it's a hard knock life

It’s been crazy around here and I seem to have taken an unscheduled blog hiatus. At this point, most everyone has heard about my trip so I’m going to skip over the rest and move on to something else. If you haven’t heard all my stories here’s a few of the activities you could have found me doing on the rest of my vacation…eating the best homemade tortillas ever in Progresso and then touring some Mayan ruins, snorkeling & kayaking in Cozumel, getting a hat made by a man who looked exactly like Johnny Depp (no joke), visiting a little establishment known as Senor Frogs, getting a body massage in the spa on the ship, playing dominoes on lido deck with my friends and nearly convincing another group of people to play “will it float” with us.

So now I find myself at the end of November. The holidays always bring some good stories because, somehow, it’s impossible for life to be normal this time of year. I stayed in OKC for Thanksgiving this year. I was ecstatic about the four day weekend and having the house to myself so I could relax and catch up on sleep. My grandparents live in town so I didn’t spend the holiday alone. Everything went smoothly all weekend and I made it through the holiday without incident.

As I was getting ready for dinner on Saturday the doorbell rang. I thought this was odd because most of my friends were out of town. For this reason I thought it would be okay to pretend that no one was home. BUT then I realized that my garage door was wide open so that wouldn’t work. When I answered the door I recognized my next door neighbors’ son. These are the neighbors to the east of us…the ones who planted ugly bushes in the grass to keep us from accidentally mowing the edge of their “fragile” grass. (That’s a good story if you haven’t heard it already). This boy likes my roommate Jamie or at least he used to. I can’t even tell you how many times he’s asked her out and been rejected. When I saw him I immediately smiled and said, “Sorry but Jamie’s not here.” But he stopped me as I was closing the door in his face and said he was here to see me. Ugh! He shoved a Tupperware full of cookies at me and said he and his family had noticed that my roommates’ cars were gone all weekend and I was home alone. They felt sorry for me so they brought me cookies to make me feel better. I thanked him for the thoughtful gift and explained that I did not spend Thanksgiving alone. He didn’t believe me and kept saying how sad it was that my roommates had abandoned me at this time of year. I felt so pathetic by the time he finished talking. I just laughed to myself after he left and gave the gift the official title of “pity cookies.”

Tuesday was our first full day at sea. I was beginning to get used to the swaying of the ship and the seasickness feeling was long gone. There were things to do and events to participate in all day. The casino was buzzing with people, there was live music and dancing on Lido deck, the art gallery was open and whatever was being served at the grill smelled delicious. In spite of all these great activities I chose to lay out in the sun. This is my view while sunbathing on the top deck…no land in sight. Does it get any better than this??



Since it was Halloween the dining room was casual attire. For dinner I had stuffed mushrooms, Caesar salad, grilled Salmon and some black forest cake thing for dessert. I could really get used to eating
this way! Once all the food was served the Maitre D’ grabbed the microphone, “It’s Ssssssshhhhowtime!” The music started, the lights flickered and all the dining room staff stopped working and started dancing. As you can see, Elaina got right up there and danced with our waiter Vladimir.

After dinner it was time to get ready for the Halloween party. We all dressed up as magnetic poetry. Now, that may sound like a dumb idea to you. But, let me assure you, our costumes were a hit. The words were velcro'd on to our shirts and people were coming up to us all night and moving the words around. We didn’t win best costume but there was some pretty tough competition. Later there was live music on the deck and we danced the night away under the stars. No Halloween is ever going to live up to this one.




p.s. We also discovered that you can’t do “I’m king of the world” like Leo DiCaprio on Titanic because that deck is for staff only. I was really disappointed as that was one picture I’d been planning to take ever since I booked the cruise months ago.

I’m sure everyone is wondering how the cruise went. Let me start by saying that, yes, the vacation only got better after our eventful day driving down to Galveston last Sunday. There are way too many stories to share in one post so I’m going to have to break it down by day.

Monday Oct. 30, 2006



Monday was a fairly uneventful day. The first thing we did once we boarded the ship was head straight to the diner for lunch. I’ll probably be talking a lot about the food because it was so amazing. We couldn’t go to our room for a few hours so we walked around and gave ourselves a little tour of the ship. Here’s a great view from one of the top decks at night…



Before we set sail all the passengers were required to participate in an emergency drill. We put on our life jackets and walked in a single file line to one of the outside decks. When the alarm sounded I yelled out, “WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST!” That got a few chuckles from the other passengers and some annoyed looks from the staff. I’m sure they hear that a lot.

After the land was out of view I started with the Dramamine. The waters seemed turbulent and seasickness was imminent. At dinner that night I was introduced to some of the most amazing food I have ever eaten. After my fabulous appetizer and salad I ate Snapper as my entrée. For dessert…warm chocolate melting cake. Meal time will never be the same. Also at dinner we met Vladimir our waiter. He was one of my favorite people on the cruise and came to be known as Vlady Daddy, Vlado or V-Dawg.



Stay tuned for the next post...Tuesday - the Halloween party!