Prince of the Land of Stench

(name that movie quote and I'll be impressed)

I seem to be fighting the trash war in my kitchen and am finally seeing some progress. Tonight for about an hour I was tearing apart the collection of cardboard boxes that had accumulated from moving in. Normally, in America, I would have just flattened them (maybe) and put them out on the curb as is. Or dropped them off in the dumpster was in the apartment complex down the street from our house. But now, I’m a slave to regulations like I never have been before. I did get the pile completely ripped and cut up into a 30x30 pile that I taped together. Just for good measure I turned all the boxes inside-out so that no English text was visible. And I threw a Korean new paper on top as the final touch. All this to escape the possible fines or embarrassment of garbage being returned to you because you did it wrong. I bet people who live on base don’t have this problem.

I also found out (via the internet) that I can put our recyclables into clear plastic garbage bags! yay I know where to buy those, I can totally get those at the commissary. AND if I can get our landlord to get us one of those bio waste food bucket things we’ll only have to buy the over priced garbage bags. If only I knew where to buy them...

I know I seem obsessed with this, but really it’s the only thing I’m having a hard time adjusting to. We live in a big city. Check. We have to walk everywhere. Check. It’s actually cold here. Check. The food is different. Check. It’s very far away from friends and family. Check. I was expecting things to be a lot harder. Not that it’s easy, but Justin and I are just good at supporting each other. And after the dryer gets fixed there won’t really be anything wrong with the apartment.

Justin is working looooooooong hours for the next two weeks. He’s got a 12 hr night shift. But it takes about an hour to get to where he’s working (they’re busing them) so add 2 hours to his day. Plus he has to walk to where they bus them from. Add about 30-45 minutes both ways. So conservatively another hour. So that’s a total of 15 hours away from home every day. And when he does get home, the poor guy is so tired he pretty much goes right to bed. Sometimes he eats some food first, but not always. He then sleeps for maybe 6 hours, takes about an hour to get ready at the beginning of his day. That leaves very little us time. My schedule is completely messed up.

This new overtime is harder than I thought it would be. Probably because I wasn’t thinking it would be hard. If this was how our life was normally, there would be problems. I’m so thankful that it’s only two weeks.

I did venture out of the apartment on my own tonight. I didn’t really want anything we had to eat at home and I was curious about the near-by pizza place. It plays techno. It wasn’t a long walk, but I was slightly freaked, I have no idea why. Just my normal reclusive self being taken out of it’s comfort zone I guess. They thankfully had take out (a lot of places don't) so I order two small pizzas. Four cheese and Hawaiian. I get the pizzas home and open the four cheese first. There is honey and walnuts on the pizza. I am slightly confused, but eat the pizza anyway. Over all the pizza was fine, mostly American style, just not very good. Also extremely over priced. But now I know. And knowing is half the battle.

Also, I saw it snow this morning. It didn't stay on the ground, but for someone who has been in Texas for the last 20 years, it was beautiful.