Company, orders

I just sat down and counted: I am in the home stretch of 24 days out of 38 where we have had company. Megan and Paul arrive tomorrow to spend a few days with us, a few days on another island and then back to a few days with us. Then we're done - hopefully for awhile. It's not that we don't enjoy hosting because we genuinely do. It just gets you out of sync with your normal routine of eating and sleeping and can be a little draining. I'm fairly confident that it's one of the reasons why Zac and I have been battling monstrous head colds for the last week.

That being said, we've had a great time with our visitors so far. (First, Zac's brother, his wife and son and then Zac's cousin and his wife.) It has been a great "excuse" to get out and enjoy the island, which we sometimes neglect to do. It will be a entirely different visit when Megan and Paul are here because at this point they're not tourists anymore. Paul was stationed out here for three years (with Zac) back in the day and Megan made a number of trips out to visit him. If we needed to we could toss them the keys to the car and they'd be comfortable finding ways to amuse themselves for a day. It means we'll be able to relax and hang out more instead of hitting up the usual tourist destinations like the USS ARIZONA, Diamond Head, etc. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we'll be able to spend a fair number of days just laying out at the beach. Have to take in as much Hawaii as we can before we leave. Speaking of orders . . .

Zac's on the phone (Skype, actually) calling the other side of the world at the moment. We've been up for orders for a couple of months. Each month a list of available jobs pops up that Zac is eligible to apply for. He can apply for a job if there's something he wants, or he can wait until the following month to see if new jobs appear. However, at some point the Navy says, "You had your chance to chose and you didn't; now we're going to chose for you." That time is drawing near for Zac, so he's spent a quite a bit of time over the last couple months calling around to different prospective commands to see what the available jobs entail. He doesn't want to get stuck without any say in the next three years of his career.

Of course there are all sorts of factors to take into account. Zac is up for sea duty (which doesn't necessarily mean on board a ship but often-time does) which is usually more work and more stressful than shore duty. He's hoping to find a sea duty assignment that, to be crass, sucks less than other sea duty jobs. Certain places/jobs will be more career-enhancing for him than others. Some locations are closer to "home" than others. There are places that would be easier for me to find employment than others. There's a lot to weigh.

So Zac brought home the latest list of job openings and we'll have to investigate each of them to see what looks good. Hopefully there is something there that we'd like to pursue. But even if we get those orders, there is always the possibility that there won't be funding to move us (the result of a lingering budget problem) and there's the possibility that the Navy could always change its mind. So the short version is, I'll believe we're moving when I see orders in Zac's hand and we've made some substantial steps towards moving there. Until then, it's all speculation and wasted energy.