In Virginia Beach, even ye olde predatory lenders are quaint.

 But they are not as welcoming as this store in Sioux City that I spotted days after graduating in 2000 and driving across the country to meet Elysia at her first duty station in Bremerton, Washington.

Congratulations Class of 2000 Now WIC Approved

WAVY-TV in Virginia covered the Military Spouse Symposium last week and a cameraman got footage from a breakout session I attended.  It was fairly intimate with about twenty people in the audience.  The 2-minute news report is here, but below are screen captures of the four crowd shots:

A distant shot of the panel.  The blue dot is where I was sitting.

Darn, just missed me!

Hmmmm.  I swear I wasn’t scratching myself or something.

The camera pans across the group.  Hey there I am!

[I found the YouTube video via the MOAA Spouse Blog]

On our way to the Virginia Beach Viva Elvis festival on Saturday it rained heavily, but around 4pm . . . a miracle.  The clouds opened up and the Skydiving Kings fell from the sky. 

Here is Elysia posing for an “I Want You . . . to be the King” poster.  Sadly it won’t wind up at the Washington Navy Yard, where several years ago the Navy-Marine Corps Appellate Defense Division had an Elvis shrine and the JAG officers traded around a blue suede shoes doormat to those who prevailed in court.  (It was good to be the King.)

After hanging out near a giant Elvis possibly related to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and listening to one tribute artist — one was enough for us — we headed to Beale Street BBQ for the tasty goodness of deep fried pickles.

We are back in Virginia Beach for a mini-vacation to the place we called home for almost two years.  It, and nearby Norfolk, are places we never wanted to visit.  And then the Navy moved us here. 

Our first weekend here we were driving to the base and a dog ran in and out of traffic.  We pulled over, as did a woman in a real beater of a car.  She and I chased after the dog for about a block and a half until she was able to grab his collar.  The dog pulled her into a ditch.

As she got up and brushed herself off, the first person we met in Virginia Beach introduced herself:  “Just all in a day’s work — I work for PETA”. 

PETA is headquartered in Norfolk, but the odds were much greater than we would first meet someone in Navy.  There are about nine military bases in the greater Hampton Roads area, with 110,000 active duty servicemembers.  Plus, another 200,000 reservists, retirees and family members.  40,000 to 50,000 military spouses (and a lot of children’s consignment stores).

With about 16 percent of the local population connected to the military, you can imagine that among younger people the percentage in the military is enormous.  When a ship is deployed or comes back, it is front page news.  Families here know firsthand what it means to be at war.

Our other early experience in Virginia Beach when we moved there a few years ago was a hail and farewell party we were invited to at a karaoke bar.  Somehow I had made it through life without knowing “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass.  It plays here all the time.  So much so that I don’t think it was a coincidence that our doula, a Navy brat, was named Brandy.

Someone also sang Imagine and I was surprised to see that the streaming lyrics omitted “And no religion too”.  Maybe not surprising given that Christian Broadcasting Network and the 700 Club are headquartered here.  When you fly into Norfolk Airport you are greeted with a giant mural of a warship firing its guns – I think it is the USS Wisconsin doing something like this – and then there is a lifesize poster of Pat Robertson’s Regent University with a giant picture of John Ashcroft giving the commencement address.

Virginia Beach turned out to be a nice place to live even though we barely settled in.  There is at least one good Cantonese restaurant (Jade Villa), and we found a few places that made good New York style pizza (Bella Pizza), something impossible to find in Maryland.  Even with the hordes of summer beach tourists, it is a calm and relaxing place. 

For the next few days we are camped out at the Navy Lodge, taking a vacation that has the familiarity of home.

What does a lawyer do with her rifle and pistol marksmanship training? 

Sometimes you just need to protect your family from giant corn and squid, or win a flower for your husband at a German carnival.

We drove back to Maryland from NYC today and it rained.  As usual about half of the Maryland drivers thought the sky was falling, some turning on their hazard lights, others actually pulling over.  The first time I was driving in the rain in Maryland I thought I had accidentally become involved in a funeral procession, there were so many blinking lights.  And when there is the threat of snow, all of the schools in the DC area shut down.  It reminds me of the story about Christopher Columbus and the eclipse of the sun — I think I ought to demonstrate my powers to some neighbors the next time one comes around.

In contrast, when the clouds parted in Seattle between the months of October and April, Elysia was sent home from work for a day of ‘Sunshine Liberty’ (leave).  Washington State drivers leave a lot of braking distance, but they are not scared of this thing we call water.

I finally visited Charlottesville for the first time, and all I had to do was marry a JAG and wait for her to go for training in Virginia! 

As I drove through the town I noticed a highway exit for the polo grounds.  Several years ago when I was working at a NYC law firm on the word processing staff, I would often chat with a young associate whenever she dropped off work for our department. One Friday she said she was going to Charlottesville for the weekend and I jokingly said that I wanted to come along, figuring it is easier to be turned down for an outlandish idea than something mundane such as going out for coffee. Plus, what if I got to go?

As a general rule, I think I have successfully blocked out most experiences of date rejection for the same good reasons the body shuts out memories of events just prior to a horrific accident. But in this case, I was taken by surprise by her answer and had a hard time even processing the question: 

Do you play polo?!

How would you answer that?

When we first started dating, I knew that Elysia would be leaving for her first duty station as soon as she passed the bar exam but neither of us knew where that would be.  One of the truths about joining the military is that you really can see the world.  Of course, it may not be somewhere you wanted to see but the mystery of it can be fun once you fully accept that it could be anywhere you are needed.  In the Navy the odds are good that you are going to be near water and we both consider that to be a good thing having grown up on the coasts.

When she was in Naval Justice School (JAG training following Officer Indoctrination School), Elysia heard a story about someone in another class who was arrogant and full of himself. Knowing that the detailer was coming to discuss possible first duty stations, several classmates began extolling the virtues of Guam in front of this annoying officer, a place none of them wanted to go.  A tropical paradise! A rare assignment! Predictably, the officer was a bit sneaky and privately cornered the detailer, demanding that he was the right person to be sent to Guam . . . and off he went. 

The detailers have the challenging job of finding someone to fill every billet whether it is a great place or not.  Of course desirability is in the eye of the beholder — we met other people later who wanted Guam — and the detailer tries to put everything in the best possible light. A few years back there was a position open at Naval Air Station Lemoore, and I had to laugh when it was described as being within equal driving distance of both San Francisco and Los Angeles. While some places are nicer than others, there are very few places I would not mind exploring for three years. Fortunately, the JAG Corps is small enough that an officer has a reasonable chance of going somewhere they identified on their dream sheet. 

After we had been dating a few months one of the first things I did was scour the web to learn more about the places JAGs can go.  Keflavik, Iceland?  We could soak in the healing waters of the Blue Lagoon for three years!  Sardinia, Italy?  The locals have discovered that the secret to living long is wine and goat cheese, and I think I could get on board with that if called upon by my country. 

As it turned out, while I was daydreaming of Europe the reality was that our first duty station was going to be Kings Bay, Georgia. I panicked when I could not find it quickly on a map.  How would I find a job in the middle of nowhere?  Then through a stroke of luck we were instead off to the Pacific Northwest and lived in Seattle, and wouldn’t you know I couldn’t find work there for months.  Go figure.

So far, we have not made it to Hawaii, Guam or any other tropical paradise.  That nice sunset at the top of this post?  Click on it and you’ll see it was taken from our Miata while driving on I-95 between our 2-year home in Virginia Beach and my job in Washington DC. Fortunately beautiful sunsets can be found everywhere. Even in Seattle.

We visited Costa Rica for ten days at the beginning of the year, and had a wonderful time.  Our big challenge was to keep things easy enough for Citrus, but not stay too long in one place that we’d get cabin fever.  In the end, we spent half the time at Playa Grande on the west coast and several days at a small jungle lodge near the Corcovado rain forest on the Osa peninsula.  A few photos are posted HERE.

I’d been to Costa Rica twice before in the early 1990s and it was amazing how much had changed.  We did not need to exchange currency and everything was priced in Dollars.  Playa Grande, a place I hitchhiked to in 1993 to see the leatherback turtles lay their eggs, now had a paved road and about 100 or more lots for sale by Century 21 only a block or so from the beach.  This is very unfortunate because the turtles will not come ashore if there are lights, and the number of visiting turtles has already dropped from about 1,000 per year in the early ’90s to about 52 per year.

Citrus had a wonderful time, though she mainly recounts all of the perils.  “I saw BIG scary spider!”  “I went in boat.  Big wave GOT ME!”  She was really looking forward to seeing monkeys and soon after we walked into the rain forest, a monkey appeared high in the treetops.  Unintentionally, a stick was knocked down.  And bounced off her forehead.  For weeks after we heard “Monkey dropped stick on my head!  I don’t like that.  That was a naughty monkey!”