The movers just left

Apparently I’d accumulated a lot more stuff over here than I realized. The movers just picked up all my things except for my clothes, baggage, and the laptop. They’re going to be coming by tomorrow to pick up the rest, leaving me with essentially one bag to camp out of for the next couple weeks. It was very difficult watching my friends the TV and XBOX get packed up for their second trip across the Pacific. Good luck guys!

It’s one of those drizzly, rainy days over here, just wet enough to keep me from wanting to go outside. Unfortunately I don’t really have a choice in the matter, I have a big pile of Christmas gifts that need to be mailed, not to mention some out processing stuff to take care of. It never ceases to amaze me how much paperwork the Air Force manages to generate when you leave an assignment. Our mortgage closing was more streamlined than this, and that thing had like forty pages to it. Oh well, it’s for a good cause.

Now I’ve just got to figure out how to get all this stuff down to the post office ..

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Boo at the Zoo

I uploaded some pictures Riki took of the boys trip to “Boo at the Zoo” down in Little Rock just before Halloween. I’ve never actually been to this for one reason or another but it certainly does look like a lot of fun. I couldn’t help but laugh at some of these pictures .. my boys certainly do know how to ham it up.

It’s getting positively cold over here now, which is a good thing as it means it’s almost time to go. We’re going to be playing war games again over here soon. I guess Korea had to get in it’s last parting shot on me before I escape. I think I’m going to go Christmas shopping next weekend if I’m able. We’re supposed to be having a Thanksgiving dinner thing a couple weeks from now, which should be nice. I’ve also been having “going away” parties every weekend, which is really just another excuse to go languish away in the bars down town. But hey, I can do that. I’ve got to enjoy my little alternate reality I have here while I still can!

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Something I noticed about Korea

I was standing outside the other day, just looking around as I do sometimes, and something hit me that I had never noticed before. Nothing particularly unusual was going on at the time, it was just another typical Korean autumn day. Which is to say a hazy but clear sky, no wind, and fairly chilly. And that’s when I realized I haven’t seen a thunderstorm all year. Not one bolt of lightning, nothing. I started thinking about it some more and realized it’s very rarely even windy here. When it rains, which it does far less frequently than I thought it would, it’s usually big fat drops coming straight down from a grey sky, followed by a day or so of drizzle and fog. After that we’ll have another month of cloudless hazy days.

Being from the Midwest, I’m accustomed to big fat thunderstorms on a regular basis. I think we literally had one every other day most of the summer one year when I was living back at Whiteman. You also never see the ever present haze you have over here. I’m always startled by how close certain things on the horizon are when the sky clears up as it does form time to time. I’ll never forget how huge the sky was down in Texas, it felt like you could almost see past the horizon at times. Even the sunsets are different here. American sunsets have that classic defined look to them, a blaze of colors followed by a fade off to the deep purple of night. Korean sunsets are huge and soft and take over the entire sky, again I assume due to the haze. They invoke a different feeling.

It’s interesting, because you can draw a lot of parallels between the Korean people and the Korean weather when you actually start to look at it. I wonder how much of an effect the weather has on a culture? I’ll say this much, it certainly has an effect on me. I realized that these sorts of things are a major contributor to feeling like a visitor. It’s just foreign for lack of a better word. Odd stuff that you would never think of until you find yourself thinking of it.

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The Osan Air Show

We had the annual Osan Air Show this weekend. Now, under normal circumstances it’s only a so so endeavor. I mean, this is Korea after all. They have a few fighters zip around for awhile, some random fly bys of whatever they can scrape up out of Japan and Guam and here on the penninsula, and a smattering of Army equipment and South Korean aircraft. The highlight is the Black Eagles, a Korean stunt team akin to the Blue Angles or Thunderbirds that you’ll see back in the United States. They fly T-37′s and generally put on a decent show, although I wouldn’t call it anything particularily special.

Unfortunately, our short little dictatorial friend up north decided to literally drop the bomb last week and test a nuclear device. This resulted in a bunch of cancellations for our Air Show. Do I think it was intentional on North Korea’s part? Did they blow up a tiny little bomb just to show they can put an end to Osan’s yearly spectacle whenever they want? I’m no expert, but it’s entirely possible. Jerks.

I went and wandered around anyway and took a few pictures. As it turns out, I had my camera set to some ridiculous settings from the last time I was screwing around with it, that made all my pictures come out overexposed and blue tinted. I tried to correct it as best I could on the computer. You can’t really tell since the pictures I put on this website are so small, so it’s not that bad.

Also, I was looking around the picture gallery earlier and realized it was horribly disorganized and hard to find stuff in, so I broke down and rearranged everything into chronological order. Better? I dunno, but it makes me happy.

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Oops

Well, to make a long story short, I managed to destroy my laptop. I’m not going to go into the gory details, suffice to say it doesn’t work anymore and never will again. I’ve concocted a plan to have a computer for the rest of the time I’m here, so it’s not that bad. Unfortunately, I’ve lost all my stuff I had on the other one, including all my email address and phone numbers and stuff. So please, if I know you and emailed you before, send me something so I can add you back into my address book again.

There’s not much else going on over here. Well, I mean, there is the whole North Korea wanting to test a nuclear weapon thing. Personally, I’m convinced this is all just another ploy by Kim Jong-Il to ensure North Korea enters back into talks on the best terms possible. I’ll be absolutely amazed if he actually tests anything, or even HAS anything to test. North Korea is notorious for doing stuff like this, making huge dramatic threats and then changing direction at the last minute, all to gain some strategic advantage in negotiations. We’ll see I guess. I talked to a few South Koreans about it and they could care less, they think it’s all a ploy too. Actually, a few of them thought it was all fabricated by the United States. That’s South Korea for ya.

We should be closing on the house within a week. Ug, Im all stressed out about this, I really need to get out of this country and get on with my life.

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