Busy Week!

For me "busy" is a relative term. In no way do I maintain that I am as busy as many working people, or as I would be if I were working, or as I have been when I'm a student, and so on and so forth. However, in the context of my current unemployed life, this was a busy week! Every day had something going on and I went down to post every day except today. I will try to share a bunch of the things that have been going on. I think day/list form is going to be easiest...

On Monday, I went to the grocery store, military style, even though it's sort of a drive. Hoping that maybe trying that out (instead of Publix, despite how much I love Publix) will save us some money. We'll see! I also used some of my time Monday to catch up with one of my closest college friends, who recently started medical school! We've got plans in the works for me to visit her in the first few months of 2011, and I am already so excited!

On Tuesday, I tried a new kind of fitness class for the first time with a few other ladies, which starts with Z and ends with "umba". :-) Having danced in the past, and enjoying the idea of group fitness (though I haven't done a ton of it in the past), it was right up my alley. It made it a lot more fun to go with some girls that I knew, and I had a great time for 45 minutes dancing to some fun music. The instructor lady was tiny, fiery, and yelled at us all to shake our hips and various other things, and really work our abs/thighs/etc. I had a great time and will definitely keep mixing it into my workout routine to shake things up and have some fun.

Wednesday was a busy day. In the morning, I went to an eye doctor appointment, hoping to get a new supply of contacts and pick out some new glasses that I'd actually want to wear.

A bit of background here - I have only been wearing glasses/contacts since I was 17, and at that point I didn't really want to "change the way I looked" with glasses so I knew right away I wanted to wear contacts more often. With that being the case, my parents didn't want to splurge on an expensive pair of glasses, and I also didn't really know what type of glasses I would like to a large extent. Long story short, my 5-year-old glasses are, for lack of a better word, dorky looking. I got transition lenses, and they stay dark and look weird, and just in general I don't like wearing my glasses out in public. I am not saying anything against glasses in general or people who wear them, but just that I never got into the habit, don't love how I look with my current glasses, and have relied a lot on contacts for the past 5 years. Basically, I wear (and have worn) them too much, and in the past few months with life changes, ran out of my supply and have been wearing contacts that were basically too old. Getting back to my visit to the eye doctor, apparently the doctor found that my eyes were irritated and swollen enough that he felt like I couldn't properly test for a new prescription that day. He is having me take a 2-week break from contacts, and take prescription eye drops, then come back after two weeks to hopefully test for the new prescription. I was a bit sad at first, but at the end of the day, I am not shocked to find out that I haven't been nice to my eyes (sad), and definitely want to prevent permanent damage, so I'm glad I have the doctor's help to fix this now. I'm dealing with this mainly by wearing my dorky glasses to drive, then taking them off to socialize, and generally not wearing them in the apartment except maybe sometimes to watch TV. My vision is still good enough that especially with things reasonably close to me, I don't really notice that I'm not wearing eye correction, at least not to a huge degree. But I do make sure to wear the glasses while driving so as not to create a hazard. :-) I'm hoping that after the two weeks I can indeed go to the doctor and get a new pair of glasses that I'm excited about wearing, so I can be nicer to my eyes in the future!

Woo, that was only half of Wednesday! In the afternoon, I went to an orientation for the spouses (read: wives) for my husband's training class. It was nice to get some structured information from the spouses of the commanding officers of the training class, and meet the other ladies who are in my position these few months. There aren't many of us because a relatively small number of the guys training have wives (especially ones who are physically here), but it's nice to know who there is! We're all in a similar situation and as the guys are away more and more, it'll be good to hopefully have each other. There was a small element of "Hey! Get to know each other!" but that's normal and happens, and hopefully from here on out we can develop our friendships since we are connected now. It's also really nice to have specific more experienced spouses to be able to ask questions of and talk to. One of them actually provided me with a possible job lead that, if it works out, would be incredible, but I am trying not to get my hopes up, and out of superstition/trying not to get my hopes up, I'm not going to write more about it here unless I get it. (If I don't I guess I will have to share my disappointment, haha.) Either way it was great to get a lead like that out of the wives' orientation! After that event we transitioned into an event with all the guys, so I socialized with my own hubby, other guys, and some of the other ladies until we headed home. I'm meeting more people, which is always good, and I'm definitely trying to take advantage of these opportunities to develop a social network here.

Thursday included another step toward building social networks, this time working on developing my blogosphere connections into real life ones. I got to meet a great new friend who recently moved down here, who I knew of through blogging, and we mixed working out and chatting into one gym date, which was great. I've never really done that before, and I ended up staying on the elliptical for one hour, which is double what I usually do when I watch TV or listen to my iPod. It was so great to have some good conversation and burn some calories at the same time.

I spent yesterday afternoon mostly pursuing my job lead, and hubby got home relatively early so we got to spend a good chunk of time together last night! I made Chicken Stir-Fry Wraps (that's linked) by Martha Stewart, and we definitely enjoyed them. I love cooking things with ginger and garlic to give food plenty of tasty flavor. :-) I forgot to take a picture, most likely because I was so excited to eat!

Today was another bout of excitement on the domestic front - the delivery of our washer and dryer! The delivery team didn't keep me waiting at all, getting here nice and early, and installing the machines really efficiently and quickly. Our first load of whites is in the washer already! I told the husband on the phone that I was actually really excited to do laundry and he said "Good, ride that wave." :-)

The rest of the day I'm hoping to get some more things done around the apartment, maybe do some actual reading, and then spend time with hubby after he gets home, cook dinner etc. It remains to be seen if we'll do anything social this weekend - it would be great to see some of our friends but as of now we don't have specific plans.

I also booked lodging for our little getaway, so barring any changes or complications, we're off in a few weeks! I'm pretty excited to enjoy discovering a new place with the hubby. :-)

Wow, this has been a doozy of a post - there has been lots going on this week and I felt like sharing a little about a bunch of different things!