Happy New Years

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and will have a Happy New Years celebration too! The weather here has been absolutely amazingly warm! Its awesome...in the high 70's during day and still warm evenings. My 3rd Christmas in a row in the sun! And no snow! The way it should be :)

As of tomorrow; 01 Jan, I am an LT in the Navy. Its an automatic promotion which falls just a few weeks after my 4 year anniversary of active duty. Had a nice little ceremony this morning with my boss; Kaz and my favorite corpsman, Maddy. Rose, another nurse who promoted 01 Dec and I had a party slash wetdown slash going away party with a group of friends. Some of us maybe didn't feel so great the next day :p

Buon Anno!

always sayin goodbye

My farewells and farewell celebrations have started already. My unit, the ER had a very fun barbeque/paintball evening last night which was a new experience. If anyone says it doesn't hurt, they are lying! I am pretty sure myself and the other girls were screaming like wild banches when we got hit and have bruises and welts to match. It was fun though, I laughed my ass off more than a few times. And drinking some good beer helped too :) Getting shot in the face was the only place it didn't hurt.

Its almost Christmas, hard to believe it though. All I did this year was put up my little nativity scene...my tree would be just another thing to take care of before leaving. The packing has already began as well...my 'gift' suitcase as well as sea bag and clothing bag are growing by the day :p I have to remind myself the more I bring, the more I ship...but its hard to narrow down clothing :)

Happy Holidays to All, Caio from Sicily and see some of you very soon!

The Countdown Begins!

Hard to believe in a little over 3 weeks I will be back in the States visiting with family and friends before the new adventure starts. I am eager and excited to get the show started; probably won't believe it all or have it all sink in till I get there, but I will enjoy the ride and love the time in Michigan and California :)

Its a good thing the shopping won't do me much good as I can't bring much to Afganistan, its tempting to splurge before I hit the sandbox. And for those that don't know much on Afganistan; Wikipedia has some basic, informative information. Without going into specifics some people have not a clue. I am guilty at times as well, but this is the hot spot of War this past year; you can't hear enough about our involvement there.

Speaking of; dropping some helpful hints of "care package" ideas; I will be purchasing a Kindle (electronic book via Amazon) and would love gift cards to load up the Kindle with books before I leave. Just an idea :) Below are the nurses from the hospital (well most of em). I am the Co-Chair on one of the committee's and we had our holiday Christmas party this past weekend.

The trash strike thankfully only lasted 3 days, but that was plenty by me. The weather has been cooperating for the most part; warm and sunny in the days and very cool at night. Using the space heater for now till I get my landlord over to help turn the heat on. Or I will just grin and bear it for 25 more days. We'll see. Below is Etna; its gorgeous right now with all the snow. I hope to go up there this weekend.