Mall of America Coasters

Drag Queens! Lady Boys meet Sailor Moon?

The House on the Rock from afar, and the gardens.

Giant chandelier from the organ room, giant carousel

I found Baby Jesus at the House on the Rock! The Mikado Pipe Organ

The Infinity Room

Creepy Doll Carousel , Creepy Killer Doll (in the back)

Upon arriving we went to the Mall of America, where we did some shopping and rode some coasters. One of them was impressive for a coaster In a shopping mall!

I broke down and bought some of those Sketchers Shape-Ups. I have had pretty poor shoes lately un terms of support, so I wanna see if these do what they advertise. I just thought they helped your back, but they are supposed to tighten the buttocks and your abs as well. We’ll see!

We spent two days in Wisconsin Dells at the Great Wolfe Lodge water park. It was so empty that we walked onto every waterside and ride. We also did a number of other things like Wizard’s Quest, Magi Quest and the Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum.

On the way back from the Dells we hit this place called The House on the Rock, a unique house built on an old Indian Rock Shelter by this guy who collected anything and everything. He had guns, cars, armor, dolls and dollhouses, pipe organs and a giant carousel. Very neat place, the dolls were a bit creepy though.

We hit their hometown nightspot Friday night, The Wild Moose. This band Jonah and the Whales was playing. I got a bigger kick out of the two Asian/Malaysian drag queens on the dance floor dresses up like they were some anime super heroes or something.

Tonight we hit Minneapolis. Actually today. We are on our way now. Hoping to see a museum or two, have yummy food, then go dancing.

Things had begun to look up. I got an email from University M asking if I could teach some classes for then next fall and spring. I thought combined with University R, I might make a decent wage! However University M is a hike, an hour and 20 minute hike! So I was weighing my options, thinking maybe a part time job locally at the pet store would be better. Of course it wouldn’t look as good on my resume.

Well the choice got taken out of my hands, as an issue came up with the class I was to teach at University R in the fall. As it stands it’s in limbo, but the department is trying to make it work. It’s budgetary problems and shuffling stuff, nothing that reflects on me. I’m still scheduled to teach in the spring. However this means possibly no income for fall. Yikes!

I have since interviewed with University M, and officially applied to teach up there. We’ll see how it works out, and maybe they’ll pay well. Keep your fingers crossed!

I may still entertain a part-time job, depending on how things go. If both University’s work out for the fall, then I won’t need to, and I am not going to work over the summer. I really need to use the summer to finalize my giant ass dissertation draft and get the whole monster turned in and over with. I’ve already registered for writing boot camps to get my ass out of the house this summer.

Anyway, all I have to do now is finish grading and turn in my students grades by next Monday. My conferences are over, thank the Baby Jesus. I do however really like this paper I gave, and think it is one of the best I’ve done. I might entertain editing it over the summer and submitting it for publication in some journals. We’ll see. After next week I can finally write full time, not being able to has been stressing me. Between now and then I’m taking a mini-break. I’ll be going to see Heidi, and doing my best to relax. That’s never easy for me. I’m gunna try and get a massage at a place we are going to, I just hope that small asian woman from the cruise isn’t there. She hurt me!

We sailed out of Miami on the Liberty of the Seas. We did this ship 2 years ago, but it’s a nice ship, and frankly the new big mama the Oasis of the Seas was only sailing a month at this point and was twice as expensive. We’ll do that one next year when it’s cheaper. We’ve already looked at the prices, it’s less than what we paid for this cruise shockingly. I think the economy has part to do with that as well.

As it so happened, the week after our cruise was the big gay cruise (done by Atlantis, not Big Gay Al). So we kept having staff all week ask if we’d be staying for the following week too? I guess we were that obvious! We had thought about doing one of the Atlantis cruises, but they are really expensive as well (about twice as what a regular cruise costs as they bring in their own entertainment they have to pay for, plus they rent out the whole boat as well, which doesn’t always sell out).

As you might have guessed from the Florida posts, it was COLD and the weather the first several days wasn’t so great. It was better than home for sure, but the sun didn’t come out until the last 2-3 days and it wasn’t exactly hang around outside and get sun weather for most of the cruise. This however didn’t bother me too much to be honest. I am not a sit in the sun and get a tan kinda person. So for the most part, it’s not like this killed the cruise the way it would have for others. It was warm enough, I got to put on shorts, I was happy. Sure, would have been nice if the sun came out a little more though I’ll admit. Fortunately it was nothing like a cruise we took a few years back where it was just cold and windy the whole time. Brrrr! That cruise is the reason we will probably not go out of San Diego this time of year again . . . Mexican Riviera be damned!

The first day on the boat though it became apparent that this was going to be a unique cruise. There is a community board where you can fill out cards to suggest groups of people with like minds or interests meet. Usually it’s usurped by the Red Hats or people wanting to play Chess or Bridge. Well from day one there was someone suggesting “Friends of Dorothy” meet in one of the bars. This is code for gay in case you didn’t know. John and I tried this one year, it didn’t work though. As it turned out another 30-something couple, Brian and Christopher, posted this message, and we became good friends.

However there were many many more of “us” on the boat it seemed, an unusual amount. David and Shaun were another couple we met, from Canada. There was also Billy, who was from the Michigan area and the only one of us on the boat the following week for the big gay cruise. To prove it is a small world, there was a guy who is from our town and whose mom shops at the farm! In total I think there were about 15 gays (that we met) on board, highly unusual! They were all fairly young too, very unusual! Sure you’ll see the older gay couple each year, and usually the lesbian couple with their kids, but you don’t see them out and about much when the sun goes down.

This time, with this batch, they were out and about and all over! We were in the club dancing all night, at times I think taking up too much of the dance floor and scaring others away We also hit the hot tub late at night after we were done at the clubs, which was funny when other people would approach as if they wanted to get in, but then get scared off by us. Not that we were doing anything other than laughing and talking, but clearly some were intimidated! Usually it was the straight men, as their girlfriends tried their best to convince them to jump in with us. They usually ended up going to one of the other hot tubs open late at night though.

So aside from the massive amounts of dancing I did each night . . . what else went on? Well Matt Yee was on board, as he was part of the entertainment the following week. He hosts the adult sing-along show in the piano bar. He’s a hoot and lots of fun, so that got John out of the room for sure at nights. We saw him two cruises ago and it was dumb luck he was on this ship. You can visit his website mattyee.com to get an idea. His shows are so much fun. The last night of the cruise he had many of the entertainment staff performing with him (as to save his voice for the following week). They were great and sang a lot of Broadway tunes. Two of them did “Wicked” when suggested it and gave me a hug. Another, who was the main female headliner of the ship’s shows, came over and sat with our group saying “I’m instinctively drawn to this area of the crowd!”

Moving on with the recap, again as much as I can recall . . . Our excursion stops were Costa Maya, Belize and Cozumel. In Costa Maya John and I headed to see the ruins of Chockchoban, which is a classic period Mayan city that has only partially been uncovered and opened to the public within the last 10 years or so. Really neat because we could climb the pyramids, whereas in many other places you no longer can because of the wear and tear tourists have caused.

In Belize we had planned to do river tubing, but the weather the week up to when we got there was too rainy and windy, and thus they were canceled as the rivers were too rough. We got off the ship and looked around the port of Belize, where a scary woman offered us a massage and a man offered to get us anything illegal we wanted. No thanks!

In Cozumel we headed off with our travel mates Keith and Amber to find some yummy Mexican food and we had a good lunch. John and I walked around the town that night as well, while Keith and Amber got sloshed at Senior Frogs.

In Cozumel we stayed longer than expected, basically until midnight, which we found out was because of a maintenance problem that wasn’t well publicized and for good reason. It seemed the plumbing on the ship needed fixing and toilets weren’t flushing like they should have. Yeah, the last thing you want on a cruise ship. We woke up that morning and our cabin toilet wouldn’t flush. I called maintenance and that’s how I found out it was a ship wide problem effecting some, but not others. Fortunately it got fixed.

This time around I weighed more than I would have liked, definitely more than last year, so I didn’t care too much about how I ate. So I did enjoy lots of yummy deserts which I skipped last year. I think food probably helped put me in a better mood this year, but a lot also had to do with the whole atmosphere of the ship too.

I got two massages on board, my usual hot stones massage and then a seaweed wrap and a regular massage as well. The second massage left me hurting the next day, which was when we got off the ship and flew home. I have to say I was really hurting and not comfortable. I think she was a little too rough with the deep tissue massage! Mental note, don’t get the deep tissue again, at least not the last day!

All in all, a great cruise, probably one of the best I’ve done in several years. I think meeting all the gays and actually having people to go out with at night (and John actually coming out many of the nights as well) made things better this time around for sure. Way better than having to entertain myself each night

Post Note: There is a story to the second one of John and I, but it’s dirty lol. Let’s just say it’s hard for both John and I to get a good posed smile in, so we have to be made to laugh in some way. My friend Keith was saying “stuff” . . . oh and where are my hands!

More soon with photos!

The cold not only shut down the park, but people too. It seems Floridians aren’t used to this weather and if affected their brains and muscular motor skills. Everyone was moving at the speed of slow it seemed. Everyone except the big jolly gay bear working at the Men in Black ride!

Anyways we are off this morning to Miami to get on the cruise. We are praying that it is actually somewhat warm and we don’t end up with a record cold snap in the Caribbean and stuck on the boat. We one time cruised out of San Diego during a record cold snap, and that whole cruise was just cold!

However the night before last we hung out with a friend of Keith’s down here. He ended coming back to our place where the drinks were poured, but Dustin didn’t have enough to eat that day unfortunately. Not a good combo! My head hurt a bit when I woke up, and I was actually okay up to the point we got in the big ass car and drive to Universal. Ironically the one thing, okay two things, that seem to make me motion sick are riding in big passenger busses or big SUV/Trucks. I don’t know why that is, as I can do coasters with no problem. So of course I was feeling a little car sick, but once out of the car was okay. Breathing in the cold crisp Florida air helped. Then we went on The Hulk. From there it was down hill. Oh we were not good when we got off, and with a half hour I was throwing up in the middle of the park for all the Japanese tourists to watch and film! Yeah, embarrassing!

We didn’t stay too long after that of course. I actually was feeling better, but the weather really turned to crap and it looks like it was about to hurricane or something, so we left. We napped for a few hours when we got home, then I met up with a local blogger here, Sorted Lives. We all went to dinner at the ever classy Olive Garden TM. Later the vacation gang watched a movie and went to bed.

Now we are up and going to give Universal another try. There should be no pukey issues from me, let’s just hope the weather holds out. It’s not looking great though! Hopefully there will be no lines so we can do everything we want quickly.

Oh PS, I give up on the Twitter Daily Digests. It’s clearly not working and I don’t have time to tinker around with it. I doubt I post more than 10 tweets a day, so my daily tweets will fit on the side bar for now.