An Ode to the Drugmakers

First, Id like to thank the makers of the drug Meclizine for allowing me to get underway and not get violently ill. The stellar performance of their drug allowed me to stand all my watches, eat all my meals (although that may not really have been a good thing), and even spend some time up in my gun mount, which is way up forward in an area usually totally avoided by me underway. It also allowed me to join in the incessant making fun of my department head who, along with half of the ship, was down hard for about half of the transit. We were in 6-9 foot seas Saturday and Sunday morning, then 4-8 for the rest of the trip til this morning when they went down a little bit on my watch.

The trip went pretty well, although we did end up staying in Maine an extra day due to weather. The fog up there is unbelievable, and even Saturday when we did finally leave we had very limited visibility. Im tired- being in 3 section watch is no fun, but I plan on getting a good nap this afternoon. I had a decent enough birthday underway- Hispanic heritage month lunch, ice cream social after dinner, what more could a girl want? I heard from people I did not even realize knew when my birthday was, and I got a nice (form) note from the CO for my birthday. Even though everyone gets the same one, its still nice to know that he takes the time to do something for peoples birthdays. Now Im here in Newport, and ready to go out and celebrate in decent fashion. I wanted it to be tomorrow night, with the old Wednesday norm karaoke at O'Briens, but unfortunately I have duty and theyre not entertaining duty swaps at all. So I guess itll have to be tonight. Ill still stop into OBriens to see everyone though.

Sounds like it was a good weekend in the real world too- Texas finally beat OU (Hook em Horns!!) and Navy beat Air Force, the Astros advanced to the next round of the playoffs for a rematch aganist the Cardinals, which hopefully they will pull out this time, and were only a little more than a week out of Norfolk. I really cant wait for that- its time to get back to normal. We get a few days off here, and then underway for a few more days. Heres to hoping the next leg of the trip will go as well as this one did...