from navywiferadio.com

Thursday- May 7th, 2009- – Join us for a special episode of Navy Wife Radio as we welcome MCPON (Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy) Rick West. We’ll be chatting about his thoughts on the service and sacrifice of military spouses. It’s going to be a fun show, so don’t miss it! HOOYAH!

We invite you to join the conversation!

Show Details:

May 7th, 2009 – Thursday 230pm ET
Yahoo IM: Navy Wife Radio
You don’t want to miss this show LIVE!

To listen live go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/navywiferadio or

Show link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/navywiferadio/2009/05/07/Military-Spouse-Day

How to Create a Dream / Inspiration Board

On last weeks radio show we highlighted a unique idea to help us focus on our goals and priorities. This project can guide our efforts and help keep us on track. Creating a dream board, or sometimes called vision or inspiration board can also be great for stress relief!

Here are some basic project details:

Supplies:

Tacks, Tape or Glue
Scissors
Bulletin or foam board

Difficulty Level: Easy

Time needed: as little as 15 min

Here are 5 steps to creating your own Dream Board / Inspiration Board:

1. Time to brainstorm. Think about areas of your life that you want to improve or plan. I’ve seen inspiration boards to plan weddings, to get into shape, eat healthy, saving for that car or vacation….the possibilities are endless. The point is to think about what you would really love to do, what big event in your life is coming up that you need to plan for, or maybe highlighting your priorities like spending more time with your family. These are just ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

Think about these questions:

What do I want to do, have, be, get or give?

Where do I want to go?

2. Next start looking for photographs that match your vision. You can look through old magazines, even online at websites like istockphoto.com. If you are an artist, sketch your ideas. You can scan photographs you already have and print them out on your printer if you don’t want to cut an original photo. Get your camera out and take your own photos even!

3. Now that you have a pile of photographs you can start placing them on your board, you can even create a digital board. Turn on some of your favorite music, make your favorite coffee or cold beverage and begin. Consider adding quotes that inspire and give perspective. Feel free to add or remove photos as you go along. You can use any type of board, or even a picture frame. If you want something to carry along with you, use a small journal book. This would be helpful for party planning, brides, decorating projects and if you want to keep your board private. Don’t get hung up on how perfectly you should align the photos. They can be random or orderly, whatever suits your personality. The goal is to have fun with it and let your creativity roam.

4. Now that you have placed all your pictures on your board don’t hide it in your closet! Place it somewhere prominent in your home. Pick a high traffic visible area, like your bedroom dresser, on a wall in your kitchen or near your computer. Viewing your board frequently will remind you of your priorities, goals and dreams.

5. Chances are your board is an organic thing, meaning it is ever changing. As you find photos of another new decorating idea, that business suit, that photo of someone doing what you want to do, a favorite swimsuit or cool photo of another street in Paris you want to visit add it to your board!

This is also a great project to do with your girlfriends and/or your kids!

If this sounds interesting to you and you’d like to try it along with me, I’m looking for some volunteers to share their creations. You can post your in progress creations on the website and we can all have a little creative fun!!

Doing a little project like this can help us all to follow our heart and Live Our Dreams!!

Check out some examples of Dream / Inspiration boards:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/inspirationboards/pool/

I’m going to end this post by an excerpt of a speech by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, addressing the 2004 Stanford graduates and I recently came across, I hope it moves you and much as it has moved me…..

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something”

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

You can view the whole speech below….

Steve Jobs’s Commencement Speech at Stanford

Recently I joined Twitter (www.twitter.com/mymilitarylife) and somehow through clicking around started to follow Karen. Today she twitted about my favorite drink!!

When getting a fancy coffee, I usually opt for this yummy treat. Since I prefer it iced, I haven’t had one in awhile. ….another reason why I can’t wait for warmer weather!

Well, if you are like me and you LOVE the caramel macchiato, you are going to love this recipe.

From karenrouch.wordpress.com

Caramel macchiato recipe

In my obsession to save money and be as thrifty as possible I decided there’s not much out there we can’t do ourselves or make ourselves so why not apply that to our fru-fru coffee? I got to the bottom of my new fave – the caramel macchiato. Turns out there’s not much caramel in it. They should probably call it a vanilla macchiato but oh well. So here’s what I’ve found, and after a few attempts my husband even agrees the taste is spot-on. You should try it for yourself…

Ingredients:

double shot of espresso (or a really strong cup of coffee)

4 pumps of Vanilla flavored syrup

hot frothy milk or cream

caramel sauce

Caramel macchiato recipe

Step by step method without having a big fancy machine:

1) make espresso using a french press or you can make a really strong cup of coffee

2) add 4 pumps Torani (or any other brand) vanilla syrup

3) pour about 1/4 cup of milk or cream into a separate cup and microwave it for about a minute or until hot

4) use a nifty gadget like the aerolatte to froth your milk

5) pour frothed milk on top and drizzle with caramel sauce

That’s it!

With all the talk about VIRUSES, TROJANS, and WORMS that can INFECT your computer now days it made me think about whats in our passwords!!   When I think about passwords, I do what I’m told… make a password memorable but complicated, use letters, numbers, and special characters…. BUT WHY!  Well I asked my husband to give some info to me as to why we need to be creative when it comes to creating a password, he would have typed it up, but instead found the info at this link  (oh and this link too) and read over it to make sure it was correct.  So please read on (combined and reworded from the links) to help protect your self from an attack on your privacy via. the internet!   And remember try not to use the same password for everything, mix it up to help protect your self even more!
 
 
 
Here is a definiton of the differnt typs of programs/techniques people use to HACK our passwords:
 
 
 
Brute Force Attack: 
 
This type of attack is the most widely known password cracking method. This attack simply tries to use every possible character combination as a password. To recover a one-character password it is enough to try 26 combinations ‘a’ to ‘z’. It is guaranteed that you will find the password.
The two-character password will require 26*26=676 combinations. The number of possible combinations and therefore required time grows rapidly as the length of the password increases and this method quickly becomes useless. My idea of an example of this is ~ 1234asdf, a sequence of numbers or letters, all lower case or upper case, etc.

Hybrid Attack:
 
The last attack of this type, called a “hybrid attack”, specifically targets passwords made of a traditional word followed by a letter or a number. It combines brute force cracking with the dictionary attack. My idea of an example of this password is ~ Marshal6, P@$$w0rd, your last name and last four of your social, etc.
 

And here are some suggestions on how you can create a password that is hard to break using the above programs/techniques:
 
 
A Strong Password- Common guidelines for choosing good passwords are designed to make passwords less easily discovered by intelligent guessing.
*Include numbers, symbols, upper and lowercase letters in passwords
*Password length should be around 12 to 14 characters
*AVOID any password based on repetition, dictionary words, letter or number sequences, usernames, relative or pet names, or biographical information (eg, dates, ID numbers, ancestors names or date.)

     
    4pRte!ai@3 — mixes uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and punctuation (evidence there is a large character set), increasing an attacker’s work factor

    
     tDI”60Hs7Q — characters selected from two poetry stanzas by different methods from a page selected using an honest die . But likely to be hard to memorize.
 
 
    152@36291QBS( - the serial number of a US currency bill with added elements (which should be random, eg chosen via the honest die mentioned above). The bill and its serial number are likely to be hard to connect to the user and so will have high entropy to an attacker. Note that some currency may not use unpredictable serial numbers (eg, adding check digits , padding, type codes and the like, often covertly) and, if so, will have less entropy than visibly suggested.
 
 
 
I hope this helps you to better understand the reasons we need to make sure our passwords are unique and complicated.  It definantly helps me out!

This movie recently came across my radar and it looks like something worth paying attention to and venturing out to see. It is coming to my area at the end of month and I’m making plans to attend.

Share this information with your friends. The executive producer is Gary Sinise.

Check out the website for movie locations:

http://www.brothersatwarmovie.com

With phonecalls.

Tonight at about a quarter after eleven I was sitting on my friend’s couch petting her adorable kitten and downing a second Bacardi Silver Strawberry (I went straight for the hard stuff). Molly is only a month or two old and her mommy is out of town this week, so we are hanging out together for a few hours every evening. Today is my 21st birthday. It wasn’t the worst birthday by far, but I did make my first legal toast to better birthdays to come.

My phone rang and when the number registered I wondered what kind of crazy telemarket phonecall I was about to take. That’s the danger in taking all calls when your man is gone, you never know what kind of wacko person you will end up talking to when you just want to make sure you don’t miss his call. But to my surprise my hello was answered by a pleasantly familiar, “Hey, you!” I was a little confused because it sounded like he was calling me from work or something, not like the phonecalls I’d gotten before during an underway. There was no delay in between our sentences and it was very clear and I didn’t hear anyone talking in the background. I asked where he was calling from and he told me he was in port. “Oh its so good to hear yo-” Then it cut off. And I cried while sending a text message to my best friend, “HE CALLED and it CUT OFF!! :”(‘ .” And then he called back! He told me happy birthday and we talked for a minute about wishing he was here and what a pretty day it was here today. We talked about the animals and some pictures of them I had sent him. I briefly brought up his in-port budget and he said he didn’t plan on spending much this time around anyway (sigh of relief). He told me he’d try to call tomorrow so I shouldn’t cry when I get off the phone and I told him I wouldn’t but I think we both knew that was silly. He doesn’t do well when it comes to me crying. When he is watching me cry he has this ridiculously helpless look on his face, offers to do anything he can to make it better and then gets mad when I tell him there isn’t anything he can do. I can’t imagine how it must feel for him to hear me sniffle through the phone.

It was good to hear his voice and hear him say, “I love you.” There is so much more emotion in a voice than in an email. You can connect when you are on the phone, instantly and simultaneously. When I connect with an email, his fingers have long been gone from the keys and the emotions he put into the words have faded into black and white and its up to me to put feeling back into them. But a phonecall masks no emotions. Every inflection of his voice said “I love you” even when the words he spoke didn’t.

The call ended much the way all the others end. “Don’t cry okay? I love you and I’ll see you soon.” Another silly statement.. “soon.” We both know its not soon, but I think it makes him feel better to say it. And now I feel.. empty. His voice carries so much emotion and triggers too many memories to even begin to detail. “I’ll be home soon.” That was the last thing he said to me when I gave him the last hug and kiss for six months. Standing in the middle of the terminal parkinglot holding on to him like Charlie did his golden ticket. I felt at a loss. And that is how I feel now. I’ll sit in this vegetative state until the tears start to make my cheeks itch. Deep breaths help ease away the lump in my throat as I type up a synopsis of why I love to get phonecalls but hate them immediately after wards. And then I will go to sleep and hope that the fresh memories of his voice will bring me a vivid picture of his face while I close my eyes tightly and pretend he is sleeping next to me. And he will be.. soon.

I am highly frusrated. The security drills are this week and it is ruining my birthday!! I can’t even have friends over because non-dependant civilians are not allowed on base!! HOW LAME IS THAT!! I’m going out this weekend with some girlfriends but my actual birthday is on Thursday.

Speaking of my birthday, my husband and his behind the scenes shopping team got together and sent me the most amazing bag I have ever seen in my life (okay except for a red Rafe New York bag that I will probably never own due to its not so fabulous price tag of $300). Exhibit A:

Its almost MARCH! Which means I am coming up on TWO MONTHS! Which means I am getting closer to the halfway point of our first deployment. My parents and brother are visiting me from Georgia in April. I think it will be fun, they get to see my house and I can show them around base (you know because its so fabulous and cool to live on a military base). My mom is such a civilian. She gets excited when I come home because she wants me to take her to the Nex. My dad is going to be hanging curtains for me and I think it will be bulk pickup time so they are going to help me get rid of some crap I have stuffed in a storage closet. And the ever-growing pile of cardboard boxes in my garage. Its one of those things your husband keeps telling you he’s going to do and then he conveniently deploys. “OH! I totally forgot, with the deployment and all.” Uh huh.. likely story. So in celebration of March, I have updated my page with a few St. Patties type graphics (if you are ever curious as to where I get these adorable graphics, please visit MR LAYOUTS and tell her Hilly sent you ). My husband’s family is Irish and born in March (my husband, not his whole family..), so his birthday package is all St. Patties Day themed. I drew shamrocks all over it in green and white paint markers (these are the best for decorating cardboard boxes) and put confettie in it and green tissue paper. My family (well the half I claim) is Italian. Why don’t we have an Italian holiday??

Grif has discovered shoes. As I sit here there is black flipflop rubber covering my livingroom. He looks so sad when I tell him “NO!” Maverick even joined in and helped him tear up one of my silver ones. I am still having trouble getting him to understand that just because I am not at the door when he is there that does not mean he should pee in front of the door. But I hardly ever catch him in the act so punishment is futile. I am so sick of cleaning it up and I can’t even begin to tell you how quickly I go through paper towels. I need those ShamWOW things. I just love that comercial! “We can’t do this all day!” Neither can I Vince, neither can I.

I don’t know whether it was hormones, Valentines day for the fact that tomorrow will be one month since I hugged my husband, but this past week was a rough one. I was sad and a little depressed, but mostly just angry and frustrated. Frustrated with myself for not working harder at the gym, frustrated that its only been a month and it feels like its been three. Angry that we don’t get to spend our 21st birthdays together (we are ten days apart.. I am older!). And really angry that we are missing our one year anniversary, but being together and being married. Its the kind of thing you knew about ahead of time but it doesn’t really make you angry until it happens. And then I just got sad that I couldn’t do anything about it.

This week is already turning out to be better though. I had a group workout tonight and it started out really rough becuase I haven’t pushed myself enough lately, and because I had to do a lot of arm stuff .. and because I had to jump rope and I kept tripping myself!! But once we got doing other stuff it got better and I actually did a lot of situps, which I didn’t even know I could do.. that right there tells you how pathetic I was. I could do a situp and didn’t even know it! I could do several situps! I updated my workout blog so you will have to check it out for some more info on my progess.

My husband sent me an email and let me know he got his pacakge from me. He loved it, and that just made me so happy! Like the happiest I’ve been in a long time. I’m already working on his birthday package (his birthday is March 8!) and I’m stirring up ideas for his anniversary package. So when I think about it in packages, things seem to be going quickly.

My parents and brother are also flying out to see me in April. I was going there but with my furry children its easier for them to come here.. and besides, I’ve been there before. Nothing interesting about that! My husband is bummed because he wanted to be here to take them to the hangar and other things that seem mundane to him but are cool to other people.

So that’s an update on me! I’ve been so bad about getting on here, I’m sorry about that! I’m seriously going to try harder!!

Halfway through shore duty and we’ve already got people fighting for hubby to take a specific set of orders.

This has been a hot topic for us because hubby and I have gone around and around about going back to a boat. He was invited to go back to a boat last summer, and I encouraged him to leave shore duty early and take it. But after a month of going back and forth on the idea (and a lot of pressure from his buddies at work) he decided not to take it. So we thought that was our last chance to get the command that we wanted… well I thought that at least.

But just a few days ago, hubby called me very excited! He told me that he got a call from someone he worked with in the past and they asked him if he still wanted to go to this boat when his shore duty was up. He responded with ‘of-course’, and he was told he would be called right back.

Well turns out, the guy called hubby’s detailer and told him how he wants hubby at that command when his shore duty is up. The detailer said OK and penciled him in!!

Its not every day that this happens! But get this; another guy he worked with in the past got wind that this happened and now hubby is being fought over for which division he’s actually going to work in at the new command! Can you believe that; lol!

Now we aren’t getting our hopes up to high that it all works out, because we know that orders change! But it’s really cool that we have a good chance of getting what we want!

I never knew that hubby was in such demand, lol! I guess it pays having a good network! Just thought I’d share!

Valentine’s day is one of those special days that you really want to share with your spouse!! But for some of us, our spouses are deployed, TAD, or a Geo-bachelor and are a way from us.  But don’t fret!! You can still share this holiday with your spouse or significant other. 

Send a care package!!!  This is one of the best times of the year to go all out and do a themed care package.  Below are some ideas to get you started, and don’t worry if it arrives a little late. Remember it’s the thought that counts!

Ideas:

-Take an ordinary pillow case and get some iron on photo transfer paper and print out some photos of you and the family!  Add some perfume or your sailor/soldier’s favorite scent and pack it in a Ziploc bag to preserve the smell.  It’s an instant visual and scent memory of home. You can iron on the pictures on the inside of the pillow case if you’re worried about the command wanting the racks to look uniform.

- Take some handkerchiefs and iron on pictures to them, or have the kids make hand prints or paint pictures on them with fabric paint.  Your sailor/soldier can carry these around in his pocket, something he doesn’t have to worry about incase it gets wet or something!  You can also send these in a Ziploc bag with a scent on it. 

- Of course candy, cookies, chips, cracker, cake snacks, etc!!  Just beware of items possibly melting or spending a long time in a holding area before getting to the sailor/soldier.

- Make a mixed CD or thumb drive (if they have their own computer), remember in school how you made your own  mixed Tape or CD of your favorite songs (is that still big, lol.  I’m starting to feel old and I only graduated 9 years ago).  Make a theme of love songs and songs that you two as a couple liked to listen too.  I used to draw silly pictures on my tapes and CDs to personalize it!

- Send little toys and trinkets that represent Valentines Day!  Everyone still loves to play with toys, come on you know it!! Send stuff that can put a smile on their face and that they can share with others.

- Don’t forget Cards and letters, in today’s email crazy time a good handwritten letter can mean so much.  And if you send one it is like a ‘wink and nudge’ to your spouse and you may get a handwritten letter back (note: you may actually have to spell it out in your letter that you want a hand written response…. Some guys just need the ‘wink and nudge’ explained to them. LOL). 

- Make a list of why you love your spouse, or what makes you smile about them.

- If you have time find a place that can put images on insulated coffee cups, and have it personalized in addition to the picture.

- Send something that is specific to what your spouse likes, for example a PSP Game, or a New CD from his favorite artist

-And last of all instead of using packing material to make the box secure inside use socks, boxers, and t-shirts to make the box tight (take them out of the packaging and use a pair or two to pack, its ok if you don’t use a whole pack just set the rest aside for the next package you send).  No matter where your sailor/soldier is deployed they can always use new CLEAN socks, boxers/underwear, and t-shirts.

I hope that his has gotten you started!! Please share your additional Ideas!!