<P>I swear packing my bags and getting on a airplane is getting harder to do. I enjoyed one of the longest periods home the last few months and it was tough packing the suit case and heading back on the road again. Being the Navy is in charge of my travel they do all the flight, rental car and hotel booking. The only flexibility we have to the hotel booking. If we can find nicer accomodations at the same rate that they booked they do not mind us moving from one location to the other. If you exceed the rate then you pay out of pocket. I normally prefer not to do that. But on this trip I am going to pay $5.00 a day out of pocket. But the choice is simple. Regular hotel you have to eat out 100% of the time. The place they had me staying in did not even have a refrigirator in the room. In the past I have been able to get Residence Inn’s to match the government rate. But some Residence Inn’s have limited Gov’t rate rooms. The Waco Texas Residence has been extremely difficult due to the president flying into Waco from time to time and I imagine that the Secret Service guys don’t like to stay in a regular hotel. Although I have never seen any of them in the hotel. So I begged and pleaded with the General Manager and he set me up with a room a little over Government Rate. We have threw that place a lot of business and I really don’t understand why they are being so hard headed the initial rate he quoted me was almost 2 times the Government rate. Waco is not the center of the universe amazingly though this particular hotel has the highest regular rates in town.</P>
<P>But back to leaving. With the wife pregnant it sure made it tough, she had morning sickness real bad last week and was loosing weight but over the weekend it cleared up and I hope she can maintain the tolerance of food the rest of the way through. But there will be no fried foods in my house for the next 9 months. We went to a movie and was a super trooper and made it through I was ready to pack it in as the popcorn smell was nauseating.</P>
<P>She will nto be alone though as she loads the kids up this Saturday and heads for Japan. We have a surprise for them as she is hitting Tokyo Disneyland on here way to Okinawa. Been pretty good about keeping it a secret. I gave them both some extra spending money and told them it was for something special so there brains are working overtime. Picked up some calling cards as it is cheaper to call Japan while on travel with thouse than incur the hotel rate which would put this entire trip over budget. The wife gets us .05 cents a minute from Hawaii to Japan which is pretty amazing as it is now cheaper to call Japan that it is to call the mainland. This is for calls over 10 minutes if she calls for under 10 minutes it is cheaper to use AT&amp;T&nbsp; at .13 cents a minute to Japan. But 90% of the time she plans her calls so they will be longer than 10 minutes. </P>
<P>With the prospect of not seeing her and the kids up to 60 days has me in a quandry as my schedule is such that it could be 90 if all the pieces do not come together as planned. So if any of you that read this are in the Dallas / Waco area give me a holler and we will have to hook up would love to talk to are Bloggers.</P>