Moving Week

Whoops.  Meant to update sooner and I didn't.  Surprise, surprise. ^_^  But here's the most recent news with Ben and I:

We finally got our move date!  We're having our household goods packed up Wednesday/Thursday (I guess the company out here packs on Wednesday and loads onto the truck on Thursday).  It's kinda early, since we have tickets to fly home on May 5th, but it's the only time they could squeeze us in.  So a week with only what we can stuff in our few suitcases and a weekend sleeping on an air mattress and watching our...well, Internet-less computers.  Hm...looks like this next weekend we'll be going out a lot.

On May 2nd, we have to be out of our apartment, so we'll be checking into the hotel on base.  On May 4th we drive our car down to Sand Island and say good-bye to it for a few weeks.  Then, May 5th we fly away home. 

We'll be staying with my parents while we look for a house to rent and jobs.  Ben is looking into jobs dealing with audio, and I...I'm not sure what I want to do.  I wouldn't mind being a receptionist again and I really wouldn't mind working at a bookstore again (though it seems that every bookstore in the world is having financial troubles-come on people! Read!).  Other than that, I don't really know.  I'm not sure what else I'm interested in, besides writing.  But to do that full time, you actually have to write and publish something (yes, I'm working on it).

Speaking of writing, I'm trying to scrounge up some money to go to a writer's conference in Bellevue in August.  It's a huge event that happens every year or so.  I had a friend go two years ago, and she loved it.  She even got an agent interested in her book.  I've never been to a writer's conference and I'm very interested.

Let's see...that's about all.  Though I guess moving back is pretty big.  There are, surprisingly, a few things about Hawaii that will miss.  I love the fact that there are no icky creatures (my term for the worst animal in existence: snakes) allowed on the islands.  I like that sometimes, when the wind is right, the air smells like flowers.  I like the fresh pineapple. And I do love the sunsets.

I'm not going to miss: The absurd humidity (though Japan may have had worse...maybe) and heat.  The restrictive feeling of being on an island (after about a month, you really start to feel this).  The stupidly expensive dairy products (and the gas prices!).  The bugs!  Especially the stupid fruit flies and cockroaches (which we found two huge ones in our apartment the other day-yuck!).  The red dirt/clay that gets on everything-it's a good thing we don't have carpet in our apartment.  I've seen the entrances of several places around here with carpet-all of it is stained orange. 

I might get more into the pros and cons of Hawaii in another blog.  We'll see.  Now I have to give up my chair (my real desk chair broke last week :( ) so my husband can record his last customer here in Hawaii.