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!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, after Christmas and Halloween that is . . . . It’s vacation time! We fly out to Ft. Lauderdale today, and hop on the Allure of the Seas tomorrow. It’s an Eastern Caribbean cruise this time, so no pyramids. There are a few historic pirate forts to see, so I’m probably going to do those since I never have.

With the updates to my blog software, and my new camera, I learned over Christmas that the photos exceed the maximum upload limit to the blog unless I reduce their file size. I googled a way to fix this within the blog software, I just haven’t done it and don’t want to do it now, because with my luck I’ll break the blog. I do have some minimal photo editing software on my netbook that I’m taking. Nothing fancy like on my Mac, just Picasa. But it should do the trick should I get some excellent shots with my new camera. However most of the photo updates until I get home will likely just be from my phone. If you’re on Instagram you can follow me at RDustinC. You can also just check out My Tumblr from time to time, as I’ll post good photos to there from a variety of photo apps too.

Any thrilling and exciting updates I’ll of course post to the blog when I get a chance. This cruise goes to small islands, so I think it’s going to be fairly low key. I don’t snorkel or deep sea dive, and I’m not a huge beach person. So I don’t know what I’ll have in the way of stories. Next year I think we might look into a South American cruise. We’ve been talking about that for a while now.

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!