He Said . . .
The past couple of days have led to a few changes in routine for us. Yesterday evening we went up to the Sky Lounge to redeem our drink coupons for the first time and met a few folks that were quite nice, Andy and Suzy, recently retired and Gary and Mikey, long retired. They were pleasant enough but as always I felt that there were two new issues, now I had to commit their faces to memory on the off chance that ran into then around the ship and my level of anonymity was being be jeopardized since I felt compelled to provide them with my real name. I had heard that people had played up some really wild profiles and let them play out real world; everything from British Royalty to Lucifer had been bantered about during a beer drinking ruckus that I happened to be in attendance of some years back and it had planted a seed. So far it hadn’t germinated but going forward I thought it might, last night I thought I could run with it but I hadn’t discussed it with Ami and figured she wouldn’t be receptive. Anyway we are going to meet them again this evening during happy hour, seems harmless enough.
Otherwise the day was filled with finishing the 3rd Lincoln Lawyer and starting the second one, not sure how I got them out of order but they aren’t prequel so se la vie. They are a quick read, a couple of days at best and they keep me from thinking about the 2,000 emails I will have waiting for me when I return to the office, I’m sure I’ll have to spend the weekend catching up. Hopefully we will have pushed out a Maintenance Pack (MP) as we call them to fix a bug that has been in the system since we launched IMS some 7 years ago, not sure how that happened but nonetheless it needs to get fixed and that should wrap up my capital dollars for the year, whooo hooooo, I can check that off my PA&D (Performance Agreement and Development)!!! Back to the moment at hand…
Yesterday was my first day to hit the gym, 25 five minutes walking and 5 minutes running on that damn treadmill, the inventor was a true masochist I swear. It felt good and I decided to add it to the regimen these last few days at sea, along with napping and reading, what a life, I could get used to this too!!
Today is Halloween, and if you can believe it, some people decorated their doors in honor of the day, I can only imagine what gets broken out for dinner. I haven’t ever seen a 70 year old in a hooker outfit, it’s gonna be an eye gouging moment I’m sure, a little prayer may be in order. Not by name, just thought, if the big guy gets ahold of the name I might be in trouble there too.
First up was an egg drop contraption from the 7th to the 3rd floor with three raw eggs as riders, if they make it you score points and the team closest to the circle they had laid out wins, the crowd was quite large and if I didn’t know any better I would have thought that some of these people tracked down hardware to make their contraptions, quite fun and imaginative. BTW, there weren’t many winners but all good fun!!
The weather is gorgeous, 78 degrees on the balcony on the 12th floor on the balcony overlooking a beautiful partly cloudy 1-2 meter swell that feels like glass on a boat this big. If someone would have asked what at Atlantic crossing looked like I would have have given them the North Atlantic version with 20-30 foot seas and riding in the trough across. That’s not this, it’s the way it was intended on a cruise ship and I’m so glad we took the long flight to get there, now we have a two hour, “big front seat” on Spirit to get home after sightseeing on Friday.
Hopefully Brandon is still down there cleaning up after the hurricanes and living large, I will call him once we get in to catch up and find out where everything vetted out after we left. I hope he’s still down there, I miss talking to him everyday and catching up.
Otherwise all is grand, life as a sailor is great, as a cruiser at least, but I’ll be ready to get back to our sense of normalcy when we get in, hope Fort Lauderdale is back to normal as well, more later…
She Said . . .
Happy Halloween!
Go Astros!
With those out of the way, as you would hope while you are in the middle of the Atlantic with the closest land being over 800 nautical miles, the last two days have been rather uneventful.
Activities
We while away the days reading and watching the ocean. We have both spent some time in the fitness center.
I went to a presentation Sunday on the Galapagos Islands and what Celebrity Cruises has to offer. Yesterday, we went to see the Future Cruise folks only to find out for the 2 of us, the price is over $30,000. Now it was all-inclusive and also included machu picchu and a few other locations. But having never priced a trip like this, we have no idea if it is a good deal or not. It seems awfully high to both of us so we did not book it. We also looked at Baltic cruises but we want one that includes St. Petersburg and the Norwegian Fjords and couldn’t find one that fit that requirement by Celebrity so we will look elsewhere. Next year we want to go to China so we also looked at their options there and did not see anything that had everything we wanted to do in China. We know Viking has it so that may be the choice.
Sunday I went to a wine tasting - one red and one white from 6 different countries. Actually it was 8 different countries because they lumped Australia and New Zealand together and Argentina and Chili together. My favorite white was the Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and the red (can’t remember the name) from Spain. Other countries/regions represented were France, Italy, and California. Unfortunately, the California wines were my least favorites.
I met a lovely man, Alister, currently living in Florida. He is actually Scottish. Left Scotland when he was 18 and went to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as part of the military police. He is 71 and now lives in Florida with his wife of 20 years. His 40-year-old daughter just finished her last round of chemo in her battle against breast cancer. She is an attorney in Florida. His son works for a charity in D.C. I saw pictures of both his children and his grandchildren. It was funny, I guess one of the ladies (Celebrity employee) working the event, picking up glasses and dirty dishes, knew him from the dining room or something because she felt the need to come by and ask where his wife was and if she needed let his wife know he was talking to me. It was very sweet - she was quite protective of his wife. I think we were both just happy to find someone to talk to since our spouses did not attend. I always like to talk to different people.
Last night we went to the Captain’s Club Elite happy hour where we met a lovely couple from Jackson Mississippi and another couple from Greensboro, South Carolina (Gary, the husband went Georgia). We enjoyed talking to them.
Other than that, I’ve been reading my next David Baldacci novel, Saving Faith. So far I am enjoying it.
The Boat
As promised, I’ll tell you a bit about our boat and accommodations. We are on the Celebrity Reflection. When we cruise, we more often than not, cruise Celebrity. The crowd is usually older than us, at least when we vacation since kids are often in school when we go. I think in general the folks on Celebrity are slightly older than us.
We have cruised enough on Celebrity, we have achieved Elite status in their frequent cruiser program, Captain’s Club. This entitles us to certain perks. As I said in an earlier post, we each get 90 minutes of free internet. We also get free drinks at their nightly happy hour for Elite members and better, 1 free bag of laundry, discounts on bottles of wine, a free scoop of gelato, some match plays on blackjack or roulette, and some other things here and there.
While we don’t normally do so, we sprung for a suite this time since we were going to be on the boat so much. This means the room and balcony are a bit bigger, we have a jetted tub in the bathroom, a personal butler in addition to our cabin steward, access to Michael’s Club (a private lounge only for suite people), and dinner in a special restaurant ( The Luminae). We don’t really use the butler much. I’ve asked him to make reservations for us and book our excursion, but not much else. With Blaise it has become a joke, because every day, Rene, the butler, tries to figure out how he can help Blaise. One day he tried to bring Blaise canapes. Another some bottled water. And yet another, he asked if he could bring Blaise some wine.
I’ve really enjoyed the extra space and roomier balcony. I have watched the sunrise numerous times from the balcony and spend time reading there. We both enjoy the shower and tub. The shower is exceptional and the jetted tub isn’t so bad either.
The boat is beautiful and very well maintained. I don’t know what year it went into service but it may be the youngest in their fleet. There are about 3,000 folks on the ship but it doesn’t really feel like it.
Dana’s Food Watch
Sunday’s Dinner: I can’t remember what we had for appetisers but we both had the bacon wrapped trout for our entree’. It was delicious. I thought it had a bit more spinach stuffed in it than I would have liked, but still tasty.
Monday’s Dinner: Our little bite before the appetizer was some sort of caramelized apple slice with some creamy cheese that seemed like some version of brie. For our starters, Blaise had the kale Caesar salad and I had the butternut squash ravioli (just 2 raviolis). For our entrees, we both had the venison loin on a bed of pickled red cabbage with mashed potatoes, carrots, and one (just one) brussel sprout. I’m not a big red cabbage fan so I only ate a couple bites of that. For dessert, Blaise had his cheese plate and I had custard (they called it a creme’ brulee but it wasn’t a traditional creme’ brulee - more like a scoop of custard) on a biscuit/cookie thing with a scoop of some sort of ice cream. No, I am not a food writer, so you get the food as best as I can describe it.
Injury Watch
Still injury free!!!
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