Christmas in June

We are blessed with a 9/80 work schedule which means we work 9 hour days and get every other Friday off. What did we do on our first off Friday...MOVE!! It might seem like moving is one of my favorite things to do since we do it a lot, this was my twelfth move in 7 years but I hate it just as much as everyone else. The move was rather painless, in a last minute panic I hired two guys to help and three small hours we were in our new apartment.
This was the second time in two years that our life was in storage so unpacking is kind of like Christmas. I got my electric toothbrush back, found my stash of chapstick and had a whole new wardrobe including a huge box of shoes! At first it was very exciting but when it comes to picking what to wear I find that it was much easier when I only had two options, holy tank top one or holy tank top two.
We have about half of everything unpacked and don't plan on unpacking the rest. Our friend Greg thinks that we'll be completely unpacked in 6 months and he's probably right. As of now I just unpacked minimal things: 4 plates, a set of bowls, a few cups and wine glasses but as I cook and bake more I think I'll be looking for things that are still packed. The dining room will be our storage area until we sort out our lives.
We were action packed the rest of the weekend. Attended a birthday party for a friends kid, went to a beach bonfire to watch the summer fireworks, went to dinner with Andrew and Alicia, and went food shopping!!! YEAH for no more eating out!!!

Pics: not in order as usual
- The 70s called and asked if we want to visit ... we said YES! Dark paneling, no dishwasher and a fire place all ours for the next 6 months
- the great thing about your friends having kids is that you get to play with them. Siena is the daughter of our San Diego besties Greg and Marisa
- Andrew and Alicia ready for a night out. Our dinners together are numbered, he got stationed on the east coast :(
- Happiness is finding your bag of Chapstick!!!
- Where else in the world can you watch fireworks while having a bonfire on the beach and be wearing pants in June!
- Locating all the pieces of my electric toothbrush is like riding a unicorn through a chocolate filled lake
- Michael might look like he's taking a break but he was actually doing sit ups

What happens when you return

We read numerous travel blogs before we left and most people posted some sort of self reflection after their trip and/or a cost summary but what no one talked about is what happened in their lives when they returned. Did they sleep on moms couch for weeks while looking for a job, did they have a home to return to, a job? So since today is our first day back at work I figured I'd tell you how it worked for us. We arrived in California last week picked up our car that was parked at a friends place and then headed over to another friend who was gracious enough to let us stay with her for a few days. Our whole life is in a 10x10 storage unit and luckily we had a small bag of clothes and toiletries in the trunk of the car that we needed right before we left. I already felt one up from when I returned from deployment since we didn't have a car then and I came back a month before Michael and I didn't want to look for apartments without him which meant I was homeless for a while.
Got settled at our friends and feverishly went about looking for a place to live. We needed a month to month or 6 month lease available now since we still had no idea where we were moving. There are plenty on the market but they are small complexes without a full time office staff which means generally we call a number who tells us if it's available then they said they will call an on site manager who will call us. From what we observed this on site person is just someone who lives in the complex and has authority to show places but it's not their job so it's not a priority, which means its days before they return your calls. After three days of searching we finally see a bunch of places and then the applications process starts. As a renter the process is painful but as an owner I'm glad they are thorough. Pays stubs (that was tricky for us), bank statements, debt and references. I don't know how people who live paycheck to paycheck ever get approved. Our current hold up is a reference. In the last three years we've only paid rent at a complex for 6 months, the rest of the time we were out of the country or living in our condo. The other issue is that every place requires a credit check and a fee so we don't want to apply to a bunch of places.
In the meantime we have to return to work which started today. It's like everything that's been on hold for months is coming at us at once. We are full speed ahead at two jobs (military and civilian), looking for a place to live, planning a move. So on this fine Monday, 6 days after returning to San Diego we are staying at a hotel, hoping to get an apartment and move this weekend, we have just enough work enough appropriate clothes to make it through the week. It's like we're still traveling as we eat take out or pre-made meals and I had to sit on the floor to make our lunches this morning. I can't wait for the day that I can put in earrings, wear perfume, use my electric toothbrush and cook my own dinner.

Texas

As we landed in Houston I think we both had the same thought: what the heck are we doing here? We lived in Houston, we hated Houston and we promptly left Houston never to return again...or so we thought. We met Megan and Jonathan when they lived in San Diego and instantly hit it off so when they told us that they were from TX and loved everything TX we figured we could make an exception for them, kind of like the small space we save for those dear friends who also happen to be Red Sox fans. Like most people our age Megan and Jonathan have grown up, gotten jobs, bought a house and made the ultimate sacrifice: had a baby. We figured this would be a good time to stop in and see them.
You know those rare friends you have where you don't see them for long periods of time but when your together its like you never left, that's how it was. 3 days of wine, excellent meals cooked by supermom and laughs by everyone including their adorable little boy. Michael got to play the manny with
Graham who at 7 months was a lot of fun to play with. Jonathan was gracious enough to answer the 500 million questions we have about corporate America and how they made it work when they both went back to school. Megan fed us all sorts of gourmet meals most of which I can't pronounce but it was delicious. Her meals generally change our lives and she gets a kick out of our frozen soy burger life style. We are so glad we made it a stop on our world tour.

Pics:
- The manny at work
- playing family at whole foods while Megan shopped. It worked people thought he was ours, I'm sure Michaels ability to rock the diaper bag helped. But after this outing I could barely move my arms.
- table set for royalty, Megan pulled out all the stops for our arrival

Somehow we came back with a million pictures of Graham and none of Megan and Jonathan, how did that happen?

Home?

6/5/12:

Well after 25,000 miles and around 4 months ... We're back in San Diego. I can't say home since we don't have one at the moment. That adventure starts tomorrow :(

Once we get settled we'll post some stats and thoughts.

304

6/5/12:

We're in Phoenix about to fly to San Diego and that means 304 miles left on our adventure.

Very sad :(

Welcome back to America!

6/2/12:

We had some serious plans for a 'coming home' blog post but clearly this plans didn't materialize. So I'll just summarize a few tid-bits until we can scrape together a better story.

The flight from Rome was a little low class for our tastes. As this blog no doubt has shown, we're used to certain luxuries in our gypsy life. Things like leg room, hot towels, in-seat TV with atleast 1000 options, cheese plates, etc etc. This particular flight would not have made Robin Leach happy. BTW if you don't know who that is I'm pretty sure it means you were born after 1990. The plane was old and a bit rickety. It even had ash trays .... EWWWWWWW! The in-seat tv (although better than nothing) only had 6 channels which played the same movie in a loop. Basically it wasn't 1st class. Oh well.

Got to DC and had some initial culture shocks. After 4 months gone the 2 biggest American culture shocks were:

1) Americans as a whole are significantly larger than people from SE Asia and Italy.
2) Americans as a whole are significantly more polite than people from SE Asia and Italy (yes even NY'ers!).

I'll save our thoughts on that for another post but I think the size issue stems from the portion size offered.

Anyway, we had our first Frosty (super yummy!) and Starbucks, had a small heart attack over the price of 2 drinks at starbucks ($9.50 ... Seriously!) and got to use our cell phones for more than an alarm clock.

Flew to NY, had a fabulous welcome from the family and after almost 24 hours of travel (woke up in Rome around 7AM, in bed the following day at about 6AM Rome time).

The next few days were a blur of visiting some of our very best friends, family in NJ, Friendly's, pizza and 7-11 coffee :) Saw the Avengers (amazing!), Yankees games (on tv) and drove around here and there.

We spent a day in NYC with our favorite diva Amanda!!!!! Even convinced her to walk around the city with us and hang out at Fleet Week :).

Can't believe we've already been back a week! Heading to Houston today to see some wonderful friends and then back to San Diego on Tuesday where we have to face real life. *****sigh****

Pics:

1) Carolyn opened the window on the plane and my inner vampire got angry.
2) us in DC.
3) us on the subway in NYC.
4) Carolyn having a scrumptious meal at shake shack in NYC.
5) Carolyn and Amanda getting comfy on a Marine Corps helicopter.
6) us leaving Rome :(
7) Me, Carolyn, Matt and Aysen.

Last day in paradise

5/24

Is it really our last day in Italy? Michael has a serious case of depression but I'm trying to just think about what lies ahead. We still have about two weeks of vacation left before we return to San Diego.
We couldn't get in the Borghese Gallery when we were here earlier so we made a reservation for today. It had some beautiful art and I do think I appreciated it more after our month in art classes ie a million museums. What I don't understand is why this art is so important that you need a reservation and you can only be there two hours and of that you can only look at the cool stuff (paintings) for 30 minutes. Due to the time constraints we gave in and paid for the audio guide. The museum was a private home so it's set on a lovely park which we toured on our way out. From there we picked up some quick items to take home with us and did a bag swap at the hotel because we had to check everything we owned at the museum so we didn't bring much.
The rest of the day we just enjoyed the city. We ate lunch late so we only ended up getting gelato once! Blasphemy I know! We went to the Spanish steps, took some pictures and people watched for a while, strolled along the streets, stopped at a few small churches along the way ending in Piazza Navona which has a four rivers fountain. Going to these places makes it even more depressing that we lost the camera because we had some great pictures from our first time. Took the bus back to the hotel so could pack which I'm happy to say went much easier then we thought.
Our home lives aren't nearly this exciting but we still have some vacationing to do while we're on the east coast so we'll continue to write. We'll be in NY a little over a week and the Yankees aren't playing at home once but it's Fleet Week!