Construction Worker

Just THINK how much money we'd save if we stopped paying that one guy to wave traffic by. If we just made these guys:
His right arm swings back and forth with a light on the end so that from a little way back you can see there's a lane closure ahead. I'd bet his arm never gets tired!

Thanks to Val for the photograph; I was driving.

Driving To a New Beach

Here's the beach we saw and quickly parked next to:







These guys must've been from mainland where it's snowing now - they were swimming (but they really looked and sounded like they were cold!)

Only In Japan

First of all, I'll share the picture from our balcony this morning at 7:45. 10 minutes after Craig opened his eyes and realized he didn't set the alarm to get Mia up for school since he's on leave. So the mad dash to get Mia to the bus stop at 8:05 was.... let's just say interesting. But the sunrise was purty.

Mia has gotten very creative and swirly. This is her new way of writing her name.
I am thinking the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I love to do lettering. And she's seen it before, so I'm all for fostering her amazing creativity!


Now - in the "Only in Japan" category... cell phone charms. Cell phones out here will NOT sell if there isn't a little space to attach a charm. I'm told the reason the iPhone was delayed here was because they had to make them with a place to loop the charm into. I believe it - EVERYONE here has jingly charms hanging from their phone! Well, I am not one to conform, but at the local photo/camera shop in town, they make charms where you can put a picture of your own on the face. There's a kid with a karate outfit, a panda bear - and this. A kimono-clad girl. Perfect for Mia's mug:
She's decked out with a bun, kimono, even little thongs. And you can't tell from the picture, but the face is contoured - the nose actually protrudes out a little bit. (If I had a macro lens, I'd show you - maybe one day soon). Here's the back:
Yeah, I sprang for it - and you know you want one now.

Lastly, Craig summoned me to try a demo driving game he downloaded on the PS3 this morning. It comes out for PS3 in January. I like driving games, and this one is really great. So I sat down and he told me what button did what - and as I began to drive - FAST - he was chuckling.

"What?"

"Well, I asked you to come try it because I wanted to see if you'd do the same thing," he says, as I swerve into a head-on collision with another car.

"What?!?"

"Drive on the left side."

"Oh. Shut up." And try as I might, I was huggin' that left. But I got lots of points for near misses.

Love/Hate

I laid eyes on some of the most beautiful water and beaches I've ever seen in my life yesterday. And I am more than excited to get scuba certified so that I can dive into that pristine water I saw. And I want to leave here knowing I've seen every inch of it I could.

However, the heat...oh the heat! It's the most uncomfortable time of year here, and it's a very conflicting feeling to want to see all these gorgeous places - but from within an air conditioned bubble! 90 degrees with a heat index of about 107.... thanks to that humidity. The smiles you see in this picture were for the second it took to push the button - after that we went back to OHMYGODGETMEINTHEAIRCONDITIONING wince faces. We would've had more pictures of the places in between, but I wasn't willing to get out of the car. This heat will remain until about September, I'm told - then we're in for a treat - it cools off - and we're still here!

This is Craig & Mia on the rocks overlooking Cape Zanpa. It's stunning out here, I'm told the cliffs are about 90'. And you can see the bottom of the ocean when you look down, as deep as it is, because the water is so clear.


There's a lighthouse on Cape Zanpa - we saw it, we thought it was very pretty, and we did NOT climb the stairs to the top of it in the heat. Maybe on a cool day some other time. The fact that Mia & I were in flip-flops didn't help either.

People actually fought here - in this heat? Oy. I'd lay down my weapon and share some ice water with the enemy....

I know, right?

Another shot of the man & his kid - if you look at these pictures (the larger versions when you click on them) and you see brown dots, that's not dust on the lens - those are dragonflies. They're everywhere.


We left Cape Zanpa and drove further north along the coast, and then we stopped at a shop that looked interesting. Well, it was - they sold everything from necklaces & knick knacks to sweets and booze (and you can TASTE the booze before you buy! - oh, and the sweets too). Awesome store, we loved it.

There were steps in the back of the shop, and when you got to the bottom there was a gem of a beach - clear beautiful water and even a starfish!We got some ice cream at the Blue Seal counter in the shop and walked down with it - can you believe this water???
The rest of the kick-butt photos are uploading now - I'll put a link here as soon as they're done.

My New Cube!

What should her name be? She's a 1998 Nissan Cube - and I already love her. She's boxy, yes- but that's really popular here. (Cubes were sort of the predecessor of the Scion & such.)
Here's Mia standing by the car in the hospital parking lot. We bought it from a Navy pathologist, Dr. Kim. She was in the Navy for over 20 years, and is headed back to the US this summer - to work at Balboa Naval (for the 2nd time). She's Korean, and one of the nicest women you'd ever want to meet. Before we were done, she gave me a breakdown of everything in the car, everything on that base (including where the post office, swimming pool, and best yoga classes were), and even where the best Korean BBQ in town was! (a walk from our apartment) What a great woman, I'm happy to have bought our car from her.

Ok, off to lunch, then we should hopefully buy tickets for Surf's Up, then we'll go into town to set up Internet & bill pay.

Another Day, a Lot More Done

Let's see here...we've signed up Mia & I for local health care (on the base closest to our home at the Naval Hospital). We then filled out everything necessary for "G.I. Bill Pay" - yeah, sounds like we're using a school loan to pay our bills, not the case. It's just the bill payment company - they'll divvy out your rent & utilities payments via automatic bill pay on paydays. Pretty sweet.

While in the hospital parking lot we saw a silver 1998 Nissan Cube for sale, and called the cell phone number on the for sale sign. It was owned by a Navy Doctor (who's leaving to to San Diego and work at Balboa Naval - again) and we decided it was in great shape, she was asking a fair price - and so we gave her a deposit and decided to buy it. So she should call tonight or tomorrow morning and I'll have a car!

We arranged for our express shipment stuff to come to our place on Monday, which is pretty fast - we're happy about that. And then we went up to Camp Courtney to talk to the housing office. We got our paperwork done, arranged for temporary furniture (until our stuff arrives, close to July 30th) which will arrive on Tuesday 7/3. Cool - only one night on an aerobed! Traci, the woman who helped us at the housing office, is super nice. She also gave me a bunch of web links to look for a job this fall when Mia goes to school.

So tomorrow we head back to finalize bill payment and hopefully find out that we'll get a good Internet connection. Then at 3pm we're going to see "Surf's Up" I hope - as a big treat to Mia for being such a good kid while we've put her through all this completely unfun-for-a-kid stuff.

Now it's off to dinner in a few minutes. It was a little cooler outside today too, which was nice. And apparently the A/C vent in our room was SHUT so when we mentioned it to the front desk and they came and opened it we realized (10 days later) that we're going to sleep much more comfortably tonight. Ahhhh.....

Eventful Days

Yesterday (Sunday) we went to the mall downtown. Today (Monday) more apartment hunting We hope we can find it.

Standing by a Pirates movie poster by the theater in town near American Village. The American Village Mall was apparently designed to look like a San Diego mall.

Mia hugging a dragon on the way up the stairs to the carnival park (with the ferris wheel, see below)

That is the ferris wheel (in Japanese: kandancha)- it goes very slowly, you can only see it moving if you really stare at it. It takes about 45 minutes to go once around in the little enclosed capsules on there. We'll do it eventually, but not in this heat I'm thinking.

This is a fountain outside the American Village shops - water pours out of the oil cans above into the convertible VW below - cute.

Now I NEVER in a million years thought I'd find a shirt like this in an Okinawa shop! We really wanted to get one for Mia, but there were none in her size. (and too small for me)

Craig's new car!! Very small, but very efficient. It's a Toyota Vitz with a CD player & a cassette player too - old school. Send over your old mix tapes!

Yeah, the place we looked at today has this view off the balcony and from the bedroom. Wouldn't exactly be awful, eh? Alas, they want too much for it - and Craig tells me that drunk idiots get loud along the sea wall here late at night - we don't need that. Not to mention if typhoons roll in, our cars (parked underneath in the garage) would be submerged. No fun.

Just came from another place that we really liked! 1 block from the place with the view above (so no ocean view, but that's ok) and 2 blocks from a really cool park. Say a little prayer! More news when we get it.