Category: joanna irl
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Roadside Attractions and Route 66 (Illinois and Missouri edition)
I like roadside attractions. You know this by now. (See: Cabazon Dinosaurs for previous stop.) And in the US at least there is no place for roadside stops quite like Route 66. Route 66 has become, in and of itself, a bit of a roadside attraction in its own right. Begun in 1926 and decommissioned…
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Re-Enlistment: take us to Twenty!
Early on Sunday morning we were first in line for the Willis (née Sears) Tower Skydeck. The doors opened at 8:00am and by 8:15 we were on the 103rd floor with a couple of other sailors and our families and Jared signed up for 4 more years* in the Navy. I don’t do well with…
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Roadside Attractions: Cabazon Dinosaurs
I told you last week that I have a particular soft spot for odd roadside attractions, and since I’ve recently been to one I thought I’d share a little bit about it. I’m as much interested in the stories behind the peculiar stops as the stops themselves, and this one is no exception: the Cabazon Dinosaurs.…
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Weird Hobbies and North Dakota Conspiracies
It has been nearly six years since I first wrote up a cheeky little blog post about not believing North Dakota is a “real” state. Six years later, and it continues to be my most-read post, and I also continue to get some really rude and yet really humorous comments from people who don’t know…
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The “we” in a military career
One of the difficult things about being a military spouse is finding the balance between “his job” and “our military career.” It’s not my career. It’s his. But because of the nature of military life, it’s also “ours” together. Where we live, when we come and go, what kind of place we live, what my job…
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Applying For Orders, aka Hurry Up and Wait
The thing about applying for orders is that you spend months and months trying to figure out how the process is going to work and where the options might be and people ask you where the options might be (and you spend a lot of time explaining that you don’t actually know until you can…
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6 Things That Make Military Spouse Life Easier
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a fairly good repertoire of things that improve our lives between frequent moves to new cities and staying on a tight budget. Here are some of my resources, and feel free to share with whomever needs it, or to suggest more in the comments! 1. The USO The USO has…
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Things I wish I’d known 10 Years Ago (About Military Life)
So I have now been a “military spouse” for over a decade and there are some things I wish I’d known when this whole thing started that would make life a little easier. In case you might be a new military spouse, here are some things that I learned the hard way. As always, your…
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It’s March, aka Look At Possible Orders Month
Oh hey, it’s March! Around the middle of this month, we enter the “9 month window” for transfer where we get to look at possible orders that J could get. Do I know what they are yet? Nope! But that’s okay. We’ve got another week or so. I’m anxious…but trying not to think about it…
Joanna Volavka 