Last weekend John and I attended a get together with some of the people I’ve met through local paranormal investigations. It was a small, invite only party. Therefore I was thrilled I got invited.

It was a very chill and relax evening. I knew some of the people, it was nice meeting others I had heard about but never got to meet. The hosts set up a lot of fun games for us to play. We did a seance, but not much happened there. We also did smoke billets, which is holding cards over a flame to see if an image appears. That was a lot of fun. I seemed to get a lot of animals on mine, so people thought. I should have taken photos of my cards but didn’t.

It was a potluck, and we found out after arriving that there was a contest for the best dish. Oh lordy! Everyone said they would have done so much more had they known that. I made sloppy joes (from scratch!) and ended up winning. My prize was a spirit trumpet. It’s an old spiritualist tool that was used at seances. It’s supposed to move, float around, and let ghosts talk through it. In reality the old spiritualists had tricks to make it move and talk. Still, it’s a fun little prop. I plan to put it in the haunted room and see if our resident ghost moves it around.

       

Smoke Billets / My Spirit Trumpet award

I thought I would post a few more photos from our vacation. At some point I need to update my side bar links, as well as my main domain’s links to my photo galleries as that website went caput. I don’t see myself organizing things on Flickr until this summer at some point when I have a little more free time to do so.

Each one gives a short description of what it’s a photo of, and this time I did a better job of not over sharpening them, reducing the file size, and keeping them their original pixel size. I’m loving my new camera, and by next year’s trip I should have mastered it pretty well.

Next year we leave out of San Juan, so hopefully we will go a few days before the ship sails to enjoy it. Unlike Ft. Lauderdale, it won’t be dead as a doornail. I’m pretty over that place, and each year it’s become more and more of a ghost town. It might have something to do with the time of year we are there, but we noticed a lot of the bars, restaurants and clubs had closed up compared to previous years.

We also might just go to Orlando first and then over to San Juan, as it’s been years since we went there and I am dying to see Harry Potter world. I honestly can’t believe I just haven’t booked a trip to go, even if by myself.

So I’m just now finally getting around to posting about our vacation. Below are some photos of the places we went and things we saw, both on and off the ship. A few of the photos I sharpened a little too much after resizing them, my bad! I need to fix my blog’s upload limit so I’m not constantly having to resize the photos to post on it.

This was our second time on this boat, Allure of the Seas, and our third time in a row on ships of the same class. The newness has definitely worn off, so next year we are changing things up. We are going on a smaller ship that we’ve never been on, and to the Southern Caribbean for stops we’ve not been to (or been to in years). There definitely is some new things to do at these stops, everything from volcanoes to waterfalls. This ship, while smaller, really isn’t tiny. We’ve been on even smaller ships in the past, so I’m not worried about the size. Going to a smaller ship will however mean the lack of a lot of things we’ve come to enjoy, such as the diving show and all the smaller speciality restaurants. However I won’t miss the larger amounts of people on these bigger ships. The past few years have seen an influx of rude rude rude people from certain countries in South America that are on summer break in January, so the families and all their kids show up. It wasn’t my imagination that these people were rude and nasty either, from other passengers to even the ship’s crew, they all knew who the problem guests onboard were. It’s ironic because normally it’s the people from the U.S. who have the reputation of being rude and nasty, but we have nothing on these folks!

Aside from the rude people, I did have fun for about the first 5 days. I participated in a “flash mob” dance class, that pulled it off in public on the final night of the cruise. We went to see Blackbeard’s tower and a bunch of other colonial estates on Saint Thomas, which I never saw before. I also got a lot of good cooking spices on Saint Martins. However about day four is when I started to not feel so good. The ship was definitely rocking a lot, and that upset my stomach. Normally it doesn’t bother me that much, but this year it did. I spent most of one day in bed fending off sickness. I had almost no appetite for the whole of the cruise, several migraines, and I ended up developing a horrible rash all over my face and arms. Fun times!

Upon arriving back, both John and I ended up with horrible colds, which we are just now getting over. Anyways, next year will hopefully be much better. Enjoy some of the photos!

For the first time in many years, John made it to see the ball drop, and then some time after. He did take a nap though after he got off work, which helped him stay awake. We also watched “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter!” It was an eventful New Years as you can tell. I did get invite to not one, but two parties. However John was being a pooper and didn’t want to go to either. I am at least happy he made it till after midnight.

Before all the amazing festivities we went to Seasons 52 for a wonderful dinner. We’d never been, but I had always wanted to check it out. The catch is that the menu changes seasonally so that everything is as local and fresh as it can be, and every dish is guaranteed to be under 475 calories. Though if you have three courses as we did that doesn’t do you much good. I guess it’s still better than 3 dishes at 1000+ calories a piece. Everything we had was amazing! I would totally go back for special occasions, though it’s a bit pricey for an every day meal. Once in a while though is definitely acceptable. In fact I just booked Valentine’s Day there now that I was thinking about it.

As for resolutions? Well I usually don’t make them, or if I do I make ones that I always fail to reach . . . you know the same ones everyone else makes. “I’m gunna lose some weight.” “I’m gunna get in shape.” “I’m gunna be healthier.” Yeah yeah, I want all of those, but I’m not gunna make them a resolution as more as just general goals for life.

I decided what I want to do this year for a resolutions should be fun and more achievable, that way I don’t get upset and stop trying when things aren’t working out. One thing I’m doing is I downloaded an app for my Mac and Phone called “One Day” which is basically a journal. It syncs across both via the iCloud, so that is what sold me. However with the phone version it can record your location, the weather and more. I liked that, especially for travels. I want to write in it every day, even if just a small blurb or a photo. I want to try and write or post something positive about that day, because I need to be more positive

Another thing I’ve chosen to do is the 365 Project. This is similar to a journal, but it’s a photo journal. You post one photo for every day of the year. It’s free to use, my first photo is up at http://365project.org/rdustinc/365. I got a new camera and some fun lenses for Christmas, so I want to learn to use them and will do my best to post photos from it. However I’m sure a lot of photos will end up coming from my iPhone as well.

Speaking of photos, Webshots, which I used to house my vacation photos for the past 10 years finally closed down. Well they are a new site now, and they imported all my photos over, but all the descriptions and albums I made got abandoned. Boo! I guess I’m going to have to finally migrate to Flicker this year.

The final thing I want to do is to learn to crochet. I actually bought yarn and needles last year, but the book that came with it confused me. The goal was to reduce stress, not make it worse! Watching youtube videos is definitely helpful. However I think I need a person to show me more complicated stuff. I’m pondering taking the needles and yarn on our upcoming cruise as there is always old ladies who meet to knit and crochet. Maybe I can get some free lessons!

Happy 2013!

So John did make it to Virginia for Christmas, but what a production it was! I drove up to Jersey on Christmas Eve to get him. The store was supposed to close at 3pm, however as usual exactly at 3 a flood of never-ending people began to stream in. Even when they were told “We closed at 3, please be quick if you need something” they weren’t! It’s one of the reasons I never shop the day of a major holiday anywhere, because those people want to go home to their families too.

We finally left around 5pm, exactly when the snow and sleet came into the area. So that made for a slow commute. We were on schedule to get in at 8:10ish according to the gps . . . until we hit a huge accident on 495. Of course this accident was 15 miles from my home in Virginia, and it apparently happened only minutes ahead of us at the exit we were coming up on. Therefore there was no way for us to get off the highway, and all 4 lanes ended up shut down for about 2 1/2 hours. We had no choice but to sit there and wait. We finally got in at about 10:30. Oy!

We got a little Christmas Eve snow, and then some day after Christmas snow, but no Christmas snow and nothing that amounted to much. Below are a few fun photos I took as well as scanned of a little me.

Merry Christmas and Happy 2013!

So given the whole end of the world thing that was supposed to be going on today, I decided to put out the entire village of Bethlehem. It’s been about two years since I dragged them all out. There are so many, and it’s such a chore. If we ever get the two downstairs guest rooms cleared out and set up (I’m making it part of John’s time off project this year) then I hope to eventually get some kind of display cabinet or shelf for them all. It can just be Christmas year round for that part of the house!

So I have traveled home to Virginia for the holidays. HOPEFULLY John will be here Christmas Eve, though the weather forecast is starting to look bad for travel. Right now they’re calling for snow/sleet on Wednesday, and Christmas Eve and Christmas are a 50/50 rain/snow shot right now. It’s too early to know, it could go either way.

The surprise for my mom that I talked about in my last post was completing our vintage chalkware nativity set. It belonged to my great grandma and was made in France. We were always missing one of the wise-men, and the Baby Jesus was some wax thing that wasn’t original. I got both, a lot of new animals that we didn’t have space for, and the weird guy all the way to the right in the photo. Ali Baba? The Inn Keeper?

My mom got a larger tree for all my sci-fi ornaments this year. They just weren’t fitting on the old little one we had, and it finally broke and fell apart this year. I was thinking we have way too many Wizard of Oz and Star Wars ornaments, and now with new sets of movies for each franchise coming out . . . it’s probably just gunna get worse!

Finally there is a shot of our regular Christmas tree in here, along with an ornament for John that my mom got this year. Awwww!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings and whatever else . . .

I have not been in the Christmas spirit much this year. I have a lot going on with work stuff, and once again John’s plans for the holiday are up in the air. It was so nice to have him in Virginia last year and finally spend Christmas with him (after 10 years apart!), however it seems his family (i.e. his mother) wasn’t happy about it. So this year, I don’t know what will happen. She has a daughter and grandkids here, but it seems last year was just the worst Christmas ever because John wasn’t there. I think they are trying to convince her to stay the night with the sister and the kids, which she should have done last year, but who knows! She was not alone mind you, she just went over to their house Christmas Day, and of course John wasn’t there.

We did put out tree up, and I put some of the lights up outside. I was hoping this would get me into the spirit some. However we still haven’t finished the lights outside, which I need John’s help to do that last part of. I also have got nothing else up in the house. I still have the villages to put up and nativities to put up. I have no idea when I will get to it!

I tried to get myself into the holiday season by buying some vintage Christmas stuff I found online. One piece I got was this scary Santa. My grandma used to have one exactly like it and put it on her coffee table every year. It was one of the things I looked forward to playing with when we went to her house. However after she died, my dad packed her stuff up and I don’t know what happened to it. I have some of her Christmas stuff, but forgot to ask about this. So I don’t know where it is. Therefore I was happy to get one online for fairly cheap, and in good working condition, given it’s from the 1950s.

I also scored another surprise last night, but it’s for home in Virginia

How pink and gay art thee!

There are still a few finishing touches to be made. I plan to do those this weekend during work breaks.