Finally. Home.

Well, I'm back home now, and I'm so excited. My trip here was kind of sucky, but it was definitely worth sitting on an extremely packed bus for 12+ hours and not sleeping more than an hour at a time for a 48 hour period.

 
 

I've got a lot of stuff to accomplish, and right now, things are going kind of slow and not always the way I want them to, but that's life, I guess.

 
 

One of the very first things I wanted to do when I got back was to get my cell phone turned back on. I have Sprint, so when I deployed my first time, I called them up and had them put my numbers on the military suspension program. When I got back, I called them back and they gave me back my numbers, no problem. This time, however, they said that their system canceled my numbers and gave them away. So, I have to get new phone numbers. That sucks, because everybody I know has the old phone numbers, but I guess this might be a good thing because it's forcing me to change, and I'll be getting phone numbers for Ohio, where I'll be living for the next few years. I have to wait a few days before I get my new Blackberry though. (I'm really excited about that! Yeah, I know I'm a geek!)

 
 

Whenever we redeploy, the first seven days consist of a bunch of briefings and stuff so we can get our paperwork and medical stuff squared away. Most of it is death by Powerpoint, but the days are generally short, so it's not too bad. After that week, we should be able to go on leave shortly thereafter.

 
 

Thanksgiving is coming up, and I really have no clue what I'll be doing for it. Since I'm spending Christmas with Sean's folks, I get to plan what we do for Thanksgiving, but with the way things are, I don't know what's going on with my leave, so the decision will probably be made like the day before Thanksgiving, and I might have a super long drive ahead of me. Ugh.

 
 

Gas is really surprising to me now. The lowest price right now in my town is about $1.73. It's kind of hard to believe what I saw on the news when I was in Iraq about how expensive it got earlier this year. When I left last year, I think it was somewhere in the $2.50-$3.00 range. We've been driving Sean's car a lot lately, and I'm keeping my truck at a friend's house, because it's kind of a waste to drive separate vehicles all the time, but I'm really happy about these gas prices.

 
 

There have been a lot of changes in the past year…I went to the PX yesterday and I was going to go to Clothing and Sales that was right next to the PX, and the building was GONE! I'm gonna have to search for it today, I guess. It looks like they've completed some major road work in my area as well. One road, I know they've been working on for about the past three years or more, and now it's all nice and finished!

 
 

The weather is going through a pretty icky cold spell, I guess. It's snowing all over the place and it's absolutely freezing here. I really would have preferred to come home when it was a bit warmer, but oh well. I'm home, and that's all that really matters, I guess.

 
 

Ah, that reminds me of shopping! Last night, I went clothes shopping for a little while and got myself a pink peacoat at Gap. It's really pretty, and I'm really excited about wearing bright colors again. I'm probably going to end up buying a lot of sweaters too. I didn't shop for too long because Sean gets bored with it quickly.

 
 

I went to Wal-mart my first night back to pick up some necessities, and I got really overwhelmed by the selection. After reading this book, the way I look at making choices has changed dramatically. I was shopping for a new deodorant, and the selection was so vast, I ended up spending way too much time trying to pick out the best one for the best price. Luckily, I realized fairly quickly that the excessive amount of choice was eventually going to make me give up and leave without making a choice, so I just picked a deodorant that was good enough, and I'm a lot happier with that.

 
 

Well, I better get going because I'm getting distracted by other shiny objects, so I better get going. I'll be posting a lot more fun stuff now that I am back in the "real world!" I can't say enough how happy I am to finally be home!

Wannabe Extrovert

I'm a rather introverted and quiet person. Especially when I meet someone for the first time or if I don't know them very well. I'd much rather listen than speak. Someone asked me one time that if there was anything that I would change about myself if I could. I didn't have to think for very long. It wasn't anything like being skinny or pretty or anything like that. I would just want to be articulate.

It amazes me that I'm as interested in languages and people as much as I am because I am horrible at expressing myself. My mind works faster than my mouth or my pen, so I stumble on my words a lot and sometimes when I'm saying something, some kind of connection between my head and my mouth gets cut and then the word I'm about to say just doesn't want to come out of my mouth for some reason. Also, I have perpetual writer's block. If you have been reading this blog any, you can probably tell (yeah, I go on terrible tangents frequently as well).

I have been complemented about my writing style before, but I think my insecurities about speaking and writing really hurt me sometimes. I know this is something I must overcome somehow. Just how I'm supposed to do it is still a mystery to me, but I'm trying bit by bit to come up with ways to help get better at expressing my thoughts and emotions. How about these for ideas?

 
 

Ideas for breaking out of my shell:

Volunteer for charity or some kind of event

"People who volunteer are 42% more likely than people who don't to say they are very happy with their lives."

Read to children at a library (Reading is Fundamental!)

Force myself to write on this blog, no matter what it is or how crappy I feel it is.

Be more forward about meeting people and making friends.

 
 

After listening to the life stories of a lot of different people, I've decided that up until now at least, I've led a very sheltered and uneventful life. Sure, I've had good times and bad times like everybody else, but no matter how bad you think you've got it, there's somebody out there that has had it worse than you. I've been so very lucky to have had such a boring life.

A part of me wants to keep living this boring existence, but then another part of me wants to break away and live for adventure (whatever that is). Soon, I will begin to undergo a major lifestyle change. I am anticipating that change to be quite difficult at times, but at the same time I'm really expecting it to be quite liberating. Oh, I'm so excited! It'll be just like I'm reborn and I get to start all over again! Of course, I will be coming with some baggage, but who doesn't? Dealing with life's baggage is what makes life interesting, I think. I can never seem to fit it all into one neat and tiny container. Maybe that's why I like boxes so much. (Yeah, that's totally off topic, but I've been trying to pack my bags for the past couple days and I still have a bunch of crap that's not fitting in my bag as nicely as I would like.)

So I've decided that a major part of my new life is going to be spent working on trying to be more extroverted and adventurous. Maybe I should decide on religion as well…um…Religion'll have to be another posting. :)

 
 

Here's some touching quotes about change. Just the type of changes that I will soon be going through…

 
 

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.  - Anatole France

 
 

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.  - Confucius

 
 

If you do not change the direction in which you are going, you will end up where you are headed.   - Confucius

 
 

 
 

 
 

Thoughts on the Election

So, Obama won the election. Good for him. I don't know how good it will be for the country, but we'll just have to wait and see. I would have said the same thing if McCain had won. I'm really not the political type, so it didn't really make much difference to me who won, although I did think that Obama would be the winner either way. As far as I can tell, that's pretty much how the presidency goes: switching back and forth between the two parties every two cycles or so. Four years isn't really long enough probably for the public to get sick of seeing your face on television, so they reelect you for a second term and then by the end of the second term, the people are sick of you and your party being in the hot seat, so they give the presidency to the other party and so on. Maybe that's why people think politics is so exciting, because it's so dynamic and volatile.

 
 

I just really hope things get better for the country, from what they've been. I know a lot of people will either blame or praise Obama for pulling troops out of Iraq, but I think a lot of the troops would be going home from Iraq soon anyway, despite who's president. However, without any big advancement in other sectors such as technology or industry after we go home, like things that happened around the ends of WWI and WWII, I think we will probably be in for a bit of recession or depression anyway.

 
 

Hope for the best but prepare for the worst, right? Good luck, Mr. President.

그냥 Rambling

I don't really know what to write, but I'm going to write anyway and post this. I know it's being a little reckless, but I don't care.

 
 

Every time I think of writing a blog, I almost never know an exact topic, so most of my postings are ramblings like this one.

 
 

You know when you meet someone for the first time, and they just give you a bad feeling? There's this person that I know that has given me that feeling. This person has not spoken more than ten words to me I think, but from quietly observing their behavior towards other people, I can't help but wonder how these types of people survive in the world. Always disrespectful toward superiors and foul-mouthed. Also very confrontational. I'm not really one to judge people, but I just can't see a person like that succeeding in the world. Does this person even know how to smile or be thankful? I may never know.

 
 

Should I even post this? Maybe. Maybe not.

 
 

For the last few days, I really haven't had a lot to do…maybe it's been the last week…I don't know because my days seem to be running together. I keep promising myself that I'm not going to let myself be this dormant when I go home. I really hope I can keep that promise, because this is no way to live.

 
 

The weather is fairly nice now. A few days ago, it was cold and rainy, and I really wished it'd clear up. I really hope it stays this way.

 
 

Today is election day in the states. I voted. May the best candidate win. I am not a political person at all, in fact, I pretty much loathe anything to do with politics, but I feel that voting is pretty much a duty as a citizen and it must be done. And as a woman, my ancestors fought so hard for the right to vote that I feel that voting is an act of respect toward them. I do regret not being more educated about the candidates than I am, but from reading various news articles about the election, I figure I am probably a lot more informed about the candidates than a lot of people who don't even know who the current president is.

 
 

Well, I can't really think of anything else to write, so I guess I better post this before I get frustrated with it and just delete it.