Odds and Ends

Family Movie Night

Tonight we opted for CPK for dinner and went to Blockbuster and rented a Tom Hanks double header. First up was Big. It was a little over YB's head, but he sat and watched most of it with us and laughed along with us. ES seemed to enjoy it though. Man, it was remarkable how YOUNG Tom Hanks looked.

Next up is The Man with One Red Shoe. I couldn't believe our neighbor B across the street said she has never seen EITHER of these movies! I loved both of these flicks when they came out in the theaters.

Conversation at Dinner Last Night

Just when we thought ES had cracked the Mommy-and-Daddy code...

LW to me: "Tonight is B... A... T... H night."

ES: [Gasp!] "Tonight is BITCH night?!?!?!"

It occurred to me that since the boys have been on summer vacation, ES hasn't been getting anywhere near the spelling and reading practice that he got during the school year. Methinks his misfire on the bath night message is highlighting the cobwebs accumulating in the spelling portion of his noggin.

Sneaky Little Bugger

Our 4-year old YB is learning some tricks of the con artist trade. He wanted a toy and ES wouldn't give it to him. So he went to the front door and called out, "Hi, E___!" (Aside: E is ES's best friend from school and lives just up the street from us) ES immediately dropped the toy and ran to the front door to go play with E, and YB ran back to the play room with a cheshire-cat grin and grabbed the toy that he wanted. E was actually nowhere to be found, YB just said that to distract ES. I wonder where he learned that one from?

Follow-up report on new running shoes

So far I've run 20.9 miles on my new Brooks Adrenaline GTS8 running shoes, and I really like them a lot. No pain in my feet and no need for any sort of inserts.

Planning Our Road Trip

Follow-up to a previous post on what to do about our cars. We're going to ship my Camry Hybrid to Baltimore on the Navy's dime. We contemplated selling LW's car and buying a Toyota Highlander on the mainland. We decided we just can't afford it right now with the new mortgage payments and the fact that sea pay and COLA will be going away when we get back to the mainland.

Aside for anyone who cares: The military Vehicle Processing Center (VPC) here will accept our car any weekday, no appointment necessary. For shipment to Baltimore, they gave me a guaranteed delivery date no later than 35 days after you drop it off at the Honolulu VPC.

Instead, we're going to pay Matson $1,000 out of pocket to ship LW's car to Seattle.

With Matson, we need to drop the car off by any given Wednesday, and the car will ship out on the following Monday. They said it would take 10 to 12 days to ship to Seattle.

Although the Navy won't pay us to ship the second car across the Pacific, they WILL pay us to drive across country. I was curious just how much they would pay us and started searching the internet for answers. I found these two websites were helpful and informative:

• PCS Entitlements
• Navy Times Military Moving Allowances

We plan to fly to the west coast, pick up the car, go to a wedding in Oregon, drive to San Diego for another wedding, then head across country and see some friends and relatives and the sights of America along the way. So far, we're planning on visiting the Avenue of the Giants, Sequoia National Park, Legoland, the Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, and we're very excited to finally visit a Great Wolf Lodge and spend a day frolicking in their indoor water park.


A Plug for My Favorite Lunch in Groton

For Andy and Sam who are getting settled in their new home and for anyone else headed to Groton, whence you feel those pangs of lunch-time hunger in yer belly, get thee to the Village Bakehouse! I could eat there every day of the year and not get tired of it. I love their sandwiches and wraps, and I couldn't resist those cookies with the candy-corn in the middle.

Blunoz Self-Portrait with his most favorite cookies at VBH
October 2006