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Bowfin Sub Museum

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I dropped off my friend at the airport at 3:45pm, and in the name of killing time and going on adventures I decided to go to the USS Bowfin submarine museum. It was AWESOME. It was recently re-done and re-opened in February, it looks like. I decided to make us members there… Brian doesn’t get in for free. You’ll find that military rates are weird… Anyway, I only had an hour, so I went into the submarine first.

It was HOT inside. Thankfully there were fans. Here are the infamous beds on top of the torpedo tubes.

Old school submerge check list and CPR instructions.

Here’s a dump of fun gauges and rooms. Can’t forget the old school mixer!

The great thing about Hawaii is that tourists with real cameras aren’t usually very far. I snagged one to take a picture of me to show the size of the holes. So small!

Coming back outside, from the bow you can see the USS Missouri and Arizona Memorial

The other side.

I was running out of time, so when I got to the actual museum part the exhibit guide told me to go right to the WWII stuff. It was amazing, and I learned a lot.

They used to have flags indicating how many targets they hit

They had a thing to look through that mimic’d a periscope. You were supposed to identify what ship you see. The mini models are there to show you the differences. There’s a running joke about submariners and how they can pick out what type of war ship is in front of them from a blurry profile through a periscope but can’t find the ketchup in the fridge. And if that isn’t true about Brian I don’t know what is. I guess he’s skilled where it counts.

Please, God, let there be no WWIII.

There was lots to see outside as well! I was running out of time, though.

I thought they did an AMAZING job on this display. The one problem was there was a display exhibit in front of it… so you can’t really get a good dead on picture.

I think this is the size of the biggest submarine hull in operation. As I was walking out I caught another tourist with a big camera and she took this. She thanked me and Brian for our service. I said honestly it feels like I serve sometimes. Also, people, help a girl out and tell me I’m not in the middle.

I emailed Brian to tell him it kinda felt like I was at work with him. He said he has it a little roomier and cooler, but similar 😉

Will have to go back to really absorb the museum part fully.

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Restaurant review- Nico’s Kailua

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This is on Brian and I’s bucket list, but they don’t take reservations and we’re a bit snobby when it comes to that, and also just generally against eating indoors if we can help it. They do have some picnic tables off to the left hand side you can bring takeout… but for a place this nice it seems a bit odd. Anyway, one of the families I took pictures for recommended specifically the furikake ahi tuna dish. I was hesitant based on the description, but in the vein of trying new things I went for it and got take out. It was PHENOMENAL. The flavoring on the fish was great and the dipping sauce that went with it, SO GOOD.

Of course the problem with this is now it’s the only thing I’ll order there. I think this is my first report of truly delicious food here. There you have it, found some!

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BSC – OLD post

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**This is very delayed. I might’ve forgot to post it, I’m supposed to wait >24hrs after they leave port… and here we are probably 3 weeks after, ha. Whoops!

Brief stop for…. commodities? On Monday, Brian’s boat was in port for a quick re-stock before they leave for a long time. Of all days it happened, we were having a tropical storm side swipe Hawaii. Also, COVID cases are really high in Hawaii. However, the captain really pushed for us to be able to see them. So, with vaccination card in tow and mask on, we went to the docks and saw our sailors.

It felt like a whirlwind. We spent ~2hrs together. I was SOAKED and turned my heated seats on on the way home (yes, in Hawaii). There was no avoiding the rain with all the wind. We were surrounded by 50 of our closest friends *sarcasm*. But, I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to see my husband. I didn’t even get a selfie of us, but I took this of him as I was leaving. He’s carrying two bags of goodies and a bag of uniforms.

Hopefully that’ll help him get through the next few months. He didn’t ask for much because he didn’t want to stress me out, so I guessed. He got graham crackers, coke zero, Aloha Drinks (it’s a hawaiian juice, basically hawaiian punch but different flavors), more cards, other drink powder, mints, gum, chocolate, I feel like there was more but I am spacing. For the uniforms, I had to drop them off at the uniform shop to get those silver bars sewn on the collar. Thank God for the workers there who know their stuff, because I brought the pin version of the bars in and the two uniforms and said I need the patch version of these sewn on, and they knew what to look for and what to do. So they did that for me. Brian was borrowing another set of these from a friend, and didn’t ask me to go get more sewn for him because he didn’t want to bother me too much, but I just guessed he’d want more. I think he’s adjusting to having a wife to help him. I felt that he should return the other set, too. They’re called coveralls, or informally “poopie suits”. They’re the “we’re getting our hands dirty and no one is going to see us” uniforms, typically. Brian was going to change into their more formal green camo ones, but “I figured I was only seeing you”. Whatever that means!

Here’s another fun thing about the uniform. You can barely see it, but attached to his belt is a personal radiation detector. It’s supposed to monitor how much radiation he’s being exposed to. It’s called a TLD, thermal luminescent dosimeter. Here are some first hand accounts about it. And here’s a huge paper about a study done about their exposure rates. (It’s low).

Brian has only good things to report about the command climate. He says there can be some communication issues, but communication is really difficult in general anyway, particularly with all the craziness always going on. He has assured me it’s nothing unusual or crazy so far. He keeps telling me how much sleep he’s getting because it’s a big concern of mine, and he’s doing ok.

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Pacific War Memorial and Fallen Marine Tribute

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I have a “bucket list” of things I want to photograph. That’s normal…right? Well, one for me was the Pacific War Memorial on the Marine Corps base (you know the one, the military men are raising an American Flag.)

It’s weirdly awkward to get to… there’s no sidewalk and no parking. Well, there’s parking, but it’s for “authorized personal only” (I’m not supposed to get in trouble as an officer spouse so I air on the side of caution here). Also, the sunlight is behind it any time after, say, 10am. It’s also generally cloudy. But, in light of knocking things off my list, I decided to just do it on the way to something else I was doing on base Saturday. I parked at a nearby mini mart and gas station and walked the side of the road (you’ll see in the pictures) at about 7am. Cars have to drive slow anyway and it was quiet, so I felt safe.

Despite not having ideal lighting conditions, I had an added bonus of a couple things. One, there was a tribute to the fallen Marines from Afghanistan. Two, the American flags were up in the median for 9/11. Here is a photo dump of some of my favorite images I was able to capture. I’m going to let the photos speak for themselves, but you know how to reach me if you have questions.

The whole area, both sides of the road, is basically a “museum” of military airplanes. So I grabbed a couple shots of those as well. It’s really a shame this area isn’t more accessible! It’s so strange.

I then headed toward my next destination, volunteering to pull invasive species. I happened to get caught during colors and driving right by them no less. When this is happening, all activity on base stops, like even driving, until you can’t hear the trumpets anymore. The first time I experienced this was on Hanscom Air Force Base with Brian, and thank God I did… because you know how an impatient New England driver would react being stuck behind some car at a stop sign for a second longer than necessary without realizing what was happening. The flag was raised to half mast.

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Mission 1 upon return

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It is very difficult to get furniture here. People try to tell you to order stuff before you come, but you just don’t know what you need. I’ve been looking for a shoe rack/cabinet combo for my front entrance for forever. I found one on Amazon that I LOVED, but it wasn’t shipping to Hawaii. I’m not sure what happened… if there was some weird shipping fluke, but it all of a sudden WAS able to ship to Hawaii. So I ordered it immediately, but of course it was coming while I was gone… so I had to give a friend keys to bring it inside. WORTH IT. (By fluke, I mean if you try to order that same cabinet now, you can’t get it shipped to Hawaii. Weird. Thank you God).

I had to back track three times, and at one point it claimed I needed a second person’s help (HA). It also said a drill was required, again, HA. Showed it wrong.

So here’s the before:

After!! I went to get some containers for the shelf space, but that’ll take a trip to target. It looks so much cleaner. That took a good hour and a half of my first day back.

So much better and it’s great to have a place to dump things that isn’t the stairs (which are to the right of this picture). Yay! Hope Brian likes it!

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Final adventures back home

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I’m still catching up on posts, believe it or not I’m keeping myself VERY occupied with various activities (which I will update on in future posts.)

Tuesday night I headed to Marblehead, which is where my friend who was my maid of honor lives. We went for a walk to the beach and saw a beautiful sunset.

We played a board game called the 7 wonders, which was complicated to learn but surprisingly easy to pick up on. Wednesday, we headed to the city for Union Square donuts (also featured at my wedding). They were wiped out! But we still managed to pick up a couple. We made our way to the science museum after that, Diana and her husband have a membership there. We went to see the Pixar exhibit, which was very impressive!

I had no idea how much “physical” modeling went into it, I thought by now it would surely be all done on the computer. But they still do a great deal out of clay and physical simulations. Fun fact, I love the incredibles.

Then we went to see another friend of mine for a bit who lives in Somerville and recently bought in RI. Then we made our way back to Marble head. We played another round of board games and that was it!

I had left behind some tomatoes from my parents garden, and Isaac made Pico De Gallo out of it!

Thursday I drove from Marbhlehead to NH to visit another friend of mine, and finally to home. So much driving! I was happy to be home.

I don’t have any pictures of the rest of the trip….crazy for me! But I had breakfast with a family friend, Faith, at the Red Barn Cafe. Went to see my Aunt and Uncle’s new house in Monterey, MA. It was very well done! We had dinner and great conversation. Saturday, I visited Grammy’s grave and we had some more family over for a BBQ that afternoon.

And finally, returned to Hawaii the next day! Phew.

On the plane ride home I had a couple Mai Tai’s, of course.

I’ve been encouraged to learn about the Enneagram, a personality self-growth tool. So, I binged on some podcast episodes about it. I also am reading the book about it, called The Road Back To You. I’m an 8, but you all would know that easily.

I also watched Luca, Raya and the Last Dragon, and half of Cruella (we landed a half hour early!) Cruella was STELLAR. Highly recommend. I also fell asleep for a bit, which I can count on one hand the amount of flights I’ve done that.

And, besides the great scenery, this is how you know you’ve made it to Hawaii

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Retirement Dinner

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Backtracking a bit, my uncle retired and in lieu of a huge retirement party, my dad offered to take him out to dinner and was making reservations for it. My cousin, knowing about my homecoming, texted me and asked me what day would be best and if they should add a spot for me (they wouldn’t tell dad), and I said Thursday. My dad called me shortly after, while I was still in Hawaii, and asked if he could call me while they were at dinner so I could say hi. Sure dad… you can. 😉

So we all went to dinner on Thursday at Cedar Street Grille.

Side note, the lady using my camera claimed to be a photographer… which is fine… except WHY DID YOU CUT OFF THE TOP OF THE SIGN.

Composition is very important, arguably more important than the camera, my friends.

Happy retirement!

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Catching up with subwife friends

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Jet lag was ROUGH. I slept the first day home, pretty much the second day, and mustered an early ish wake up Friday to get to the wedding. My cousin gave me some melatonin which definitely helped. Checkout of the hotel was 11am, so that motivated me to leave. I travelled to Mystic, CT to visit a couple subwife friends.

I arrived at Erin’s house and we chatted and caught up a lot. She’s been having a very unfortunate time with COVID, she also had a COVID wedding and she’s from Australia, so she hasn’t been able to see her family in forever. She’s such a trooper and is doing the self care she needs to get through this period. I’m very proud of her. We made our way up to another friend’s place, Terra, and met her new pug puppy, Murphy.

Then we made our way to Ford’s lobster for dinner, which was my one request. I got the lobster bomb, it’s lobster topped with lobster bisque in a bread bowl, aka heaven.

Erin and I watched the new age version of “She’s all that”, aptly named “He’s all that”. Very nice millennial spin to the story line.

The next day, we went and watched Erin’s husband’s submarine come home. It was a gray, dreary day (how New England of the weather!)

There’s plenty for the submariners to do before we can pick them up, so we walked the Niantic board walk and ate lunch. I specifically requested clam chowder, see a theme?

And finally I stopped at a seafood market place to bring home some lobsters to Dad. This is a newly opened stand alone store for a seafood market in the velvet mill, a mill turned into shopping center. The lobsters were $15/lb. I guess that’s expensive? It didn’t really matter to me, plus #supportlocal.

We went back to pick up Erin’s husband, and then I went on my way home to give them some time!

Monday and Tuesday I slept pretty much all day. I think it was a combo jet lag/leftover COVID fatigue.

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Wedding and Connecticut weekend

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Phew, I have some catching up to do! My parents don’t have wifi (ok, they do, but it’s as slow as molasses. Don’t underestimate molasses, though, as it did kill people in a flood) so I didn’t post much. I decided to leave my camera behind for the wedding and just enjoyed it. I grabbed a couple pictures, here’s the church it was held at in Providence with some unfortunately timed construction going on. It was at the Cathedrals of St. Peter’s and Paul’s. The ceremony was really nice, there was AC!!!, and the priest did a great homily. Very few people were wearing masks. It was an army wedding, rescheduled from last year, and Brian was really disappointed he didn’t get to wear his whites and come with me.

The wedding hotel was the Graduate in Providence. After the ceremony I went and checked in and took the ride to the venue at the Aldrich Mansion in Newport, RI.

This is the view looking out the backside of the mansion. So picturesque! Had to bring a bit of Hawaii with me 😉

I thought it was VERY picturesque and made for a beautiful wedding. One small downside was the tables were split into different rooms, but this was made up for by doing the toasts etc. in the foyer. Then we were dancing, so it didn’t really matter!

She’s beautiful on any given day, but her dress was a fabulous compliment to her.

They had a live band and now if Brian and I ever get to have a second chance at a wedding celebration I think it might include a live band. I did need to sit down a few times, because the combo dancing and singing was a bit tough on my still recovering lungs. This was the mansion at night, so pretty.

I had a really fun time. I got a bit emotional during the ceremony thinking about Brian. It helped to have some other mutual friends of ours there that I was able to catch up with and dance with. Also, all her sisters are super welcoming and know me by now, and I don’t yet know them very well. To be fair, she has 4 of them. I am really glad I went!

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Surprise!

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In July, was invited to a wedding in Newport, RI on Aug. 27th. At the time, it felt like we had just arrived in Hawaii, I wasn’t really eager to get on a plane again, and Brian wasn’t going to be coming with me.

Well, when the Navy threw a wrench into my plans and took Brian a year sooner than I thought for deployment, the thought occurred to me I could go to that wedding, kill some time, visit family, etc. etc. To add some extra excitement, I decided to keep it a surprise from my parents. So here’s the video of me greeting my dad:

If only everyone had Dad’s who loved them this much, what a world we would live in! Needless to say he was surprised. There’s no video of my mom seeing me, because dad was too eager for me to ask him to take one, and also because if you know my mom, the most excited she gets is “Oh, this is nice. By the way at work today the line for sandwiches was out the door…”. But she’s happy I’m here.

It was a tough decision, honestly. First, I am an anxious flyer, so it’s tough to fly alone. To mitigate this, as dramatic as it sounds, I just thought about how so many Afghani’s would give their life to be on any plane. I also sprung for first class. With all the sh** thrown at me the last few weeks, I justified it (more on this later). Next, work. Thankfully they approved my time no problem, even though I took a lot already this year. I can’t say enough good things about my employer. Then there were the logistics, again thankfully I had family here to help get me from the airport and my parents are ok with loaning me a car. I was also concerned about the optics of “Oh, she’s coming home for a wedding but didn’t come home for Grammy’s funeral?”. I figure people will get over it if that’s even a thought. (No one has said that to me, btw, these are just my thoughts) And finally, am I running from Hawaii because Brian’s not there? So what if I am for a little bit? I think that’s ok. I’m going back, and I’ve only been gone a couple days and am actually really excited to go back already (Hawaii’s easy to miss. The OPPRESSIVE heat here helps! Oh my goodness).

What really pushed me to go was when I went to the book club and all the military wives were around the table. I asked them all what they’d do in my situation, and it was a resounding GO. And I said but what about logistics? And they were all like “just ask!”. So it was actually a marine corps wife who’s husband is also deployed that drove me to the airport, and a sub spouse wife is grabbing me when I return. I trust a lot of military wives’ opinion, especially the ones who have been around the block.

I am missing a golf lesson and a COVID recovery clinic appointment. I am missing a couple events with the Officer spouse group. But all that will be waiting for me when I get back, and I will be ~12 days closer to having Brian home. I will have attended my friend’s wedding, and I was able to eat a dinner celebrating my uncle’s retirement, will be able to see a couple friends and some new houses of my aunt and cousin. I think I made the right choice.

It was an expensive choice, one that I would’ve never made five years ago. Thankfully, though, because of the decisions we’ve made, we have plenty of expendable income for it. Since we’re debt free (except the car, don’t get me started), maxing out retirement and saving more, and I don’t have to feed Brian for the next few months (that alone is $10k 😉 ) it was an easy decision. Brian is of the opinion we can’t afford to fly first class when we have kids…so why not while I can! I’ll take the Mai Tai’s all day. The flight was 9.5 hrs on the way here, and will be 11.5 on the way home. I a little bit regret not stopping in California on the way back for a bit, but I didn’t want to procrastinate on getting home, and it’s one more flight I have to muster the courage for.

Anyway, that’s the story. Blogging from MA today!

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