Day Sixty-Six

19 October 2006
Today marks the halfway point of this deployment. A while ago I had looked forward to this day with great anticipation. Now that today has arrived, it was approached by most people with a half smirk and a “let’s hope.” The wardroom attempted a celebration with a special dinner consisting of steak, fried shrimp, crab legs, corn, mashed potatoes, and whole table of ice cream and other deserts (all very yummy!). The workers also dimmed the lights and put a few red chem sticks (chemical lights) in glasses to act as candles. It was very cute and a nice touch to celebrate. If we get extended until January, we will just be able to celebrate another halfway point and know that it is for real! Also, I am probably the only one on the ship whose current problems will be non-issues if I have to stay out here, so an extension actually works in my favor a little bit. I am bound and determined to be optimistic, aren’t I? Ha!

Tonight was the second round of the great dodge ball league. Unfortunately I was not able to play with my team, the Purple Cobra’s, because I was leading Bible Study (which has been so great since we started at the beginning of deployment). It all started on Monday, we lost in the first round of the tournament but had a kick anyway. The Purple Cobras was started by my friend, Zach a.k.a. SWOVIATOR (funny name to us here because he is an aviator stuck with a ship job that Surface Warfare Officers, SWO, do). His goal was to stimulate trash talk in order to get people to get teams together. The purple outfits and ridiculous hissing noise (see the movie Dodge Ball if you are unfamiliar with the Purple Cobra chant) paid off so now there are twenty or so teams throwing balls at each other. Good times! It definitely gets people laughing which is what we all need. I laughed hysterically, too. Such experiences I get on this ship!