A Quickie...

Not much to report for today...no word from the bosses on the schedule situation, and my sore throat is getting worse, now congested and achy too. Went to bed at 6:45 PM. I have the best husband in the world; he wrapped me up in blankets, because I was so cold and put me to bed right away, which really helped my fever, and I'm definitely improved from all the rest. That doesn't leave much excitement from the day though, sorry! I did talk with Jimmy (Casey's brother) this morning while Casey was getting ready for work. They are getting packed up to come see us! They leave Wednesday in the States, and get here to us on Friday. Long journey for them! Hopefully all will go smoothly. Wish I had more to tell you about, but perhaps my cold will shake itself off today and there will be better stories on the morrow (although, I did accidentally hit myself in the face with my keys on my way to work, but maybe I can elaborate on that later).

Putting my Cards on the Table

After my post yesterday about what I really want from work, I was feeling very motivated. I found that writing my thoughts down really helped me to solidify my reasonings and gave me a sort-of preparation for speaking with my boss at work. I wrote down my main points and laid it all out there for my boss and let her know that I need more from them, and I need them to need less from me. I felt like I explained all my issues and made it very clear that this was a serious need for me and my family. Thankfully, being that everyone who works at the bank are also Navy families, my boss was very understanding of where I was coming from. We agreed she would take some time to think/talk it over with the other manager, and let me know. I also let them know that I would be willing to hear if they had any other arrangement ideas that I might consider. So either I will be quitting my new job in the next few days or I will get a week off in December to go to Singapore with Casey, a flexible, 3 day work week, and more freedom and say in my scheduling. We shall see! Either way though, I see it as a big win for me. I feel proud of myself that I stood up for what was best for our family, and either I'll have a job that works for me, or I will have the chance to find that knitting class I've been looking for! :)

That was really the biggest event of yesterday, but Casey is FINALLY of duty, after about 5 days, and we got Drifter fixed! So we're just about ready for Jessie and Jimmy to come out and visit us! Luckily, I have Thurday off (Veteran's day) so I can finish cleaning up and getting some extra sheets washed. I'm so excited for their visit, I'm just hoping now I can get those Sumo tickets! Sayonara!

Jay-Bug; Work-Bug

Surprise! My friend Jason (nickname: Jay-Bug, but only to me) was in Nagasaki for work (randomly), and he took the train up for a quick visit! It was such a treat! He's getting married to my college roommate this May, so excited for them! I gave him a little tour of our lovely town of Sasebo, or at least I tried to, but I was thrice cut off by my work's "on-call" phone. Yes, my part time job, called me 3 times on Sunday, to check on jammed ATM's. It was totally ridiculous, but more on that later. We thought about trying to make an appearance at the hot air balloon festival, but all the trips back to the base for the ATM's nixed that option. So instead we just grabbed some fruits at the local store to bring to Casey on the ship, did a little mini tour of the house, and stopped in on the USS Patriot, while it has some repairs done. Casey gave us a neat tour of the ship, since it was Sunday and no one was working on board. It was neat! (If anyone is interested in some Navy-approved pictures of the ship under construction, here is a link to their facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/USS-Patriot-MCM-7/359718106353).

After our ship tour we decided to sample some local specialties, and went to "Big Man", for the famous, Sasebo Burger. I'd had another version before Jay's visit, but this one was much better than my first. It was a nice filling lunch, on our way to the restaurant we perused the arcade, or shopping street, and we picked out Megan a little present! Only to get another call about the ATM and have to head back to the base again. RIDICULOUS. Luckily, Jay busied himself shopping tax-free at the NEX while I tended the ATM again. We also popped in on a small oyster festival, where people were buying bags of oysters and grilling them on hundreds of little bar-b-que sets out in a field. It was very fun to see (I will bug Jay-Bug for his picture of that!).

Sasebo is a really neat town, but it's just a normal small city where people live normal lives and go to work and go to the park. So we exhausted most of our neat places to visit rather quickly, so after a quick drive around the downtown, we drove through some rice patties, and saw a little of the country side, and Jay headed back to Nagasaki on a train before dinner, since he was going to be working bright and early the next day on a Japanese Navy ship. It was so fun to have a little impromptu visit! Very refreshing, the day was absolutely amazing, sunny, but just the right coolness in the air. Fall here is wonderful, I definitely recommend visiting this time of year!

So after I dropped Jay off at the train station, I stopped at the local grocery again to pick up some sushi for Casey's dinner (he's still on duty on the ship). This is when we got to talking about work and the silly ATM calls all day. We finally landed on a very important point. As the employee, I need to be honest and firm with my employers about my realistic commitment to this "part-time" job. Being on-call on the weekend doesn't seem that part time, if you ask me. Also, a huge part of the reason Casey and I selected Japan for our station was for the opportunities to travel and explore together. Casey found out he will be going to a conference in Singapore, and originally I told him I couldn't go with him because I have to work. Now let's think about that for a moment. I was turning down a trip to Singapore with my husband, because of a 20-hour a week, part time job, that I'm doing "for fun". It's just not adding up. There's really no reason I should be putting this job (or any job) ahead of my husband and family, and the plans that are truly important to us. I've decided that the best thing to do is to lay out what I want from this job, not what they want from me. I think for employment to be worth your time you and your employer need to be on the same page, and right now I don't believe we are. Here is what I want:

-to work 0-20 a week, which implies that there may be times when my life schedule doesn't permit me to be scheduled for work.

-to work only a maximum of 3 days a week.

-to have the flexibility to seize opportunities, like the Singapore trip, that come up, often with little notice.

-to spend time with my husband, my family, and my friends when there are important events happening (and sometimes Casey being not-out-to-sea is important enough for me).

I know this all may sound a little selfish, but I'm OK with that. There's no reason an employer should be getting the most valuable pieces of me. Ideally, this would have been a discussion for before I applied for this job, however, I think I also needed this job to help me get my priorities straight. My position would obviously be different if this were an income-necessity situation, or if this was a serious career move, in order to better some greater goal in my life, but being a part-time bank teller is none of these. It's a way for me to get out of the house during the day, meet people, and make "fun-money" for those spontaneous trips we plan to go on.

So, I think by letting my job know what I need from them, we can come to a mutual decision about whether working there is really a benefit to both sides, and if it's not, then it's not an arrangement I should be in, is it?

I welcome thoughts and comments!

Coupons are Fantastic!

In preparation for the big day that Casey's brothers arrive, I did some hard core grocery shopping at the commissary. Not just the go-down-the-street commissary either. I took a cooler with me, folded all the seats down, and drove 35 minutes to the "big" commissary at the other housing complex. It was an exciting afternoon! I was armed and ready with a big stack of coupons that I had printed out online, and a lengthy shopping list. Somehow it turned out to be very tiring, but it was so worth it, when my final total rang up, I turned over my coupons, and then I watched it tick down again, dollar by dollar. I think I might be addicted! Anyway, for a few weeks worth of groceries, I'd say I did pretty darn good coming it at just about $200.00 (which is including $18 for 6 lbs of potatoes for the ship for Thanksgiving). It's always a nice way to start your day by doing something productive.

Most of the rest of the day passed like a normal Casey-less Saturday, me pretending to clean/to chores, while really playing on my computer. But luckily, our friends the Riley's called, and were in need of a babysitter for their 3 little girls for the evening. It would be a little fun adventure to keep me busy. :)

I decided I'd stop by Casey's ship on my way to babysit, just to say hi to Casey and visit for a few minutes. For some reason he wasn't answering his phone (I later found out the batteries died), so I thought it would be better to just see if he was in a meeting. When I walked up to the gate, it was the same guys from Friday, who called over "his wife is here. With his dinner." They're joke-sters, but they remembered I had lost my phone and asked if I never found it again since I was back. I had to explain that I found it in my shoe, but no, this time Casey just wasn't answering my calls. I asked if they knew where he was, and so they explained he was just drawing up some reports. "Will you let him know I'm here?", I say. And so, over the radio goes, "there's a crazy girl here at the gate who says she's having OPS's baby, and he owes her some money." GREAT. AGAIN. They come back over the radio, "uhhh, does she have identification?" "Yes" "Well take down her information, while I pass the word. Do you need backup?" "No, I think we can handle her" "OK, what's the name?" "Uhh, [I pass over my ID, barely able to keep my laughter off the radio] that's Re-becca, um, Bur- Bur-nette? I think" "Roger". Oh great. If I get arrested, someone is in major trouble! Haha, the gate guards can barely contain themselves. After they figure out on the other end of the radio that I am actually OPS wife, the word comes back "OK, hold her there, try to keep her calm, we're sending security backup. Ramrod." One more kid comes out to the gate laughing, and so we just wait it out until Casey is finished his reports and he comes to the gate to "pay me my money" haha. I make sure to point to him and yell "that's him, that's the one!" when he walks into view, just to give the duty guys one more laugh. As I walk from the gate one of the guards says, "ma'am, please make sure we don't get in trouble for this." :-D

Then I was off to babysit, which was much less eventful than dropping by to see Casey. The girls were well behaved and went to bed all by themselves, how do I teach my future children to do that? Then I just watched "The Nanny" reruns for the rest of the night! Not a bad day!

How Am I Supposed to Think of Cute Titles Everyday??

Look! I'm keeping my promise...two days in a row! What a busy Friday! Casey has recently bought a second car, which I took into the shop Friday morning. I've decided that our car's should be named Zippy and Drifter. Zippy is our first car, a Honda Life, which is cute, and the engine sounds like you're pulling a zipper up and down repeatedly, because it's so small. Our newest car, Drifter, got it's name because some previous owner attempted to make our Suzuki Kei look like a vehicle from Tokyo Drift, but failed miserably, so it's a little off (like a Drifter, which are also usually a little off). So poor Drifter is having some issues, but I suppose you can only expect that from a car that cost a thousand dollars. It has a little leak in it's distributor, which oddly enough, was the same problem we had in Seattle with our beloved Camry...! So into the shop Drifter went, which, luckily is on base, so there is no language barrier issues with this bout of car trouble. Unfortunately, they tried to give me attitude and didn't believe me when I explained the issue. So husband saved the day and showed up in his uniform to set them straight for me. They were much nicer when I came to pick it up! :)

While I wasn't dealing with the car issues, I spent most of the daylight hours working. Nothing too crazy there, it was a quiet day filled with, "that's 100, 2-, 3-, 4-, and 500. Would you like an envelope for that?" :) Luckily the day passed quickly, since it was Friday and we were busy with people taking out their money for the weekend. Then after work was Zumba! Woo! This time my co-workers from the credit union also came. Our manager, assistant manager, and one of the other tellers all joined our class (it's also taught by a fellow teller, too!). So it was fun to see everyone dancing around after being so professional at work all day.

Casey is on duty all weekend, so that he can have the weekends that his brothers are here free. I usually try to bring him dinner while he's on duty, since the ship is still under construction and doesn't have a kitchen on board. So after Zumba, I went to the food court to pick up Casey's favorite, taco bell. I try to bring him a treat on Fridays :)! But after I picked up the food and got back to the car I could not find my phone! It was already dark out, and Drifter has some stupid blue lights installed inside, so I couldn't see a thing!! I tried looking everywhere, and even dumped out my purse and gym bag. So frustrating! So I had to arrive at the ship unannounced and embarrass Casey by having them call over the radios "Can someone please call the CDO, his wife is here, with his dinner." Oops! Sorry honey! It's always nice though to have dinner together, since we can't spend the rest of the day together, so we like to catch up on what's been going on and visit for a little bit. Casey thankfully was able to call my phone for me when we got back to the car, and YAY! We heard ringing! Using Casey's, always-handy flashlight we found my phone, which was in my shoe. No, not the one I was wearing. But the ones I changed out of when I went to the gym. That would happen to me. Hooray! So everything ended better than expected, and now you don't have to hear any stories about explaining how I lost my phone and need a new one in the Japanese cell phone store.

I guess it turns out that even a "normal day" has some fun stories to share! I hope you guys are ready to recap my weekend of errands...coming up next on NaBloPoMo. :)

Visitors!

I'm very excited to announce we'll have our first visitors soon! Casey's brothers are coming out for a 3 week visit! They'll be here through the end of November, and I'm so excited! We're hoping to get some tickets to the Sumo competition that's getting started in a few weeks. I've never been to a sumo competition before, but I really hope we can make it!

I've been working at Navy Federal Credit Union for a few weeks now, and I've been learning a lot. It's been a nice change of pace to have a schedule and to get out of the house during the day. I'm still not used to packing my own lunch though (even though I do it for Casey every morning..?!), so I'm working on remembering that! I'm still working 30 hours a week right now because I'm still in training, so I'm looking forward to going down to 20 hours a week, as planned.

Ok, ZUMBA. Who's heard of it, and who's doing it? I started a zumba class at the gym two days a week, and I'm really enjoying it! It's like a dance-aerobics class, and it's a little crazy, but it's fun, and keeps me interested! They have some really nice gym facilities here, so I'm trying to take advantage. I'm still doing the yoga class I started too, which is still in Japanese. :)

One thing I do wish I've done more of though is learn Japanese. I still haven't learned much more than greeting phrases yes/no and thank you, so although I can get around at a grocery store, trying to inquire about my cell phone bill was very difficult. Thank goodness for dictionaries!

One other crazy moment, some of you may have heard the story on facebook already, but it's a good one, so I'll re-tell. Casey and I recently took a drive out to visit a castle not too far away. Once we got there, we took a nice tour, it was a beautiful day, and we walked around the grounds and visited for a while. Unfortunately, the whole time we were gone I left the lights on in the car! Our battery was very dead, and we had no wires to jump the car. Not to mention, we have that whole language barrier working against us. We spent a few minutes trying to see if we could get the car started on our own, but after a few attempts it was obvious we were out of luck. God must have really been looking out for us that day though, because two nice older Japanese couples approached us, and one said "Car battery, no start". A miracle! They saw our problem, and also at least understood a little English! I used my Japanese phrase books and their English skills to explain the problem, and they were able to explain to us that they would take Casey to the gas station down the road to get cables! Hooray! I waited behind with the wives of the two men, to wait. The ladies were SO nice! They practiced their English on me, told me I had a handsome husband, and asked lots of questions, which I tried to answer in Japanese as much as I could. Then, one of the ladies pulled out a Taylor Swift CD! It was so funny, she was so excited, asking me if I know of Taylor Swift and her songs, when I replied yes, she asked me my favorite and if I would sing it! Oh man! It was amusing, but since they were being so helpful, and there is an obsession with karaoke, I obliged. :) The boys were back in what seemed like no time at all, we got the car jumped and were ready to go! The couples would not accept any money, not even for the parking lot they had to pay for twice! Casey luckily had an enameled ship's coin from the Patriot, which he's on now, and they were excited to accept that as a gift of our thanks! It turned our day into quite the adventure!

I supposed it's never a dull moment with the Burnette's.

P.S. I was recently informed of a "movement" called NaBloPoMo. Where, you pledge to write on your blog every day this month. Seeing as I've been neglectful of my dear friends and family on my blog lately, I thought it would be a good chance for me to get back into the swing of things. So I'm pledging that I will do my very best, to post on my blog everyday this month! Ahh! I hope you're all ready for boring stories about how I poured all the pepper into my sauce, and Casey had to wait until 8pm for his dinner, poor husband. Because, that's what my normal day's are like! :) Thanks for reading, friends, hopefully I will speak with you all again tomorrow!

To My Long Lost Friends

Hello! I've been back online for a while now, so I apologize for my absence! Some good updates! We are very much settled into our house! It's lovely, but we still need some more furniture to fill it! It's bigger than we expected to have, so we left most of our furniture in storage in the US. I've been trying to fit into our little Japanese community, I hang my laundry out to dry, and I sweep my front porch, and I pull weeds. Just like the neighbors! (Although, I think they know we're not Japanese...).

We have some fun things coming up, and we've been out and about as much as we can. We took the train down to Nagasaki a few weekends ago. We saw the Atomic Bomb Museum and the Peace Park Memorial. It was a very interesting experience. I think I expected it to be very somber, like the Holocaust Museums that I've been to. Instead, it seemed that the Japanese people who were there were snapping pictures and chatting it up during the tour. It seemed odd, but I can at least be grateful that there are no hard feelings. They were still very kind and we even had one man try out his English skills by explaining to us all about the Peace Park (there is a marker-monument on the spot where the bomb exploded above, he said, we think). This weekend coming up we're going to the Navy Ball. We're going to get all dressed up and go! I'm excited, I'll be sure to put up pictures!

Also, I recently got hired at the Navy Federal Credit Union! I'm very excited to start working again. It will be part time, so we still get to spend lots of time together, but it will help me fill my days with something more productive and get me into a routine. I'm excited to start later this month, so I will keep everyone posted on how it works out!

We don't have an oven here in Japan, so I've been asking friends and family, if you have any crockpot recipies, please email them to me! I need all kinds, breakfast to dinner to dessert and sides! Anything is welcome!

Hope everyone is well, fall is proving to be quite lovely here, if anyone is thinking of making a visit, this is certainly a good time of year to do it. We're hoping to do some hikes soon too, so I will have more fun things to write about!