Smelling Salts and Spiders

I was doing a lot more inprocessing today at Eglin, since I'm now permanent party, and I had the WEIRDEST experience ever at the lab.  I've always been a wimp when it comes to needles...I can stick other people all day long with needles to draw blood, start IVs, give shots, whatever, but you CANNOT come at ME with a needle.  Noooooo way.  So when I went to the lab I knew I was in trouble when they needed FOUR tubes of blood from me.  FOUR.  Talk about a nightmare.  So of course I closed my eyes and when they stuck me, I got my typical hot flash and started getting woozy.  No big....just breathe, just breathe.  But the kid didn't know what he was doing and every time he popped another tube on that needle it jammed farther into my arm and it hurt.  Finally when he was all done and wrapped me up I put pressure on the site while he labeled tubes, and then all of a sudden the wave of nausea hit me.  I tried coughing to bring my blood pressure back up like they taught me last time, but I knew it wasn't working.  I told the tech that I felt like I was going to get sick, and he took one look at me and I must have been like a ghost, because he immediately called over the "sick chair" and four people rushed at me at once and all held me.  I closed my eyes to make the weird feeling in my head stop, and then all of a sudden I see a hand with a little white tube in front of my face, and SNAP.....the worst smell in my life!!  I started coughing and wrenched away from it because I knew what it was--it was smelling salts.  I've never actually experienced them up until then, and they are freaking gross.  The smell stayed in my nose for the next thirty minutes, and it made my eyes and nose buuurrrnnnn!!  The techs thought it was pretty funny how quickly I reacted though, so at least they got a little laugh out of it.


I hate getting blood drawn.




On a cooler note, we have a banana spider in our backyard. :)  He lives in our orange tree.  He's pretty dang cool, and he's eaten quite a few bugs for us.

Our New House

So, after eighteen hours on the road, two family pit stops and innumerable potty breaks and gas fillups, Dave and I made it to Eglin AFB in the wonderfully oil-splashed panhandle of Florida. (No, we didn't actually see any oil, but you should check out the spill on Google Maps.)

Checkin: ran into Capt Plourde from my old detachment in Charlottesville--he was teaching at a PDT (Professional Development Training) course.

TLF (Temporary Lodging Facility): Tiny, but two bedrooms. What in the WORLD would I do with two bunkbeds? (Answer: put our suitcases on them.)

After two days in the TLF we got booted because the room was no longer available, but we shored up in the Days Inn at Fort Walton Beach across from a massive hotel that was being built across the street. My first day of inprocessing on Monday was a bunch of briefings and lectures, and was both exhausting and boring but my Captain, Kathy Williams, helped me get through the brunt of all the info with a few hints and explanations. I also got through some of my inprocessing checklist.

After looking & researching a LOT, by a total fluke we drove by a sign that had the militarybyowner.com designation on it. After looking at a few more absolutely terrible properties, we drove by this particular house again and decided to call. We found out that the landlord lived next door, he was prior Air Force and had JUST put up the sign that morning. He happened to own his own lawn service business so he drove back from one of his customers and showed us around the house. After a little more mulling and a couple more properties later, we decided that this was the house for us! We signed the lease today and started our electric and water, so we're definitely well on our way to having (well.....renting) our first house. We put the STUFF that we've been toting around in our cars into the house because it was much safer than in the heat & windowed vehicles, and started taking pictures of our new home!

the view from the front gate

the living room

the dining room

the (beautiful) kitchen

the master bedroom

(with the ceramic tile--notice the difference

between this and the rest of the house!)

the view out the front door, with my

darlin talking to my mom over the phone

The grass is a bit sparse because apparently the previous tenants absolutely TRASHED the place, but the landlord has fixed up a few things and he's putting in new grass & a sprinkler system. Hallelujah. :)

Tomorrow starts more inprocessing, so Dave will have to update you more!