Oh, Navy...

Well, Austin got the billet list yesterday. Good news for those of you who voted for Norfolk, there are 16 billets in Norfolk, Virginia!

Bad News - the ship types are listed but not ship names.

That may not sound so bad to some of you land lubbers, but here is the explanation:

For example, there are 4 spots listed with aircraft carriers. There are currently 4 carriers based out of Norfolk, so this makes sense.

Unfortunately, the list does not differentiate between the Norfolk carrier spots, because there is no name attached to them.

This means that we cannot figure out the schedule for the ships and may end up ranking a slot high that would put Austin out to sea on the date of our wedding. Le sigh.

Also, there are certain types of ships that only have one slot – like there is one slot for an LHA and one slot for an LHD (both types of ships…google them if interested), but there are 5 or 6 of these ships based out of Norfolk and we don’t know which one is the one on the list of options.

Now, we knew that this (having a wedding with no ship assigned) would be an issue from the get go, but Austin was led to believe that there would be a little more information on this list.

I think we were both pretty stressed discussing this last night, but we have our ‘network working’ on getting as much information as possible (thanks guys!) and Austin is asking if he can get the names of the ships today in class…so cross your fingers that we can get some more information before the schedule is due on Monday!