Octonodecembuary

I forgot that Preseident's Day was the official end to Octonodecembuary! What is Octonodecembuary? It's the name I have given for the incredible rush of holidays and birthdays that seems to occur between Halloween and President's Day. You have Halloween, Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas, New years Eve, New year's Day, my wife's birthday, Martin Luther King Day, Valentine's day, and President's Day. We also have at least four close family and friends that have birthdays during Octonodecembuary. It seems like most families have a slew of birthday's during this period as well. Octonodembuary is literally October, November, December, January, and February all rolled into one quick blur.

I first came up with the phrase as a joke about two or three years ago. But I was also serious. Since I work in the mental health field, I actually worked it into holiday stress briefings while I was at Edward's Air Force Base for 2005-2007. Mental Health Flight's always gets tasked to do briefings to remind everyone to watch their stress levels during the holidays - and also the stress levels of those around us. A lot of concern comes from leadership about suicide, stress, and drinking & driving during this time frame. It seems like just when you get the Halloween decorations down, the Thanksgiving decs and planning start. And immediately after Thanksgiving, Christmas decorating starts. Then New Years. Then.....the bills start coming in. But don't forget Valentine's Day is just around the corner. It can be a stressful time just trying to keep up. So I actually inserted a slide into my PowerPoint briefing about "Octonodecembuary" in 2005.

So here it is. I want credit when the term starts getting thrown around.

Some Funny Things In Turkey

Today is Karen's last day working at The Incirlik Library - so I get to post two days in a row. The down side of not having a computer at home is I end up posting long after events happened. We may end up getting Internet but most likely we will continue just posting at the library. The local company charges $80 per month, wants three months up front, and we would have to buy a modem - so it's $300 just to start Internet service. The library will work just fine at those rates.

Today we are looking at a few unusual things about Turkey. Let's start out with the whole idea of copyrights and trademarks. In Turkey - there is no such thing. If there is, it is simply not enforced. That takes us to our first photo. Below we have the store "Disney World" in Adana, Turkey. You can see Karen and our friend Melissa Thompson coming out of the store if you click on the photo and blow it up. Now I don't know if the "XL" means trademark or copyright, but it clearly doesn't matter. I doubt that Disney has anything to do with this store. But the owner wants you to think it does, right? That clearly looks like your typical Disney writing to me. But this was the first Disney store I have ever been in that smelled of cigarettes and actually had people smoking in the store. Oh, did I mention there are not any actual Disney products in the store. You can find Spiderman, The Flintstones, Hana Barbara - but no Disney characters! I see Mickey and Minnie on the front window but they are not in the store anywhere.

But we had fun with the Thompson's looking at all the stuff that isn't actually Disney. Below, Joe and Melissa's son Cameron finds Disney's latest new character - Spiderman!

Everyone has heard about the Turkish toilets - the ones that are simply holes in the ground. The newer restaurants and offices have American style toilets but you still find the old hole in the ground quite frequently. Below is a toilet at a gas station in Mersin:

Below we see an American-style toilet at great restaurant we ate at in Adana with the Thompson's. The Turks definitely have a sense of humor. Each toilet has a photo of a famous woman above the toilet. If you look close you will see that the Sharon Stone is looking down at the male's package. Pretty funny. Luckily there wasn't a Turk in the restroom wondering why I was taking pictures in the bathroom!

And the Turks do celebrate a form of Christmas around New Year's Day. In the below photo you can actually see Santa and a reindeer on display at the mall in Mersin. I only caught the back because I was actually trying to get a photo of the penis-shaped balloons that seem to be all the rage. Karen I laughed every time we saw one at the mall. I'm not sure what they are supposed to be. If you blow this picture up you may be able to see one the kid is carrying.

Karen says hi to everyone. Bye for now!

It's A Girl

Please allow me to introduce Katie Marie Dwyer. We love her:


Click on play button - you may need to click 2x - once you see the word "buffering" appear on the screen it is about to start.

We found out about three weeks ago but I haven't had time to post. It was an interesting experience. First Dr. Tajha (spelling?) at the 39th Medical Group told Karen and I he was 95% sure the baby is female. But he wanted to send us to Adana for a more advanced ultrasound and screening. So we showed up to TriCare about a half hour before the appointment and "Sami" from TriCare drove us Sistems in Adana. At Sistems he took us up to what seemed like a SIP lounge. All the Turks were waiting in the lobby but they took us up to a special private room with a TV and we waited away from the crowd. The other interesting thing was the entire clinic smelled of cigarettes. We couldn't actually see anyone smoking but they clearly were in the offices. This was a clinic not a hospital but still... My coworker who is a longtime resident here, Tom Evans, tells me even in the hospital you sometimes see people smoking despite signs forbidding it - no enforcement. Sistems was very nice and had great equipment. Karen could actually watch everything on a television while I sat beside her and watched on the machine. The doctor at Sistems said they were also "almost positive" the baby is a girl and they saw nothing to worry about. "Looks good," said the doc.

We have also purchased the crib and attached diaper changing stand with a mattress. Buying the crib was a typically funny Turkish experience. You have to remember the Turks run most of the Incirlik Base Exchange (BX). And where we bought the crib they run the entire store. The name of the place we bought the crib is the BXtra because they sell all the large items that don't fit in the BX. So here's how it went:

Patrick and Karen walk in and tell Turkish employee which crib they want. "Do you have some in the back?" asks Patrick.
"Yes Abe. They are in box - we deliver to you on Tuesday."
So Patrick and Karen buy the crib. After we have exchanged money Turkish employee says, "Oh, I am sorry Abe but I realize we don't have any in the back. they are at warehouse and we can't get for a few days. We can deliver the model on the floor?"
"No. We want a new one in the box. Can we just wait?"
"Sure Abe."
Awkward silence as Turkish employee looks at computer screen. "Abe, I am not sure if we have two at warehouse or not. it says two. I think we have two. Can you call Mehmet on Tuesday?"
On Tuesday, Patrick calls Mehmet who says, "Abe, my guy looked at it wrong. We have two on the way but not at the warehouse."
Patrick says, "But you already sold it to me."
"I know Abe. What are we going to do?"
"Well, when will the two new ones get here."
"Maybe two to three weeks Abe. I could also give you the floor model."
"Well we looked at it and there's nothing wrong with it but we won't pay full price for a floor model."
"Abe, I will give you 25% off."
Patrick rushes over to take advantage of the fantastic Turkish bargain. He finds Mehmet. "The crib will be delivered today then."
"Yes Patrick, except we have a problem with the 25% off - we have no money in our register."
"Well, I am going to buy the mattress. Why don't you just give me the mattress."
"I have to be able to show the transaction Abe. We will give you a gift card for the 25% and then you may buy the mattress with the gift card."
"Tamum (OK)," says Patrick.
I was happy that it only took ten minutes for them to figure out how to work the gift card and then I got an even better deal. Those Turks thought they were getting me but I pulled the wool over their eyes. You see, when we were all done I was able to buy the mattress AND still have money left over on the gift card. So they had to hand me a gift card with one cent of credit left on it!
"But Abe we still have one problem left. Can we deliver maybe before the delivery time?
"Well...when?"
"Oh, anytime before the three o'clock time. Maybe one or...NOW?"
"Yeah, I can do that but I don't have a car. You need to give me time to walk home."
"Abe, you can ride with my guys in the truck."
"My wife has the only key and she's at the library."
"Abe, we will drive you to the library and we can get the key and then deliver the crib."
So I hopped in the Turkish van looking like a Turkish worker - crammed three to the front with no seat belts. We got the key from Karen. And that is how Katie received her crib!

We Were Hacked!

Just to let everyone know we are OK and fine. Yesterday, Karen received a call from a friend of hers on base while I was at work. "Are you OK?" the friend asked. "Yeah....you just saw me an hour ago," Karen replied. Turns out, someone accessed our g-mail account around 1-2pm yesterday and sent out an e-mail with the title "It's Over" and a message saying I had had it with the Ar force and couldn't take it any more. Unfortunately, the message went to relatives, friends, friends of family, the incirlik spouses club, Karen's former boss and her current boss. So after Karen got ahold of me and determined that I was in fact still working for the Air Force and earning a paycheck - we then began to try to figure out what happened. I'm fairly certain it wasn't an actual hack but that someone got on the computer I had used the previous night at the library and was able to acces the actual gmail/google page I had accessed the previous night when he or she typed in the google address. We have seen it happen before on a specific computer at the library. Access to deleting history and cookies is disabled on this computer and I had manually shut the computer down thinking it would delete the actual logged on page - but it appears it doesn't. But we want to asssure all friends and relatives that everything is fine. If for some reason we are wrong and you receive and any sort of weird message, please call us and let us know. But i think we have it figured out. I am on the same computer now and it appears that I can now eliminate the problem.

Baby news: we tried to have the sex determined this past week but baby was not cooperating. I was able to see the heartbeat and some arm/hand movement but he or she was facing down from the side and the movement wasn't enough fo the doctor to make a determination. We will try again in about two weeks.