Life After NEXCOM...

Many of you have wondered where the title of my blog came from. So here we go.
In a nut shell, NEXCOM stands for NAVY EXCHANGE SERVICE COMMAND in Navy language. It is the Retail Store on the Navy bases around the world. Army and Air Force bases have PX's or BX's for Post Exchange or Base Exchange.

I started working for the NEX (Navy Exchange on base, NEXCOM is headquarters) in 1965, as a weekend grill cook. I worked 15 hours on Saturdays and 10 hours on Sundays. This entailed cooking the orders on the line for the sailors that came up and ordered. I was a very shy never had dated 19 year old, and having to talk to these single guys SCARED ME TO DEATH!!! I managed though and went on to work week days, Full time, and then drove the Mobile Canteen out to the planes and the hangers and the guys out on the flight lines working. I LOVED that job. And that is how I met my first husband. (story of life on another day!)

I took time off to move, marry and have a baby, divorce and go back to work. I worked for another 2 years at the NEX and then married Jim, my 2nd husband. (last one too!!)

We moved to Virginia Beach, VA. Where I had my son and started back to work to earn enough money to buy furniture with so we could move out of government housing. I worked for 3 years this time, in the Retail Store, stocking shelves. We then got our orders to Alameda, Ca.

I went back to work at the NEX there, and worked in several positions for 3 years. One of the reasons I stayed with the NEX was the fact that no matter where we went there would be a store! Pay sucked, Benefits were good, and my time accumulated. One of the positions I held here was fork-lift operator in the warehouse. LOVED IT!! Worse thing that happened here was I "forked" a pallet of house paint, and had paint spill from the 2nd rack all the way to the floor. Made for a colorful warehouse!! And forklift too!!

We next got our orders back to Whidbey and I again went back to work at the NEX. At this time, we knew it would be our last move, so I worked my way back up through the ranks, to warehouse supervisor and management. (several years later...) Once in Management and now Separated from Jim, I applied for and got the Store Manager job in Bangor, Wa. I had this job for almost 5 years when I was transferred to Adak, AK.

Adak is an island in the middle of the Aleutian Islands, and 1500 miles out on the chain away from any civilization. But I persevered and was transfered back to Whidbey Island. ( I had made a deal that I could come back to Whidbey if I went to Adak. ) I worked as Store manager until my Boss Retired and I was promoted to Retail Operations Manager. Time passed, and I was then Promoted to General Manager and transferred to Fallon, Nevada. This was a base just like Adak. Out in the middle of NOTHING and isolated. The only difference in the two was on Adak you are surrounded my Mountains and Water. In Nevada you are in the same environment, only the water has all dried up and just left the desert! YUCK!!

I stayed in Fallon for 2.5 years and came back to Whidbey when My son was arrested. I continued working for another 2 years until NEXCOM came out with a Buy-out. If you had at least 25 years and were at least 55 years old, you could retire with full benefits, and medical and they paid up to 25K dollars if you would go now. I was not ready to retire, I had not made any plans to, and my entire life was NEX!! I had no idea what I was going to do, And was afraid that I would become a slug.

I took them up on their offer and On March 1 2003, I walked away from 37 years of working and living NEX 15 hours a day. I was scared.to.death. My daughter was blogging at that time and suggested I start an on line diary to document my days.

I found Blogger.com and picked a template and started writing. I had no idea in the world that Any one would ever care what I had to say, And I did not have any comments enabled. (Blogger did not have them at that time) I had no idea what to call this missive either, so since I had just retired, I decided to call it Life AFTER NEXCOM... And started writing.

the Iraq War was imminent, and I found a few blogs that I read about the war, and I kept looking at the recently published blog columns, and searching for new ones to read. There were a LOT of CRAP teen blogs out there, and I just thought that was the way of all blogs. I then discovered CRITTER LOVER and Then Wanda and Kat and Brenda. I still had no comments, but discovered the comments on their blogs. Wanda and Leslie ganged up on me and said I HAD to get COMMENTS, so Wanda emailed me and set me up with Haloscan, and the rest is history.

What used to take me less than an hour to blog and then read my blogwalk, now takes me 3 1/2 hours every day!! WHO'D A THUNK that any one would actually care about what old fat me had to say? I Found a WORLD of friends out there, and Love every one of them. Blogging has become very fulfilling for me, and even though sometimes I feel like that it is taking too much of my time, I would be LOST with out knowing what each and every one of you was doing. What I do not do though is always comment. I am very acerbic, and some find me way to caustic, so I only comment if I think I have something to contribute to the string. I read every one of you every day. Don't always comment but I do Lurk.

Hope I have cleared up the Name NEXCOM for you. I have thought about changing it to Whidbey Dreaming, because I found that there IS LIFE AFTER NEXCOM.