A rainy day in July

The day to deploy finally came. I got up early and packed my carry-on bag with my essentials: iPad, laptop, kindle, magic jack, phone, chargers, a pair of Matt's shorts, one of his T-Shirts to sleep in (sorry baby, if you can't find your Southern Miss track shorts and T... You now know why :) ) and some hygiene stuff. Then I remembered that people told me to add colored duct tape to my bags so that I could tell which ones were mine from a distance. It's a great idea. But I didn't have colored duct tape, and to be perfectly honest I wanted to be more creative than that. So I rummaged through my basket of ribbon and pulled out my craft bin and voila! My own luggage tags:

After getting here and dropping off my big bag, I am very glad I marked them! I'm also very glad that they found some cover for us to put our bags underneath. For those of you not currently in the lone star state, the weather two days ago was sunny and 102°. Yesterday evening a storm rolled in and it has been pouring for the last 20 hours without relenting. So I had to pull my 80lb rolly bag through puddles the size of ponds to drop it off. Oh and in case you were wondering- it is completely impossible to look professional when you are wearing a uniform that looks two sizes too big, struggling to pull a duffle bag the size of you through the rain. At one point I passed an older NCO and a younger junior enlisted soldier and the younger one saluted me and when I had to stop moving and manage to free a hand from my bag to return the salute the older one chuckled with the knowing look of someone who saw a young girl playing dress up instead of a young officer. So needless to say, I was glad when I finally got to drop off my bag! Now I just get to sit and wait, and pray my carry-on is small enough!!