"There are personnel working aloft!"

Well, today I got to go "Aloft" for the first time ever... now, I have a problem with heights, so this was a big deal! Not only do I not like to be up high, but when I am up high I tend to get dizzy/spacey and sometimes feel a little queasy... but as we are preparing to enter the yards for major overhaul on the ship, we are required to take down our antennas so they can be overhauled also... so, up I went! My assigned area: "The Stick"... it's the absolute highest point on the ship, that is actually also the narrowest point on the ship up at the very top where when the wind blows, "The Stick" shakes and sways... before you go up you strap on a safety harness around your body, much like the one used by window-washers on the big high-rise glass office buildings... then you walk up 5 stories of stairs, then you get on this HUUUUUUGE ladder and you climb up ANOTHER 5 stories... then you are the bottom of "The Stick"... it is just a narrow beam that goes up another roughly 15 feet and there are these little ladder-like rungs welded to the side of it that you use to climb up it... there is a pole welded in between the rungs to which you attach your safety harness... once you are at the point where you want to work, you verify that your safety harness is "locked in" on the metal pole, you reach out and strap your safety line to a metal tie-point on "The Stick" just in case your safety harness slips from the metal pole, then you lean back and "sit" in your harness so that you can use both hands to do the actual work... at roughly 11 stories above the ground!!!

Anyways, I was up there all day yesterday, most of the day today, and I'll be there all day tomorrow until we are done... I did much better than I thought that I would... but I quickly learned to not look down or up any more than I had to, just look straight at the bolt I was trying to remove and focus on the work at hand!

I have included pictures!



This is where "The Stick" is located on the ship... that small "post" inside the red circle...






Here is a view of the aft-end of the ship from "the basket", which is the very bottom of "The Stick"... it gives you a good idea of how high up it is up there...















Here is the view of the pier and the parking lot from the basket...











This is the focsle of the ship... the red arrow is pointing at one of the antennas that we have removed and it is being hoisted off of the ship by a crane...












Here's me at the top of "The Stick"... uuuhhhh... "fun stuff", yeah...

:)

Our New Gym

We joined a new gym. We had grown out of our old gym. They didn't have that many weights and not that heavy of weights. Also, the pool closes early now for Water Polo classes and then the they only have 2 lanes open during the after work traffic so you always have to share with another person. So, we decided it's time for us to move on. We checked into different gyms in our area to see all the different things they had. Only the YMCA and 24 Hr. Fitness had a pool. So, it was between them but the YMCA isn't very close and there is only 1 in Utah so if we were to move back we wouldn't have that many options of where to live. The 24 Hr. Fitness had a lot more of what we wanted so we ended up signing up for the 3 year plan and every year after that is $99/year. It was a really good deal since we plan on really using it and sticking with it. We used our new gym for the first time last night. It was so big and had so many people that it was a bit intimidating to me but I think I'm sure I'll get used to it. There were a lot of fufu girls which I don't really care for that but I learn to ignore that kind of stuff. Our last gym had a lot more older people or less in shape people so it wasn't so intimidating. I'm very excited to learn about the different machines and find out the different exercises I can do that I haven't been able to learn.

He's Home!!!

Brandon is home!!! YEAH!!! Sorry it literally has taken me a month exactly to put this post up here.

The homecoming was great. The ship pulled in at noon so I was able to decorate the house in the morning, go to Godiva chocolates to get chocolate covered strawberries for the hotel room but they didn't have the strawberries yet so I got other chocolates, get all done up and get to the pier about 2 hours early and still get a front row parking spot. Don't ask me how I managed that one.
I hung out with my girlfriends from the ship. I had brought posters to make Welcome Home signs to wave when the ship pulled up but I forgot the markers. Then I had bought a special marker to write on the windows of the car and I thought I had forgotten it but found it later in the trunk of the car so I wasn't prepared with all the Welcome Home stuff other than at home. He was still happy to see me though. :)
The ship pulled in and shortly after they opened the gate to the pier and everyone went crazy trying to get to the ship as fast as they could even though we couldn't stand next to the ship and we still had to wait a little bit for the people to start coming off. My friend Cindee drew the "First Kiss" ticket so her husband was able to come off first and give her the first kiss. That was really cool. She deserved it since she had done so much in the Family Support Group on deployment. Before the ship pulled in all of my friends made a pact to make sure someone stayed with the last person to take their picture when their husband came off the ship and it was a good thing we did that because my husband was the last to come off out of my friends.
It was a great moment. We were instantly old friends laughing and joking around. Brandon said he could tell from the ship that I had been working out. He always says the most perfect things. I'm very lucky. We didn't stay too long after he got off until we left. We went to the Paradise Point Resort for our first night. I had reserved a suite there and I hadn't told him. He did know that we weren't staying at home our first night and he did know how much it was going to cost so he was ok with it. The hotel was really nice. Our suite was a 1 bedroom bungalow with a patio right on the bay, a 2 person jacuzzi tub and a 4 poster bed. I've included pictures of the room. We wish we could have stayed longer because the whole resort was beautiful. It was like we were in the Hawaiian rain forest and there were beautiful pools, ponds with exotic fish and tons more. Brandon got me a ton of things but some of the main things were a beautiful purplish/green onyx necklace that you can only get in Australia, a really cool silver necklace, carved wooden coasters with a holder made of interwined wooden camels and other carvings in the wood, a very unique incense burner with crystals to burn instead of the incense sticks. You put a little brick of coal that you burn a little first in this pretty metal holder and then you put a crystal in there. It's very cool. There are many different types of crystals and some of the ones he got me were Francinsense, Myrrh. He also gave me a little glass camel that holds your perfume and you pull the head out of the camel and wipe the perfume on you.

The next day I surprised Brandon with his first ever massage. It was a hot rock massage too. He loved it and can't wait to go back. If anyone's looking for a place to get a great massage for a great price just ask me. After the massage I took Brandon to his favorite Thai restaraunt without him knowing where we were going. It was a great first couple of days.
I had to work for a few days after that but then after work on Friday we headed up to the cabin in Julian at the KQ Ranch Resort. It was very relaxing. We hung out at the pool a good amount, read books, went for long walks, played games and watched a few movies. We also felt a couple of good sized earthquakes. We really did see the earth and the cabins shake. It was pretty scary. No one was hurt and there was no damage though so that was good.

Since we've been home from the cabin we bought mountain bikes. We have been biking a few times. Brandon has start biking to the trolley in the morning and then biking from the trolley to the ship. It's about 5 miles each way. He's a toughy. We rode it together one day before he started riding his bike to work and it's fun but sort of long.

We also had a great 4th of July. We worked out in the morning, then we went to the San Diego County Fair for about 4 hours. I think our favorite part was the pig talent show. We never knew that pigs are the 3rd smartest animals. They had a 600 pound pig doing a ton more tricks than Tazzy can do. After the fair we went to the ASW base in Pt. Loma and watched the fireworks. It really is an awesome place to see the fireworks because you can see 6 different fireworks shows along the bay. The fireworks were awesome but they would have been better if people didn't come late and stand in front of other people or wouldn't have stood up because they couldn't see that well with the person in front of them. That was crappy. We tried to plan well for the traffic to get off base too. We parked close to the exit but even with that we had only gotten a few miles away from the base in about a hour and 15 minutes. So, by 10:45 we were so fed up with it that we pulled over into a parking lot and set our alarm for a half hour and went to sleep. We pulled out of the parking lot at 11:15pm to see that the traffic hadn't gotten any better. So, we went back to the parking lot and slept until 11:45pm. By that time the traffic had lightened up enough that we could leave. We got home around 12:10am. Despite people standing up in front of us at the fireworks and the crappy traffic on the way home we still had a great day together and were very thankful that we were able to spend it together.
I've included pictures below.




First Night Hotel Pics

View from inside the room

View from patio of our room


Brandon in the bathtub


Closeup of Brandon - Isn't he hot?!?