9

I finally got to talk to R last night.

Pffft. Listen to me, "finally." When he deployed in 2003, it took two months to get my first letter and I thought that was awesome! Of course, we weren't married then, so perhaps my perspective was somewhat different. The other thing that skews my perspective this time is living in Europe. "Down range" is no longer halfway across the world, and in fact is only ahead by a single time zone. It feels closer and quite frankly I don't know if that makes it easier or harder. On the one hand, logistically he could be back home in a couple of hours, but in practice he's as unreachable as the moon.

Took Heidi on a long, meandering walk this morning. Bright fall colors have begun to darken to that charcoal gray grunge look, but this tree is hanging onto its red. These spots reminded me of something utterly alien to northern Europe - as though a bit of Africa had set up shop beside the river. I spent several minutes observing it from different angles, and this shot is my favorite. Very straight forward and direct, which is an acurate reflection of how I'm feeling today.