Rumors of my (Literary) Demise are Greatly Exaggerated.

Wow. Just...wow. That's all I can say when I look at this thing. This blog was buried in my bookmarks, and has not been used in nearly two years. Two years! That's a LOT of undocumented time! Well, assuming any of you, my readers, care much about what's been going on since April, 2009. How to put it all in a nutshell? Well, I'll try.

Most importantly, what I hadn't told you all before, was that I met an absolutely sweet girl at school roughly the same time as my last post. I couldn't mention it before, since ours was...well, let's not call it "forbidden love" since that implies all sorts of negative things. More like "heavily frowned-upon love." And I didn't especially want to get my hopes up, given that I was going to be moving away in a few months' time. And I was thinking "Oh geez, long-distance relationships work out, I'm gonna be sooooo busy in Pensacola, etc." But she's just so darn sweet and wonderful, it didn't take us long to figure out we were meant for each other. It wasn't easy, but I can say from experience that long-distance relationships do indeed work, if you both want them to. Well, it was stressful at times, not getting to see each other for months at a time, but we visited whenever we could, and talked on the phone every single night, and this past summer, July 31, 2010, she made me the (WARNING: CLICHE AHEAD!) happiest guy in the world when she accepted my proposal. The proposal itself is an interesting story, perhaps for another time, involving a family ring, a castle, and an itty-bitty shoe made of pink glass. We've set a month (not a date, considering I don't know my deployment schedule quite yet), and neither of us can wait to start our life together in Hawaii.

Yes, Hawaii. Now, onto the other big changes in the last two years. Once I left for Pensacola, I expected to be there maybe four months. Instead, it was almost four months before I classed up for flight school. Not necessarily a bad deal, spending the summer in the Florida Panhandle doing essentially nothing and getting paid for it (well, I worked at the Aviation Museum restoring old planes while I waited). But once it started, it went quickly. I finished up there last April, having selected the mighty P-3C Orion as my aircraft of choice, so a move to Jacksonville was in the cards. What was not was the flooding in Tennessee which left our Bureau of Personnel (the guys who write the orders moving me from Point A to Point B) somewhat swamped. Another month and a half wait while they dried out, and I got here early last summer. No waiting around this time: straight into the syllabus. As of the end of last year, those shiny golden wings you see on this page became reality. That same day we all found out where we're going for our first assignment outside of a training command. Some people will remain here in Jacksonville, some go to the Pacific Northwest, and two of us are going to Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. Not my first choice (it means being farther away from my wonderful fiancee for a while), but she should be able to join me out there once she's done with school roughly a year after I get there. In the meantime, there will be at least one six-month deployment for me somewhere in there, so it's not as bad as it could be. More long distance, but we've overcome that particular obstacle, as difficult as it still is.

And so here I sit, in my chair, sun shining through the window. It's still chilly outside, even here in Florida. But that is the last two years in a nutshell. I promise I'll try to get better at updating this thing -- if not with the regularity with which I did while still in school, then better than once every 21 months! The next post might be more along the philosophical maundering of my earlier work, but I can't promise that...I'm a bit out of practice it seems, and I must exercise the literary muscle a bit.

Thanks for reading, and hello again!

--Mr. NFO 2009