About

Me
I'm Ashley. I'm in my mid late twenties. My husband is in the Air Force and soon his job is taking us to the far away land of Washington state. After living in Virginia for my entire life (though I did manage to at least live in 3 different regions of the state), I suppose it's about time to get out there and experience some place new. That doesn't make the prospect any less scary though.

I graduated high school a year early. I then went on to take 9 years to finish college. It was an on and off sort of thing. Community college lasted four years between taking a semester or two off and having to retake a semesters worth of classes I blew off when I discovered the joys of partying. I finally got my shit together and went to a four year university. Unfortunately that happened right after I turned 21 and discovered the joys of going out to bars every night. So that year of school sort of went down the drain and was followed by a mandatory two year leave of absence. Oops. By the end of those two years, I got my shit together (for real this time), reenrolled and two years later I finally had my BA in History (not to mention a sweet GPA).

I can't really do entirely too much with said degree without a Master's. What I really want to do is get a Master's degree in Library Science. However, I'd like to get some of my tens of thousands of dollars worth of student loans out of the way before I go incur more debt (college is expensive when you take the looooong route through it). One nice thing about moving to Washington is that the program I need is offered at a school close to where we will be living. My GRE study guide is in hand, now I just have to open it.

Other odds and ends include:

• I love trivia. My life goal is to one day be on Jeopardy! and not fail miserably.
• I'm a terrible cook, but an excellent dishwasher loader and counter scrubber.
• I know every word to The Wizard of Oz.
• I have worked in the restaurant industry before, during, and after college. I am eager to leave that job behind me.
• I am obsessed with Pembroke Welsh Corgis.
• I love road trips, but I hate driving.

The Husband
The husband can still claim to be in his mid twenties. He is quite the nerd. In fact, before we were dating (when I still thought of him of the weird kid I happened to work with) he was my go-to computer repairman. He loves Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica (pretty much any sci-fi show with the word 'star' in it, I guess), Legos, gadgets, and Nerf guns.

He has been in the Air Force for not quite 4 years, and will continue to be for at least 6 more. He was an Air Force brat himself, so he had already lived in England, Germany, Italy, and both Carolinas before I met him at the restaurant we both worked at in college. He never had any intention in following in his dad's footsteps, but after he had to take a mandatory two year leave of absence from college during the same time I did (what can I say, we have a lot in common), he decided to give the Air Force thing a try. It turned out to be a nice fit. He has the exact same job his dad had, so he likes to race against the timeframe of his dad's achievements (promotions and awards and such) and so far, he is winning.

By the time we started dating, he had already decided to join the Air Force. Though I wasn't crazy about the idea at the time, it has worked out rather well. When I went back to school, he went to basic training, and by some miracle he was able to swap orders to get stationed back in Virginia. A year later, we eloped (not to Vegas or anything, we literally went downtown, got married and I had to go back to class a couple hours later). By the time we were finally able to live together, we'd been married for a year. We've been married for nearly 3 years now. We have no kids for the foreseeable future (much to my mother's dismay), but we do have an exceptionally beautiful cat.

The Cat

This is Sicily, otherwise known as Miss KiKi or Lady Sicily of the Puffy Pants.

Sicily was acquired by one of my roommates in college as a tiny kitten. She was the runt of the litter and taken away from her mother too early, so we had to feed her milk with an eyedropper. She lived with four crazy college kids for a year in an apartment complex that didn't allow pets (seriously, people got fined for having FISH). It was miraculous that we able to hide her from management for an entire year; without the assistance of Christian, the hot young maintenance man that the three ladies and one gentleman of the apartment all had a crush on, it would have been impossible. When the end of our lease came, none of us were able to keep her, so she went to live with the roommate's ex-boyfriend. I didn't see her for three years.

Then one day, a month or so before I was to graduate and finally go live with the husband, I got a Facebook message from the former roommate. The ex-boyfriend was about to move across the country and couldn't take Sicily with him. She wanted to keep her in the family, so to speak, and after a good deal of convincing/begging, the husband agreed that we could take her. The day I went to reacquaint myself with her a few weeks before the adoption, I walked in the house where she was living and she immediately walked up to me, took a sniff and started giving me kitty kisses. It was love.

That was almost two years ago, and we’ve been a happy little family ever since. Though the husband was initially hesitant about taking her in, he and Miss KiKi are the best of friends. Sicily enjoys lounging on her cat tower, playing with her Darth Vader Light Saber laser pointer, sitting in boxes, eating her fishes, giving evil stares and going batshit crazy every so often. She is also useful as a second alarm clock. My favorite thing about her has to be this though...

Polydactylism for the win!