Rachel’s Reflections

The biggest blessing I’ve had this week is that Jeremy got to come home and stay for a whole week!  He’s almost done “playing Navy”, that is, being on a ship, at least for a little while.  It’s been so good to have him home. It’s amazing how my stress levels have been lower this week.

He bought me a new game for the Wii.  It’s called Sims Castaways.  I haven’t tried it out yet as I’ve been too tired and migrainy (I made that word up) but I plan to.

Sunday was “Husband Appreciation Day” according to the sign on the door of the base library.  I meant to write a post about it, but didn’t do so as I was busy appreciating and enjoying Jeremy.  So here’s my late post:

Some things I appreciate about Jeremy (in no particular order):

1. He’s really good at computers.  This includes troubleshooting as well as being knowledgeable about software and the Internet.  When he gets back for good, I’m going to have him help me write some technology related posts.
2. He’s good at research.  If I want to know something and am having trouble finding it, he can usually do so.
3. He’s smart.
4. He’s very gentle.  I really appreciate that.
5. He’s very forgiving.
6. He’s patient and longsuffering.  Sometimes I need that.  <grin>
7. He’s not a complainer.  For example, he’s never complained about my cooking. (There’s been a few “burnt offerings.”  Hey, you try cooking on a Celsius stove when you’re used to Fahrenheit.)  He’s not critical.
8. I love his sense of humor.  He says the most random, funny things sometimes.  He’s crazy, but in a good way.
9. A correlary to the above: I love it that we can be silly together.
10. He accepts me.  I feel that I can be myself around him.
11. He loves me.  And he values me.
12. He’s an eternal optimist.  One of his favorite expressions is, “It could be worse.”  Since I tend to be pessimistic, he keeps me from getting too negative.
13. He sees the best in other people and has been teaching me to do that.
14. He’s my friend.  We have some good conversations.  I love it that I can share my soul with him.
15. We have a lot of the same interests.  This is good as this means we can have fun together.
16. He’s a hard worker.
17. He’s very persistent.
18. He’s a good leader and can make decisions.  Since I have trouble making decisions sometimes, this works out great.
19. He has a vision for the future.  He’s not wandering aimlessly around “like a lost soul.”
20. He loves God.

I could go on, but twenty is a good number.

I love you, Jeremy!

Today is my youngest nephew’s birthday. He is four years old today. He is my brother’s son. His mom regularly writes a blog called “Where the Wild Things Are.” There’s a link to it in my sidebar. I’m sure she will be posting birthday greetings. You can also see pictures of “his cuteness” there. I’m glad somebody in our family was born in April as that’s my favorite month.

Some things I know about Caden. He’s very active. He likes to climb (like his Uncle Timothy when he was his age) and explore, and he’s very athletic. He also has a good mind. I got to see him last May. It was so fun interacting with him. Preschoolers can be great fun.

So Happy Birthday, Caden! I hope you have a lot of fun today!

I love you,

Aunt Rachel

Every month the base does a “fun run.”  Usually it’s around a holiday, but April doesn’t have a holiday, at least not at this time of the month, so they called this one the Fitness Fun Run.  It is 5K.  That is five kilometers or a little over three miles.  It is four laps around the base.  Our command makes us participate every time.  So it is not “fun” for us unless you like running.  We call it mando fun (mandatory fun).

Today I ran mine in 33:50.  The last time I did one was in February (I was gone for the March one), and I did it in 32:40.  So I did it a little slower today.  But it was raining today, and the pavement was slippery.  I always sprint at the end of a run, and I couldn’t get up speed today because of the slipperiness of the pavement.  Just so you know, it wasn’t pouring–it was more of a drizzle.  But it still made everything wet.  We always get a free T-shirt out of it, so I have one more for my collection.

I also did a “fun walk” today.  April is sexual assault awareness month, and so they had a base walk to raise awareness about SAVI, which is the Sexual Assault Victim Intervention program.

• The Dept of the US Navy SAVI Program is a comprehensive, standardized, victim-sensitive system to prevent and respond to sexual assault Navy-wide.
• SAVI Provides:
  • Awareness and prevention education
  • Victim advocacy and intervention/direct services
  • Data collection
• The US Navy is the only service with a defined Sexual Assault Program with dedicated staff and funding at both headquarters and installation level.

The above bulleted information came from this website. You can also go here to find out more information.

We got a free T-shirt to wear and carried signs and walked around base shouting cadences.  Well, some people shouted.  It was more like chanting slogans.  They were based on actual Navy (running) cadences.  Like the following:

• Sexual assault is a crime
• If convicted you’ll do time

or

• “No” means no
• Not “maybe so”

or

• Everywhere we go
• People want to know
• Who we are
• So we tell them
• We are the advocates
• SAVI SAVI advocates
• We’re here to help you
• We’re here if you need us

After the walk SAVI sponsored a free barbecue for the base, so we got free lunch.  My legs were sore and so were my feet all the rest of the day.  But I have two free T-shirts now.

If you haven’t read the post directly preceding this one, read that first.  This is a continuation.

Jeremy emailed me some pictures.  He said to mention he’s been stationed on the USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81).  It is the only ship in the US Navy to have a British officer permanently stationed aboard.  He adds that he can give us a few hundred other facts about the ship if we would like.  I bet!

Edited to add: If you click on the pictures, they will open up bigger.

Reading the Certificate

Getting Pinned

“Congratulations.” Note the shiny new pin above the “U.S. Navy” on the upper left of his uniform. (his left)

Jeremy’s new certificate.

In case you don’t know, the uniforms he and the officer are wearing are coveralls.  They are a one-piece uniform that is very comfortable and durable and is the standard underway uniform.  You can tell officers and chiefs because of the rank on their collars and the khaki belt they wear. (Yes, Jeff, he’s an O-5, but we call him Commander.)

The pinning took place in the ship’s wardroom, which is the place where the officers eat.  It is usually decorated very nicely, and as you can see this one is no exception.  Normally enlisted sailors aren’t allowed in there.  So it was special for Jeremy to get to have his ceremony in there.

Congratulations, Jeremy!

I am pleased to announce that Jeremy is now Surface Warfare qualified. 

Yay, Jeremy!  (Insert huge round of applause here.)

You may remember from my earlier post about it that he had a whole series of things he had to do to get this qualification:

• He had to complete some books
• And then take a test.  The test was hard, but he passed it.
• Then he had to do some walk-throughs, where he visited each department and demonstrated to the chief in charge of it that he knew about their department.
• Then he had a First Class board, more commonly called a Murder Board.  A group of First Classes (E-6) quizzed him about all the knowledge he was supposed to have about surface warfare and particularly as it applies to the specific ship he was on.  The reason it is called a Murder Board is because it is their job to determine who is ready to go to the real board, or the Chief’s Board.  It wouldn’t do to waste the chiefs’ time by sending them candidates who weren’t ready.  He passed this board “very well.”
• So finally he went to the Chief’s Board.  These can be grueling.  I don’t know how long his was, but I’ve known some boards that were three hours long.  Three hours of being asked any and every question concerning the mountain of information you had to learn about how to fight a ship.  That’s every system on the ship, every department from Operations to Weapons to Engineering to Supply, everything about a ship.  And you only have 15 seconds to answer.  If you take longer, that means you don’t know it.  So this can be very hard.  But Jeremy passed this, and he was told he did very well at this too.

Edited to add: Jeremy’s First Class Board was an hour long and his Chief Board was 45 minutes.  But he did his boards alone, so that means he had to answer question after question for the entire time.

So now he’s official!  He made it!  He can put (SW) in front of his name now.  Yes, the parenthesis are included.  It’s called a designation, as in Rate, Designation, Name.  (Jeff, rate is the same as rank–it’s just the Navy doesn’t call it rank except for officers.)

From the time a sailor enrolls in the surface warfare program he is given twelve months to complete it.  Most people take the whole twelve or close to it.  Jeremy didn’t have twelve months.  He did his in five.  And he did it “very well.”  That’s amazing!  It’s very hard to earn a pin in such a short amount of time.  There’s a huge amount of information to learn and then there are the hands-on stuff where you have to demonstrate proficiency in various things.  And then, of course, you have to coordinate with other people’s schedules in order to get signatures.  So it can be very time-consuming and why the Navy gives people a year to do it.  It is very amazing that Jeremy was able to complete it in so little time.  He worked very hard at it.

Correction:  Jeremy did his in three, not five.  That is even more amazing.

Today he will get pinned.  He gets an actual pin.  And he will get a certificate.  This is a great accomplishment, especially since people in his rate (job) don’t often get the opportunity to earn warfare pins.

I’m very proud of you, Jeremy!

Hoorah!   

I promised you I would post the winner of the Bahrain Gulf Air Grand Prix.  I know it’s a little late, but work’s been crazy lately.

 So the winner is (drum roll) Ferrari’s Felipe Massa who is from Brazil.  He won last year too.  The race was 57 laps and his time was 1 hour 31 minutes and 6.970 seconds, according to the Gulf Daily News. 

Bahrain felt like it won too.  Saturday there were record crowds at the race–33,500 people attended, which was up 7,500 from last year.  And on Sunday thre were record crowds again.  One of the officers from my command attended Sunday, and he said the place was packed.  The three day attendance total was 99,981 people.  That’s very close to the 100,000 they were estimating.

So Felipe Massa was very happy to win.  Ferrari was very happy to win as well since another teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, won second.  BMW’s Robert Kubica, who is Polish won third. 

I won’t give you more details of the races, simply because I don’t know much about racing and so don’t understand much of what I’m reading in the paper.  For example, I don’t know what “pole position” is, but it says that Kubica “started from the first pole position of his career.”  Is that good or bad?  So in order not to mess up any of the details, I’ll let you go online and read about it yourself if you’re interested.  You can access the Gulf Daily News here or the Gulf Weekly here.

Today is going to be a little update on what I’ve been up to lately.

Saturday I went to the BSPCA or the Bahrain Animal Shelter.  No, I was not looking for a pet, although I wanted to take a bunch of them home with me.  I went with a friend to volunteer there.  The first thing we did was go into the Cat House and help out there.  There was a staff member sweeping and mopping the cages.  We went behind him and put in the food and water and the litter boxes and beds.  And of course we petted the cats too.  There was a Persian there that looked very funny as it had recently received a haircut.  I never knew they got haircuts.  I hope it looks good when it finally grows out.  There was one cat brought in while I was there.  I never found out why.  Some of the cats had been there since August.  One was such a sweetheart she let me carry her around.  I don’t know why she was there so long.  If I could, I’d adopt her.  But I live in a “no pets” apartment.  There were a few kittens there too.  I expect they’ll go quickly.

After the cats we helped walk the dogs.  The dogs are not kept in kennels but in large pens.  There are around 8-10 dogs in each pen.  It’s easier to walk all the dogs in a pen at the same time instead of individually.  If you know dogs you’ll know why.  If you don’t know dogs, it’s because dogs are like people–they get jealous if they think someone else is getting something they’re not.  Fortunately for them on Saturday there’s usually a lot of volunteers.  So everyone takes one dog and thus the whole pen gets walked at once.  On the other days of the week the staff have to do it when they get time so maybe only one pen gets walked a day.  Even on Saturday, when every dog gets walked, there is still a lot of walking.  That is because there is a lot of pens and a lot of dogs.  It would be easy to spend two hours just walking dogs.

All the dogs seemed small to me, but maybe that’s because I’m used to seeing the big German Shepherd military working dogs on base.  These at the shelter looked to be from 30-40 pounds–so in the medium range of dog size.  They were also mutts and most skinny.  The only one I that didn’t look skinny was the one that looked like a rottweiler, and those dogs don’t look skinny.  My friend said a lot of the dogs had some saluki in them, and saluki is a skinny breed of dog.  There were also a lot of puppies there.  Most were half grown.  But they were all cute and definitely wanted attention.  If I were to be able to get a pet it would be hard to pick out just one.  They all need a good home.

Even though it was hard to leave the animals there, I enjoyed volunteering there and would like to go back.  It was fun being around all those animals that just wanted some care and attention.  But then I like animals, particularly dogs.

Later the same Saturday, I went to taekwondo.  I’d missed two weeks from being out of town and having a migraine.  I’ve had a lot of problems with migraines lately.  I don’t usually get this many.  I had one Saturday night too, but I took my medicine and went anyway.  I didn’t end up staying the whole time.  Maybe it was just as well.  My medicine tends to make me dizzy, and he was having us do these exercises that involved turning around (and around), which is enough to make you dizzy anyway.  Once I spun around too fast and ended up on my face on the mat.  I didn’t even realize I was falling until I was lying face down!  I wasn’t hurt.  That’s why we practice on mats.  The teacher applauded.  That’s what he does every time someone falls.  He says it’s so they don’t feel bad.  It does make it easier to laugh it off.  And it was funny.  I wish I could have seen myself.  I probably looked funny flying around and landing on my face.  So now I can officially say I’ve had my first fall in taekwondo.

The klutziness doesn’t end there.  Yesterday when I was riding my bike home from work I wiped out.  That means I came as close to falling down as makes no difference.  I tried to jump a curb and failed.  I guess I need to find some ten-year-old boy and have him teach me how to do it.  They all know, right?  So I scraped some skin off my knee.  It bled a little bit and hurt some too.  But as both my mom and Jeremy’s mom like to say in situations like this–I’ll live.  The ironic thing was that my senior chief talked to us about bicycle safety at work just that morning.  He’d said that even though it’s not required, we should wear long pants and long sleeves when riding.  I thought that was ridiculous, especially with Bahrain’s climate, but guess what?  I wasn’t wearing pants.  But will this encourage me to wear pants in the future?  Probably not.  So have I learned my lesson?  That would be a negative.  I have learned not to jump curbs.  Does that count for anything?

Well that’s all I can think of for the exciting things that have been happening in my life lately.  In blogging news I took down the “dead” widget from the sidebar.  It’s supposed to tell you the temperature in Bahrain.  It’s really cool, but it stopped working, and I don’t know why.  So I will wait until my computer guru husband comes back and hopefully he can get it working again.  Until then, I put a search bar up in its place.  I figured I have enough posts now that if someone were looking for one it would be annoying to page through all the archives; they should be able to search for what they want.  I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know how well it works.  It’s also rather ugly.  Sorry.  Nothing I can do about that.

That’s all, folks.  I’m off to bake a cake–Triple Chocolate Hot Fudge Cake.  All you have to do is add water.  Sounds easy and delicious.  I love chocolate.  I’d share if there were some way to send it electronically.