls are pretty easy…I can’t change ISO settings and basically the only functions I can change are the white balance, color settings and the exposure compensation, but that’s alright.  It’s not meant to be a DSLR!  It’s a point and shoot; I accepted that fact when I bought the thing.  It is loaded with a ton of scene modes, though.

Well, without further ado, I present the test drive of the Nikon L18 (retailed at $125.00).

I got tagged by A Soldier’s Girl today!  Thanks girl!  HeeHee!

Here are the rules:The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was doing many things 10 years ago, but I want to share a very touching story that happened in 1998.  I was in Denver, studying at Metropolitan State College of Denver.  I was doing an internship at Denver Alternative Middle school, which was a brand new program for the Denver Public School system.  They were targeting the “At-Risk” students–students that were at high risk of not graduating from high school.  Most of these kids already had criminal records (arson, grand theft, auto, and things of this nature) in addition to having an unstable home life whose parents had done time or were doing time.  Most of those kids had severe learning disabilities and all of them were at least 2-3 grades behind academically.  When I first heard about this program, I jumped at the opportunity!  I was going to help these kids!

When Mr. J, the head teacher for this program told me that it was my turn to teach a lesson plan, I was extremely nervous, but excited!  I was finally going to be a teacher!  So, my lesson consisted of a audio presentation of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” (yeah big surprise there, huh?)  This little boy who reminds me so much of my nephew D, started drawing.  He was the only one not paying attention.  I walked over to him, stood behind his seat and watched him.  I lightly tapped him on his shoulder and he quickly covered up his drawing.  Mr. J came over a little while later and was able to snag the drawing from him.  There was no humiliation, no conflict.  He just took it away.  After school was let out, Mr. J was talking to me about how I could improve my lesson.  Then, he showed me the drawing.  It was the flowers on my dress that I was wearing on my first day.  It was so touching.  I actually cried (but I waited until I got home)!  A week later, Mr. J selected one intern and one student to represent our little school at the Middle School conference.  I was the only intern from my college to be invited.  The student Mr. J selected was, yes, the boy who drew the flowers.  Brings tears to my eyes to think about it.

2. Five things on my to do list for today.
Go to the exchange and get my camera, order Father’s Day gifts, go to the bakery for breakfast, finish watching DH Season 4, spend time with my hubby. (almost all complete)

3. Snacks I enjoy.
Unsalted pretzels, Mac and Cheese, String Cheese, Rice Pudding, Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches (If you couldn’t tell, I’m a carbs girl, all the way!)

4. Things I would do if I was a billionaire.
Change very little about my life, but I would enjoy taking more time to travel and I would probably live much more materialistically than I already do.

5. Places I have lived.
Please check the tab called “Travel Log”  L=Lived

Those that are being tagged:  Merecedes (because I know you love to Meme!), Randomability, Pam, and DC!