Cameras At Work

I wish we were allowed to have them. Why, you ask? Because my name is actually on a whiteboard underneath a deployment month. This Fall. Success! Make a little money this fall (and maybe again next spring), come back to Omaha to get everything squared away and get the hell out of here. It's almost like I think about this a lot or something.

Also, it was sunny here today. I can prove it!

She hates baths so much.

April Showers Bring...Tornados?

I'm so bad at this writing regularly thing. Mostly because I forget this blog exists from time to time, and then I remember and that's also when I write. So, what's been going on?

• I started flying. This is both kind of awesome and sucks spectacularly, just like most everything else in the military. Awesome because well, I'm flying twice a week, get to wear a more comfortable uniform and am one step closer to being done with this whole training thing that apparently sucks no matter what rank you are. Which leads us to the fact that I also throw up during touch-and-go's, feel crushingly exhausted after every flight and vow never to complain about a 5 hour commercial flight ever again.
• Signals are kind of neat, kind of mind-boggling. They also make me wish I had taken physics in high school, because this might all make more sense.
• I'm re-learning how to live the single life. This is for good healthy, responsible reasons, but is still weird considering I've spent about two months single in the last 4.5 years. There's a learning curve involved. Especially when you're gay and find yourself magically in the American Midwest with no hope of return to a sane coastal area for over a year.
• The pup is awesome and passed basic obedience. 
• More tattoo work coming next month. Expect photos.
• I'm taking a class through OSU, and am trying really, really hard not to procrastinate until the last minute. So far it's working, but we'll see whether it continues through the whole quarter. I still have two more discussion boards and two more papers.
• I'm waking up multiple times in the night, usually from bad dreams. This has been going on for a couple weeks now. Awesome Roomie half-jokingly told me to go see a shrink, I considered melatonin until I read that it makes your dreams more vivid. That's probably a horrible idea, considering.

Anyway, that's probably most of the updates for now. Other than the title of this post; weather in the Midwest is as crazy as people say. I'm really ready for it to be above 45 and raining, since we're almost to May.

As Long As I'm Posting...

Have some bonus pictures of a broken down farmstead in Northern Kansas. They're on Facebook so you may have already seen them, but here, as always, you can click for a super big and awesome version.

This is actually a working grain elevator about 20 miles south of the farm, but it's still cool. 

I love that this place had a green roof at one point (it really pops in a later photo). I would have loved to have seen this place before it reached its current state.

Falling Behind

Yikes, only three posts in and I'm already slacking. Time to put the nose to the grindstone while I eat some late night oatmeal and make an update. This is going to be pretty photo heavy, because I've got some pup and cooking experiments to post.

The roomie went back overseas at the beginning of February, so the pup and I have been getting used to being on our own again. This apparently involves us driving around a lot, especially to the park, and me devouring new Netflix Watch Instantly shows like a fiend. I've been going out with work friends occasionally on the weekends as well, which is better for my mental state than my hydrated state, I'm sure.

And the cooking experiments, thanks to Trader Joe's. This was last weekends:

Brining ingredients, including awesome natural honey

Giblets for the puppy! 

 Taking a 12 hour soak

 The other stuff that went into the Dutch Oven at roasting time: fingerling potatoes, shallot and WA wine.

 Ready for the heat.

 Trying to beg off some more giblets. Sorry kid, we're out.
(Boxes behind are the 'I've been too lazy to make a Goodwill run with ice all over the ground' residuals)

Roasty goodness. 

Successful experiment.

The dark meat all got left on the carcass and turned into awesome soup two days later. I'm going to freeze some because I don't think I can down a couple gallons of soup in a good measure of time. 

As promised last time, the pictures of the pup from (midway through) our decently big snow of the winter:

That's about it, for now...

Dog Park

My Awesome Roomie is sick and asleep right now, so I figured I'd update with some pictures while watching the BCS Championship game (Go Ducks!). We took Holly to the base housing dog park the other day, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to try out a Christmas present, a Canon 50mm lens. (As always, click for big)

She's so fast... 

Tree was kinda pretty, even with nothing on it. 

She likes riding in the truck much better- think it's the flat surface and windows.

Awesome Roomie took some photos of her in the snow on the deck today before I got home, which I'll have to get and post. We had our first major snow of the season over the last couple of days, ending up with somewhere around 7 inches this evening. Because the roads obviously don't get plowed all the way down, there are basically no traffic lines on the roads. Everyone just kind of picks what they think may be a lane and goes with it. It's pretty, and I've missed snow, but I hope it doesn't interfere with our couch being delivered tomorrow. The apartment is really coming together, and I'm excited to take some pictures and show it off soon.

Well, Here We Go...

It's been a while. While using a blog to document life in another country (Korea) worked well, life in the U.S was a little disjointed and frankly too hectic to blog often. In some ways, using a blog I'd been writing on since high school also seemed weighty.

So why write now? After spending almost two years living on the West Coast again, I'm back away from my side of the country, firmly planted in the middle of rolling corn fields. Blogging has always been a good way to include people on day to day life. Additionally, I'm on a downhill slide of wrapping up my military journey in less than two years, and transitioning to different life of college and civilian jobs (yikes!). Plus, there's always the pup's antics, new cooking, and travels to be documented, as well as the occasional news story. So, back on the blogging train.