Weekend Wrap-Up - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Days 281 & 282

Saw this guy outside of Starbucks..."I need money for weed and beer" 

Hey...at least the guy is honest!

This weekend started off with getting my wife’s hair cut. Normally this isn’t a big deal, not even big enough to mention on a blog. This haircut is a little different though, her hairdresser moved and started working in Seattle. My wife is a little picky and after one attempt with another local hairdresser, she decided she needed to head into Seattle. Living in Bremerton has a great advantage when it comes to visiting Seattle, we can just hop on a ferry which will drop us off right in the middle of downtown Seattle. When we arrived at the ferry there was an unusually large amount of people waiting for it. A quick look around the crowd and I realized that there must be a Seattle Sounders game today. There were a ton of people in their Sounders gear. I like how the color scheme of the Sounders is similar to that of the Seahawks. I’m not a huge soccer fan, in fact I would change the channel if it was on TV. To me it’s kind of like baseball, I would not watch it on TV and I do not keep up on the standings…but I do enjoy the occasional game in person. I haven’t seen a Sounders game yet, but I do think it would be fun to go see.

When we arrived in Seattle after the hour long ferry ride, my wife and I walked to her hairdresser’s salon. I said goodbye and then made my way a Starbucks located near Pike Place Market in Seattle. I only purchased a bottle of water, just to justify my use of one of their lounge chairs. I got comfortable and started spending some quality time with my iPad. Between the use of my iPad and just people watching in downtown Seattle, time passed by pretty quickly.

Once my wife was finished we met up and decided to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe in Seattle. Neither of us had ever tried it out yet and we were both starving. Dinner was great! After that we left, boarded the ferry and headed back to Bremerton.

Sunday was very laid back. It consisted of sleeping in, doing schoolwork, watching some basketball and finally visiting the in-laws for dinner and laundry. We still don’t have our own washer and dryer. Until I get out of the army and get a real job, we don’t want to add any additional debt to our budget.

TransProc - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 272

The Hammering Man in Seattle...just a quick photo I snapped on my way to the interview

Sent a text to my squad leader “MOU Today”, then I went back to sleep. I got up about 0730, took a shower and got ready for the day. I put on some business casual clothes and boarded the ferry to Seattle for an interview I had scheduled. Right when I arrived in Seattle I received a call from my PEBLO saying that I have been placed on “TransProc”. TransProc is short for Transition Point Processing System and is used by military personnel office and military transition centers. This is the system that will produce my DD214 (Certificate of Release from Active Duty or Discharge). This is good news, this means I’m on the final stage of my time in the army. She told me there is a transitional brief I could attend today, or there is one next Tuesday. I let her know I couldn’t get to today's, but I would attend next Tuesday’s brief.

I then proceeded to my job interview. It seemed to all go very well, but there might be an issue with my start date. They need someone right away, and I am still not out of the army yet. Sucks if that is going to cost me this job! I got a call from the VA representative and setup a meeting for next Monday. I also got a call from my platoon sergeant letting me know that I am on TransProc, I let him know my PEBLO already called me and I’m planning to attend the next brief on Tuesday.

I took the ferry home and then did schoolwork. Later on I picked up my son from his grandparents, then we all went to my in-laws for dinner and then we watched “The Grandmaster”. The movie is about IP Man, who ended up training Bruce Lee. I thought the movie was “so so”, my son ended up falling asleep pretty quickly. Either he was really tired, or the movie was pretty boring for him…lol.

Weekend Wrap-Up - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Days 133 & 134

A picture I took of Seattle's Pike Place Market while waiting in line for the show

This weekend the kiddos came over and on Saturday we even had two of my nieces over. We volunteered to take them to their soccer games for my sister. Once those were over with, we all headed to Seattle. We took the kiddos and were joined by one of my wife's friend and her son to see a band called Boyce Avenue. I came across them because I am a big fan of cover songs. I like when an artist takes a popular song, remakes it, and adds their own style to it. Boyce Avenue does most of their remakes in an acoustic setting. I liked them and I figured the kiddos would like them too because they would know some of the songs they heard.

We stopped by a pizza joint first which turned out to be a great idea…everyone was starving. After being served a giant sized New York style pizza (complete with our waiter's east coast accent) we scarfed it all up and headed on to the show. One of the nice things about living in Bremerton, we can take a ferry that drops us off right in downtown Seattle. Dinner and the concert venue were both within walking distance. Everyone enjoyed the show, but we had to leave before it ended unfortunately. One of the drawbacks of taking the ferry is that you're stuck with their schedule, and at night we had the choice of catching the 10:30 PM ferry or waiting until 12:50 AM for the next one. One right in the middle would have been perfect…but such is life.

Sunday was spent sleeping and and then just hanging out…not a whole lot to report.

Our view of Boyce Avenue during the show