"As full of wind as a corn-eating horse..."

Que lastima! It's been three months since I last posted, but I actually started this entry on June 30th. Our newest and most exciting news is we have puppies. Chocolate labs, brothers. Ifit (pronounced I-fit or E-fit) and Teak. Ifit is a dark wood indigenous to Guam, and teak is a lighter wood found in Asia (hence, the darker pup is Ifit and the lighter, Teak). Ifit also has a white streak on his chest..."that's why they call him The Streak." Four months old and 80 combined pounds of awesomeness. As a first-time pet caregiver, this has been quite a learning experience for me...and I'm sooo glad we did dogs before kids.




















The boys at two and four months

In other news, volunteering at the TSA is now going strong. I'd been on a self-administered hiatus because of the pups and a not-so-brief trip to WI to visit family. Now that the dogs are older and I'm so much more comfortable leaving them alone to their own devices (in the comfort of their individual kennels), I can put in more hours at the aquarium. This means a) more dive time, b) more quality time with Hans and the balloonfish and the cow-nosed rays, and 3) a brand spankin' new blue polo shirt, courtesy of the TSA, for 50+ hours of service. Yessssssss.

What else...oh, I'm currently enrolled in my first graduate-level forensic science course. Forensic Analysis of DNA. Completely online, through UF Gainesville. Go Gators (had to put it out there). Quite interesting thus far...helps that I'm doing pretty well with the coursework. I've also applied to the Master's program in Forensic DNA/Serology for Spring 2010 entrance, but I've yet to hear. Fingers crossed.

Still no luck on the job front...not even many irons in the fire. It's somewhat depressing. I'm still hung up on not being able to financially contribute to our relationship, because there aren't any forensics-related jobs here at the moment. I'm going to spread my wings, though, and start looking outside the box that is all of my educational and work experience. Otherwise, I might have to revert back to "volunteering" (gasp!) my time at one of the local crime labs. C'est la vie.

"The wind's blowing like perfume through a prom"

When we first arrived in C.C., I almost immediately started a pros/cons list...mostly just to prove my suspicion that no one place could hold a candle to the tropical gloriousness/perfection that is Guam. Before April, I had never lived in Texas, let alone visit any part of the great, wide "Lonestar State," so this whole shebang is a completely new experience for me. Anyway, the list itself is definitely a work in progress.

For the first week or so, it was pretty heavy on the cons (further supporting my aforementioned claim that Guam is ridiculously awesome). Two I noticed right off the bat were how incredibly flat and windy it is here. One begets the other, right? Now, I come from southern CA and my family lived downstream a piece from a well-known mountain pass that was great if you wanted to get to Vegas quickly, but uncool when the Santa Anas rolled around every spring. So, I thought I knew wind...but I was wrong. My hair has pretty much been in some form of a permanent ponytail since we've been here and I have resurrected my hairspray, environmental consequences be damned. To top this off, C.C. has been NATIONALLY recognized as the #1 worst place to live with long hair:

http://www.totalbeauty.com/content/gallery/p_worst_hair_cities/p26872/page14

Seriously, folks. By the way, I take little consolation in the fact that Pensacola, the place we would've moved to had we not chosen C.C., was ranked #6.

Bad hair days aside, the list has balanced out more than I expected. The neighborhood in which we live is spectacular, for one, and Ocean Drive provides a pleasant scenic view of the not-as-green-or-clear-as-Guam water and downtown C.C.. We've found salvation in the yummy food at Jason's Deli and the bargains at Half-Priced Books. BUT, most importantly we are still diving, thanks to the Texas State Aquarium.

The TSA is indeed a diamond in the rough. Because the Aquarium operates almost solely on donations and admissions, its workforce is largely comprised of volunteers. That's where we come in. Almost every week, or really anytime we'd like, we get to suit up and help feed the fish during popular feeding programs, clean exhibits (with the fish swimming around us), and generally contribute to the overall enrichment of our sea animal friends. The paid employees are always grateful for our assistance, and we haven't had a bad experience there yet. I truly believe C.C. is the only place where we could walk right into volunteering with only our dive certifications under our weight belts and not a smidgen of education or work experience in marine biology.

http://www.texasstateaquarium.org/

Here are a couple of photos of him cleaning and hanging out with the fish in the offshore exhibit, or "Islands of Steel," which is patterned after the offshore oil rigs that populate the Gulf.

With Hans, a sand tiger shark that looks ferocious, but secretly enjoys having his belly rubbed.

Petting one of the groupers...they love our air bubbles!

"Don't squat with your spurs on"

So, this being the inaugural post of my very first blog, I thought I'd provide a quick rundown on the haps of the past 3 months since we moved to good ol' C.C. ..for any of yous guys out there that are interested.

We arrived in the Coastal Bend after a week-long (or so) trek from Guam to CA (to see family and pick up my belongings that the military opted not to move to Guam) to AZ (to see family and sight-see) to TX (to reside). Needless to say, we arrived exhausted and unfortunately, homeless. Luckily, we were warmly welcomed into a commune of sorts, staying with friends at various houses while we ourselves looked for a place to call our home.

This was not so easy. In the beginning, I was pro-renting and he was somewhat pro-buying. When we heard that renting a house was not a simple task here, I reluctantly started changing my mind. We did research, lots of research. We hit the ground running, visually checking out houses, looking up property taxes, staking out neighborhoods, etc. We mastered Excel (well, I became more familiar - he was already a master) as we condensed all we had learned into spreadsheet after spreadsheet. Mind you, this was all before we contacted a realtor.

We took a one-week respite to drive to FL for work-related training and once again, to sightsee and visit relatives/friends. We drove through the French Quarter (at night, which I hear is more impressive than during the day), discovered boudin, played in the Atlantic and oh yeah, hit a ginormous piece of metal on the freeway and had to have all of our tires replaced.

Upon our return to C.C., I was whisked away on a last-minute trip to CA. Apparently, evidence I developed at a crime scene two years ago when I still lived and worked in CA was crucial to the prosecution of the defendant in a life-term case. I had to testify (my first time!) and everybody said I did great, even the court reporter. I stretched a 2-day business trip into a week-long visit with friends and family, whereupon I celebrated my 27th birthday and Mother's Day with the people I love the most (minus the husband, who stayed in C.C. to start work).

Back in Corpus, we resumed the house hunt, only to be derailed by a job prospect of mine that would require a two-hour commute each way. I had interviewed for the position and scored higher than the other applicants, but logistically it was never going to work. Neither of us were really interested in relocating to someplace outside of C.C., not to mention that what I would have been making would have only covered gas and car repairs. I withdrew myself from consideration. It was a tough decision not because it was crime scene work and I would have been actively involved in forensics community again, but because it is very important to me to be employed and earning money and contributing. Once I passed it up, though, it was smooth sailing. By that time, we had decided to lease (even with the fates against us) and keep the option for buying open. We really had no problem finding a house in which we could tolerate living for at least a year, in a neighborhood we actually really liked.

So, after being in C.C. for approximately three months, we finally moved two weekends ago. Our belongings from Guam were delivered almost completely unharmed a week ago and we're 97% unpacked. There's work to be done, of course, but mostly small decorative projects.

In the meantime, he's hard at work and I'm hanging around the house, trying to push myself to study for the GRE and hunt down elusive forensics jobs that are located here in C.C. We've also become volunteer divers for the Texas State Aquarium, but I'll save that for another post...