Archive for January, 2010

Cruise Recap!
 

So it took awhile, but here is the cruise recap, from what I can remember. I’m in the processes of uploading photos to an online gallery and labeling them, so I’ll link that as soon as I get through them all.

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 πŸ™‚ 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 πŸ™‚

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Scanned Cruise Photos!
 

The two photos I bought from the many the cruise staff took πŸ™‚

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!

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Back To Work!
 

Just a note, I started back to work this week, teaching two classes. So come Friday I can breath and then I’ll begin the vacation remembrances. Just some quick notes. As you might have been able to tell from the tweets, yes this year was a great vacation πŸ™‚ The parks started rough, but the cruise was great. Not only were there like 15some gays on board, we took over the dance club, so it was a blast each night (okay most nights, some annoyance as usual with music/djs). Since I was also weighing more than I would have liked to start, I wasn’t picky about what I ate and enjoyed the food this time (which also probably helped with my mood).

More soon with photos!

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Quick Cruise Photos!
 

Sorry for the lack of blogs while on the cruise! I’ll have a full report when I return though! Here are some quick photos. I have been on this and the sister ship before, so I really didn’t take too many ship photos except of us and the people we met. I did take photos of the ruins we went to of course, as we’d never seen these ones.

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It Was Too Cold For Florida
 

So we returned to the park yesterday, but the 30s were too cold for Florida. None of the coasters were running, so we were stuck with only inside rides, which thankfully there were plenty of. However I really wanted to do the new Hollywood Rocket, but it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe next year?

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!

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Yesterday Was A Very Pukey Day . . . .
 

Well we didn’t have a good day yesterday unfortunately, but it ended well. Not only is it cold in Florida, it was wet and raining all day long. Surprise today is basically the same too. We’ve nixed Disney at this point in favor of Universal, as we bought 2 day tickets for it. With the weather we didn’t want to spend too much on parks if the weather was sucking and/or rides would be shut down. Not that there is too much we wanted to do at Disney really, we are fans of Universal more.

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.

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Our Posh Hotel Room :)
 

Keith hooked us up this year with a 3 bedroom suite in a time-share resort. All we are paying is the 20 bucks a night tax charges πŸ˜›

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Tweet Tweet Twat
 

Okay so another day went by, and no tweet digest. I googled and surprise surprise, there are issues with this plug-in and the latest WordPress version. I’m going to increase the tweets in the sidebar to 10. Maybe the daily digest will kick in eventually, I dunno . . . . I am afraid to upgrade all my blogging software to latest versions though as I have heard there are issues.

Speaking of issues, OY! I was designated driver last night so I didn’t drink, and as everyone else was having a good time drinking I was like “Hello, haven’t eaten since thismorning, I know you all don’t care about this right now, but I have hunger pains so lets go to dinner.” When we finally did, I inhaled my food. Then we got back to our posh suite (it really is, Keith hooked us up this year, I have to take photos), and everyone decided I needed to drink since I didn’t all night. Let’s just say we are feeling not good today! My guess is nobody else is either since they didn’t get up and go to the gym like they said they were this morning!

More updates to come, especially since the twitter digest doesn’t seem to function πŸ™‚

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Today
 


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Taken today by my friend Keith.

I’m hoping the Twitter daily digest posts will kick in tonight. Not sure why it didn’t last night (maybe it has to be running a full day?)

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Flying Out Tomorrow!
 

We drove down to Virginia today to drop the dogs off with my mom and then fly out in the morning. Waking up at 4:45am and then off to the airport by 5:30. Kill me now! Oh I will be sleeping on the plane, I just hope there is no nightmare like the HotLanta mess or even when we flew out last year for our annual vacation (planes delayed forever due to an ice storm up in Boston).

Twitter posts should start back up tonight and be daily digests around midnight each night, detailing whatever I sent out that day. Of course once we get on the boat on Sunday, twitter recaps will drop off. Last year I somehow lucked out and the internet was broken or not working right, so it never subtracted my pre-bought minutes until the very last day, so I was on all the time πŸ™‚ Here is hoping I can get that luck again?

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