All in a day's work

As was pointed out to me by Kara, I haven't put anything up about my job yet, or much about Germany for that matter, so today I decided to take pics on my way to work. So now you can all see what my daily 20 min drive is like.

This is my street. My house is that first one on the left

This is the road I turn on to off of my street

This is my little town of Erlenbach

This is where I turn left

This is the little village of Otterberg that I drive through (not to be confused with Otterbach, which is in the other direction.

This is a traffic circle (aka roundabout). They LOVE these things over here. There are no such things as 4 way stops.

Some open space

On the A6 - or what you all know as the autobahn

Another traffic circle near base

I stopped taking pictures before I got to the gate cuz, well, people get suspicious when you start taking pictures of an AF Base gate.

This is the warehouse that I work in

This is inside the warehouse

This is the view from my office

This is a view of my desk from that chair in the pic above

As far as what I actually DO at work - Well...let me give you a rundown of my day today:
Got to work about 7:30. Tried to log on my computer but am logged out due to some security patch something-or-other. So I spent a good deal of time on the phone with 480-help, our computer tech people. They basically said I just have to wait for them to fix it.
I was supposed to have a meeting with the group commander at 10:30, but it has been rescheduled. Then I was supposed to have an intro/tour of the Airplane Parts Stores section of my flight this afternoon (we're in charge of supply and things like that), but found out something came up with another LT that was supposed to come with me, so I had to call and reschedule that. Then I went to lunch at the British cafe with the other LTs in my squadron, and a few from finance that we normally eat with. Then I went back to my office. Still not able to log on to my computer. So I went over to finance to try and get my travel voucher filled out. After waiting an hour I found out that I have to get an actual scheduled appointment for that. So I set that up, then went back to my office. There, still not able to get on the computer, I wrote a letter to my nephew, Justin. Which, having become quite bored at this point, turned into this:

I don't know how well you can read them. But these are, in fact, stick figure adventure drawings of James the desk guy, based on my almost true daily events, with slightly dramatic endings.
Yes, this is what the AF is paying me to do.

After this I went and dropped of a paper at MPF (the personell people), went and bought groceries, and came home.

So what do I do at work all day? Not a thing. Every once in awhile I tag along to a meeting, or go get a tour of a section in my flight. But that takes up 1, maybe 2 hours a day.

The thing is, having not been to tech school, they can't really put me in charge of anything yet.

So that's that.

Act of Desperation

Today I did what some might very well consider an act of desperation.

Let me back up a bit. About a month or so ago while I was in Alabama I was in great need of a hair cut. Well not really knowing where to go, I made the hasty decision to go to a mall. Not the best idea I've ever had. I wouldn't say I came out of there with a BAD haircut, well maybe I would, but I had made the mistake of asking for layers, which this girl obviously didn't know how to do. My hair was all sorts of lengths, and far from being even. Well, I didn't really care too much at that point because atleast it was back in regs. But recently it has been getting longer and, with all that unevenness, has been quite impossible to do anything with. I have taken to wearing a hat a lot. And it finally is back to the point where it's too long to be in uniform, but I couldn't pull it back because parts of it were too short, and it was just a pain. But I have no idea where to get a haircut around here so -
Here comes the desperation part:
I cut it myself.

A great haircut? probably not, but I'm actually quite impressed with myself.
Better than an Alabama mall cut? Sadly, yes

Back from Storage

I finally got my stuff back from storage today and got it all set up in my new place. I don't have any real furniture yet so it's still looking pretty empty. But I was surprised how many cupboards and shelves I actually did fill. It might be a lot of junk, but it's MY junk :)

My Chair :) Oh how I've missed you.


My TV is looking pretty small up against a giant empty wall. I'm planning on purchasing a large entertainment center to help fill some space and give me more shelves.

This is currently my piano corner. When I get my guitar it will be upgraded to a full fledged music corner.

This will one day be my guest room. But as of now, having no guests- and no furniture for that matter, it is the room for my shoes.

This will be my office/sewing-and-all-other-craftiness room.

My kitchen cupboards have things in them :) And there's a shelf for my Jones bottles up top (for those of you who were aware of this collection)

Cochem Castle

Last weekend the YSA (Young Single Adults) went on a trip to Cochem (Coke - em).


We walked all the way up to the castle and got a tour - which was actually quite the hike because we started down by that bridge.






We got to go inside a few of the rooms. They only have a few of them furnished. This is just some replica armor. But that tall guy behind me really did exist.


This is looking down over Cochem from the castle.
(Mays - I remembered what you said about me always crossing my arms in pics so I tried not to this time)


Afterwards we ate at a little German restaurant. I had pasta of some sort.


We finished off the day with gelato- the perfect completion to a German meal. That's Strawberry and Nutella in case you were wondering - which, may I add, I ordered completely in German :)

A roof and wheels

So this week was the week of big purchases.

I decided to get a used car for now and then before I leave I'm going to buy a new custom BMW (328xi for those of you who are wondering). I bought this 98 BMW 323i to get me around for now. Except for the fact that it has no cup holders - it's a pretty good little car.


I also went house shopping this week. After looking at about 6 different places I found one that I LOVE. It's about 20 min away from base in the little village of Erlenbach. I got really lucky too. There were already two other people scheduled to look at it the day after I called but I managed to talk her in to letting me look that day. If I had called a day later I probably wouldn't have gotten it. It's all on one floor (which is unusual for here). I'm on the main floor. This is a view from the back. ( I forgot to take a pic of the front)


This is my view from the back yard. Awesome, no? And that's west so it's going to be an awesome view for sunsets :)


This is the "secret garden" gate out of my backyard. I have no idea where it goes... yet :)

This is my back yard. Patio and all. I'm definitely going to have to get a grill.


This is the guest bedroom. That means I need guests to come stay in it - that means you!


This is the master bedroom. There is an office almost identical to this just a little smaller so I didn't take a pic.


This is the guest bathroom


Master bath


Other side of the master bath


This is the living room, and that doorway to the left leads to the entry way. The entry way is about as big as the living room in my last place.


A view of the living room from the opposite corner


The kitchen.


There's also a laundry room/pantry, some closets, a garage and a tiny basement for storage. I really am not sure what I'm going to do with all this space. But the AF is going to give me furniture to fill it with until I buy something of my own. I'll get more pics up when I actually get all moved in.
And an awesome thing about the AF - I don't have to use any of my monthly pay to pay for this place. They pay me extra to cover the rent (about $1300). I love the AF :)

How to celebrate the 4th in Germany

This is mostly a post about my 4th of July - but I finally took a pic of my hotel today too so I'm throwing it in as well. This is the Hotel Atlantis. Pretty stylin eh? I'm on the 2nd/3rd floor. What I mean by that is in America it would be considered the 3rd floor but here they start counting at 'ground' so it is ground, 1st, 2nd. I never use the elevator down because I still haven't figured out how to get to the bottom. There isn't a "ground" button. The buttons actually look exactly like a phone keypad.


This weekend Jeremy and I drove over to Heidelberg. It's about an hour out of Ramstein. It was way awesome. In this pic you can see the castle on the left and the tower on the right. Those are the two places we went and the market in between.


This is just on a bridge over the river that we walked over just to check it out. Just before this we climbed the 200 (exactly - I counted) steps of the spiral stair case up to the top balcony of the tower you see in the background.

This is just a picture from the tower looking down on the river and part of Heidelberg. You can also see part of the castle up on the right.

This is down in the market area. It's actually called "market strassen" (which is spelled wrong because I don't know how to do the cool letter that looks like a B on my computer). We got gelato at that place on the right, twice actually. And that place on the left is a Hard Rock Cafe. Didn't eat there but I'm planning on it someday. This street goes on for blocks and it's just all different stores. I loved it.


This is a view from the tower of the castle that we hiked up to (314 steps).

A view inside the castle.

This castle was bombed during the war and they've pretty much left it as is. You can see part of the tower laying there at the bottom right that was blown off. It's HUGE in person.

After we were done in Heidelberg we drove back to base to check out the 4th of July festivities. We discovered a free Blue October concert. If you don't know who they are you should look em up. They're pretty good (if you like alternative that is). I don't know if you can tell from this pic but I was pretty close to the stage. And it was a way awesome concert. I recorded one of the songs on my camera but it couln't quite handle the noise level. It was sooo loud. I loved it

As soon as the concert was over the fireworks started and they played patriotic music through the base speakers so you could hear it all over.

All in all it was a pretty awesome day. I love Heidelberg and def want to go back. I'm just sad none of you were here. Basically you should come visit :)