Eric’s Story Book

I was digging into some old photos the other day and found this gem.

So these guys are some of my best friends I have ever had.  A little history on them and myself is we were all in the Marines together.  Tim (the big guy on the right side of photo) and I were stationed together at Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Air Station (K-Bay from here on out) in B Company 7th Comm (Bravo Company).  I didn’t know Tim when he first reached the island he was in our Information Services Platoon (ISP before the Internet) and I was in our Radio Platoon.  I was just a field radio operator but a pretty good one and Tim had already been through one duty station at Camp Pendleton CA and was on top of his game in the messaging field.

We Tim got to Hawaii I was supposed to have been taking off to Somalia about that time but broke my collar bone while fighting with a bunch of the Senior guys in the platoon.  I missed my trip to Somalia and Tim ended up getting shipped out there.  After that trip was done I was healed up and Tim got back to K-Bay. We still didn’t really know each other or hang out together.

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Well besides the fact that I am working tonight for an undetermed amount of time… Alicia and I just got back from a 4 day trip to Chicago.  My first trip there and I fell in love with that town.  My buddy Wiz who lives in Dallas now is from Chicago and takes a trip home every year.  I always wanted to visit it with him there. 

While there we went to The Great Wrigley Filed to watch the Cubs beat the Phillies 3-2.  We also got some hanging out done with Wiz, Meriam, and Big Brian.  For a big town it is really pretty clean except for the occasional smell that would pop out.

On the trip out there we started playing with names for the baby right now we are thinking about Abigale or Mikena maybe (Abigale Mikena).  I am a fan of both of the names I just don’t know which one I want to be the 1st name.  The baby started moving enough that I can now feel her through Alicia’s belly and I am a sucker for it.  I could keep my hand there all day now. 

I guess in other news I am still working at Kaiser and with the baby on the way I am really finding myself not so commited to work.  I say that as I am pulling about a 20 hour day but besides that I don’t see myself going out of the way to get more work these days.

Whelp about a week ago I had some really good news tossed at me.  Hopefully if things go well I will be a dad in about 8 months.  I had Alicia go take a test and things came out positive.  We then setup an appointment at Kasier and they took the first ultrasound I have to admit I got all teary-eyed.  I am on top of the world right now and can’t wait to be a dad.  The date is wrong I guess the CMOS battery on the machine was screwed up.

So now that we are back from Japan I am sooooo jetlag that every morning I am waking up at 3AM and laying in bed till 5.  I can’t sleep at all so I get up and go jogging. Well Alicia and I are taking care of our friend Windi Adam’s dog Olivia.  She is the coolest little dog a little high strung but really good.  Well I decided to take her for a walk down the beach yesterday day and I took the camera just to get some photos.

I let her off the leash for a bit and she went ape shit nuts running around me.

Once the sun came up Olivia decided she wanted to go on beach patrol and look out for the early morning surfers.

I call this photo “No Lifeguard on Duty”

Whelp Alicia and I have made it back from Japan and everything went great.  We wish we didn’t have to return to work next week but that’s how the cookie crumbles.  So I figured I would start adding some post a kind of day by day look back at our adventures in “The Land of the Riseing Sun”.  While on the road I didn’t have much time to blog about it so I figured I would try heading back through memory lane now with some back dated postings.

Today was our Anniversary so Alicia and I hit the JR line and decided to head out to Yokohama. It was a bit overcast but we weren’t going to allow it to mess with our trip.  Alicia planned this whole day out herself and it really turned out great.  I love getting out to this coast side town and checking out what the city looked like and some of its history.

The reason we went to Yokohama was to check out their China town area.  It was a very large area and there was an enterance right when we left the train station.  Before we went into China town we decided to cross over into Motomachi Street in Yokohama to give it a look.  It was a just starting to rain but it wasn’t going to stop us.  Motomachi St. is kind of like the Ginza Area with high end stores but without the high rise street.

I didn’t know that Alicia had more for me than just the shopping district.

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Whelp everyone we made it to Japan and we are having a blast. Today we went to Yokohama and walked all around town.  We have some photos on Alicia’s Phanphare site (I hate phanphare but she sticks with it.)  You might have to sign up for an accout to see the photos.  Well besides that we have also made it trough our 1st year of being married.  The year flew by before I even knew it and I can see 40 years from now thinking the same thing.  Oh well here is a photo of us hanging out in China Town in Yokohama today for lunch.

KANPAI EVERYONE!!!!!! See you when we get back.

So on day three in Tokyo Alicia had a trip to Sumo planned for us in the afternoon.  We figured hey lets just wake up and walk around the Ginza area and see what we can see.  Tokyo really doesn’t start to bustle until about 9AM so we had the streets to ourselves.  I did notice that on the weekends there seemed to be a ton of window washers in the city that took care of the high rises.

While walking down the streets we noticed a cat that just popped out of a random hole between two buildings it was the oddest thing.  It was like it came out to say hello to us.

Read on for more about this day it gets better when we get to the SUMO!!!

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The next Morning Alicia and I get up at the crack of dawn.  See the thing about Japan is their timing is like exactly different from ours.  Meaning during the day light or working hours here (in the US) it is afternoon/late night hours for them (in Japan) and viceversa. So to give you an idea of the view from the hotel here is a couple of shots.

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So Alicia and I got on the road today heading for Japan.  We took off from Orange County (John Wayne Aiport) to hit our connecting flight in San Francisco (SFO).  Our flight was a bit late into SFO because of fog in that area. Alicia was stressing about the trip for a couple of days but the hardest part about getting there was hitting our connecting flight in San Fran.  They really need to do some work on the connection between the terminals at SFO.  We made it to our seats and 10.5 hours later we were in Narita Airport.

After we reached the airport Alicia picked up our Japan Rail passes and it was on our way to the trainstation in the Airport.

This post is going to run on a bit so to check it out here you go.

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