How did I get here?

A year ago, I was finishing up my Doctorate in San Francisco. I had met this nice man who was working on his Master's at Stanford. (We sound pretty impressive on paper - but don't let that fool ya.) He was a student, I was a student - we had stuff in common. He is calm and level-headed and I am emotional, (that can be read as "exciting") so we complemented each other as well. He told me he was in the Navy but I don't think I really believed him. (Funny enough, there were members of my family who seriously didn't believe him.)

We started dating, it became serious and when he told me he was moving to Hawaii in June of 2011, I was like,"is there room in your suitcase?" Long story short - I made it on the plane and not in the cargo department. Everyone was jealous and envious that I was moving to Hawaii with my boyfriend. "It is paradise!," they said. And while the weather is nice and palm trees are pretty - Hawaii doesn't have my immediate family here - the family I left behind in order to pursue MY family. There are ups and downs to everything.

We landed on Oahu and my then boyfriend told me that we would be met by one or two other people that he would be working with - not the 20 or so people that actually showed up at the airport. I think it was only appropriate to be stunned into my first real meeting with the Navy. And I would be repeatedly *zapped* over the course of the next several months. I fell in love with a student and then married a sailor - who incidentally will never spend time on the ocean - which I am not complaining about.

In order to respect my husband's privacy - that may be the only time I discuss him. I think this blog will be more about my adjustments to military life, an unemployed pharmacist, and observing how my views change from a bleeding-heart, liberal democrat from the San Francisco Bay Area to a moderate with one foot in the military world and the other one in the civilian world.