Carnival and Me - I think I finally figured it out

We've sailed on Carnival ships twice now - more than on any other line - but I don't think they'd be my choice in the future.  I've been wrestling in my mind with why, because, as noted two years ago, the Conquest was truly a gorgeous ship, the food was good, the service more than adequate.  But it was just all wrong for me, and for a long time, I could not put my finger on a reason.

 

This is going to sound truly weird, but I think it's their repeated emphasis on "fun".  Despite the very upscale appearance of the ship, the demographic it was catering to was not upscale - the activities and infrastructure were aimed at people who enjoy Vegas for the slot machines and shows and go to amusement parks and waterparks a lot, and who spend their "evenings out" at nightclubs or bars, drinking and dancing and singing karaoke.  I'm not one of those people.  When I'm in Vegas, I enjoy the neon lights and the utter bizarreness of the tourist offerings, but slot machines and gambling in general bore me, and I wouldn't go to Vegas as a destination; it's always a stop en route to somewhere else.  I like an occasional visit to an amusement park - with kids; I wouldn't go for my own purposes - and I really don't get waterparks.  My vision of an evening out involves music at a volume I can talk over (if necessary) - jazz or symphony - performed by other people, not me.  With drinks included, maybe, but not as the central reason for being away from home.  Perhaps I'm just getting old.

 

The weird thing is that I know for a certainty that both Royal Caribbean and Princess had casinos and pool slides and nightclub options - and I liked both of them better than Carnival.  The only reason I can think of is that those things were not front-and-center on the other lines in the way they were on Carnival; other activities and venues were the "attractions" instead.  The shows were different.  Royal Caribbean fascinated our entire party with a quick-change-artist act, and we were vastly entertained on Princess by the hypnotist's act.  We did see a fairly amusing ventriloquist on Carnival - I'm still wondering how he worked the whiteboard dummy - but everything else seemed to be aimed at another group; not us.

 

So our next cruise is on yet another line - Holland America - which has a reputation for being targeted at an older audience even than Princess.  I don't know if we fit the demographic there or not; guess we'll find out.  I do know that their Culinary Arts Center program is a huge magnet for me, and they are definitely downplaying the karaoke contests and things of that sort, which seems like a move in the right direction.  I guess I'm looking for more of an educational slant on cruising - give me a lecture on the geologic origins of the rocks at Cabo San Lucas, or teach me about the migratory habits of the whales, or introduce me to new cuisines or art forms.  (Wow, do I sound like a snob!  But that's really what I would enjoy.) 

 

I think our bucket list includes a Cunard lines cruise in some class above steerage (they really do have classes of cabins on their ships, although I'm not so sure about steerage).  If we do go some day, I almost hope that they don't turn out to be the perfect match for us; I'm not sure I could sustain the wardrobe.

Nothing like a disappearing flight reservation to start the day off with a bang

I was kind of groggy when I first got up this morning, but no more. 

 

After posting my last, I did some searching around in my e-mail archives and found all of the very detailed packing and to-do lists from our last cruise, and that spurred me to some action overnight.  I did a poor-man's laminate job on the luggage tags (covered both sides with clear packing tape).  I sent the packing list to my daughter.  I resolved to get a swimsuit or two purchased (like that's going to be easy in Colorado in February).  And this morning, I hunted down my confirmation e-mail for my flight reservation, to make sure I had it on my phone calendar.

 

The airline I'm planning to fly on offers early check-in for an additional $10, and after thinking about it, given that I'm likely to be a bit busy the night before I'm due to leave, what with settling the dogs at my parents' house and various other things, I thought I would spring for the extra money to get one thing off my plate.  The link was handily right there on the e-mail, so I clicked it.

 

And the window popped up, nicely loaded with my confirmation number and my name - and a nasty red message saying that they could not find my reservation in their system, with a few reasons why that might be so.  None of which applied to me, unfortunately.

 

I logged into their site with my frequent flyer number.  The flight doesn't show up on my upcoming itineraries.  I did a regular search on their site, typing in my name and reservation number.  Same rather annoying red message.

 

I have an e-mail into their customer service, asking them please to find my reservation, which was made with my frequent flyer number (I can see it on the e-mail), and which has been paid for (I checked my bank records).  They'd better find it, and soon.  Because I'm flying to San Diego two weeks from this coming Friday (which is the day after tomorrow), and if they've lost me, well, the loss will be permanent.

Shouldn't we be doing something about now? Anything?

I feel like I'm forgetting something important.  After all, we leave in quite a bit less than 3 weeks, now, and all I've done so far is buy some shorts and get the passports out and print off our boarding passes.  I've done cruises before, and I KNOW that preparation is involved.  So this is sort of freaking me out.

 

I have a pack list done - for me, anyway.  My husband is on his own as regards clothing decisions, and my daughter, being at college, is beyond my help.  My pack list includes those weird shipboard necessities like nightlights, travel clocks, and powerstrips, so that's taken care of.  It does NOT (so far, at least) include formalwear.  What it does include (not counting the weird shipboard necessities) is:

• 5-7 polo shirts or dressy t-shirts
• 3 pairs of walking shorts
• 1-2 casual skirts
• 1 pair of exercise shorts
• 1-2 exercise t-shirts
• 1 casual dress/swimsuit coverup
• 1 cardigan sweater
• 1 ballcap
• 1-2 swimsuits (aha!  I need new ones, I think - something that needs to be done!)
• sneakers and socks
• casual sandals
• (maybe) slightly less casual sandals
• belts
• underwear and pajamas
• toiletries
• jewelry

I think I could cram all that into a duffel bag.  Are we definitely going on a ship here?  We don't even have a self-service laundry on this one, so that eliminates the detergent-and-quarters item from any possible list.

 

We aren't signing up for any shore excursions this time, so nothing needed there.  At the moment, we're not even sure we'll bother going ashore - this cruise is to places we've been before, so we don't need to do much in the way of exploring.  Although I did really like Mazatlan's old city and wouldn't mind wandering around there again.  Nonetheless, I don't think there's any planning to do in that arena.

 

I got the scoop on my shipboard activity of choice (the Culinary Arts Center classes), and can't do anything about signing up until we get on board.  Note that this trip, I am not even going to go out of my way to find the spa on the ship.  It has taken 3 cruises to do it, but I am over the whole shipboard treatments thing.

 

Our luggage tags have been printed - yet again, we're faced with the "fold it in thirds and staple it around a handle and hope it doesn't rip" instructions, and no one to laminate them for us this time.  I think I'll add a step to the instructions - "cover both sides with clear packing tape" to occur after the folding and before the stapling.

 

There IS a pile going in the closet, though - so far, it's 3 pairs of walking shorts and some of the weird shipboard necessities.  I guess we could get a suitcase down, but I know what will happen if we do.  The cat will sleep in it for the next few weeks - and then we will really regret the lack of a self-service laundry when we go to put anything on.  We'll have a coordinated wardrobe then, all right - every item grey and fuzzy.

 

I guess we can wait a while longer.

 

 

Going down to the sea in ships (again)

It would appear that, for our family, the need to go to sea surfaces on about 2-year intervals.  Given that we were last at sea in June of 2008, it's time again, and we're scheduled to be sailing on the MS (I think) Oosterdam from San Diego on March 13th (less than a month, now that I think of it!).  Mexican Riviera for 7 days again, but on Holland America instead of Princess.  I don't know if we'll even bother to go into any of the ports this time - they're nice and all, but the whole point of this trip is to be on a ship on the ocean.

 

Our original plan was to go on NCL in a mini-suite (the dates matched up with the offspring's spring break), and were particularly intrigued with the "freestyle" aspect of the whole thing.  My husband vowed at the time that he would spend the entire week in shorts or a swimsuit and that he was looking forward to not having any formal nights.  So of course, when we went to book, the mini-suites were all gone and our best option was just a balcony room - which seemed very small in the pictures.  HAL had a cruise on the same basic schedule, and their balcony rooms looked less likely to provide a "family bed" from the combination of fold-out couch and bed.  And besides, they offer cooking lessons.  So we changed lines.  My husband is still vowing to spend the entire week in shorts or swimsuit and to avoid formal nights.  Which is fine by me - it means that the 3-suitcase goal of our last cruise is so achievable it isn't even worth worrying about.  Shoot, we can probably do it in 2 suitcases.

 

Except that my daughter keeps letting slip little sentences that start out, "I could bring this for formal night...".  Hope she's okay with our ultra-casual program here.

 

If anything of interest occurs, I'll add it here.  Given our track record, it seems likely.

Lesson for the Day

Cruise Report 5

It was a close call. 

I really don't like having "learning experiences" related in any way to air travel.  And I guess that I'd rather learn the lesson we did than one involving the laws of physics.  Bottom line, though? I want air travel to be boring.

We got off the ship by about 8:30 am, in way too much time for our 6:55 pm flight.  But my husband wanted to hit the road early, and we were sharing a shuttle with my brother's family, who had a much earlier flight, so we found ourselves at the airport with almost 8 hours before our flight was to leave: we couldn't even check our bags for 3 hours.

So we caught a taxi and went to the movies.  The theater was about 10 minutes from the airport.  Watched a hour-and-a-half movie, came outside and called a cab.

At first, we were told one would show up in about 10 minutes.  When we called back 20 minutes later, we got the full story.  In Houston, there is no concept of "dispatching" a cab.  They put a call out, and anyone in the area can opt to answer it.  And nobody did.

After that second call, we started making calls to other cab companies.  And limo services.  And the shuttle service that got us from the ship in the first place.  And even to Enterprise Rental Car, since they'll pick you up – we figured we could pay for a day's rental and not be all that much worse off. 

No luck – none of them were particularly interested in our plight, and Enterprise was closed.  We were starting to get panicky at the 1.5 hour point.

Thank goodness for Google Maps mobile.  I downloaded it on my phone a few months ago, and played with it a little, but it saved us in this situation.  A search for "hotels" put a bunch of red balloons on the map near our current location.  Clicking on them produced a phone number, and I was able to call around to see if they might allow us to pay to use their shuttle.  And the Baymont Inn and Suites near Houston's Hobby airport came to our rescue.  They didn't have to, but I'm sure glad they did!  After starting out with nearly 8 hours to kill, we got back to the airport about 20 minutes before the 2-hour window started – 4:30 pm.  Shaking and nearly in tears, I might add.

So the lesson for the day?  Once you arrive at the airport, DO NOT leave it.  Just get in the uncomfortable seats and hang out.  Because if you leave, you might not be able to get back in time for your flight.

Port Observations

Cruise Report 4

As planned, I really didn't go into Montego Bay at all.  I had a "spa-scursion" - indulged in the $129 in-port "Top to Toe" special, which was a massage and facial combo.  With Mary Anne, who may well hold a record for strongest fingers on the planet.  At various times, I truly thought I could feel them poking out through the side of my body opposite where she was working.  It helped a lot, although not so much with my nasty feet.  The facial was fine as well, although I have to learn.  I just need to skip all the questions on their form regarding my current "regimen" (which doesn't really exist), because my answers, indicating that I wash my face with soap and water and moisturize it with either glycerine-based or shea-butter-based hand cream (it's dry where I live), triggered the sales lecture with extra emphasis on the horrid things I was doing to my skin.  Yeah, whatever.  I still wasn't going to spend upwards of $300 on eye of newt gel, or whatever it was, because I'm not suddenly going to start doing twice daily cleansing and moisturizing when I haven't done anything of the sort for the past 46 years.

After the spa stuff, I went into the Montego Bay port building and checked out the shops there.  Bought a lightweight sundress and a stone necklace and reboarded the ship.  From what I heard, everyone else had fun golfing, horseback riding, or rafting (which I think included a pedicure, of all things).  And no one was robbed at gunpoint or even harassed.  But they did say that nearly everything they passed on the road was surrounded by concertina wire.

Cayman, as mentioned before, was our parasailing adventure.  Afterwards, we just wandered the shops for a while.  I had an entertaining conversation with someone at Columbian Emeralds International, while admiring (from a distance) a bunch of 5-figure jewelry pieces.  Do people really buy that stuff?  The mind boggles.  Cayman also had lots of lizards and tropical birds in cages throughout the shopping district, and many statues of someone called "Big Black Dick".  It was a little too modern for my tastes - I prefer traditional Caribbean architecture, and while there were notes of it here and there, much of the town looked a lot like Denver or Kansas City - pretty generic business buildings.  From other members of the party, we heard that the Captain Marvin stingray tour was seriously boffo.

Cozumel was my favorite.  It had what I liked about Mazatlan, and right near the pier, too.  Lots of colorfully painted stucco and tile buildings, a faint (aesthetically pleasing) air of decrepitude, and a feeling of being somewhere unusual.  We wandered for a while, and then took a taxi ride around the island, came back, and wandered some more.  The water was stunning - I hope my pictures come out.  Bought a bunch of stuff - hammocks, jewelry, terra cotta sun plaques, t-shirts.  And met another dog - something that seems to happen in Mexico for us a lot.  This one was a caramel colored floppy puppy, very friendly, at the place we bought one of the hammocks.  Cozumel was also the one place that moved me to buy a port debarkation photo - me and a shiny Mayan warrior guy (who was probably one of the waiters on the ship).  It made me laugh, and that's always a good thing.

Parasailing is pretty cool!

Cruise Report 3

I really thought it would be scarier.  Our parasailing excursion was a lot of fun, but actually fell into the "pleasant" more than the "exhilarating" category, which was a surprise.  I mean, we were 300 feet in the air, flying like a giant kite at the end of a rope attached to a speedboat.  On paper, it sounds shriek-inducing.  In reality, it's a very smooth ride and you just don't get the feeling that you're high in the air attached to nothing but a giant yellow nylon smiley-face (even though you are), and even when our boat stopped to let us splash into the sea, the descent was gradual and the water was a lovely 80-something degrees.

The only downside to the whole experience was the fact that I should have taken my shorts off and done the whole thing in my swimsuit.  Nothing dries in that climate, so the walking around we did in Grand Cayman after the parasailing was a bit clammy.

While we were on the parasailing boat, we ran across an entire school of flying fish, which were amazing to see up close.  I had always thought they used the bow wave of a boat or ship to take off with, but we saw some that were distant enough from us that we couldn't have been helping them.  Nobody got a picture of them, though - we were too busy pointing and shrieking.

And another useful tidbit about Grand Cayman - the water at the pier is clear enough to see bright blue tropical fish without any of that bother with mask and snorkel - just lean over and have a look.  They don't photograph all that well that way, though.

Stunning - and in a good way, too!

Cruise Report 2

I really did expect to walk onboard and feel like I'd landed in Vegas - all the official and unofficial pictures we'd seen gave me the impression that the ship would be garish and a bit tacky.

Maybe they need to take new pictures.  It wasn't at all - it was simply gorgeous - much nicer than the Diamond Princess, I thought.  The passageways on the stateroom decks seemed to be wider, there was a lot of natural wood (including some gorgeous inlay work), and the colors were warm and soothing, not garish.  It was just a really pretty ship.  On the Promenade deck, they had created a wide walkway bounded on one side by the casino and on the other by a bunch of squishy sofas in groups - a perfect place to hang out and people-watch.  And handy to the coffee bar too.

The reviews I read that said that the ship handled the crowds well were generally right - you could nearly always find someplace public that wasn't particularly crowded - although I must admit that by our third "fun day at sea" we were kind of tired of those of our fellow passengers that were not in our party.  Many of them would have carried out the "landed in Vegas" theme nicely, if the ship had in fact been decorated that way.

One odd note, though.  I was doing laundry on our second sea day - because most of my family drove, we had several day's worth accumulated by then - and heard a familiar bit of background music over the speakers - one of the movements from Mozart's Requiem.  Beautiful stuff, but a Requiem Mass just doesn't put the "fun" in "fun ship" if you ask me.

So, I'm a little confused now, because I had certainly been laboring under the impression that Princess was supposed to be more upscale than Carnival, but the ship itself really didn't bear that out at all.  Go figure...

Stupid freaking feet

Cruise Report 1

I woke up Friday morning with a bit of pain and stiffness in my right ankle, and basically ignored it.  It's done it before and went away, so I figured it would this time, too.  But it was still stiff on Saturday when we got into Galveston, and as the week progressed, the stiffness went away (at least, I think it did) and was replaced by swelling - in both feet.

So my walking shoes got no use at all this cruise.  I spent more time than planned sitting on my balcony with my heels hooked on the rail.  And because my right foot was more prone to swelling than my left, I ended up with a one-shin sunburn, which looks just a bit odd.

I really didn't let the feet stop me, but they slowed me down a little.  I missed one dining room dinner, opting instead for room service (but room service has potato chips, which nowhere else on board has!) and the opportunity to lay around with ice bags on my ankles (or "cankles" in my brother-in-law's terminology - short for calf-ankles, and yes, they really had pretty much merged together.  They looked disgusting).

The plane flight home wasn't tremendously helpful either.  At least I don't have interesting foreign ports beckoning to me anymore, and can choose to sit at my desk with my feet up without exposing them to the Caribbean sun.

One Suitcase, but Four Pairs of Shoes

I came close. 

My husband drove away this morning with 3 pieces of "checked baggage" for the 3 of us, and 2 carry on bags, containing travel clothes for him and our daughter.  And 6 bottles of wine (extra for extended family adults) and her backpack. 

But we did good.  So good, in fact, that when I was looking at the garment bag last night, I realized it had 2 entirely empty shoe pouches, and at the last minute, decided to pack the Birkies and wear the Crocs down to Texas on Saturday.  So I'm up by a pair of shoes from my original goal - but only AFTER everything else was packed and room was available.

I have a very short list left of things to bring with me - so short, in fact,  that if one of the items wasn't my last spare pair of undies (the others DID get packed, so I won't need to do nightly hand-laundry), I could put all of it in a reusable grocery bag.  But I'll use my backpack instead - it zips shut and spares TSA from any unplanned underwear sightings.

So, just one more non-travel day to go - lots of errands to run to get the dogs and cats to their vacation homes, make sure we don't end up with any funny smells in the house on our return (MUST remember to run the garbage disposal!!!), and make the place look inhabited.  It should be a busy day - enough so that it should go pretty quickly.  And our flight's in the morning, thank goodness.

The daughter's friend opted to fly in the end.  So she's sleeping today while the rest of the party is heading south.  Through thunderstorms and tornado warnings, according to the weather channel.  I'm sort of envious - it still beats work - but it will be a tiring drive at best.

So close you can almost taste it

The Carnival website tells me I have 4 days until our cruise.  I have a little over one more workday to get through.

We're mostly packed, although if the suitcases go off tomorrow with no addition to their contents, I'm going to be swishing undies in the sink a lot next week - and I didn't buy any of that kind of detergent.  So we have a few last things to add before we can officially declare victory.

My husband, daughter, and parents are starting to drive down tomorrow morning.  Maybe with my daughter's friend, maybe without her.  Not that she's not going or anything, it's just that she was in England all of the past week and some, and she's apparently really jet-lagged.  So her family is looking into flying her out with us on Saturday instead.  I can sympathize.  It's been over 20 years since I spent a short vacation in England, and I even made it easier by living on the East Coast at the time, and I can still remember how disorienting it was for a couple of days after I got back.

We're working through the final details - getting the animals into their boarding houses, figuring out how many cars are going to the airport, coming up with a way to distribute the wine bottle totes amongst the adults who can bring them onboard.  Even working out the logistics of getting things like swimsuits into the carryon bags so we can spend the hours waiting for our checked bags in the pool.

I've tracked down the webcams for Galveston island, and have been checking out their weather (it looks quite nice down there right now), and even found a bunch of pictures taken on our ship, so I have an idea of what to expect.  It'll be different - they take a very different approach to design than RCI or Princess, I'd say.  Much more Vegas-esque.  Although I don't think the resemblance extends to having people hawking the services of "sex workers" by handing out their baseball cards.  At least, I hope not - that would make for a far too interesting trip.

You know, all our cruises to date have been just my immediate family, and our one extended-family trip, while entertaining, ended with all of us needing not to see the other families for a couple of weeks - we weren't fighting, but we'd had enough togetherness by then.  So I am kind of wondering how that aspect of the upcoming trip will work out.  Three of our cabins are adjoining one another; the other two are about as far from those three and each other as they could get without being on another ship.  The logical conclusion is that the three adjoining cabins will become party central.  The preferred conclusion would be that cabins are private space - a place to get away from everyone without fear of intrusion.  And are we going to end up going everywhere in a mob?  I herd cats for a living, after all, and graduation (party) weekend, where we assumed responsibility for getting all of our out-of-town relatives from event to event, just about did me in.  I think we need some rules.  Maybe these:

• No compulsion to breakfast or lunch with other members of the party - they're both just too hard, and we can't possibly all be on the same schedule.  Some of us are teenage boys, after all.
• For dining in the dining room, we meet at the table.  No waiting around and going in as a group.  It's not like the waiters aren't used to that anyway.
  
• It is perfectly acceptable to want to do something without including other families - and to act on that desire.  A family obviously engaged in something "on their own" becomes automatically invisible to everyone else.
• We should define a mechanism to advertise our whereabouts when we're doing something and would welcome others to join in if they want. Maybe that's what the post-it notes are for.  We could use them like the wipe-off-boards on college dorm room doors.
• Also, for any activities that involve "meet at landmark and X" type plans, we should establish the ice-cream rule: If you're not there by the time it would take ice cream to melt, anyone waiting to meet is free to head off to the planned activity.

Not quite as elegant as my sister's family's food rules, but still potentially helpful, I think.

Hey! We Need More Stuff!

Well, not really.  It's just that I've been saying all along that we were pretty much done shopping and had all our stuff ready to go, and on Saturday morning, we let my husband go to Target with us. 

I can't remember what the original need was.  But we left with 3 bags of stuff, most of it for the cruise.  Bungee Cords, duct tape (in bright sunny spring green), shorts and a cami for the daughter, pantyhose and a slip for me, (more) travel-sized toiletries (and travel-sized Tide!!!), replacement ipod headphones, electronic and pool games (including some fabric-covered sponge balls that will no doubt make us very popular with our fellow cruisers), and a bunch of other things I cannot recall.  Almost none of it was on the list going in.

So do we have everything now?  Probably not.  After all, the luggage doesn't leave for 3 more days, which gives us lots of time to put things in it.  Many things are already packed - we started the luggage stuffing itself on Friday night after work.  And we might actually get onboard with one suitcase each - one of which is the joint hanging bag with our "elegant night" clothes.

So, this time next week, we'll be at sea.  I never know, in the run-up to a cruise, if I should really wallow in anticipation and make that last week almost part of the cruise, or if I should try to get through it as quickly as possible.  The problem is, if this week goes quickly, then it will BE next week and there's no slowing it down even if we wanted to - it'll be over way too soon.  There's no good solution here.

My master lists have 2 blank days on them for today and tomorrow.  That can't be good.  Wonder what I'm forgetting?

Apart from the travel sized toothpaste, that is.  And maybe some more packets of detergent...  And some more clothespins...

The luggage has been tagged

My sister is awesome.

Carnival provides luggage tags in their electronic boarding paperwork, and when you print them out on your home printer, they're obviously not showing up on cardstock (they could, if you go get some, but most people don't).  So the tags themselves have all sorts of "fold this in thirds - do not cut" instructions on them, folding in thirds apparently to beef up the strength of the cheap recycled printer paper everyone has, in the hope that they won't rip off while being manhandled onto the ship.

Not us, though.  My sister printed out, folded, and laminated tags for all of us, and provided cable ties to attach them with.  Barring some sort of natural disaster, they are not going to come off.  And they're on our suitcases - I put them there last night.

I also found my travel hairdryer, our tiny alarm clock, and the nightlight last night, and added them to the pile in the closet.  The pile is getting kind of big, and I began to suspect this morning that I might have non-cruise clothes buried in it somewhere.

So, I just scrolled down a bunch of posts to find my last "T-10" entries, and they involved blizzards.  I am so amazingly grateful to be going to sea bound for warm climates during the summer this trip - it has simplified everything!  The words "hiking boots" or "coats" are not on any lists this time.

I had been searching for travel-sized laundry detergent last night, without luck.  What I want is those little boxes that come out of dispensers in laundromats - maybe 2 of them.  What I found in the luggage store was tiny pouches of Woolite, just right for swishing the undies in the sink, or "airline-safe" packets of dried soap leaves, also perfect for swishing the undies in the sink.  And while I find Rick Steves very enjoyable to watch, the ship has laundry facilities and I want to take advantage of them.  No sink-swishing.  I was whining about this to my husband this morning, and he comes forth with a volley of sense.  "Just get a travel-sized plastic bottle and fill it from the detergent in the house," he said. 

Doh!  Gotta learn to step back occasionally.  Can't think out of the box if I can't see it.

T-11 again!

We leave in 11 days!  And I am so beyond ready.  Mentally, that is.  We're not much on the way to being packed and organized just yet.  And we need to be. 

One week from tomorrow, my husband, daughter, her friend, and my parents all set out to drive down to Galveston with most of my luggage (and theirs - there will be plenty of room, since I'm only taking one suitcase, in case I didn't mention it).  The day after that, I take off from work to get the cats and dogs to "camp" (my term, not theirs, probably), and our flight down is on Saturday.

Between now and then, my husband has to go to an out-of-town conference, so he has to be packed and unpacked (and laundered, no doubt) twice.  And my daughter's friend is currently in Europe, due to return next Wednesday.  I'm sure she'll make it back in time, but it's a good thing no one's counting on her to drive - she will probably spend the trip down sleeping somewhere.

I've made up a countdown schedule, with tasks to do every night after work.  If we stick to the schedule, we'll probably make it okay.

And then suddenly everyone got sick

Hopefully, this is a good sign - we still have time to get over it all before leaving.

Last Friday, my sister came down with a nasty stomach virus that put her hard down for the better part of three days.

Last Tuesday, my dad caught a cold that wiped out his ability to speak for a couple of days.

This morning, my daughter and husband were both exhibiting signs of having caught my sister's virus (without any contact with her at all, so it must be something going around).

I feel peculiarly light-headed at the moment, but not exactly sick, so I'm hoping I've dodged the bullet so far.

With luck, this means we're getting all this out of our systems prior to sailing. We've done the "sick while on a cruise" thing - bronchitis, not Norwalk, in case you were wondering - and it does cramp one's style. And I left on my first cruise with a fistful of antibiotics to help me get over the last lingering bits of the flu (and they handily allowed me to eat in Mexico without dwelling on the possible after-effects).

But since everyone's apparently so susceptible just now, I think that I will have to bring rather more intellectually challenging books with me, to keep my mind from thinking I'm on a vacation and finally have time to be sick. No bodice-rippers by the pool; I'll have to read Origin of Species or the general theory of relativity or something. Not like I haven't done that before: the book I chose to read by the pool on our last cruise was Charles Williams' Descent Into Hell. I hope no one read anything into that choice...

Shooting for the one-suitcase challenge

One month from yesterday, we will have debarked, boarded our Super Shuttle to the airport, and flown home from our cruise. I'd be all bummed thinking about it, but that actually means that we only have a little over 3 weeks until we fly to Houston to get on the cruise - and that's a good thing!

The weather around here is altogether too reminiscent of our cruise to Alaska several years ago - grey, cloudy, drizzly, and offering a view of snow-covered peaks. Great for tourism, those snow-covered peaks, if anyone was still in the mood to go skiing in mid-May (actually, I do have a few friends...). The snow contrasts nicely with all the green around town - with the drizzle, the plants are very happy just now. So it would look very pretty if the sun would just make an appearance, already. The weatherman promises we'll see it tomorrow. Of course, I think he said that about today, too. Weird spring for here, that's all.

So, we're in the home stretch, I'd say. And I've been refining the wardrobe a bit. Cruise Diva says to pick a color scheme and plan your cruise wardrobe around it. On previous cruises, I haven't really tried that - at least, not all that hard. But for this one, now that I've overcome the 3-pairs-of-shoes challenge, it's time to shoot for the 1-suitcase challenge. So my color scheme is "Navy Blue and things that go with it, mostly". I didn't say I was good at it. But here's what I've come up with:

5 pairs of shorts - 2 good for shore excursions and 3 good for eating on casual nights - in navy, black, and shades of khaki (bet you didn't think khaki came in shades, did you?).
A boatload of shirts in purple, yellow, navy, green, black, and white (things that go with the shorts)
2 formal/elegant night dresses in prints that include black or navy and purpleish colors (BTW, that they fit the color scheme is pretty much sheer chance - no planning involved)
Maybe a navy skirt (if it fits in the suitcase)
Swimsuits, which don't have to match anything.
And, of course, the 3 pairs of shoes - black heels, brown birkies, and white sneakers.

One suitcase for a week-long cruise - and not one the size of a semi. It can be done.

Mission Accomplished

One shopping mall, one hour, two dresses, one swimsuit. Triumph.

Some days, the planets are just in alignment. And it was an outlet mall, to boot. I think, perhaps, I may never shop anywhere else again - there's no point.

If you were to go into my closet now, you'd find that I own jeans and t-shirts and sweaters from the Eddie Bauer outlet, polo and dress shirts from the Ralph Lauren outlet, and now, two dresses from the Jones New York outlet.

Another checkmark for the giant list o' stuff to do. One a day, that's all I ask, and we just might make it.

And there was much rejoicing

The dress is done, and the dining room looks like a dining room again (except for the sewing machine itself, which I need to find a new home for anyway, since we tore down its closet a while back). The last step was to finish sewing on some bead trim which looked really nice in the store.

Nice, it was not. 1/2" satin ribbon with 1" strings of beads suspended from one edge about every 1/4". The night before last, I sewed its top edge (bead-free) to the dress, and last night, I did the beaded edge.

Beads tangle in thread. In order to affix the stuff properly, I had to put a stitch in every other space between bead strings, and on about half of them, I'd guess, the thread wrapped itself around the beads. My husband had on a loud movie, which was a good thing, since it prevented his hearing what I was muttering to myself.

But it's done.

My husband is already talking about getting suitcases out of the attic - it's dawned on him that we're less than a month away, and we have way too much to do in the interim as it is. But if he gets the suitcases out, then they're in the way while we host out of town relatives for my daughter's graduation party, which was the real reason I had to get the dress done and get the dining room cleaned out.

And I still don't have even one dress identified for formal nights, much less two. And I need to find a swimsuit.

This weekend. No excuses. Dress and Swimsuit or bust. And a bunch of other stuff while I'm at it. Eek!

(almost) Ex-Seamstress, and Karaoke?

One more stretch of handsewing, and my sister's dress is done! I could go on and on about black fabric, especially black polyester crepe, but I think I actually already have... Anyway, after 3 false starts on moving seams and darts a bit, including an episode of accidentally ripping out the seam I just put in, instead of the one it meant to replace (complete with swearing), the minor alterations are done, the zipper's in, the hem's on, and the trim is half-attached. That's the last stretch to do. And then I can hand it over, clean up the dining room, and go find myself something to wear, other than just shoes. Although, Carnival didn't exactly prohibit nudity on formal night in their new policy... Naaah, my skin doesn't look all that dressy, I'm afraid.

Got the phones set up to work internationally - one of our key takeaways from our last cruise. It will be crucial to have them working since it's likely that we'll be going in many directions once on shore - and I'd just like to make sure everyone's accounted for. Occasionally. More often than the kid would like, I'm sure, and not quite enough for my personal comfort.

So, the big question on my mind at the moment (heaven knows why) is whether, at 80, looking back on my life, I will regret not having tried to do Karaoke on this cruise. I sorta want to, and I'm entirely certain I will make an idiot of myself if I do, so I also sorta don't want to. Maybe right after we find the bar with the better variety of single malts...

Swimsuit and shoe shopping

On Saturday, once the carpet cleaning guy had done his magic, my daughter and I went out to try to find me a swimsuit for the trip, and look at shoes for her (I thought that part was cruise-related, but she didn't, really).

Shoes, for once, were easy (and yes, I know I said that about the red torture devices I bought for my last cruise). The kid got a pair of Rocket Dog Mary Jane sneakers in blue plaid (there is no accurate way to describe these shoes in less than a complete paragraph), and a new pair of Teva flip-flops. Both of which will probably come on the ship with us, but won't be worn at formal night, which I had sort of thought was the point of the shopping.

I found a pair of lowish (less than 2") heel slides in black, similar to a white pair that I own and like, that are a bit dressier than my old standby "black dress shoes". And that's great - it would, however, be nice to find a dress to go with them. More on that further along...

Next on the agenda was a trip to look for swimsuits for me. I have the one I wore on our last cruise, and it's okay, but it's a tankini, and I just don't really like how it fits. So we did the Lands' End store at Sears (which was, unfortunately, nearly all tankinis all the time), and various other stores at the local mall. No joy. I'm pretty tall, and the suits I tried on all succeeded in making me look short and squatty. Weird effect, really. I'm actually starting to wonder if I wouldn't look better in a bikini of some sort, which is a strange thought for someone my age.

We also looked around a bit for dresses. I found one I loved (and another two not so much), but it didn't fit, either. I may hunt around to see if it comes in my size anywhere, because it really was cute - or I may find myself with another sewing project on my hands if I'm not careful. At least my sister's dress is close to being done.

I typed out my entire planned wardrobe for the cruise today, and I think I'm going to make that 1-suitcase goal. It's so nice not to see items like "hiking boots" or "heavy coat" on the list for once!