Another Busy Weekend

I'm not really sure how it got to be the weekend in the first place this week. I guess I spent all week looking forward to Thursday when Dory came home, so Friday kind of snuck up on me.
Friday night I was invited to another officer's wife's house to play Left Right Center. Since the house is on base, where gambling is officially against the rules, I promise that while this game was a game of chance, it was not, in fact, gambling... really... and I didn't win 15 bucks, either. The fun thing about this game is that it really is all chance, zero skill, so you can basically talk to everyone while you play and the game just takes care of itself. We had a lot of fun playing.
Saturday, the Family Readiness Group for Zack's ship met to start putting together the welcome back party. We all brought food and the kids colored posters and the adults attempted to make tissue paper flowers with which to decorate. I say we attempted it because it was windy in the park where we met, and that made dealing with the tissue paper a little complicated. In the end we gave up and split up the supplies to make them at home. I now have enough tissue paper squares and twist ties to make no less than 125 red flowers. So the cross-stitching I've been working on (and that's almost done, by the way) is now set aside while I work on the flowers. The funny thing is that I have no idea what we'll be doing with them when we're done. I'd heard there will be lei's, so may be they're for that? I don't know, but they are easy to make (when it's not windy) and so I don't mind.
Saturday night the group that runs my Japanese lessons had an outing, too. We went to a firefly festival just outside of Sasebo. I say it was just outside of Sasebo because it was literally a few tents set up on the side of the road. We left at about sunset and arrived with just enough time for those who hadn't ate to grab some yakitori from the tents before the sun went down all the way. Once this happened, we were herded across the highway and down a hill to a small river, and on the other side, hiding in the underbrush were the fireflies. Our position made it very easy to watch them. It was really quite lovely. As it got darker, they got more and more bright, and there were tons of them. They were like little blinking Christmas lights. Occasionally, a few would float across the river and we'd get to try to catch them, but there were so many people that this was not an easy thing to attempt. There were lots of little Japanese kids around, and it was fun to see their reactions, but the group I was with agreed that it seemed a little weird to be watching fireflies in such a large crowd. In the States, you'd be sitting with family in your back yard, and that's about it. Add it to the list of cultural differences, I guess. Anyway, it was a lovely evening.
In between the two events on Saturday, I used Dory as an excuse to further explore my neighborhood. She wasn't too excited about going very far from the house, but she got me far enough to explore the Shrine that I'd heard was near me. It turns out that it's right at the end of the street, and it's the coolest one I've seen so far because it's not a tourist site by any stretch. It's just the normal buildings built right into the mountain, very natural and pretty. When the camera comes home, Zack and I will have to go back and take some pictures.
Dory's stay in the kennel really did make her a much more sociable creature. She's not nearly so barky, and she doesn't attack every person she doesn't recognize. She's not always nice, but I'll take a dog who ignores everyone over a dog who attacks everyone. The kids around here really love her, so I'm glad she's not so yappy anymore. I don't want her to scare anyone. I walked her all the way to base today (she hated it until we got to Nimitz which she knows), and she did very well wandering through the Ginza. So life is good.