Our Courtyard

Our house has a small courtyard in front, that originally was just pea gravel and dirt. I've been waiting a while to have a small yard of my own to landscape. I appreciate the Japanese way of gardening, and I tried to model mine after it. The traditional Japanese garden has roots centuries ago with the tea ceremony. The garden was where you walk through to clear your mind or collect your thoughts or something, on your way to the tea ceremony. The plants tend to be evergreens or grasses of Asian origin and will usually mimic nature in the layout.


I built the pond, which I would estimate it to be about 200 gallons, so on the small side. I've stocked it with koi, goldfish, mosquito fish, white cloud minnows, bitterlings, Japanese dojo eels, and a couple turtles.


I didn't realize how much landscaping costs. It feels weird paying for rocks. But when you live in the city, you can't just gather some from the surrounding area. I tried to stick with smaller plants and items on sale, so it kept my costs to under $500.

Our New Car

It's called a Suzuki Lapin. It's only sold in Japan. I would call it a cross between a Scion xB and a Mini. Very cute, but not too bubbly that a guy can't be seen driving it. This will act as our car until we need 2 cars, which may be never. It depends on where Candice ends up working. Then I'll get to pick my car... fun times.


It's classified as a "mini-car" in Japan. Because of it's small size, weight, and engine (60 cc believe it or not), it gets reduced rates for taxes and random fees. But this thing can haul... a lot of packages. And WOW! Look at those rims! They've got to be 12's or something!

Married!

Below is our website we used for the invites. Sorry if you didn't get invited, because it was a blast! We don't have many pics available now, but I'll post some soon.... 'er or later.

http://www.andyandcandy.info/

Wonderful Worms

This entry is an ode to thee grand ol' worm. Whenever it rains, so many of these fantastic fellows lose their way onto the sidewalk and street. Then it's a race against time. Will they make it home before the weather turns nice?


Check out this video about an effort to save lost worms.

Wayward Worms Video

If you don't know what's going on here, you'd probably be too grossed out if I explained it.

On of the grossest things I've ever seen was this woman with a high fever in Haiti. When the body heated up, the worms started squirming for the fire exit. She started coughing up a multitude of worms that were crawling up her throat.

UNREAL!

Check this out and be amazed. You may want to turn down your sound if straight up beats annoy you. Click the center to get it started, then click anywhere to stop.

Trippin'

Japan

Just when I was getting excited about moving to Japan after seeing this video portraying their amazing talent, I found out that the Air Force is going to keep me in Korea for a couple more months. Looks like we'll be moving there in early September.

Moustach March

Here's the result of 3 weeks of work (I absent mindedly forgot of Moustach March the 1st week). It's a sorry 'stach, I know. My philtrum happens to have my blondest hair. We're all supposed to grow them. Here's my boys...

Engage

Sorry for the late post here. I wanted to write about the rest of time in Thailand, which was too daunting of a task that I kept putting off. So I'll write about it in several smaller, manageable posts. I'll start with the big news...

My girlfriend Candice met me in Thailand after my work with the Air Force. On Valentine's Day, we were supposed to be in Cambodia at Angkor Wat, which is where I planned on popping the big question. But I came across trouble at the border. The Thai immigration officials wouldn't let me across the border. Because I flew into Thailand on a military aircraft, my passport had no Thai entry stamp. Even though I had a letter from the US embassy explaning my situation, and immigration spoke with an embassy liaison, they wouldn't let me across. So with a quick change of plans, we headed back to Bangkok.

The next day was Valentine's Day, and we went and visited the old palace and a couple temples which were simply amazing. I'll talk more about that later. That evening, we got a Thai massage and went to eat at The Breeze restaurant (http://www.breezebkk.com/index.php and http://www.bangkok.com/what%27s-new/breeze.html) which is on a rooftop terrace on the State Tower. With a call beforehand, I ensured we would have a nice table, and the Breeze pulled through with our table sitting on a private semicircle on the roof's edge.


After some romantic prologue and nearly knocking over the table getting to my knee, I opened the ring box and asked Candice to spend the rest of her life with me. She was shocked, and couldn't say a word but gave me a big tearful hug. She was looking forward to this day.

We plan to have our wedding in San Diego where her family lives. It'll likely be July 19th, which is after she finishes her internship and after I finish my year here in Korea. Right after, we'll move to JAPAN!!! I don't think I've posted this yet, but next assignment will be at Yokota Air Base, which is right by Tokyo. Candice and I are both really looking forward to this. She is half-Japanese herself (and half-Chinese) and even has relatives in Japan. After my assignment there, we'll probably move back to the West Coast and finish our residencies.

On the way out, the State Tower had this huge, sweet aquarium. In it, I saw the most beautiful fish I've ever seen...

Picasa

I've started created online photo albums with Picasa, which is another Google beauty. It's quite streamlined with Blogger and other Google entities. It gives you 1024 Mb of free storage. One of the best features is that it can upload scores of photos at once. So here's the link. http://picasaweb.google.com/drewbarnett
You can already check out photos from the first part of my trip to Thailand. It includes pics of the hotel the Air Force put me up in, Thai kickboxing, and more.

Cope Tiger

Part of my squadron of A-10's went down to Korat, Thailand, to participate in Cope Tiger 2008. This is a joint Thai-Sing(Singapore)-US Air Force/Marine exercise. They brought me to be their medical support. So late February, I flew down there on a C-17 Globemaster, which is nice new big aircraft.


This was a awesome assignment. The US Marines brought a couple flight docs and several techs, so we were well staffed in the clinic. I only saw 4 patients a day average, but we were always ready for anything. I also got a chance to fly in a E-3 AWACS. The big platter on top houses a radar, and inside the aircraft are air/weapons control stations. It gets exciting in there when the controllers are informing all the friendly aircraft about approaching enemy aircraft.


Another incredible part of this flight was the in-flight refueling. Watching from the cockpit as 2 large aircraft approach each other to refuel was quite awe-provoking.


Korat (which is in Northeast Thailand) is one of the biggest cities in Thailand, but it doesn't offer much to see or do. In the evenings, I would eat dinner with the pilots, and sometimes we would hit a bar or club. We did get a chance to see a couple Khmer temples from the 10th century.


Above is the center of Phanom Rung, which is considered Thailand's largest and best restored of the Khmer temples (the same folks that built Angkor Wat).


After 2 weeks of flying, here's the A-10's preparing to fly back to Korea. I was able to take some leave afterwards, so I stuck around in Thailand. I'll have much more about this in my next post.