So… Bill has now been gone for eight days. He’ll be gone for ten more. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. Yesterday, I got extremely bored and drank a lot of wine, which I had managed not to do all week. I now feel like warmed over crap.

I need to go to the store and could actually walk there, but it’s cold and rainy outside and I really just want to crawl back into bed. Bed would probably be the worst thing for me, though, because I have really bad lower back and hip pain that is only alleviated when I move around. I really think it may be time for a better mattress, but we’d probably need to order one from AAFES, because German mattresses are not the same size as American mattresses are.

The store can wait until Monday, I guess. I have enough of what I need to get through the weekend. Nothing is open on Sundays. However, I’d kind of like to get that little chore done. I might just drive to the store, even though it’s so close. That way, I won’t get rained on and will be able to haul all of the plastic water bottles I’ve used up rather than trying to carry them. Edited to add: I just went to the store. Piece of cake! And I traded in 7,50 euros worth of plastic bottles. Go me. Seriously, that is the first time I’ve driven my car since late November. I’ve turned into a true hermit.

I really hate how long this TDY is. I miss my husband. I hope he doesn’t have to do another one of these again anytime soon. I can’t believe he’s been gone eight days and we’re not even halfway through this crap yet. It sucks. I need to get a life in the worst way.

Oh well… I did manage to upload a couple of new tracks to SingSnap a couple of days ago. They turned out relatively nicely. Here’s the first one. I swore I’d never sing a Celtic Woman song. I thought I didn’t like Celtic Woman, but then I heard “You Raise Me Up” and decided I should try it. This version was done when I was a little tired. I messed up the ending a little and decided to say “fuck it”…

I like the other one better… This is my impression of Linda Ronstadt singing “When I Grow Too Old To Dream“. I was excited to find a karaoke version of it. I may have to do this one on Garage Band, so I can eliminate the Internet fuzz from the sound. When I record on SingSnap, I get static. Hell, it would give me something else to do besides drink wine… Edited to add: I was listening to Linda Ronstadt last night and this morning and was inspired to learn this song. I think it turned out even better than the other two.

I’m also reading about Chernobyl, the nuclear reactor in Ukraine that blew up in the 1980s and killed many people. Very cheery topic. Actually, it’s an interesting topic, particularly since I remember when the nuclear accident happened in 1986. I was a couple of months shy of turning 14. That was when we thought the Soviet Union would never die. Little did we know, the whole thing would collapse just a few years later. And little did I know that I would one day live in what used to be the USSR.

I surprised myself a little. The book I’m reading explains how nukes work. As I was reading the process, I thought to myself “That’s fission”. Sure enough, it was. I was never that good at science classes, but obviously I learned something. So a very special thanks goes out to the teachers at Gloucester County Public Schools for doing their jobs. I recently read a sad story about dogs who are living in the nuclear wasteland now. They want to be petted, but they’re all full of radiation… just like everything else is in that area. It won’t be safe to live there for hundreds more years. There’s also a former Soviet era listening device there. It’s huge. Legend has it that Phil Donahue was one of the first allowed to visit it. He saw the spy equipment in the distance and was told it was unfinished hotel. Having seen a couple of bare boned hotel skeletons in Armenia, I would agree that’s what it looks like. The link will take you to a post that includes some pictures of naked, unfinished buildings… or maybe they were just buildings that were really messed up after Gyumri’s earthquake in 1988.