For some reason, this video takes 10 seconds to start playing. . .

Navy News Update Video featuring me!

I recently returned from a 35 day deployment on the USNS Comfort as part of the Continuing Promise 09 tour. The USNS Comfort departed Norfolk, Virginia on April 1 with me on board; beginning a four-month deployment to Antigua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Panama. Continuing Promise 2009 is an annual humanitarian civic assistance operation supported by U.S. and international military medical personnel, U.S. government agencies, regional health ministries, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and U.S. academic institutions.

While on deployment, I acted as a pharmacist at field medical sites in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and on-board the Comfort. The Comfort is a hospital ship that served as the location for many surgeries at each country. On the days that I stayed on the ship, my role was essentially that of a hospital pharmacist.

The whole experience was amazing and life-shaping. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to partake in the mission and hope to do it again. I have thousands of crazy stories that I could share involving crazy seas and hospitality boats, overall life on the ship, helicopter rides to and from work, and my perception of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I will spare all the stories for a later date if anyone cares to hear them. Otherwise, pictures are posted under USNS Comfort!

Beyond that, Matt and I are slowly painting and arranging the new place (how long can I call it new?) and we hope to have a good bit done soon! We have two guest rooms complete with comfortable beds and would love to have company anytime. Maybe some of you will actually take us up on this offer now that our pool is open. Just disregard how cold the weather is right now. The plan is to get a huge chunk of the house complete so that we can enjoy the great outdoors and our pool this summer. Fourth of July party at our house!!! Details to follow.

I am a little late in posting this! Life got busy, again. Without any less excitement though, I am happy to announce that Matt and I have a new residence. After six months of a 2 hour (on most days) commute each way, I had enough. Matt and I made a list of things that we wanted in a new house, some of which included more room, more than 1 bathroom, a dishwasher, a garage, a little land, some carpet, a bigger kitchen, no gas heat, central AC, closer to work for me, and a country feel. In November, we found a house that had ALL of these plus a few more extras. The location is amazing. It is only a few short miles from where we were married. Check on the country feel and double check on the “awwww” factor. The house itself is amazing with ample room to start a family in.  After a few weeks of pure agony, a few price negotiations, and another offer on the house, we found out that our offer had been accepted!

From here, the ball started rolling and before we knew it, a closing date of December 31st was set. Christmas came, left, and next thing you know, we were at the settlement table. Everything went without a hitch. The house was well loved and taken care of. There was hardly a thing wrong with it. We packed a U-Haul the night before closing and left immediately after closing to move in.

We were moving in all last week and are still getting settled. We had new carpet laid this past Monday and we have plans to move the rest of our stuff out of the garage and into the house this weekend. We think that a pool party this summer is in order to help celebrate the new place. Did I mention the pool? Yipppppppppppppeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

In this awful housing market, I feel so lucky to have found this place and even luckier to now call it home. As far as our house in Hagerstown . . . The current state of affairs in Hagerstown is pretty bleak on the housing front. Judging from the houses that have been for sale for over a year on our street, we think that unless we drastically cut the price of the house, we should probably rent for a little while. So, if you know anyone that is looking for a rental home in the Hagerstown area, please let me know. The house is quite lovely. I almost cried when we packed it up and I surely would have if we had sold it. The house is located about 2 blocks from City Park and has a fully fenced in back yard.

Pictures will follow this post tonight, I hope.

Matt!

Me!

After ascending for 25 minutes to get to our destination altitude of just over 10,000 feet; we started to get prepped for our jump. The instructor who I was diving with secured me to his vest and we were ready. They open up the little plane door and we crawled towards the exit. The fun part of the jump was climbing out of the plane onto the little step while holding on to the strut. See the picture which isn’t me, but is exactly what we did!

Here is where you feel like a true stuntman. I thought the skydiving would involve us bailing out of a larger plane. I was not ready to hang on to the side of a plane while it flew around. After a few seconds, that felt like minutes, my instructor rocketed us back into a very cool back-flip. I convinced him before the jump to flip off the plane instead of a boring step off the plane. I thought you would get a huge G-force sensation, but you don’t. It isn’t like a rollercoaster at all. It feels like you are floating around in really fast wind. After about 30 seconds, we pulled the rip cord and thankfully, the shoot activated. At this point, we really were floating around in the sky. It was way more peaceful and beautiful than I thought it would be. I thought the whole experience would be extreme, but really only the jump was intense. The parachute allowed us to float around the Earth and take in the gorgeous fall leaves from a view point that few are brave enough to try. I highly recommend it to anyone. It truly is an experience of a lifetime and to miss it because of fear would be crazy.
Here is a picture myself high in the sky before the parachute slowed us down:

I have more pictures and videos of both Matt and my jump. Matt made his second jump with me! The videos are awesome and I hope to get them up here at some point soon.

I posted quite a few new pictures that includes Ian’s 1st birthday, Summer 08 events, and other miscellaneous pictures. Enjoy if you care to.