Let the Games Begin!

John's slate came out last Friday. The slate is a simple listing of jobs and locations for those up for relocation between month x and month x. It's been different this time around as we're used to looking it up together and then discussing the possibilities.

This time, we're communicating through other active duty Navy friends. They have access to all the classified email and their unclassified email is working. So, John sends them a message and then I send one back through them. Odd, but it's work

ed for the day. Today is, by the way, our first contact in over a week.

Our choices right now are these:

CHENG (Chief Engineer, John's current job) out of Hawaii, San Diego, Norfolk (no, thank you) and Japan. There is NOTHING listed for Mayport, thank God. Not that this is a bad duty station, we just want to get some new places before the boys are in school and things get complicated.

There is one other possibility but it's a different job (CHENGs usually do two tours of the same job). It would take us to Gaeta, Italy! I told him to go for it! Why not?

One curve ball: If John is chosen for O4 command (that's an early command) then we will not have a say in location. The two places he would go are Sasebo, Japan or San Diego.

I have to say, I'm open to all those choices -with the exception of Norfolk. There are Navy families out there that would never come to Mayport and, for the same reasons, we don't want to go to Norfolk! Ultimately, you go where you're told!

In other news: the paper chain is up! Instead of doing a deployment countdown chain, I've chosen to make a paper chain that we add to. Since our communication has been slow, it's hard not telling John about the little things. When email does come back up, it's spotty and stops working without notice so writing a long catch-up message is not ideal. By adding links to the chain, I'm able to write little things that happened during the day. Never fear, we're also crossing days OFF the calendar that I made.