Stephen had to work on Saturday and Sunday, but we already made plans to have people over to watch the OSU - Michigan game. They were nice enough to let him off at 1pm, which is when people were supposed to arrive. The game was already long over, but he thought that either we'd be able to download a rerun of the game or we could just watch whatever was happening in other college football.
Turns out my coworkers aren't exactly the social type. We had three people, and a fourth one showed up two hours after game start, already a few sheets to the wind from playing something called "slosh-ball" that is like dodgeball but with details that I'll spare. Still, company is good, and we spent a nice, relaxing evening together eating lots of our homemade buckeyes and failing at grilling chicken.
I must say, I made some of the best buckeyes ever, and I attribute it largely to really whipping the daylights out of the butter and sugar before I added the peanut butter. I'm sure the Ghirardelli chocolate coating didn't hurt, either!
This week started my first official week as an E-5. Yep, all that psychological warfare, and at least I can say that this time I got promoted!
Not that it wasn't a total cluster. Apparently Navy Advancement accidentally posted the results the night I posted about their power ploys and then immediately took them down, but the damage was done. Friday morning, I found out from my command that I had been selected for promotion, so I had three working days to get my uniforms in order for the promotion ceremony that was held the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
I was the last person to make the cut, so I won't actually get paid my new grade until, oh, June of next year, or something like that. Yep.
BUT I MADE IT!!! WOOOOO!
So what does being an E-5 look like? The same as being an E-4, except apparently I don't have to drive vans and I don't have to do janitorial work. That'll change come January I'm sure, but we only have two weeks before we go on winter leave.
This last week was mostly a ramp-up to the commemoration of the Pearl Harbor bombing. We had some rehearsals, and we also just had a lot of our regular old ceremonial work. On Thursday, though, we played for the arrivals of the last remaining survivors of the USS Arizona at the memorial, and then I think we had another gig in the afternoon, but I don't remember what it was.
Friday was a day off. Over Veterans' Day, everybody got a four-day weekend, except for some people, like myself, it got split up because we had the parade in Hilo and a Veterans' Day ceremony. My group got booked for an extra concert on one of our days off, so we got our "fourth day" on Friday. I guess that works...
Sunday was the big day for us, being the actual commemoration of the Pearl Harbor bombing. We had a 6:30am muster time because the ceremony started at 7:45am with a moment of silence at 7:55am when the bombing began. I played for about three-quarters of the ceremony before my small group had to leave and catch the boat out to the USS Arizona memorial. We played music while the VIPs arrived and then stopped playing during the ceremony they had. I think we were there for about 2 1/2 hours, and then we left, had a little over an hour for lunch, and then returned for a late afternoon ceremony where the last survivors offered a toast to their fallen comrades. It should have been more poignant than it was, but someone's kid was screeching in the vestibule where it echoed (you know, instead of taking her out to the pier where she would be less disruptive), and while people went up to throw rose petals into the memorial pool, everybody else just started striking up conversation. They should have had us play mood music during that time. I would say live and learn, but this was the last year that the survivors were formally reunited.
Today, Stephen and I both had the day off together, and he was chomping at the bit to take a boat out. We tried to get a group of people to go with us, but like I said, my coworkers are a little anti-social, so out of the 16 or so people we asked to split the cost of a 10- or 12-person boat, we only got 2 yeses. So we went by ourselves on a little boat and just had a date. We drove the 20-minutes out to a sandbar in the middle of the bay that at spots was less than knee-deep. When the tide is low, the sandbar is actually above water, and you can take chairs and volleyball nets out there and have a whole picnic lunch on the beach. The view was amazing! We took a million pictures, so I'm going to stop the blogging and just share the pictures.
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| Boat full of tourists setting up a volleyball net |
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| Shaka! |
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| Christmas wrasse |
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| Cleaner wrasse |
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| So many fishes |
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| A view from water level |
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| Swimming near coral |
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| All the Moorish Idols |
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| Sandbar from the boat. |
And there we have a few last-minute fishies from our attempt to snorkel near Coconut Island. We found the sandbar snorkeling to be some of the most satisfying because of the sheer numbers of fish! It was so awesome! Coconut Island was cold, and we didn't get the boat anchored very well so we had to swim pretty hard back to it once it started floating away.
Still, one of the most amazing days I've had here in Hawai'i. I have a small touch of sunburn on my face and shoulders, but it was awesome beyond what words can describe. I think I got two weeks of relaxation in during four hours. Since we're not going anywhere during the holiday leave period, I look forward to renting a boat more. I also look forward to Stephen getting the opportunity to learn sailing, even if today was so calm you couldn't sail if your life depended on it.
Anyway, that is all for now! Mahalo for checking back in!
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