Jan./Feb. Books

One of my goals for 2011 was to finish reading 18 books within the year. To accomplish this goal, a mere 3 books must be read every 2 months to stay up to speed. So this is what I have been reading.

Francine Rivers might be my favorite author. After reading book after book by her, I have yet to find one that has let me down. Her Daughter's Dream is the squeal to Her Mother's Hope. I love the Christian moral values and lessons in all of Rivers books that she intertwines within the story rather than smashing it down your throat. Being not the biggest reader, another one of her books, Redeeming Love, is the only novel I have willing picked up twice to read, that has got to say something.

I bought this book years ago with a friend who took me to Barnes and Nobles to learn how to pick out books and I never did actually get around to reading it. I walked away that day with this and another book written by the author of Sex and the City. Lets just hope I have advanced from those days. :) Most everyone knows how Nicholas Sparks novels go, this one went down that same path. It was interesting at points, but lets just say I defiantly tried to hide the cover of this book from those around me in the airport in January, so know one would look at me and judge.

I chose this book because I try very hard not to read all fictional books. I feel if I am going to read, half of what I read should be someone insightful and accredited. However, this was not a page turner, it took most of February for me to get through it. I was hoping to gain insight from this book to why dogs, Mason in particular, do the things they do. The research behind the facts was never concrete and it was more of suggested reasoning from the author's point-of-view of why dogs do the things they do. 

I have been browsing past my book shelf on what I should pick up next. I am in the middle of Crazy Love by Francis Chan already, and a friend is starting up her book club this Saturday, so my book shelf might just have to wait a bit.

Blast to the Past.

Last night, the spouses group on base hosted their annual 50's Sock Hop. At first we were not going to go, because we like to be anti-social like that, but it ended up turning out more fun than expected, which is always a plus!

I had woken up with a serious eye problem yesterday (I must have scratched it in the middle of the night) and it was a challenge to get through the day. However, we overcame and lasted through the whole day of work, Sock Hop set-up, and Sock Hop fun.

Glad I got through it and went. To keep in theme, there was hula-hoop contest, gum ball machines being given away, basa wood airplane contest, hamburgers and milkshakes and everyone came all decked out.

Strangely, as soon as the music got turned up and it was time to "shake, rattle and roll" everyone promptly got up and left. It was a Wednesday night, and unfortunately no one had a day-off today. So we followed the crowd and called it a night.

What to do with a day off?

Thankfully, days off are not far to come by around here. It seems the base shuts down at random points of the week due to countless Portuguese holidays, family days, goal days... you name it. Yesterday was off in remembrance of President's day.

All week last week I kept thinking how odd that I had nothing scheduled, no commitments on Monday. Then it would click, we got a 3 day weekend. Mas and I love having B home, it sometimes seems that we, along with the rest of the community, don't know what to do with ourselves when we get "extra" free time. Yesterday my time was consumed by running, cleaning, making hummus, and online window shopping, B spent almost the entire day studying for his section 2 CDC test be taken today. Exhilarating stuff I know.

As I took in my surroundings of the day I noticed many cars being washed, tire pressures being checked, many new faces at the gym, facebook posts of morning wake-ups at noon followed by a nap shortly after. There are only so many hydrangeas, cows and other sides of the ocean you can see here, so people must think up things to pass the day along besides twiddling their thumbs. :)

Not complaining here, bring on more days off, just observing that people, myself included, seem at a loss when given those extra 24 hours.

V-Day/B-Day Recap.

What a delightful 2 days we just had. They were a nice change from the ordinary Monday and Tuesday routine. Seems like Wednesday just snuck right up on us.

On Monday, since neither of us our V-Day fanatics, we both had our normal stuff going on during the day, but in the evening B surprised me with our dinner menu. He took over the meal plan for Monday and Tuesday, and oh does it make a wonderful difference. We had what I believe was lamb chops. B had ventured out to the local grocery store during the weekend and after about 10 minutes of trying to find someone who spoke English, they were able to direct him to what he was looking for. Some deliciously breaded chops and many many smashed potatoes later our tummies were fully satisfied.

For my birthday, I was surprised with chocolate croissants, in the morning, from the local bakery B had been hiding somewhere. Add some coffee to that mix and you got one happy girl. During the day, B had put together a small scavenger hunt for me to follow to find my gift, such a creative husband. As well, all the birthday calls, facebook messages, and special gifts from all my friends and family kept the smile going on my face. For the evening, B had set up dinner reservations, but being the indecisive person I am, I couldn't make up mind if I really wanted to get all dazzled up and go eat Portuguese cuisine. We ended up opting for plan B, which was pizza and champagne in the back of our car overlooking the ocean - we keep it classy here. :)

Thank you husband for being so sweet! I love you.

1/2 marathon training

The 11 week countdown begins today to my first ever half marathon (13.1 miles). Since being on the island, I have run several 5ks that the base puts on, and during Thanksgiving I ran the Turkey Trot 10k. I ran the whole way but it definitely kicked my bootie.

On May 1st the island actually hosts a half marathon race, starting in one of the small villages and goes through 11 other villages along the coastline. It should be a beautiful run.

One of the spouses put together a training group starting today. What that entails who knows? It will probably turn out to be half training on my own, half training with the group due to conflicting schedules. Either way we are getting t-shirts and May 1st should be an exciting, eventful day that I am looking forward to.

Oh yes, Happy Valentines Day!!

We're Trapped.

Maybe thats a little exaggerative, but that is sometimes what it feels like. On my quest, to find the best prices for our upcoming trips I have scoured the internet high and low, near and far, and whatever other direction it can go in. Summary of results: Cost of cruise < Cost of flights. Unbelievable right! Aren't we already currently living in Europe??

Anyhow, back to the reason for the title, there are only 2 commercial flights that fly off our island, TAP Portugal and SATA. SATA had the best deals online and they were offering student prices, so I opted to go with them and give them a call to see what qualified us to be students. Apparently, only those presently residing in the Azores but studying in Lisbon qualify. 2 years expired Texas A&M ids apparently don't count. As I was pleading with this women to find me some kind of deal, she enlightens me to say if we are residents of the Azores we qualify for the resident rate. Excellent! Oh, but US military residing on the island doesn't count.

So if you have a free moment to spare to look at www.sata.pt you will see the student and resident rates are astronomically lower than the regular rate. Now there are so many pluses to living on this beautiful island, but when you are asked "How is it?", "How could you not like it?" or "Do you love it?" this could be a valid reason of why people count down their days living on this bubble.

Why People Hire Travel Agents.

Sorry for my absence on the blog. Any free computer time that I had was spent surfing countless websites for affordable flights. Last week was a pile of frustration and unnecessary stress added to the week. As many of you know, we have been speaking of taking our "Europe vacation" in the Spring of this year. A cruise was the perfect answer for us to be able to see a couple of different countries while we live on this half of the world.

Idea 1: Cruise to Egypt - got completely shot down once Cairo entered into such Chaos.
Idea 2: Cruise from Denmark, to Sweden, Russia, etc. - We were too slow and too late, when our window of opportunity was closed and the price jumped $700 in a day, and now even if we could afford that it's sold out.
Idea 3: Cruise from Italy, to Greece, Turkey, Croatia

Third times a charm, right? This one sat perfectly at our fingertips. With much help and advice *THANKS NAN!* we were ready to book. After trying for hours to finagle flights to get us there on time and on the cheap, it was just not doable. Expedia would be the easy way to go with a flight from our bubble of an island to Venice, Italy for a mere $1600 for 2 people. That was just not going to happen.

As our deadline came last night on our hold on cruise #3 we were defeated. As prices kept escalating, due to baggage fees, and taxi rides, and overnight stays before the actual cruise, cruise #3 busted through our comfort threshold of what we were planning on spending.

SO, Idea # 4: Same boat, same itinerary same port, different date - in November for 1/2 the price, even the flights are cut way down. Ding. Ding. Ding. Sign us up!

We will just have to sit patient and wait now in anticipation for our long awaited vaca.

Airplanes Don't Like Us.

The accounts we have had with delayed flights, lost luggage, exchange of words with airline customer service I could write a book on it. This however, is only a small exert of our headache this past weekend.

On Friday, everything looked to be going smoothly. We left almost promptly from San Antonio with only a 10 minute or so delay to Houston Hobby. Arriving, at Hobby we looked at the monitors and were overjoyed when it read:

Departing HOU         Arriving BWI       Time: 7:00pm            Now 9:55pm

We were overjoyed that we would be arriving in Baltimore almost an hour before the scheduled time. To our dismay, as we took our seats and overheard others we were mistaken at what we were reading on the monitors, the flight was not even taking off till 9:55pm!!! I believe we actually left around 9:25pm.

So we are finally in Baltimore. All of our bags came intact and the shuttle to the hotel only took about 5 minutes to arrives. This is how we like things to happen when it is around 1:00am. After being in our hotel room for a couple minutes I hear "Those bags look identical in size." Hmmm... not a good thing to hear when in fact your bags are different sizes.

Looking at the labels closer (come on who really looks at the labels) we discovered we grabbed someone else's bag who looked identical to ours. After making numerous phone calls at getting voicemail and B riding the shuttle back to the airport he came back to report that the family whose bag we took was thankfully still waiting at the airport and overjoyed when they saw their luggage rolling its way to them. Ours however was locked up in the "closed for the night" lost and found. He could see it behind the glass, we were so close.

3 hours of sleep later, we arrive at the BWI airport once again to catch the military rotator to our little island. As Brandon is checking in I am chatting with a familiar face I see. She informs me that there are only 4 empty seats left on the plane. 4!! and tons of people standing around waiting to get on as well. However, option B would be to take the commercial flights leaving that day for a mere $1000 dollars each. Ya, we were sticking to option A. B comes back to say that they will not let us check in without all of our luggage. Seriously!! Hightailing it down to lost and found we were praying they were open.

By God's grace we were 2 of the 4 seats, with all of our luggage. There were even a couple who got split up, and only the active duty member boarded. We were so thankful that both of us made it on the rotator on Saturday.

We arrived safety back to our home and Mason was overjoyed to see us, and that is all the truly matters, but I just wanted to share this fun story with everyone.

As my dad always says, "Traveling isn't what it used to be" or something like that.