Sorry for the extended absence. I guess it's been a perfect combo of being busy, gone, and, most of all, me being lazy.
We last left our bloggers in November with a visit to sunny Coronado Island near San Diego. After that, John started his 30-day training exercise with the Marines ("Mojave Viper"). He got to come home one day for Thanksgiving (sorry, no pictures), which was great.
About that time, Savannah (on of the "wiens") started getting sick with all of these weird bumps that would pop up that seemed like abscesses. I thought about putting a "medical mystery" type of thing on here, so you medical nerds (you know who you are, Dustin Little) could have some fun. It turns out that she most likely has a condition that is specific to dogs, so it wouldn't have been a very fun game to play. A vet down here figured it out--it's called "sterile nodular panniculitis"--so she's on steroids and is starting to get much better with treatment.
We were home for Christmas and got about three weeks, because it also doubles as my "pre-deployment leave". That was fun (but very cold). It was great to see everyone, and we got to snowmobile a little bit.
We were in Vegas about a week ago for our Battalion's Marine Corps Birthday Ball. The Marines (and the Navy, for that matter) love to celebrate (and I mean CELEBRATE) the anniversary of their formation (their "birthday") every year. Even though we are stuck out in the middle of the godforsaken desert, at least we aren't that far from Vegas, so we can head up there to celebrate. The normal birthday is on November 10th, but we were preparing to go to Mojave Viper, so we put it off until January. We stayed at the Wynn because we got a great deal on Hotwire there. If you ever get the chance to stay there, I highly recommend it. We were on the 58th floor and had a great view looking west over Vegas and south down the Strip. I tried to take a picture, but the window caused too much glare.
Now we're kind of just hanging out. I'm headed to Iraq in about 10 days or so, so we're trying to get stuff neatened up and loose ends taken care of. I think my mom is coming out for a few days, so maybe I'll have a few more pictures before I go. I should be able to still post on here from Iraq, but the primary responsibility will fall to Tally (ha ha). Sooo, if you aren't happy with the tinjblog service, you know you to contact.
