Chapter Eight
30 May 2012
And the hum-drum
of everyday life got me back today. But what if I don’t want IT back? Do I get
a say in the matter? It certainly doesn’t seem that way! The reality that I
won’t see Ken for a very long time is slowly setting in and it fills me with
sadness. Even just writing out this thought makes my eyes well up with tears.
While I sat here
sobbing, Ken boarded a plane at 8:00 pm that took him even further away from
me; from Baltimore to Ramstein Air Base
in Germany, on to Turkey and then to Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan. I am having a hard
time keeping myself from crying every time I think about my husband. It’s going
to be a very long year…I guess I better invest in some waterproof make-up!
As usual, one of
our electronic devices stopped working; in this case our sitting room TV. I
couldn’t believe it! I had only been gone for five days and when I pushed the
power button on the remote, the TV would not power up. I tried to push the
power button several times, exchanged the batteries and checked the cable
connections, but nothing was amiss. The TV just wouldn’t work and I feared that
I would have to buy a new one. I was already beginning to wonder what else will
go wrong while my husband is gone. To make a long story short, I was finally
able to get the TV to power up by replacing the TV’s power cable. Apparently
the old one was no longer conducting electricity, for some unknown reason. I am
kind of proud of myself for figuring this one out on my own.
Since my husband
had the entire morning and afternoon to himself he decided to go exploring the
immediate neighbourhood of his hotel and discovered this museum…the National
Electronics Museum of all places. Apparently he felt the need to satisfy his
inner geek again!
31 May 2012
This morning I
woke up to the sound of a chime from my mobile phone, alerting me to a text
message. Happily I realized that it was from my husband. His plane had just
landed in Turkey. We chatted for about half an hour, and then his messages
abruptly stopped. He probably had to get back on the plane to fly to Kyrgyzstan.
I’m very glad that we got to chat for a few minutes, even though he woke me up
after a rather restless night.
I finally got
around to buying a new light bulb for my car’s driver’s side headlight.
Remember? It had burned out when I had to jump start my car, after I had
returned from my visit to MC-12 country. A friend of ours promised to come by
and install it for me. If that doesn’t happen then I’ll just take my car to the
auto parts store; they offered to install it for me as well.
After today I
think I need to change my last name to “Murphy”, because Murphy’s Law certainly
applied to me today! When I returned home from my errands, all I wanted to do
is switch cars in order to get the earlier mentioned light bulb installed.
Instead I had our smoke/carbon monoxide detector system go off, scaring the
“bejesus” out of Lana, Darren and I.
First it gave
alarm for the presence of CO2, then for smoke, then both and no matter how
often I pushed the reset button, the system just wouldn’t shut up! After I had
exhausted all troubleshooting measures I had determined that the downstairs
detector was faulty, setting off the rest of the system.
Since I am no
electrician I called around, and after much online research, I went to the
builder’s supply store across the street from us and asked them for advice.
They were wonderful! They found a replacement detector for me and one of the
contractors shopping there decided he would be a Good Samaritan and installed
it for me on the spot…and free of charge! There are still some people in this
world that actually try to help others! I just hope that this detector was
indeed the culprit. I have no desire to be woken again by an alarm going off in
the middle of the night!
Ken arrived in Manas, Kyrgyzstan safe
and sound. We sent each other several text messages, before we tried out Google
Voice...and would you believe it...it actually worked! I was so happy to be
able to hear his voice!
He told me that he won't find out when
exactly he's flying to Kandahar until 10 o’clock tonight local time. For all he
knows he'll be stuck in Kyrgyzstan for the next couple of days. I hope he was
able to get some sleep, even though it was the middle of the day when we spoke; the
time difference between Kyrgyzstan and Alaska is 14 hours.
My husband has been traveling non-stop
since I dropped him off at the gate in Sacramento and after his arrival at
Manas AB he's been running around base gathering more required equipment. It
was definitely time for a nap!
