All work and no play ...

Since I got promoted, work has picked up quite a bit. I've felt a little burned out lately, which is probably why I haven't blogged much lately. This four-day work week is coming just in time! It'll be four hellacious days of work, what with this project I've got to get moving on, but it'll be wonderful to have that Friday off! And it's the Fourth of July, which is my favorite holiday! Score!

When it's not projects keeping me super busy at work, I've had plenty of other things keeping me working extra hours.

I'm head of a committee at work that is sending car.e packages to sold!ers. Several weeks ago, we collected names and addresses of employees' friends and family members who are deployed with the military. We held fundraisers over the last month and a half or so, and it all came together this week when we assembled the packages and shipped them out. We sent 24 packages, and we'll probably be sending a couple more in a month or so. It feels good to know we did that, but it's also nice to know we're done. It took a lot of planning!

I got to talk to K last night for the first time in two weeks. The phones have been down for the last week, so we were really missing each other. It was good to get to catch up on things. K is doing well. They're doing a lot of good things where he is -- repairing schools, fixing up soccer fields, renovating neighborhoods to increase the standard of living.

Since he switched jobs in March, he's doing a lot more office-type work now. He's planning missions and things like that. He's doing good, important work, but I know he misses being out there with the soldiers. Unfortunately, it'll probably be a few years before his rank will allow the level of interaction he had for the last year and a half. He's climbing the ladder, though, and is constantly getting good remarks from his superiors, so that's good.

K is actually up for his first look at getting promoted to ma.jor. We won't find out anything until probably late August, though. It's really hard to get promoted on your first look, so we're trying not to get our hopes up too much. There are a lot of factors that go into the promotion, and only a small percentage can be promoted early. We'll see what happens.

K says we should also know where he'll be stationed next in August or September. That will be some exciting news. We probably won't start looking for a house or anything until after the deployment is over, but I can at least start researching neighborhoods and things. I can't wait for that -- it'll be so nice to get to live in the same place. We won't know what to do with ourselves!

We're still trying to figure out what our plan will be for K's R&R. It's going to be here before we know it. We had planned on Costa Rica, but I told K that I think we should just save that vacation for after the deployment. When K is on R&R, we'll be so excited to be together that we won't care where we are. It just doesn't make sense to me to spend thousands on a vacation when we'd be happy doing nothing.

We know we're going to PA for a week or so (no longer than a week, for both my sanity's sake and my selfishness at not wanting to share K for any longer than that! I get 18 days with him in 2008, and I want those 18 days!) to visit his family.

For a trip for the two of us, we talked about just going to Florida or something for a few days. We could just drive there and stay until we're ready to leave. That sounded like a good plan.

K and I decided to just keep our schedules open. We'd obviously have to get plane tickets for PA, but we would just see what we wanted to do when K got here. That was our plan. Until the very next day, when K talked to his dad. Evidently his dad has a week at a time share that he's not going to use. He wants to give it to us (it has to be used by November, so we can't save it for later) since we didn't really get a honeymoon (Yes, I know the wedding was in Florida, but we were there only 3 days -- the day before, the day of the ceremony, and the day after. One day is hardly a honeymoon.). We can choose from several different locations. It's really sweet and generous of K's dad to give us that. How can we turn it down?

So it's back to the drawing board planning for those 18 days. At least that's some work I don't mind spending a little extra time on!