Six Days To Go!!

Post by R

As I write this I am multi-tasking.  The University of Wyoming football team is playing the Florida Atlantic University football team at War Memorial stadium in Laramie and I'm listening to it on the radio.  Radio?  Yes, it's very old school, but even before we ditched cable you couldn't find it on television, unless you opted for some sort of premium package.  J and I have never hesitated to spend money on things we consider worthwhile, but premium cable has never been one of those things.  I've actually grown fond of listening to those Cowboys radio broadcasts in the fall.  The radio network has a great play-by-play guy and your imagination does the rest.  It's straight out of the 1940's and it's one of those little things I'll miss about Wyoming.

I finished my electrical project today.  The electric line from our house to the shop was a 70 foot overhead line that was only about 8 feet off of the ground for much of its run.  That's a major code violation so I decided to put it in underground conduit.  Only about 20% of the job actually involved electrical work; the rest involved moving dirt.  I'm glad it's done.

I've been filling up the trailer with things that need to go to the landfill.  We've been in this house for 13 years, and the longest we ever lived anywhere prior to that was three years.  Between packing, unpacking, and space limitations, all of those military moves forced us to cull unneeded items.  Now I'm dealing with 13 years of storing essentially unwanted things in the shop, the basement, the garage, the corners of closets, the dark recesses of kitchen cabinets and drawers, etc. - just in case we might need or want them in the future.  Now I'm realizing that after 8 or 10 years of "out of sight, out of mind" we have a lot of assorted "stuff" that we have no use for.  Obviously, much of the excess isn't going straight to the landfill.  Some is yard-sale material, and some, of course, has sentimental value to our daughters, so it will not be tossed.  Bottom line:  It's time to simplify and reduce.  I remember when J and I first got started, and how we couldn't wait to own some furniture and accumulate a few things.  Of course, we started with next to nothing, so owning more "stuff" was a good thing back then.  Now?  Not so much.

Enough about boring Wyoming updates.  The big story is that J and I have less than six days to go before we find out where home will be for a few years.  It's difficult to make any decisions on the house/furniture storage until we find out where we are going.  At some posts we ship our own furniture, but in others furniture is provided.  More important is the issue of language training.  We would both be very disappointed if J received an assignment that had no foreign language requirement, but that is only a remote possibility.  I fully expect to be heading to northern Virginia in October to go through language training with Jackie.  Fortunately, spouses are almost always permitted to attend language training.  J and I met at the Defense Language Institute, and the opportunity to go through language training again at the Foreign Service Institute is a wonderful opportunity.  It will take a lot of work and dedication, but we know first hand what it takes to succeed.

In just a few days, I will join our daughters in the D.C. area to spend some time with J.  I am very much looking forward to it.  There will be excitement and anticipation both before and after J receives her assignment, and we will be able to spend some time together as a family.  We'll enjoy it and have a great time, while always being cognizant  that we are just visitors, J included.  We are very much defined by wide open spaces, even though big cities might be in our future.