Day 59 - Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Well, Mr. or Ms. Blog Visitor -- welcome back!! We're glad that you have joined us once again. Please notice the snazzy changes that have happened today!! I have added weather (Al can't access weather sites where he is at) - figured out what was wrong with my text wrapping on my links --- AND added a very cool feature that pops up - randomly, I might add - a quote about love, absence, etc.

I also got to talk to Al on lunch today which was nice. We have gotten to email back and forth a lot more the last couple of days too - trading jokes back and forth, etc. It makes time go so much faster when I hear from him. He makes me laugh in a way that few people can --- here is an example of one of his silly emails that he sent me:

Reasons why English teachers die young:
Actual Analogies and Similes Found in High School Essays
---------------------------------------------------------------

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

He got mail yesterday -- he got his printer that I mailed him (whoo hoo for nobody stealing it), the Girl Scout cookies - took a week and a half (yay for the new address), and a BUNCH of stuff from the awesome Homefront Hugs people!! He said that the guys have been teasing him because he gets the most mail out of anybody - the chaplain asked him if he's going to get his own conex to put it all in.

I am going out of town this weekend to visit his mom again - and I have a list of stuff to try and find in his house -- cross your fingers for a missing Army outfit and that I find some nursing CD's! I will be going to the FRG meeting too.

Al said that hopefully he'll be getting two new medics at his location - he lost the ones that he had -- and that things are going to be better organized now because they have a new group of people down there to help them out. He said that everything is going very well -- whoo hoo!!