When Life Imitates Porn

Not to rush away from the Alys memorial post (this one and that one both being backdated - I'm actually typing a week or so later in February), but I so rarely have an anecdote worth sharing.

So, on the night Alys fell into a coma, I had just found out that I didn't make the cut for jury duty again and - having been called and rejected twice - my service was now complete. Rats, but just as well, because I wanted to be able to take Alys to the vet in the morning if she seemed uncomfortable. (She didn't, but she deserved a second opinion.) Meanwhile, I was a bit sick myself, but nothing major. All of these factors in place, I called in for a sub.

Mike, being in Australia and thus limited to Skype while being distracted with writing his daily six-page paper for an intense two-week part of course he's doing for a grad program (which requires that he travel back and forth to Australia throughout this year), didn't quite catch that I had called in.

Around 1:00 a.m. Alys slipped away from us and past the velvet rope that leads to invitation-only access to Hammie Heaven, and by now I was in an ouchie state that required the force of a leftover Tylenol 3. I already had my sub, so why not conk?

Because it was 1:30 a.m. and I felt like poo, there wasn't much I could do with little Alys, so I laid her out on tissues on the carpet, next to her hamitat. (I couldn't leave her body in there with Vanessa and Caroline. They had both, especially Caroline, been covering her up all night and fussing over her. I had to even take Caroline out for a bit because in the early stages she kept trying to rouse her mother and sometimes drag her to their main nest.) I went to sleep.

I never heard the doorbell ring 20 times. I never heard the knocking. I never heard anything until my eyes flew open as my bedroom door was being opened.

A man stood there.

"Um, hello?" I started to sit up, not processing anything, thank goodness, or I probably would've had a heart attack on the spot.

"I'm with the fire department?" the man said, and he did have that sort of look about him.

I paused. Even in my groggy but very startled state, this didn't seem to be how people were usually rescued from fires.

"Is everything okay?" I asked. (Thinking, "Oh, crap. Am I going to have to evacuate? With all these hamsters?")

"We're here because your husband hadn't heard from you in eleven hours."

What?

"Um, my husband is in Australia."

"Yeah... We know."

You can guess what happened. Mike didn't see/hear from me before I went to work. He knew my jury duty was cancelled, so why didn't I come on to Skype to say bye? That's what we do every morning, then he goes to bed right after I leave. I only wouldn't do it if I were physically unable...

All Mike could think about was how I'd been in some pain last night, restless and whimpering (it was unusually bad), and he remembered that I took a Tylenol 3 once Alys no longer needed me, but he didn't really think it through that I took the pill too late in the evening to be able to go to work the next day.

So, Mike called my work and was relieved to hear that I had a sub... but 11 hours? When normally I call eight hours a big stretch?

Mike called the property manager, Frances. He begged her to go inside and check on me, but she said she couldn't without permission... which is bizarre, since we're both on the lease and his permission has been good enough in the past to let in workers, etc. But what she could do is come around and knock and ring the doorbell, which she did to no answer. He called her back, and she suggested 911. He pointed out that he was in Australia. (Does anyone know how to call Las Vegas 911 from Australia?) She called 911 for him.

And some minutes later (the fire station is right around the corner), I had four fire department personnel standing in my bedroom - three guys and a woman. (Something for everyone's fantasy, I suppose. And yes, to answer everyone's question, they were all totally young and cute.)

The woman said, "We're going to have to ask you some questions." (I'm still sitting up in bed, looking amazed.) "What day is it?" "What year is it?" And then from the lead guy: "How many pills did you take?"

All I can say is that I'm glad, on this rare occasion, I'd gone to bed with a t-shirt and pants.

"Do you require any further medical attention?"

No, but I figured him asking that meant that I could check "yes" next to "Did you see a doctor?" on the absence forms teachers have to fill out.

Of course, the worst part was that the floor was in need of a vacuum and the kitchen countertops were messy. I reassured Mike on Skype (who thought I'd be mad, but no, just still stunned, as so many of us are when the fire department comes to the foot of the bed to wake us up) then quickly did ten minutes' worth of housework and pretended it looked that way when they came in.

I try not to dwell on whether or not they saw Alys lying in state like a tiny Lenin. (Well, our hamsters are Russian dwarves.) At least they didn't have a camera crew, which in 2012 is always a real concern. (Like the time I pulled to the highway shoulder in Austin for a flat tire, circa 1994, and a police officer, perhaps trying to look extra macho for his TV people who stood around while I shuffled laundry in my trunk to get to the spare, issued me a citation. A citation for having a flat tire.)

Alys was nicely put to rest later that day, and the school secretary laughed to hear about the firemen, which is good since every teacher knows that you never, ever, ever piss off the school secretary, and dealing with your distraught Aussie husband in the middle of a busy day might've qualified as that.

And so this was the story of the night Alys died and Mike got to look like the sweetest husband on Earth (which he is), while I got to look like some pill-poppin' dead hamster hoarder. I expect the Bob Dylan ballad will run seven, maybe eight minutes. Movie rights sold separately.

Previously: Alys

Alys

Alys, gentle mother of so many little hamsters, many of whom arrived two weeks after we adopted her and her companions, many of whom we suspect to be her offspring as well.

She lived a low-key life, always sweet and never fussed, with her daughters Caroline and Vanessa. And like many of her daughters (Adora Belle, Madeleine, Vanessa, and probably Charlotte), she developed tumours fairly early on. Luckily hers didn't keep her from running in the wheel or playing peekaboo in the cottage, and she seemed to always be happy.

After all, this is how we adopted her:

And soon after there was, with help from the fellow in the lower right corner above (the SPCA is historically not-so-hot at separating males from females), a lot of this:

For a year and a little over two months, we've had eighteen (18!) dwarf hamsters, all just about the same age. I wish we had fewer, just so we could spoil each one better, especially since this lot will be the last. But at the same time, I wouldn't give up any of them. (Although, as I said on Facebook a few months ago, "I just realized that we're the Duggars of the hamster world.")

Alys lived at least 17 months, and I'm guessing it's a lot closer to 20 months or beyond. A goodly age either way for a dwarf hamster with tumours and litters and an early life of stress. We miss her, our last matriarch, but we are, as always, grateful for good lives and peaceful ends. Love and kisses and all the tofu you want, little Alys.

Previously: And I Actually Need to Buy Some Dishwashing Soap

And I Actually Need to Buy Some Dishwashing Soap

This post is completely inspired by just having watched a commercial for Dawn dishwashing detergent with Olay inside. It's not really about the soap - although we are out - but about the cute little sponge featured in the commercial.

YouTube has any number of Dawn commercials, but not the one with the pink sponge with fuschia daisies in it.

I actually have pink daisies in our kitchen right now. Ooo.

Half-price at Fresh and Easy, even. (Which is my most recent Yelp review and finally puts me past 100. Maybe I can stop now. Maybe I'll opine here again instead.)

Maybe it's the 2 a.m. talking, and the way The Bob Newhart Show is on the television (which just led to me downloading a sample of Marcia Wallace's autobiography), and the fact that I'm on Day 8 of a strangely nasty cold but really must go to work in five hours despite flip-flop sleep and continuing oogeyness what with having missed the last four days and final exams started in six hours... but I thought I'd catch up the unseen world on what's happening with me these days.

Oh and look, I just did.

By the way, I'm not happy with everything that's on the fridge door. I come from a people who prefer, to this day, a silky smooth refrigerator front. And although Mike and I have collected a few cherished magnets, it's a careful collection, and things like free business magnets get put in clutter drawers if we like the business, then eventually thrown away when my WASPy upbringing manages to wrestle for itself a little extra forebrain.

But it's not the magnets that bother me, but the big empty (and ugly) notepad that I won't let myself take down until we plan more meals, damnit, and the card on the left that I made for Mike some years back and that, when told last year to find a home for it so it would stop looking out of place in the bedroom bookcase, he chose to stick where you see it now. So now I scroll back up to the photo and think, awww, him placing the card there is more touching than me gluing it together in the first place. Of course that's where it must stay.

But the big notepad has got to go.

And speaking of "got to go" - I have a few hours left to lie awake and wonder how I'm going to function, even as proctor and especially as freeway driver, on reduced mental capacity as I go to work at bedtime and come home after 24 hours of being awake.

How I envy those of you who can just... sleep.

Previously: Alpha 2 Zulu

Alpha 2 Zulu

When not feeling sad/guilty about all the posts I don't write (because I'm just a hack for the Yelp man, doncha know, as I try to hit 100 reviews before winter break ends), I like to counter the blank spaces with inane fodder such as follows:

What my browser autofills in for me when I type each letter of the alphabet.

(Hopefully nothing embarassing. Let's see.)

A is for Ancestry.com, where I don't currently have a subscription.

B is for BestBuy.com, where they're never going to list the Canon 7D for half-off Amazon's price, but I keep checking anyway.

C is for CNN.com. My apologies to my dad. I swear I must never go to URLs that start with a C because I usually go weeks if not months without checking this site. How in the world does it beat out Chase.com?

D is for Docs.Google.com. Right on.

E is for eBay.

F is for Facebook. Sorry, Flickr.

G is for Gmail.

H is for some convoluted long URL that leads to HSBC which is where I make those 0% promotional interest-free payments on the television we finally bought last summer.

I (is for something else below, I'm using the pronoun here) almost wrote a whole post about credit card tomfoolery recently, specifically about how misleading the billing period and the payment date can be. To wit: I made a payment on the 5th of the month. The due date was on the 19th. I then made a payment on the 25th of the same month, anticipating that it would be applied to the due date of the 19th the next month. (In each case I paid at least 4x the monthly minimum.)

The next month, I made a payment on the 20th, remembering that I'd last paid on the 25th and not wanting more than 30 days to go by without a payment. (Because of grace periods and whatnot.) I also figured it was the earliest I could pay for the following month, since the due date had just passed the day before.

Ha! I was slammed with a $30 late fee, a new monthly minimum, an interest charge, and a new scary-number APR.

This happened because, and I know you already figured this out, although my due date was on the 19th, my billing period ended on the 26th. So, when I paid the next month's bill early, it was really just going on the same bill, even though the due date was almost a week earlier. Then, when I thought I was paying the next bill as early as possible (on the 20th), it thought it was a late payment for the month that had just passed.

I called HSBC('s headquarters in India, from the accent) and was very sweet and asked if, in the light of my history (always on time, always paying extra, sometimes making extra payments), someone might see if something could be done. I barely had the words out (again, SWEETLY) before Raj (or Jimmy, as I think he announced himself) in full exasperation started trying to explain where I'd gone wrong.

I stayed sweet (I swear!) even though if there's something on my grrr list it's a customer service person trying to calm me down before I'm become angry. I know they probably just had to deal with 100 ragey, abusive idiots, but I'm nice. Like, I usually end any customer service call blushing and skipping because I've been complimented to bits about how patient/nice/understanding/joyous I am. I'm a bit of a dream, frankly.

And thus I hung in there, acknowledging quite humbly that I totally knew it was my error (but perhaps someone could note that I'd clearly thought I was doing a good thing) and Jimmy-Raj said he would check to see what he could do, and by this time he realized that I was not the usual devil, so when he came back on the line, everything was great - all charges removed and the promotional 0% APR restored with full honors, and we were besties and blah blah honey flies vinegar bad etc.

I'm just sharing that because a) remember that your due date is not the end of your billing period, and b) sometimes life is fair.

I is for IMDB.com. Really?

J is for JoyStiq.com... because I celebrate the Feast of Winter Veil more than I do Christmas, these days. Sorry, Coca-Cola.

K is for KVVU.com - where I usually go instead of CNN. I don't know why. I don't even like the news. I think I went for one story then at some point just typing "k" to see if the news was still insipid became a habit.

L is for LVCCLD.org, our public library, now serving e-books to Kindle owners. (But not making it easy to search for e-books because the same database also includes digital audio books. Why? So, every time I see a title I want, I notice that it's only available in WMA format. Then I go steal the book off IRC... in my imagination, because I'm law-abiding. Very law abiding. That's not even my sarcastic voice. Some of us have future emigration to think about, you know. Remember Meg Ryan's character in French Kiss? I can't afford to be without a country. I don't want to live in an airport.)

M is for Maps.Google.com. I like to stalk the places I used to be and street-view the places I'm about to go.

N is for Netflix. No, I didn't jump ship this summer. See also comments on new TV.

O is for OfficeMax. The August spent constantly checking flyers stays with me. Also, I have a gift card I need to use there.

P is for Pinterest. I love Pinterest so much, I will link my page of pins again: Pinterest!

Q is for QueenMary.com. I think it's my only starts-with-q Q-URL.

R is for Norwegian Pearl Roll Call on Cruise Critic. Odd. Anyway, it's not like I'm going to any meet and greets, so I'm guess I'm just a creeper.

S is for Subscribed threads on Cruise Critic. (One of which is the Roll Call. Heh.)

T is for Typepad.com, which I use to type this, because I haven't had a chance to convert everything to WordPress and do all the fiddly things to keep URLs intact.

U is for The Undermine Journal. You don't want to know. (Nerdy World of Warcraft stuff.)

V is for VirginAmerica.com. Someday they're going to drop those First Class rates, they really are.

W is for Woot.com. As in, "I have a post in progress saved from last month where I talk about all my Woot shirts, but I can't finish it because I can't remember them all, and this is why I no longer participate in Woot's mystery random shirts - that, and Mike keeps complaining about having to find more hangers, and let's not even get started on how I've never actually worn one. Like I said, a whole other post.")

X is for XE.com. Did I even go here in 2011?

Y is for Yelp.com. Of course.

Z is for ... a URL I think I'd rather not give out. It's a little too powerful for my taste. (In fact, I'm going to turn off comments so no one guesses.)

So there we have it, my personal dot-com Monopoly board. Now back to eating jalapeno gouda, watching Twilight Zone, enjoying those rare few weeks of open windows (61 = perfect!), and not thinking about next week.

Next up: everything I've learned over Winter Break. (Basically, cilantro granita will change how you think about food, and Arkansas Black apples are mealy and bleh, even if you buy them at Whole Foods.)

Previously: Smitten with Written Kitten

Smitten with Written Kitten

My teeth are pretty normal again. (I had forgotten what it was like to be able to brush behind my back molars!) So, while mine wasn't really a horror story (just horrible pain and meds that worked like my hatchback climbing the mountain to Big Bear Lake, and I'll remind you that this past summer that ended with an overheated engine and a night's car rental), Mike has learned to not reassure people that wisdom tooth extractions are "easy" or "pretty painless" or "no big deal." And I have learned that "I will eat soup all the time! Soup is good!" convictions pass pretty quickly once the ability to gnaw returns.

(But Plan Alaska is still underway. In baby steps. The kind of baby steps infants take when they're just dangling from their father's arms and being hopefully swirled and dipped over the carpet.)

I was just on MeFi where someone made a post about writtenkitten. You get a photo of a kitten for every 100 words you write. (Excuse me while I paste this in.)

The 156 words above got me this cutie:

Now back to Facebook, where I'm (surely) boring people with too many status updates (three in one evening!), with at least one being - (Susan from Coupling voice) APPARENTLY! - too subtly silly to avoid a rather pointed comment from an acquaintance about (APPARENTLY!) having too much time on my hands.

I have always found them curious, those people who begrudge others for a little mental frolicking on their own dimes. They're not unlike those who proudly say "I have a life" when you're eagerly describing something they find frivolous. I suppose I should be grateful they even took the time away from their cancer-curing and world peace-bringing thinktank to give me those four tired words.

And for that rant I get two kittens!

Discussion topics from recent status updates (and no, I didn't post each one individually - I'm a bore but not completely uncouth in social networking etiquette):

• What's up with the Obama-Gillard press conference where, when answering a question, the President suddenly referred to the Aussie Prime Minister as "Julia"? I even asked on MeFi - no responses.
• So, I have ordinary UV and/or polarizing filters on my lenses, which makes me wonder what effect they have on my photos when they cover the nice glass. (Okay, so only two lenses have nice-ish, not L-quality but well-rated, glass. And I only have four lenses.) I've seen people be persuasive in both directions, and for years I've just left the filters on to protect the glass, rarely even caring about twirling the polarizer. But maybe I should be thinking lens hoods instead? (But they're kind of expensive. But you can make your own! But those aren't very sturdy. Unless you get ambitious! But I'm not ambitious.)
• Who was our "greatest ally" before the President said this morning that it was Australia? Is there a timeline somewhere? Seriously, because I really thought it might be Canada. Or is Canada more like family and not in the running? How does the UK feel? Was Obama really referring to just Australia or to the whole Commonwealth?
• I can't decide if Pumpkin-Nutmeg Dinner Rolls would be just so fragrant and interesting or a dense, sickly mess.

I get another kitten!

(These photos are all CC licensed for sharing. I'm assuming, per my own Flickr CC designations, that the direct link and HTML title tags are sufficient attribution.)

I best shut up before I become a full-on cat lady. (Not that there's anything wrong with that... unless you are already a full-on hamster lady.)

Previously: In The Place Where They Call Me Diane

In The Place Where They Call Me Diane

Greetings from Vicodin City, where the Fire Demons and Angels of Ache must keep 50 feet away from the city's enameled walls, and nobody ever poops!

Last Friday morning I had my wisdom teeth (plus a bonus molar) extracted.

Three hours later, we were sitting in a CVS parking lot. Mike was on the phone to AAA, urging them to hurry as his wife was in pain and needed to take her medicine with food. My memory is in snippets. Screaming. Writing "GAUZE! GAUZE!" on the back of an envelope. The AAA guy arriving while Mike was still across the street at the (usual) dentist (not where the surgery took place) getting gauze because CVS was a madhouse. Blood running out of my mouth and down my neck. The AAA guy looking rather spooked. Somewhere in this, our battery was replaced.

I remember throwing bloody gauze down to the floorboards. That was over five days ago. Some warm days ago. I hope it's not still there.

By Friday evening I was feeling better, although it meant supplementing the Vicodin with 800mg ibuprofen.

Saturday was worse. The stiffness that sets in overnight, and all that. The cracked corners of my mouth from where they'd been stretched. So nice for the "care" bag to include lip balm. (And gauze, oops. Not that it would've been enough.) I found myself clenching, over and over, especially if I waited five hours to take another Vicodin. (You can take it every four hours, but the pharmacist said not to take more than five per day. So, I tried to hold out a little each time.)

Sunday was much the same.

On Monday I was writing on Facebook, feeling guilty about missing work and wondering if I was supposed to be better. People were reassuring.

Don't think I wasn't on FB before that, though. My first update came less than an hour after we left CVS:

"Can't believe am already writing on FB. 45 minutes ago was screaming and crying in car for more gauze to bite on (like bullet) while waiting on AAA to fix battery. (See Mike's post.) Vicodin is NOT cutting it, but added ibuprofen and can now grunt short phrases with some coherency. Woke up in chair at the end to "Breathe, Shari, breathe!" over and over. Heard someone say "very bad sleep apnea." Really? Frozen peas are on face - only the site of worst impact hurts now. Am thinking of Tom Hanks with ice skate in Castaway and trying to keep perspective..."

Sleep apnea? I'll think about it later.

On Tuesday I was definitely feeling improvement. At last! And there I was worried about dry socket. Whew!

I didn't take any Vicodin, first because I felt I could get by on 800-1000mg ibuprofen, and later... when I was on my 10th ibuprofen within a two-hour space... because the thought of taking another Vicodin scared the poo out of me.

Or rather, I wish it did.

Yes, yesterday I learned all about the fizzy grape drink bottled under the name Magnesium Citrate. And 90 minutes later, I learned even more. I learned through tears and whimpers and swallowed screams. And I learned that no painkiller was worth the kind of constipation where, even if you've had nothing but pudding and soup and mashed potatoes for five days, there are tears and whimpers and swallowed screams.

But then this morning, on my "well, I know I'm doing better, but let's take this last day to really rest and do things right" day, I woke up around 10 a.m. with Firejaw.

Firejaw = burning, swollen heat around where the worst impacted tooth was. (Ironically, this is the tooth that has given me the very least amount of trouble over the years. I'm not sure it ever really was a problem, maybe because it barely erupted, what with being all sideways.)

There, see it on the lower left side? The white smear whose roots are outside of the picture?

And above it you can see the broken nub of a wisdom tooth that started all the trouble, along with the molar that it partially ate, its cohort in urgency.

(If you can't see, click to enlarge in a popup window.)

Before I went to sleep, I was tossing and turning over a strong ache in my lower jaw, on the side of the Bad Ex-Tooth but more forward. But like I said, I woke up with Firejaw, and the pain was very definitely around the area where the tooth used to be. (It's hard to tell when heat and pain are radiating.)

That was at 10:00, so that's when I took 800mg ibuprofen.

At 10:30 I took a Vicodin.

At 10:55 I took 200mg more of ibuprofen.

At 11:15 I called the dentist office. They got me into a post-op appointment this afternoon. (Or I could've had them call the oral surgeon - which was already an option because he gave me his 24/7 cell number - but it seemed better to have someone actually look in my mouth.)

At 12:00 I was feeling okay. I called my Dad. "You sound terrible."

It's nearly 1:00 and I'm still feeling okay. I want a nap, but my appointment is in about an hour.

Tomorrow is a staff day. (With the new policy that if I miss it, I have to make it up with an administrator before and after school next week.) Grades for the quarter are due on Monday by the end of the school day. I've missed six days of school. (Two before surgery due to pain, one for surgery, and now three for recovery.) Let's NOT think about that today, though, okay?

So, that is life with me. (OH NICE. I'm here eating yogurt while I type, and an inch's worth of stitching just came out of my mouth. Sadly, it's the chewiest thing I've had since last week.)

UPDATE (5:00 p.m.)

Hooray - the doc did some poking and irrigating and says that all is well. Unfortunately, they had to take so much bone (see new X-Ray, above), that it's not surprising that I'm still needing this much painkilling power. But no dry socket, no infection, no trapped food - and no more soft foods and especially no more guilt. So happy! (Hurty, but happy.)

END OF UPDATE

Oh, other than my father-in-law just booked a cruise for the four of us (me, Mike, him, his wife Carol) to go to Alaska! this summer on Norwegian Pearl.

Alaska!

(Sorry HAL, but you were charging insanely higher rates to book from Australia, which we could've worked around, but it offended my father-in-law - who cruised HAL as recently as September - immeasurably to discover he had to pay so much more just for being an Aussie. And no, it's not because of fees or exchange rates - the Australian dollar is stronger than ours at the moment. In fact, their better economy is probably why HAL dares to charge more there.)

(Sorry Carnival, but we can't handle yet another Spirit cruise, especially since it means no thermal suite of any kind. And frankly, your "2.0" upgrades are disappointing to this vegetarian, but that's another post, and the hype surrounding them is even worse. I love John Heald's blog, but the way he now compares everything good to a Guy Fieri burger, and calls the Fieri burger the very best in the world, is laying the promotion on a bit thick. I don't even like Guy Fieri's shows.)

(Sorry, Princess, but we're tempted by the freestyle dining and all of the extra dining options. Sure, there's an upcharge for many of them, but we're used to paying even more for Carnival's steakhouse.)

(Sorry, Disney. I don't think my in-laws are into your product the way we are, and even though we do love The Mouse, we don't want to pay more money to eat with strangers.)

(Sorry, Royal Caribbean. Um. What is it that you offer again? And justify charging more than NCL and Carnival for? I speak of the Alaskan cruises here. Let me know.)

I can't wait to be excited about Alaska! Academically I know that someday soon the thought of ten restaurants on board will mean something other than "Ow" to me.

And that day, when it comes, and please let it come soon, will stretch and stretch into a period of continued deprived longing, because if I'm going to Alaska! this summer with my (never met in person before, picture-takin') in-laws, to Alaska!, where things like hikes around glaciers are meant to be breathtaking in a way that doesn't cause alarm in others, someone is going to have to wake up her Wii Fit avatar again.

Eight months. That's about how long I had before Mike came to the States the first time and we planned a big whirlwind trip to Walt Disney World and Las Vegas. And I "got ready." By the time his plane landed, I still felt like a cow who was only halfway done with her weight loss (and I was), but when I look at the pics now, I sure wouldn't mind rolling back to that point.

Fatty McFatpants at Mt. Charleston, February 2001.

So, we will consider the soft foods (minus the pudding) of the past near-week to be a fortuitous start to, well, something I've done so many times before, but without any real earnestness for six or so years.

Alaska!

P.S. The title of the post? My middle name is Diane. For some reason, the office where I had my oral surgery had me down as preferring to go by my middle name. So, at first, everyone was calling me Diane. I felt a bit Shirley Jacksonish, and thank goodness the surgeon's name wasn't Dr. Harris, but after I corrected the staff, I sort of missed Diane. How often do I get to use my middle name? So, Diane is my dental name. But Shari's the one going to Alaska!

Previously: And then, 23 years later, I visited the dentist again.

And then, 23 years later, I visited the dentist again.

There comes a point where you put off going to the dentist for so long that it becomes, in your head that now may or may not have cavities (paging Dr. Schrodinger, DDS), too embarrassing to go to the dentist.

After a wonderful evening remembering why Lindsey Buckingham is one of the top live performers today (a sentiment deserving its own blog post, but you know I'll never get around to it), my face was brutally ripped open from nose to neck.

Or that's what it felt like. And then the evil spirits brought out the lemon juice cauldrons.

Yeah, felt more like that.

x50.

My mother always warned me, way back when, that if I didn't get my wisdom teeth out, then SOMEDAY, and that day WOULD be a weekend, Bad Things Would Happen.

And, if right now you're incarcerated in a posh prison with internet access but with most of the internet blocked, perhaps you've read all of my past posts when I thought Bad Things were happening, but then the pain subsided and I settled back into denial. "Hey, I've lasted this long."

And if you're perhaps a psychic prisoner, maybe an X-man of sorts, and that's why they keep you locked up but also restrict your ability to spend time on better sites, then maybe you remember all those blog posts I didn't write, like about the time one erupted wisdom tooth cracked (April 2009), or the time the gum next to that wisdom tooth was starting to shrink away from the perfectly good tooth next to it (2010?), or the time the now-jutting-out no-longer-so-perfectly-good bystander tooth just broke in half while I was eating (date erased by denial mechanisms).

If you don't pay the Tooth Fairy, she charges interest.

And so, per the title, today I found myself back at the dentist at last.

Things have definitely changed. I filled out a questionnaire online the night before, where I got to rate my level of fear associated with going to the dentist ("moderate") and share what I thought the dentist should know. (I wrote about how disgusted I was with myself, but the character limit is about a fourth of a tweet, so I had to settle for "Haven't been to the dentist in 23 years. Appalling!")

I don't know if that's why they gave me the super-nice dentist and technician, or maybe they're all that way. By the time the X-rays were underway, I wasn't even scared. But, as soon as the dentist starting tapping that pick on my teeth, the sound took me right back. That's when I realized that it's all big brave talk until the noises begin. I'd far rather have surgery than a cleaning. No whirring. No tapping.

And that's where things will begin, with five teeth being pulled on Friday morning: all of the wisdom teeth (two are impacted and two are just troublemakers) plus that poor tooth that was killed by my stubbornness. (Part stubbornness and part economics, which later transformed into part "I don't know anyone in this city who I feel I can ask to drive me home afterward," which - by the time Mike arrived - just became "LA LA LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU.")

(Short break.)

I must try to sleep and see if I can go without the Tylenol 3 tonight. As nice as it would be to have a medicated holiday tomorrow while I wait for the surgery, it's a case of it being more work to make sub plans than to stay at home. (As I discovered when I stayed late on Tuesday, holding my jaw.)

I'd intended for the above to just set the scene for some issues I wanted to discuss (okay, rant about), but let's cut straight to the punchline: I'm looking forward to oral surgery. Not because it means I'll be taking care of my health (although that's good), but because I'd rather have five teeth pulled than deal with the shambles that is our education system.

(Not my school, not my students, not their parents, not my co-workers, not my district, not my state, not our country, not anyone employed by any of the above - just our education system. This is hardly the place to point fingers, as I need that broken system to help pay to pull the five teeth.)

What is the buyback policy on souls?

Previously: Wii... Fit... Hic...

Wii... Fit... Hic...

Today I popped in the Wii Fit disc, and notice my verb "popped" like it's this thing I do every day and not every 181 days. I can be specific because right away Wii Fit mentioned how long it'd been since our last workout together. Pneumonia, recovery, blah blah excuses excuses, but here I am now and let's begin again.

Wii Fit seemed glad to see me, but it couldn't hold back a few passive-aggressive jabs. "Of course I remember your name! I remember every name and every footstep!" "How are you... Mike?" (Robotic Boobah laughter.) "How is Mike?"

And then I had to pick from a list of options. Was Mike SLIMMER? Was he HEAVIER? Was he MORE TONED? Or was he THE SAME?

I chose The Same. (More Boobah cooing.) Oh, did I know that dogs are more encouraged to exercise when they see their owners do it? Maybe I could help Mike and encourage him by doing well today?

Lordy. The Roomba never sasses me like this.

But finally I made it through 24 (official) or 32 (counting be-bopping in place while switching menus) minutes of yoga (3 activities), strength training (1 activity), and aerobics (basic run, basic step, basic boxing THEN advanced boxing because I unlocked that and it was actually making me sweat and not just feel like a doof), took a shower, and am back on my butt on the sofa with a bag of tortilla chips and World of Warcraft open in another window. But I'm drinking water instead of Sprite with a shot of Toroni watermelon flavour so, you know, one step at a time.

Brewfest

Every year WoW has an Oktoberfest-inspired holiday called Brewfest. Year Five is underway right now - not in any kind of Stalinesque way, though - and as usual it's a lot of fun. (By the way, WoW is probably our last stop on the topic train today, so no hurt feelings if you want to activate the in-post escape parachute at this time.)

With the Cataclysm expansion and breaking of the world last year, BF (as I'm now going to abbreviate it) changed a bit in terms of where we do the daily ram racing and the stats on boss Coren Direbrew's drops, but mostly it's the same as it's been since the second year. (Yes, I was lucky enough to buy both rams the first year. And both are 10x more attractive than the ugly orange-ish Horde-side 100-mount achievement sunhawkthingie, but that's another post.) In fact, it's so similar Blizzard forgot to change the quest text for the ram racing. (Poor Mike looked for apple barrels all the way to Razor Hill and back again.)

A thousand kudos, however, for the text that went with this year's purple stein, and for adding the keg pony (not to be confused with the pony keg), so no complaints from me. That said, here are some things I'd like to see added to keep Brewfest fresh:

Trade Prince Gallywix: Okay, this is Mike's idea, but shouldn't TPG be all over this event? Maybe once a day he arrives on a mechanized litter and is just a general ass. Maybe he thinks he's owed taxes on something; I don't know. The drunk revelers ignore his petty tyrant demands, which upsets him. You get a small buff if you can chuck a sampler mug at his head without him noticing.

Dark Iron Hipsters: The poorly defined stereotype we all love to hate would be fun to see coming out of the mole machines every half-hour, but here's what I'm thinking: the dark iron dwarves invade not only for the possibility of free beer as they do now but because they're mad that we have their Dark Iron Ale. Maybe when people are in the Grim Guzzler fighting Coren Direbrew, they can stop to buy some DIA then sell it for a profit to any Brewfest vendor. (Limit the number you can buy or carry or that will be purchased in X amount of time.) Said Brewfest vendor then turns around and sells it at an outrageous markup. (And maybe a cluster of JubJub's tiny grandchildren hop around vendors who have the limited quantities for sale. Maybe selling the brew re-activates the limited quantities, and you can only sell to those who have sold out. And maybe I just realized that it's not the dark iron dwarves who are the hipsters in this scenario, tunnel-visioned righteousness aside.)

Or Alliance Blue-Brew: Some people love imports, that's all I'm saying. Maybe there could be a tie-in quest to steal some of the Alliance drinks? Attack carts on the road to Ironforge? Something PVPy that would annoy me but might be fun for others. (With a way to get the loot without winning the fight.)

Noisier Ogres: Did we used to be able to bark for the ogres? Let's bring that back. I know everyone would take option because their tent is closer to Orgrimmar, so maybe it would only be available when one of the ogres decided to take a break and walk around the grounds to stretch. (And this event would only happen every 3-7 hours, would award 20 tokens instead of 15, and if you do it 10 times, it's an achievement. Oh, and you have to keep pace with the walking ogre and be quick about it because he only does one lap.)

Gear: Anniversary tabards with a number on them (made of signature Brewfest bubbles) for the number of years you've celebrated Brewfest. (Determined by steins/Feats of Strength.) Every year you can turn it in for a new tabard. (Maybe have it just about stein pride? Because 2010's missing stein poses a problem.) Something new and useless to wear makes shopping all the more fun.

Sippy Straws: The goblins will love this the way they love their inflatable pool toys. This year's stein can't be filled from the kegs (right?), so why not sell goofy sippy straws to drink from the BF keg (ew), pony keg, or keg pony('s kegs)? And a random buff of short duration could proc based on how good the straw was and/or where you used the straw. Maybe there could be a quest to gather reeds (cheap straws?) or materials for glassblowing (curvy, lasting straws).

For my own home-based Brewfest celebratin', I finally bought a bottle of Young's Double Chocolate Stout. Is it as good as some claim, or will Whole Foods' "coffee" keyword on the display prove all too accurate?

Previously: Sprechen (Typ)

Sprechen (Typ)

So, remember that trip to Salt Lake City that I never blogged about? Where the microfilm laid bare generations of Mike's peeps (yes, I non-ironically say "peeps" now - I think Pepys would approve) from Germany? (And a bit from England but damn if he's not collecting at least three different lines of Wilsons, which are just as bad as Smiths, almost, in a genealogy-off.)

No, of course you don't, but suffice to say when we came home it was all click-click-hey-cousin! And now Mike has a cousin (ummm, firing up Family Tree Maker), specifically a second cousin once removed, that we type to over in Germany. (We = me, because Mike gets embarrassed.)

And when I say type, Ich meine, dass ich Dinge Typs in Google Translate und dann kopiere ich die Ergebnisse in einem anderen Fenster der GT und dann kopiere ich * die * Ergebnisse noch einmal zu überprüfen, und so weiter, immer und immer wieder. Und dann habe ich auch einfügen, die Engländer. Und dann die Cousine schreibt mir in Deutsch und Englisch, und ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob er beide Sprachen spricht und jetzt ist es zu umständlich für ihn zu erwähnen. Hrm. Auf jeden Fall werde ich nicht cross-check dieses oder auch die englische, weil es einfach viel alberner auf diese Weise. Wenn Sie Deutsch sprechen. (Was ich eindeutig nicht.)

We need a photo. Here, in case I never do that SLC post, is the death record of Mike's great-grandmother - Mina Luisa (Fiand) Späth. We only knew her name from the refugee documents that accompanied Mike's grandmother and family to Australia. It was at this point we realized we were on to something. (And then we spent the rest of the trip hot on the trail.)

So yeah, that's what Mike gets. And that's probably the most illegible record in 200 years of scrolling through microfilm. By day three, I could almost believe I could speak German, so legible and neat were the records.

But as for my own family, what did I get?

Merci, 17th-century French parish priest. You suck.

Tomorrow the San Gennaro Feast starts, this time at the Rio. I haven't been since Mike first came here. Neither one of us is a bit Italian, as far as we've discovered, unless you count my great(x35)-grandfather, which we don't. (He doesn't look like the sausage, pepper and onions type. Also, that would be a prat move on my part.)

But, as I eat this delicious roasted red pepper pesto penne that Mike made tonight based on my Pinterest board, perhaps it's time to forge a few italiani onto the family bark. (And he served it with ciabatta - così delizioso!) Hmmm, and doesn't Babycakes make a lovely tiramisu cupcake? And don't we have free slot play at M tonight? Hmmm.

(Arrivederci!)

Previously: Ricotta, Peppers, Garlic

Ricotta, Peppers, Garlic

Something has happened in the past month or two: I've completely changed my pizza topping preferences.

Before I was firmly a mushroom person; maybe mushroom + onions if it didn't cost too much. If I didn't like the mushrooms at a particular place, or just wasn't in the mood, I'd get onions + pineapple. Or sometimes just pineapple. On a few occasions I even saw my pizza covered in mushrooms + pineapple and sometimes + onions as well, but then I'd remember why I don't do that. I also like black olives, but I don't like too many toppings interfering with the cheese patches, plus olives can be a little too bitter.

I don't know what happened. I think it's because of Mac Shack, this place down the road where they make pasta to order. Pick a sauce, pick a noodle, pick toppings, etc. (You can see my Yelp review here. The first visit was "meh," but the second-chance visit sealed the deal.) Tired of carrying over my pizza preferences into pasta, I decided to order pasta with roasted pepper cream sauce, ricotta, jalapenos, and garlic.

Yum! And then I tried it the other way: ordering the same ingredients on pizza. Yum-YUM!

It's funny because I hated mushrooms as a child, but when I became a vegetarian I decided to try the scary fungus again, just to make sure I hated them, because back in those days, if you didn't eat mushrooms, you were looking at a lot of sad cheese + bread + sides dishes at restaurants. And luckily - unlike with cooked spinach and soggy collard greens and okra in almost any form - this was one ingredient where my childhood yucky-meter was wrong. (Maybe those over-sensitive kiddie tastebuds find mushrooms just a spot too pungent?)

So, the mushroom pizza that was my gateway to second chances 24 years ago has been semi-retired in favour of more spice and the strangely pleasant sensation of cloudy clumps of ricotta. I wonder what other food revelations are waiting for me. I'm eager to try spaghetti squash...

Otherwise, we've been getting Indian almost every weekend. Last night I milled around the former La Concha/El Morocco parking lot while Mike ran in to the Riviera food court for what is (surprisingly) some of the best Indian in the city. (Although the naan was rather terrible this time.) Oh look, here's another Yelp review from me.

But I'm really sick of eating out, honestly. Even when we only do it once a week. Mike now makes curries as good as any we can buy, and until a new restaurant opens, I feel like I've worn out the thrill of trying new things. With a bunch of cooking possibilities pinned to my Pinterest board and a book called 660 Curries within fingers' reach, here's hoping that my resident chef and senior Roomba operator will be cutting down on our to-go box footprint soon...

Previously: Rather Inevitable, Quite.

Rather Inevitable, Quite.

Made with the Keep-Calm-o-Matic.

Previously: Summer Rolls (Over)

Summer Rolls (Over)

Home from a spontaneous meal at Panna Thai. I've come to regret meals out that stem from laziness and not seeking some new dining experience... is this why people take up skydiving? Mike has resolved to pay better attention to my "Vegetarian Pleasures" Pinterest board and cook accordingly.

Tonight we're watching season one of (deleted). I'd say what, but the same people who delight in popping to throw out insults would probably also throw out spoilers, if they thought it would upset me. (Why am I so powerful to get such a rise out of passing strangers? Is it because I'm the Dalai Lama's secret suburban twin? When Mike heard that the Dalai Lama loves cheese, bread, cilantro, and sweets, everything suddenly made sense.)

I will say that it's not Mad Men - finally got into that this past summer. As excellent as the hype. (But when is Sal coming back?!)

Last night we watched Olivier's iconic speech from Henry V (III.i) after seeing Branagh do it. Um, Olivier was shit. And I remember thinking the same thing twenty years ago when my friend Julie had a paper due so we watched both Zeffirelli's and Olivier's Hamlet. Okay, I'm no Mel Gibson fangirl, but Olivier? Shit. I know old movies and new movies each have their own charms, but I'm just talking about performances. And Olivier? Shit-shit-shit.

I keep repeating that because once you've commited the sacrilege of saying that Sir Lawrence is shit, you've just got to run with the moment. Some goons from the RADA will probably be around any moment to "have a word," so I'm going to type it now before I'm too busy trying to unknot the scarves tying me down in front of the TV looping The Larry until I "get it."

I mean, I want to appreciate him, even if only in the context of the day, but what was so awful about the other actors that he was considered good? Were they less pretty? Less precise in their speech?

Subject change, same category: I'm always bothered by photos of Charlie Chaplin showing all that light, ruffly hair.

Subject change, new category: It's going to be ages before I qualify for an Aussie degree at the cheap rates. If I decide to go with science-science (astrophysics), I really should start re-learning math now. (It would be nice to have those reckoning skills anyway, and I'm convinced that I'm only ignorant in advanced math, not actually bad at it.) But if I decide to go with information science (sorry, but it's embarrassing to even type that phrase - STAND BACK WHILE I CATALOGUE THIS DATABASE!), all I need to do is keep indulging my OCD tendencies when it comes to organization, right? Heh.

And now it's 10:21 on a school night and I have to dream less interesting dreams.

Previously: Dribble-a-Day

Dribble-a-Day

I've become fascinated with those five-year diaries that only allow enough room for a sentence or two per day, per year. It speaks to both my urge to document and my urge to always find something else to do rather than something that doesn't take much time and would be appreciated later. (See also: exercise, lesson plans, cooking from scratch, and scrapbooking.)

And then I remembered that I have a blog and that I'm a dumbass. There's nothing stopping me from writing down a sentence a day... even though the unspoken proprieties would probably gently redirect me to Twitter or Tumblr for this.

Entries I would have to choose from today if I had one of those five-year diaries:

• My ear really itches. Didn't I see the doc about this last year? And he said it was allergies?
• Networks down all morning at school. There went those lesson plans.
• Mike ran the Roomba twice. Maybe he will steam clean soon.
• I hate when Mike lets the Roomba clean around the toilet. I've seen the floor next to the toilet, and that should be a bleach-and-gloves-only zone.
• No, last year I saw the doc about the bug bite inside my ear that got infected. It was the year before that with the itchy ears.
• But also last year.
• And this year! ITCH ITCH ITCH ITCH ARGH ITCH ITCH.
• Every September. Must be allergies.
• Or students.
• Mike already checked for lice.
• Pudding!
• Watched MacGruber last night. We keep forgetting that we have a television in the bedroom.
• Wore new pants today. I like the deeper pockets.
• Worked until about five. Where does the time go?
• It's only week two: how is there still grading to be done?
• So, here we are, watching Henry V. Only took me 20 years to get around to it.
• You know who was interesting? King Lear's father. Last summer I had a fancy to write a story about him... or his wife... or King Lear's wife... but I was afraid of copying Jane Smiley.
• (But that didn't stop Christopher Moore from writing Fool, so that's a pitiful excuse for not having the focus and tenacity to try to write a story-story. I'll leave talent out of it because who knows until you try? Such is the allure of not trying!)
• I'm a yod-dropper.... except for "news."
• "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!"

Scritchy-scritchy scratch-scratch.

Previously: I'm Just Mad About Saffron

I'm Just Mad About Saffron

Labor Day weekend ends today with a delicious meal at Bombay (where one should avoid the buffet - see, it even rhymes - but not miss the tikka masala) and a melted Babycakes cupcake (I was so amazed by the double-digit temperature that I forgot it was still hot) and me actually moisturizing... actually, poor Mike performed the moisturizing since my solo attempts are mediocre, and Mike hates the feel of lotion on his hands. He hates liquid soap, too - can't feel clean with it, at least not beyond the wrist. What else does Mike hate? Fish, mushrooms, shower gel, and lotion-hands - I think that's it.

He loves napping, which is what he's doing now. Later when he wants to stay up late to watch/annotate Branagh's Henry V together for his Shakespeare class, and I need to get to sleep, you are my alibi that I was right here on the sofa, waiting, and we are now even for the dermal hydration episode.

(What kind of moisturizer, fictional readers want to know? This was a cream from Bath & Body Works' former Pure Simplicity line. It is, just like their droolicious Les Couvent des Minimes stuff, long discontinued. Pure Simplicity had a great "milk thistle" cleanser for dry skin, and my fave lotions and creams and body washes were the ginger and the salt. Fig was okay, too. I can't be alone in being a fan because all of this stuff now sells on eBay for 2x-5x the original price. It was all very light in feel and scent, never perfumey or greasy, despite Mike's complaints. Damnit, B&BW. Maybe it's really your fault that I only moisturize twice a year!)

Speaking of things that sound like food but are not food at all, here's a photo of Saffron:

A few days ago we moved Neil(-the-hamster) out from the hamitat with his brothers. Too much fussing. Neil will need some solo pics soon. A few of the others are up on Flickr (click the box in the upper right).

This weekend we also finally finished watching all 80+ episodes of MasterChef Australia. This is nothing like MasterChef in the United States. The fact that there are 80+ episodes should assure you that we're not talking about a hyped-up rah-rah cutthroat competition, and I like food-based reality shows like The Next Food Network Star and The Next Iron Chef, but MasterChef Aus is really something different.

I guess it's on every night, for one thing? And everyone is an amateur chef, unlike Chopped and the others mentioned above that I usually like. Some nights are challenges that will end with a few contestants (or a whole team) having to face an elimination round in the next episode, some nights are said eliminations, some nights are competitions against professional chefs for an "immunity pin" (like a Get Out of Jail Free card), and some nights the pros step in and give the contestants (and us) a master class in several dishes and techniques. It's actually civilized, with none of the alliances and scheming from the contestants like in other shows, or at least none shown on camera.

Production values are very high - a big trip to New York, some barely documented trips for winners to Asia and New Zealand. And the visiting chefs! Thomas Keller, Nigella Lawson, that guy from that #1 restaurant in Denmark (okay, I am not a chef groupie), that Blumenthal "everything is full of liquid nitrogen" guy from England, and others that I'm sure I should be in awe of... oh, and at one point? THE CONTESTANTS COOKED FOR THE DALAI LAMA.

And one of the contestants (go Ellie!) freaked out, and the Dalai Lama held her hand to comfort her.

That never happens on shows with Bobby Flay or Giada de Laurentiis.

Mike has now twice made a leek-and-goat-cheese tart we saw on the show. Yum-yum. (Oh, but add "goat cheese" to the list of things Mike doesn't like, so he substituted mascarpone. Tasted great.)

Sometimes I get nervous about all the fetishizing of food in our society (as wonderfully lampooned in that one South Park episode that also takes on the Shake Weight), like we're just asking for Biblical plagues to kill all the crops and stop the silliness - check out the frayed vestiges of my Protestant upbringing, y'all - but then I look at old cookbooks or old restaurant reviews and think, no, specific people may be silly, but I think there's a respect toward food emerging in this culture, especially giving thought to where it comes from, that's a step in the right direction.

And now Mike is up, and there's a piece of chocolate hazelnut panettone (also from Babycakes) clamoring for my respect.

Previously: Lesson Plans in Google Calendar, or "Organization is the First Step to Faking It"

Lesson Plans in Google Calendar, or "Organization is the First Step to Faking It"

If there's one area where the kids usually do give me credit, it's for being well organized.

Sometimes, if I don't give them something they want, like checking to see if they turned in a paper, they'll start getting accusational. And then I'll say, "Oh no, I know exactly where it is. It's in the burgundy folder on the left side of my desk, about midway through the second section."  Oooo.

But, rare showoff opportunities aside, usually the kids think I'm organized because I have a clean desk. No Seussian stacks of grading papers obscuring a calendar blotter for me. No, instead I tuck everything into colo(u)r-coded folders (by period) and if that stack gets too tall, I throw it all into my bottom desk drawer... where it joins the bulging folder with the post-it on it... and the post-it says, "Slush Pile." Which I sort out in June, mostly by recycling everything.

But the clean desk is good psychologically, and "adequately organized" is as good as "well organized" for most purposes, unless you're subbing for me and want a paper clip.

(Subs always go nuts looking for paper clips. I rarely need clips, what with my folder system, so I keep them somewhere other than my main desk drawer. I feel the judgement in the sub report.)

One area where I am, I think, justifiably proud of my organization is in my lesson planning. Yes, I frequently change my plans at the last minute, which I think some people file under "Shari being all hippie floopy kum ba ya-ya-tastic," but really I change them because I do what you're supposed to do, constantly reflect and adapt.

Some might argue that a really great lesson plan will stand up to all situations, and to them I say, "Please, give unto me the sacred manuscript of lesson plans to which lies affixed a magical ungent that will turn this humble teacher into a scary Terminator robot. Or that thing from Alien. Or Gozer. The banshee from Darby O'Gill and The Little People. Something. Because those of us who can't get that one kid to shut up and work often find ourselves scuttling lectures or fun activities involving easily-stolen materials or thoughtful projects requiring a certain amount of self control because one proverbial bad apple, who can't be sent out of the room without stopping for paperwork and first talking to the parent, who only speaks Spanish, and even then little changes because he's been in monthly conferences in the deans' office since elemetary school, ruins everything."

As one of my Pinterest boards says, I am not the Jackass Whisperer. Nor am I one of those people with a drill sargent voice. And I smile too easily. So, for this reason and others, more academic and less frustrated, lesson plans change.

But that's not where I was going with this.

What I like about my lesson plans isn't necessarily the content (which my students will swear is designed for optimum misery and trickery) but how I do them. I do them in Google Calendar.

Why?

• So I can just give people the link. Supervisors wanting to scrutinize, fellow teachers wanting ideas, whomever. But not the entire Internet because I don't want to risk having the kids see them. A few years ago there was a push at our school to share their lesson plans online so the parents could see what we were doing and the kids could anticipate what was coming. Er. no. I put minutes up so the parents/absentees could see what we did, and I put in topics so everyone could see what was coming, but my actual plans have procedure notes and mandated legalese and journal topics/discussions meant to be surprising, of course, the expected dates of pop quizzes.
• Easy to change. This is self-explanatory.
• Paper-free! One less thing tryin to clutter my desk. If the system is down, I have my smart phone if I need to remember some detail. (But I don't do much that I can't ad lib.) I make copies in advance whenever possible, so that's not an issue.
• Just attach files. Files - such as worksheets or handouts - can be uploaded or linked to their location in Google Docs, if you use that. I'm starting to use Google Docs for everything so that every (internet capable, and most are) computer has access to my stuff. It's also vital for keeping me sane regarding objectives and standards, which I'll get to in a minute.
• Color-coded and separated by class. ("U" in colour looks weird to me in compound adjectives now. I think I'm going to take my regional spelling inconsistencies even further and start dropping it. When in America... and all that.) I have a calendar for each class. They all show up on the same calendar view, each with a different shade. I can flick them on and off with a click. It's just a nice way to see my whole day all at once then focus as I need to, without staring at three documents or having items run into each other.

Yes, my English IV plans are lacking, but I just was given the class, remember? Also, I have the year scoped out - now I just need to sort out the daily particulars, and that will be easier next week when I have the textbook (and can see how long stories/pieces) are.

(And AP is minimal because I'm just going to copy over last year's plans and tweak them. I had planned to make amazing new plans, but then the English IV bomb dropped.)

Obviously only the day's topic shows up in the monthly view of the calendar. But, click any "event," and it looks something like this:

Except hopefully without blue scribbles. (Those are there to avoid identifying various things that don't need identifying. I don't know why I scribbled out the attachment names on the bottom. It was just the fun of Snipping Tool's blue pen, I guess.) You can see that I just use the word "Explain" without getting more specific (Diagram on whiteboard? Student example? Personal anecdote? Poster? PowerPoint?). More on this, and the objectives at the top, in just a moment.

Objectives and Standards: These drive me batshit. I absolutely understand why they exist and why they are necessary and how they are helpful for planning. I even understand why our lesson plans must reference them. What drives me nuts is how some supervisors want them.

Like, some supervisors want you to write the objective on the board like this: "The student (or learner) will be able to (some task in the standards) by (names of activities you will be doing)."

Why? "Oh, the kids need to know what they are meant to be learning." Yeah, well, 1) the kids (my kids, anyway) rarely look at the board ("What warm-up?" is one of my pet peeves), and 2) that is not kid-friendly language.

If you want to be "student-centered" (did anyone just call buzzword bingo?), just write "Vocabulary - Chapter 4" in the area on the board where today's plans go. Or, if you follow a "to do list" format, write something like 1. Complete vocabulary worksheets on own. 2. Discuss new vocabulary.

The kids will, at least if you remind them to look at today's agenda, then know that today they are learning new words. And those words will be seen when/as we read Chapter 4.

Everyone is happy.

If I write, "The learner will be able to determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by completing a predictive vocabulary worksheet, engaging in whole-class discussion, and following independent study procedures including creating two-column notes," then the only person happy is the admin who gets praised when a superintendent or similar mucky-muck comes to visit and happens to see that waste of good whiteboard space. Oh, and don't forget to note that this is Common Core ELA Standard L.9-10.4. And all that's just for one activity...

The kids aren't going to read/appreciate that kind of phrasing, and having to write that crud on my lesson plans every single day makes me cry. (Just ask a student teacher who has spent an hour writing six pages of lesson plans to describe a single class period. "You'll thank us when you're a real teacher and you can write shorter plans." Fine, that's student teaching, but there's no reason to use highly formal language and nuance-by-nuance descriptions every day once you actually start teaching.)

And just as what I write on the board should be of benefit to the kids, I think what I write in my lesson plans should be of benefit to me.

We're required to "demonstrate advanced planning" and have at least a week's worth of plans available, just in case "something happens and someone has to step in," which is the rationale for making incredibly detailed plans using the language bolded above.

But honestly? If you, the sub who gets to be me while I'm recovering from "something that happened" (please, let it be the lottery), can't think of something to do when I write, "Explain the three types of irony," then I don't know what to say, other than I resent that the fractional chance of you needing detailed plans with formal language is chewing up so much of my time.

(Or let's say it's an activity. One activity for vocab might be shortened as, "Make groups of threes, one word per group, to do picture, sentence, and definition/part of speech on whiteboards. Groups then present to class. Class takes notes."

I understand that a sub might be confused over how to run that activity. Big or individual whiteboards? Where are the markers? How are the groups formed? What kind of picture? What kind of sentence? Do they use dictionaries or the glossary in the textbook? How long do they do this? How long do they present? Which member of the group presents first? Is the presentation graded? What constitutes good participation? How is division of labor fairly separated? What kind of notes? Are the notes graded?

And that's where I come back to "Yeah, my lesson plans are for me, and I don't spell out everything that's in my head. Ask if you have questions. And if I'm in Tahiti, spending my lottery winnings on indigenous coconut art, ask anyone else in my department. They'll probably give you something even more interesting to do.")

The district asks that we outline the objective, procedures, grouping, materials, and assessment in our daily lesson plans. I used to do this all in a spreadsheet, which looked like this:

Not the most exciting week, at least not on teeny-tiny font with minimal explanation. You can see (if you click through, enlarge, and put on any reading glasses) that I kept my objectives brief and me-friendly, and instead of stating the standards, I listed them all of the standards by number then bolded/underlined the ones that I used that week. Not daily. (But these were plans I transferred to another spreadsheet before I was done, so I hadn't marked the standards yet. That other spreadsheet is at school, which is another argument for using Google Docs.) I then just checked off whichever assessments applied (again, for the week) from the list of checkboxes.

With yearly tweaks, this is how I did plans for the past six or so years. Then last year I found myself drawn to using Google Calendar for the reasons described near the start of this post. What to do may be less obvious for that mythical substitute, but I now just write the procedures and let people deduce the materials and assessment from that. (If it says "End of class: vocabulary quiz," then "quiz" is one of our assessments. Well spotted! And the attachments are a good reminder for the materials.) I like to think that it works, in that I know what to do and how to do it, and the supervisor can see what I'm doing, that my assessments/groups/activities vary, and that I have clear objectives which tie to the standards.

Oh wait, I didn't prove that last bit yet.

Okay, look back at the first image. You'll see that on Mondays, there's an event called "Objectives: Common Core 9-10." (There's also one for grades 11-12/AP.) If you were in my calendar and clicked on it, you'd see this:

See the attached spreadsheet (with the big red circle around it)? If you clicked that (and I'd remembered to share that file with you as well as my calendar), you'd see this:

It's a list of all of the Common Core standards. (Or it would be, if you could keep scrolling down.) I then put an X next to the standards we've met this week. I'm thinking I will have at least nine or so weeks visible at a time, so I can see which standards we're hitting the most (and least) often.

"Awesome," you might say, "but what about the objectives?"

Yeah. Okay, well, there's going to be an agenda on the board each day, as always. (Inside a nice grid made with painting tape that also lists the homework and upcoming due dates.) Do I really have to make a boring multi-part statement for each part of each class every day along the lines of "TLWBAT X by Y" if my X is covered by the linked spreadsheet and my Y is covered by a description of each day's activities in the detailed calender view?

Or did I just invalidate part of the salaries of a bunch of education "professionals" (who aren't actually in the classroom)?

Consider it a pay cut. Like the one the teachers got.

(Well, here's hoping it will be acceptable. The district has started their own calendar-style online lesson planning tool, which looks exciting... except it doesn't offer any standards past the 8th grade. Don't get me started on how the business of education so often peters out when it comes to supporting the needs of high school teachers. I spent too many of my "teacher education" classes listening to K-5 ideas and strategies to have anything fresh to say there.)

I really like this "Calendar with linked standards spreadsheet and attached documents as needed" approach, and I hope it may inspire someone else (if they can make it past my usual bitching). Now, off to fill in all that English IV and AP... or maybe try to get my priest to level 75. She's never going to master tailoring and alchemy otherwise. Oh, behold the final hours of summer...

Previously: Portraits in Mischief

Portraits in Mischief

Listen, I seriously-seriously have, I swear, three content-rich (but smothered in the house blather) posts going.

There's the cruise miscellany one, the one about how we went to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City that shares everything you need to know about the joys of saving microfilm records to USB drives (amazing!) complete with a rant about German vs. French records, and there's also a post brewing about how the other day, just to warm up my writing fingers, I wrote a bazillion Yelp reviews and am now in the Yelp "Elite" Squad. Just like Mike. And lots of other people. But I take what scraps I can when I can and fashion them into a mental tiara, but still doing little prove that I'm not jut a sofa-slug who only leaves the house so I can check-in to places on my phone (and then write reviews about them).

Okay, so all that was going on, and I was there reading my Yelp Elite "list of suggested tasks so you can feel guilty about lots of things, and not just about taking forever to write reviews," when - FOR REASONS THAT TOP SCIENTISTS HAVE YET TO DETERMINE - I opened my work email. Oh, hey, guess what, Shari? You may have another class to teach next year.

Not another period to teach, but another class. Two of my four regular sophomore classes (yes, I have sophomores again, LONG story) were just swapped out for regular senior classes. (My other class is AP Lang. AP Lit did not survive the budget cuts.)

On the one hand, this was great news. Not only do sophomores hate me in general, but many of these sophomores just had me as freshmen (and thus hate me specifically). Even I think they deserve a year off.

Also, I love the Brit Lit curriculum. Not that senior English is Brit Lit any longer, especially with the new national standards. The interpreters of those standards strongly push non-fiction with an American or global-but-not-so-really-British-at-all bias. But since we can't afford new textbooks, I will still have an excuse to approach reading, writing, and thinking through the lenses of Beowulf and Sir Gawain. Ha.

And, senior classes tend to be a smidge smaller. (Although the reason for this - drop outs - is unfortunate.) There may actually be a desk for everyone, or at least a chair.

But, on the other hand, I only found out yesterday that this was definitely happening, which gives me about one week to make plans for a class I didn't expect to teach... and haven't taught before other than student teaching... and now must be planned planned during the time when I was expecting to use to make refined, beautiful plans for the other two classes I will be teaching.

Which means the next person who yaks about teachers and their "summers off" is getting stabbed in the neck. Yes, the contract schedule is nice, very nice, and I'm glad to have it, and I'm grateful to have a job at all BLAH BLAH BLAH, but spending days on end doing work for which I'm not paid AND getting a pay cut when I return to "real" work is not cool.

Oh, August is too soon for griping.

Thank goodness I'm just another sucker who checks work email when off the clock, right? I could've been finding out about this new class next week.

(Still, it meant also seeing clueless messages from clueless people who don't know how clueless they are. I'd use livelier adjectives, but I don't want anyone to recognize themselves. Let's just say that our pantry is now short a box of emergency brownie-consolation mix.)

Moving on.

While I am busy, our hamster Madeleine is being a tiny, silky handful. In the past eight months of her little life she's gone from a shy, unassuming thing to Bossy McWhipcrack. A few days ago her personality just got too big for the hamitat she shared with Lauren and Adora Belle. Strangely, she wasn't fighting so much with Lauren, whose life work is to know what's going on with ALL people and ALL hamsters at ALL times, but with poor Adora Belle (aka Zippy), who is sweet and quiet.

It happens. They can live together for a year and be cuddly affectionados on their own but suddenly just not want another hamster around. (Unless that hamster is willing to bow down, and even then...)

So, Madeleine is off on her own, and all seems well. Lauren only has to keep vigilant tabs on one of her sisters and any incoming hands, Adora Belle can zonk out in the sand bath in peace, and Madeleine.... can rev her energy up another ten notches.

Right away she started trying to get under her blue coupe. This was Helix and Owl's old car, and plenty of hamsters have had cars since then. (We also have this model in pink and yellow, and Teddy and Russ have an SUV.) But we haven't had many hamsters try to turn over the car.

Evelyn was the first, and she'd attempt it for hours. After she died, we got the huge lot of SPCA hamsters, and we gave her car to the five opal boys who currently live in the bathroom. They too were obsessed with turning it over, and the power of five is what it took to make it so. (It was like seeing Evelyn's dreams realized.) But that was it, and I thought maybe it was just something about that yellow car.

But now Madeleine's just going nuts about flipping the blue one. In the morning I see the car standing alone, the purple bedding pushed away by all her kicks and flops and digging during the night. It's hilarious, of course, but the poor frustrated dear...

Cheered by this sight again tonight and thinking I'd lay out a fast post (not knowing I'd still find a way to bitch on and on about work, doing my bit to make everyone feel superior for not being such a whinybabyasshat), I scooped up Madeleine and took a few other photos.

That's another overdue post! "Bought a refurbished Roomba from Woot. Changed my life."

Luckily I saved everything from student teaching, including the calligraphy markers for a project that I'm sure would be regarded as a waste of time by the current standards. Now I'm going to use them for a different project while everyone else is "not teaching much for the first few weeks because all of the kids that still haven't enrolled or will switch classes when we get our new numbers at the end of September." Because that's not a waste of time. (See how I'm still weaving in the bitterness?) Back to the markers: I'm amazed that they're all still juicy!

And yes, there is a huge push for everyone teaching the same subject to do the same lesson plans every day, at least for the first month as kids change classes frequently, and it's absolutely a sound idea... except it comes down to someone (usually non-pushy me) having to teach using materials/methods that don't bring out his or her A-game (and showing your A-game is important at the start of the year). Then there's still the problem of catching up all of the unregistered kids who wait until the last possible day to enroll and still get credit. (And by "kids," I mean "parents" who tell the kids it's more important to stay another month in Mexico with family than go to school. I don't even disagree with that, but it affects those people who choose to be in school when it starts. Come or don't come, but don't make us build a crappy system that caters to extreme absences.)

(And that's why this year I'm going to start teaching on Day Two. Like, actual parts of speech and everything. I sort of tried this last year, and everyone survived. This year, if you enroll five weeks late, I now have a website for you to check and get all of your makeup work. And you now have to do it, too: no more starting these mega-latecomers with an A because no transfer grade is coming and even beginning to explain a month's worth of make-up work is overwhelming. Check the website. See me before or after school with specific questions. I go home at contract time. Don't count on me to check my email after I go home. Good luck. Tell your parents I said hi.)

You know who is never late for class? Madeleine.

See, here is she trying to think of ways to teach Antigone, which I've never taught before. (Oh yeah, never mind the seniors. It's been five years since I taught sophomores, and I'm not doing anything the same.)

Madeleine was thinking of getting some cheap sheets from Goodwill for togas... maybe the kids would actually read with inflection if they were wearing costumes? Let's see, my current roster says I have 38 kids... plus the kids who will register late.... not sure what used sheets cost, but is it possible to get 40+ teenagers into togas and doing their warmups in the first few minutes of class? Maybe not, but since my 31 desks (I've had a couple break) and five chairs will be at a premium, maybe "fastest toga-tying" will be the incentive that gets you out of Standing Room Only. Hmm!

Madeleine is blurry in that photo because she was laughing. I had just told her about how, before I was a teacher, I thought all you needed was a teachers' edition of the textbook, and you could wing the rest.

Madeleine is a silly hamster, but she's wiser than I used to be.

And then Madeleine picked up each calligraphy marker and tested it for suspicious bits. Kind of like the special TSA patdown I got on the way to Utah, a story no one will ever hear, unless I go finish some lesson plans.

Or go waste an hour on Pinterest. (Are you there? Feel free to follow me! Are you not there? Well, that's another post...)

Or I could go gamble. Gamble. Win. Give an unemployed teacher my job. Hmmmm....

Previously: Gratitude

Gratitude

(This post started out as a list of 10 things for which I'm grateful, mostly because sometimes I think it isn't obvious how appreciative I am about life in general when I'm going on about the tiny hiccups interrupting all the good stuff. I never really made it past the first item on my list, though. Usually going off-topic doesn't faze me, but usually when I stray to the topic explored below I end up deleting the post. So, if this post disappears later, it will because the benefits of sharing couldn't match the catharsis of writing.)

I still have some a "misc roundup" of thoughts for the last cruise, what we did on the last two sea days and whatever else my phone notes (hopefully) reveal. My father-in-law has generously offered to take us on an Alaskan cruise, although with Mike's uni schedule and his having to fly back and forth to Australia over the next 12 months for some limited "face-to-face only" coursework, it's hard to say exactly when that will happen.

What I do know is that if we go next summer, it won't be on Carnival. Not because I'm down on Carnival now (although I may be over school break cruises and am definitely done with the west coast itineraries unless they start sailing Splendor - or anything with more balconies than Paradise/Inspiration - to Catalina), but because I just can't go on Carnival Spirit again. Beautiful dining room, but no thalasso/co-ed steam plus my desire to not be on a very familiar ship again has us looking elsewhere. (Now, if we wait a year and Carnival Splendor starts doing Alaska, we'll see.)

I was all decided on NCL Pearl - freestyle dining! lots of restaurants! co-ed steam! not too fancy! - but then I heard (hi Kathy!) that if you do Alaska, HAL gets the prime position at the ports, and NCL leaves you walking a mile before you even get to town. Okay, back to my spreadsheet...

Some will read this and say, um, Shari? Your father-in-law is taking you guys on a cruise to Alaska? And you get to pick the ship? And you have the nerve to lightly fuss over the "issues" involved, in public, in this very scary economy? When even you, with a steady job and good credit score, have more gut-pinching things to worry about? And how do those jeans fit, Mrs. Vanderbilt?

I know. I'm very grateful. Below are a few other (chosen from the mind's ether as I type) things for which I'm grateful.

I'm grateful Mike got to know my mother before the Alzheimer's. (Or before it was obvious.) Someone favourite'd an old pic of my Mom on Flickr the other day:

Photoshop overindulgence aside, It feels weird posting this because my mother was very pretty, and downright glamorous when she had her "face" on, and this is an unflattering photo compared to how breathtaking she could be. But I like her happy expression so much, and it's so genuine. The photo was taken just about 10 years ago, when she drove me early-early to the tiny Victoria (Texas) airport, where no one thinks twice if you're in curlers and pajama pants.

And here she is only four years ago, with my cat Euphrosyne. (Phros died a few weeks later of old age.)

Mom was clearly afflicted at this point, but she could start to tell stories (and finish them, if people were willing to sit through the long pauses) and could call Mike by name.

(The reason she's sitting on the toilet, for those of you with alert eyes, is because at the time my father was rebuilding a bathroom in my grandmother's house that was added much later. It's in the middle of what's become the preferred route to backyard/garage, so chatting around the toilet, even sitting for a moment, isn't unusual, and definitely was the norm when Dad was working on the room.)

Three years ago she was talking even less, and her motor skill decline was more noticeable (not able to feed herself), but she was in fine spirits and able to be goofy and ham it up for the camera:

That was a great visit. I think that's something that changed as she got older, her willingness to be silly on camera and not self-conscious about taking a bad photo. Or maybe it just came with the 21st century. I was into (film) photography for awhile and I remember getting her to play around for some long exposures while I clicked away on cheap film I'd process myself. As soon as our photography culture changed - thanks to digital cameras - to one where it wasn't "one shot, let's hope it comes out," I guess everyone started getting more casual shots. I'm glad she'd developed that relationship with the camera before things changed.

Then again, maybe it wasn't just a global shift. The mother of my 30s was a lot more laid-back than the mother of my youth. I know some of that is the warped perspective of a child, but she'd tell you so herself. There was a wonderful eight-year stretch from my late 20s to my early 30s where we spent a lot of time together getting up to zany adventures and making each other laugh for hours. As terrible as it was, with Mike stuck in Australia and me stuck in the States, I realize now that had Mike been around, or had I been single, I wouldn't have had all of that wonderful time with my mother. Our unique friendship, with the near-telepathic communication and the unconditional love, gave her an outlet to joy as well, something I fear she tended to put off otherwise, always saving her dreams for a day when XYZ goal was accomplished.

The mother of my 40s, last summer:

This was before she lost 70+ pounds, so I doubt I could hide as much of my bulk behind her now. She didn't lose the weight through illness, but through a healthy eating program instigated by my father because when a person, in an instant, doesn't know who you are, and she decides to fight for her life to get out of what is a frightening situation, any extra bulk is an alarming burden on the caregiver. (Especially one who must live carefully in his post-heart attack / post-health insurance days.)

Dad's camera was fogging that morning. Maybe it was set on "metaphor mode." He has since had battery issues, so there haven't been many photos since our last visit. I want to send him my tiny pocketcam that I don't use since getting a smartphone, but he doesn't like little cameras. Maybe I will send it anyway. Or bring it. It's hard to think of time.

Mom no longer hesitates when speaking, but her speech is nonsense. It sounds real, with inflection and pauses, but it also sounds like the jibberish that is relaxing to make when you're exhausted. (Or am I the only person who's played with that?) Sometimes I can hardly get a word in when Dad puts her on the phone, which isn't how she was "in real life." Her drawl is 78rpm now. She sounds happy, though. I try to treat her normally and when she pauses, seeming to expect a response, sometimes I even say, "Wait, what was that last bit?" as if it was all intelligible until those last few words. I don't want to disappoint her.

Eighteen months or so ago she could still answer questions. (Although the hardest question I ever asked her - "Mom. Do you still know my name?" - was answered with a pause and a carefully light and long "Yessss!" I recognized the tone. She used to use it when she wanted to make someone feel better. Kind of a "Duh! Silly!" without the splash of sarcasm, but also the voice of someone who is speaking the fundamental truth but maybe not the immediate truth.) Now I'm not sure if she's replying to my insipid little remarks about the cats and the weather or if she's in her own world, talking into a plastic toy telephone to imaginary friends.

But sometimes, as if she is deaf or Scooby Doo, she will make strained, recognizable sounds. Only a few months ago she said, "How are you?" on one of her very good days.

And sometimes she says, "I love you." Sometimes she says it over and over. And she sounds so happy.

And I am very grateful.

Previously: Carnival Splendor Again: The "City and Tropical Jungle Escape" Tour in Puerto Vallarta

Carnival Splendor Again: The "City and Tropical Jungle Escape" Tour in Puerto Vallarta

Early spoiler: there is no escape.

For three months now, almost four, I've had a review of this tour on the "Sticky Notes" app on my desktop. Actually, I have at least a couple of reviews - each more heavily neutered in an attempt to get it posted in the shore excursion review section at Carnival's site. (I have a problem with word counts. You'd never guess, right?)

It's a shame I don't have the first-impulse version, heavy on snark and allusion (deluded words for "whining," some might say) and light on the proofreading, the kind of thing I'd usually post here, because Carnival won't accept my cut-down version. They say my review breaks the rules because it contains names... even though the rules clearly say that names may be used so long as they are first names only.

I suspect - and you all know by now that I'm a Carnival cheerleader first and a critic second - that Carnival simply didn't want to have a negative review be the first review of this tour. (I should revise and resubmit, I know, but look how long it's taken me to write about a cruise in April? I've got to stop cruising just so I can get back to babbling about other things, instead of feeling bad that I haven't finished the cruise report and thus not writing anything. Update: I looked at Carnival's site and saw that the two reviews there are one-star. So, I wrote another version - a brief version of what's below - and submitted it. Fingers crossed.)

Anyway, below is one of the versions. I've added photos and commentary that I kept off the original review lest it distract from my point. (Apologies for not letting the same editing wisdom guide my typing fingers here.) My advice to you is to not book this tour unless you really don't care if it runs as described. Otherwise, get Carnival to agree in advance to compensation if you can prove, with photos, that the tour is misrepresented.

(Composed the same evening we came home, mid-April 2011.)

Today I stepped off the beautiful Carnival Splendor, caught up on the latest John Heald blog, and found out that we can now write excursion reviews on Carnival's website. What timing! Let's start with the "bad news," as they say - the only excursion I've ever regretted, and one that has still had both me and my husband grumbling since we were in Puerto Vallarta just three days ago. (Well, grumbling as much as we can when not heartily enjoying the rest of the cruise, of course!)

First, forget what you read about this excursion online or in the "Fun Ashore" guide once you board, both descriptions of which will talk about "time on your own" to explore the city square and an "optional nature walk" as well as a duration of three hours.

Also forget what you will see on the colorful brochure available from the TravelEx display on the Shore Excursion desk, which mentions swimming in beautiful pools by the river in the foothills of the jungle.

Don't, however, forget to read your ticket, which is the only place that will say, "closed toe shoes required." We asked the Shore Excursion desk about this new information; they said to ignore it. I say to keep it in mind if you don't like sand in your shoes.

You can read all of the above referenced descriptions for yourself. You can also do what I did, and look up reviews and photos for the El Nogalito restaurant - I'm sure that, like me, you'll be looking forward to a relaxing, scenic visit as soon as you see the lush landscapes.

So here's what actually happened, both the good and the bad:

We waited in a little tent on the Puerto Vallarta pier for our bus to be ready, which I thought was a nice touch. (Especially if you've ever queued up in the sun for half an hour, e.g., Acapulco.) The tour left right on time at 9:15, which I definitely appreciated. We had specifically booked a short tour so we could have plenty of time to relax in the spa while most people were off the ship.

Our first stop was downtown. Instead of being allowed the specified "time on our own," we were aggressively told, over and over, by the tour guide Jesse to "keep up with the group" and "don't go off on your own." This was disappointing because we've been to PV before, and this time we really just wanted to bop into a little cafe near the downtown square while everyone looked at the church on one side and the beach statues on the other, but the driver had moved the bus to an unknown location, so the "time on our own" evaporated and we were forced to follow the group.

Jesse hustled us to the malecon (boardwalk) just in time (cough cough) for a performance group (the admittedly impressive "flyers") to ask us all for donations and try to sell us flutes. We stood there for 10 minutes while they walked around and around our group, triple-checking that no one wanted these things. We then saw them perform. The performance was neat, but being a captive audience and spending so much time standing in the direct sun waiting for the "huckster" portion to end was not.

Here is Mike's skeptical face as we grew tired of waiting:

And here are the flyers:

Performance over, for the next ten minutes we were led past a few boardwalk statues, past the city hall ("that's the city hall on the left"), through the church (120 seconds, tops), and then along the streets to where the bus had moved.

I liked this internet kiosk, which we hadn't noticed on the last trip:

Jesse did stop to point out a school and talk a little about the school system, which was interesting. He was a friendly man who seemed earnest in what he presented, and I think he had the grace to show discomfort as he knew some people were not happy, so I don't know how much of the blame for this trip falls on him, and how much falls on the operator. (Later the operator - according to Carnival - completely blamed Jesse. But, you have to wonder...)

Something else I missed when we were at the church last time - a statue to Isaac, Your Bartender.

The school Jesse talked about:

For the entire now-mandatory tour of downtown, everyone was repeatedly told to hurry up, keep up, and so on, with stragglers (usually older passengers walking at a normal pace) getting directly addressed to walk faster.

We got back on the bus, drove around the block, and went to Marino y Marino "Jewerly" (sic). Here Jesse announced that we would spend 25 minutes in the shop and could look at the fire opals. (Suddenly all his earlier chat about the pretty opals of Mexico made sense. What didn't make sense was when he said, "Australia also has opals, but ours are much prettier." Um, Jesse? Tons of Aussies in our tour group, if you hadn't noticed? Way to earn a tip.)

This "jewerly" shop was the low-rent equivalent of the Diamonds International stops on some tours. This was not the Plaza Genovesa advertised in the tour description with its "many small shops and a number of restaurants". (Quotation from Googling around.) There was nothing to look at other than a similarly run-down pharmacy across the street. We stayed on the bus while the driver drove in circles - I think we got the better tour.

Here's the pharmacy:

And here is the "jewerly" shop:

At this point we were a little disappointed, but more in a shoulder-shrugging, eye-rolling way. We'd been to PV before. We were mostly interested in taking in the scenery and some snacks at El Nogalito. It was just a three-hour tour, after all. Enough to say we tried something new, then we could get back to the thalasso pool.

After 35 minutes (there's always time to earn more of a kickback?), we headed to El Nogalito. How was the tour described again? Oh yes, the chance for an optional nature walk along the river or, if we preferred, we could buy snacks at the restaurant and hang out there. The latter sounded like a great deal. All of those vacation photos from independent travelers were the carrot to keep me from getting grumpy over what was so far a somewhat sleazy tour.

We turned onto a dirt road off the coastal highway and almost immediately stopped. "I hope you don't mind the sun!" yelled Jesse. Huh? I thought. Actually, this pale chick who gets sunburnt just driving the car around does mind the sun. "Your tour description mentioned the sun, right?" (Um, no.) "Okay! Hope you brought a hat!" Jesse continued. "We're going to walk a short way through here, then get back on the bus and ride to the restaurant."

Well, I had sunblock, and he did say a "short" ways. We decided to get off and see whatever there was to see in this "short walk." It looked like we might cross the river or something. That could be nice.

It was not nice.

First Jesse led us by a large yard of caged chickens. "For fighting," he explained proudly.

Look, I can roll with the "when in Rome" cultural sensitivities as well as the next person, but, c'mon. It's a bus full of mostly Australians and Americans. Cock fights? Pretty offensive in OUR culture. And since we're the guests (the paying guests), I don't think that's something that needs to be advertised. (Although, come to think of it, this wasn't advertised, was it?)

Then Jesse pointed out a clump of banana trees and a clump of bamboo trees in the middle of a dirt parking lot with a few outbuildings around it.

It was like going to the tree zoo, except it was more like some sad tree zoo from the days before zoo reform, which is my way of saying that I've seen lusher, fuller displays at the local nursery... and I live in Las Vegas. You know, the desert.

Around the corner a man was waiting for us. Jesse turned the tour over to his friend, who invited everyone to sample his different kinds of tequila. Oooookay. Which tour are we on, again?

It turned out that we were on the tour where you sit for 40 minutes - yes, 40 minutes - by a cash register as you watch an ever-dwindling group of people take "just one more shot" and learn yet another toast in Spanish.

Now, I will admit that we're not really drinkers (Mike not at all and me rarely), so we weren't thrilled over the detour, but it added a little local color, and it distracted me from the sad burro tied up under a tree on the other side of the lot, waiting for photo opportunities.

Five minutes of unadvertised tequila tasting, and I wouldn't have complained, and I'm sure most of the passengers were pleased to suddenly have free booze foisted upon them.

But, as I said - FORTY MINUTES LATER (I took a lot of photos with time stamps) - we were still there, and by now all but a few people were sitting around, glumly staring at nothing, waiting for the host to feel confident enough to point out the cash register so we could get the inevitable sales objective met and be on our way.

Finally we started to walk across the dirt lot to a bridge over what I realized was the river - a trench with a lot of dusty grey rocks.

True, no tour has any control over the whether, but a disclaimer might be in order here. ("Conditions may be significantly less "tropical" at certain times of the year.")

Was the bus waiting on the other side? No. We walked in the sand along the dry riverbed for ten minutes as Jesse pointed to trees and mentioned some of their uses. Hold on, was this the "optional" nature walk? I don't know which was more irritating: that we'd been forced into what was advertised as an optional nature walk, or that the "nature" walk was less interesting than a slow meander down most people's driveway.

Admittedly, there was briefly a pretty part:

We walked back across the river(bed) and up a gritty slope to the waiting bus.

I checked the time - guess what? We were due back on the ship in five minutes! Argh. But could it get worse?

(Oh, one should never ask that.)

Anticipating that all would be "right" soon as we finally got to our last stop, I was encouraged as the bus turned in to the little (and very pretty) town of El Nogalito. Jesse spoke of the many things offered by the restaurant: fresh seafood, quesadillas, "wonderful guacamole - very creamy," and a combination plate for ten dollars with a "variety" of snacks. He spoke of exotic drinks but also the option of soft drinks in a can, two dollars each.

We'd skipped breakfast, so this sounded good. I wasn't happy about the tour going into overtime, the near-hour spent trying to sell us tequila, the skeezy stop at a store that was not the Plaza Genovesa, or having to march around downtown in the kind of tour group we usually aim to avoid, but put a little salsa and fresh Mexican cheese my way, and my happy face usually wins out.

We arrived at the restaurant, only to be ushered to one side where a display of seafood was set up. "Don't sit down! Don't sit down! You must come here first to hear about the menu!" both the restaurant host and Jesse cried.

The host pulled back a cloth to reveal a fish/seafood platter (then, for the remainder of the "presentation" used his other hand to swat flies off it), which we could get for $52. He pointed out each type of fish. This went on for several more minutes than was necessary. Then we were allowed to take seats.

As we wandered to a table, I noticed that there was a bit of water in the riverbed here by the restaurant... along with a lot of trash - advertising banners, plastic bags, etc. My photo looks overexposed, but the area really looked that faded and bleached.

As the waiters came around to take orders, everyone near us asked after the "creamy guacamole" Jesse had spoken of. "No, only seafood platter," they were always curtly told.

When I said that we didn't care for fish/seafood, I was told that we could get fajitas. Guacamole? No. Quesadillas? No. Combo plate? No.

(But if we ordered an alcoholic beverage, we could get chips and salsa. No thanks, especially not after watching all of the flies land in the open salsa bowls on every table - including tables that sat empty until the next tour came.)

We asked for a couple of Cokes, being thirsty by now and not having much else to do for the next "45 minutes to an hour, we'll see how it goes," as Jesse put it.

Great.

Some people ordered the available food, but most stuck to drinks and sodas. I saw the fajitas served to someone at the next table and... yeesh. Granted, I didn't taste them, and I'm the first to point out that "authentic" Mexican food is different in every region, but what she was served looked like wet chicken salad with a couple of tortillas. If grilled vegetables and meat are a gringo tradition, then viva el norte.

After an hour of playing homemade crosswords and jumbles on a piece of paper with my husband (it was so desperate that I suggested ripping the notebook into 52 pieces to make our own "prison deck" of cards), a waiter came over and shook my husband's can of Coke to see if it was empty.

"I guess it's time to pay," said my husband. "Four dollars, right?" "No, six dollars," said the waiter. "Three dollars each." "Tell him Jesse will pay!" I cheerfully advised my husband, but being the non-confrontational people that we are (hey, we just wanted to avoid drama and get out), my spouse only repeated "Six? Not four?" a few times before handing over the cash with a boggled grumble.

Jesse finally said it was time to go. With the exception of one easy-going table that had ordered the seafood platter, we led the stampede to the bus. (But not without hearing Jesse tell the people at the table to take their time and not rush. Argh!)

About ten minutes later, everyone was on the bus and we began the short trip back to Puerto Vallarta. More than once Jesse picked up the standard stack of comment cards and looked around at us before setting them behind his tip basket, where they stayed.

Jesse asked who wanted to be let off in Puerto Vallarta instead of returning to the ship. "Where would you like to be let off?" Everyone described places by the boardwalk. "Great!" replied Jesse. "We will let you off at a good place, only two, two-and-a-half blocks away!"

And so we got to see the "Jewerly" shop again, as that's where the bus stopped to let off those who wanted to spend more time in PV. Nice.

That morning we had hoped to be back on the ship around 12:30, maybe by 1:00 with traffic, with some nice Mexican snacks to tide us over. Instead, it was nearly 2 p.m. and we hadn't eaten all day. Plus, we'd been lied to, subjected to shady business practices, forced to attend a long tequila tasting (not even a proper tequila tour), and pretty much had spent five hours taking a tour other than the one we'd purchased.

When we told the Shore Excursions desk the next day, the clerk's reaction was, "Wait, are you sure you were on the City and Jungle Escape Tour?!" Like I said a jillion words ago, she contacted the tour operator and they expressed the same dismay and amazement over the misplaced hour spent hawking tequila plus the short shrift given to following the tour's description.

Carnival gave us a 25% refund, but really, I just wanted the time back, not the twenty bucks. I like a good war story (and blog post with plenty of photos - but that will come later), sure, but I'd rather have spent that time relaxing on the ship. (Or being on the tour that was described.)

Even if what we went through sounds like a fun tour to you, I advise you to think twice. We didn't get what we expected. Who knows what you'll get?

Previously: Carnival Splendor Again: Todos Santos (Etc.)

Carnival Splendor Again: Todos Santos (Etc.)

Previously: The First Sea Day

(With no greater excuse than "the Fun Times were a bit out of reach behind the sofa for reference," the travelogue finally continues.)

Todos Santos awaited us! We were selfishly pleased the stop in Mazatlan had been cancelled. The second day in Cabo meant we'd stay later the first day, which meant the Todos Santos tour was available. Usually it's only available when you sail on Carnival Spirit.

By this cruise we felt like old hands at Cabo if not the entire "Mexican Riviera," but this was our first time to share a port with a Norwegian ship. Here's the Norwegian Star:

Morning tours in Cabo (booked through Carnival) meet onboard to make sure everyone gets on the tender and to their tour on time. (If you book with someone else, always make sure they have a backup plan if the ship is delayed, or a refund option if the water is too rough for tendering.)

We waited in El Morocco lounge, not a space we usually visit during the sunshine hours.

Tours were called in groups of twos and threes. I ended up wishing our tour had met closer to the central steps; after we called and started walking the length of the ship, the pace felt a bit competitive as everyone vied to be first. Yes, first to the tender that would take us all at the same time. I think a few non-tour people fell in with us, too - maybe that should be the next Cruise Critic flame war. "Unauthorized Queue Zippering," we could call it.

Anyway (she continues, a month or so after typing the above - I'm not only a lazy diarist but a lazy typist as well), we got the big catamaran for our tender, a nice change from the little "doll eyes" as we call them. (Long story. Inside joke. Hamster related, of course.) The size of it, though, just heightened the usual problem of small families claiming an entire bench for themselves, disregarding the "move to the back, slide all the way down" directives, and then leaving was delayed because the last people were milling around, trying to find a seat.

I think I've mentioned (not sure, as - like I said - it's now been awhile since I started this post and the last thing I want to do is be all professional and reread what I've said so far) that on this cruise Mike and seemed unusually sensitive to people being people. Someone in an Amazon review of our "book" (if you don't know, don't ask - it was just a trip report) said that I claim to not want to complain, but then I complain all the time. My reaction?, "I said I didn't want to complain?" Ha! I love to discuss minutia and ponder why things are the way they are. (Which, to some, does sound exactly like complaining, I admit.) But if there's bitching to be done, may as well enjoy the camaraderie of it. Gripefest at Shari.com. Bring your own sour grapes. We'll make smoothies!

Anyway (trying this again), here's Mike on the tender:

Our group met on the pier, crossed the street together, walked through the bus depot, queued by twos in an orderly fashion, and finally boarded a bus with excellent windows:

Later on the ride home all that sun made me feel kind of faded, burnt, and oogie, but for sightseeing, they were great.

The restroom was tiny, though. Astonishingly so:

Maybe it was bigger on the inside. I don't mean like a TARDIS, but just bigger than I realized. (Or maybe like a TARDIS. May have missed a chance there.) Putting the microwave and coffeemaker right above it just added to the errrgh.

To this day I wonder if this is wordplay or a typo:

A bunch of ATVers:

It's funny; I was on the bus thinking, "How awful - to come all the way to Cabo and just screech around in the dirt." Someone down there may have been thinking, "How awful - to just sit inside an air-conditioned bus and be driven to sights instead of playing in the sunshine." Travel: We're All Doing It Right.

After several "that must be it"s that weren't it, we approached Todos Santos.

As we rode along, Mike and I kept looking at street signs, trying to remember the name of the street with the restaurant we'd routed out on Google Maps before leaving. But then we thought there wouldn't be a TS tour, so we didn't write it down. Oops. Hotel California - where the tour meal was planned - didn't have much to offer Mike's dislike of seafood/mushrooms/etc. and my vegetarianism. We preferred the idea of wandering off on our own anyway.

Good plan, and one we set into motion as soon as Mike caught up with guide Libby, who was almost all the way to the Hotel California down the street before everyone disembarked. (Except for the restaurant, the visit to TS was meant to be self-guided. However, she was doing a tour of the cathedral and cultural center for anyone interested. Anyway, we wanted to tell her our plans.)

Libby didn't know our chosen restaurant from the description, but she made some suggestions for other places we might like.

We parked a little past the Jill Logan Galeria:

"Tequila's Sunrise" is across from the Hotel California. Hyuk hyuk.

I was disappointed to see that the tour company brochure on the cruise ship promoted the lie that the Hotel California had anything to do with the song, but at least no one on the tour or in the town brought it up. This would've forced me to become Boorish Person Who Cannot Let Some Things Go. (Become? More like "stop suppressing.") I think the rumour that hotel = song subject (soundly shot down by Don Henley) only survives now because of shoddy copying-and-pasting or sleazy tour operators. Yes, the HC gift shop plays a twinkly version of the song in the airy background, but that's almost tongue-in-cheek and easily forgiven.

(Hotel California, lobby.)

We started in the gift shop, looking around a little and noting the culinary sea salts created by the hotel chef. Libby had mentioned them in her well-informed spiel. The shop was a little crowded, not only with our tour but other tourists (no other buses, though), and the salt didn't have prices, so we decided to look at it again later after sorting out our restaurant.

Having a delicious, leisurely meal somewhere scenic while taking in the atmosphere seemed like a great start to our too-brief time here.

(Much better than trying to peer around people queueing up for blinged-out baby-Ts with the hotel logo. Also of interest to many were the damiana-based liqueurs. I remember when I first learned about damiana as a neopagan teen, wearing out a copy of The Herb Book. And no, I didn't go straight to the "marijuana" entry - I was a late bloomer to pot and it never really took. Yes, I just admitted to the entire internet which includes my father that I tried then-illegal-and-currently-sorta-illegal drugs. Sorry, Dad! It was only a few times and I was so bad at it that I honestly don't even know if I inhaled. Smoking? Ew! The control freak in me prefers carbs. You can still drive. Anyway, I was far more interested in entries on things like damiana. "You mean there are plants that promote... that?" Never would I have foreseen that 25 years later I'd be on a pier looking at signs saying, "Damiana Vodka! Made with Nature's Viagra!" Meanwhile, did you catch the name of the book's author?)

Right away it struck me how clean and casual Todos Santos is. I mean, I wasn't expecting the filth of Acapulco (jab, jab), but even when we walked past dirt, there was no connotation of grime. (And definitely no machine gun-bearing officers on prominent duty.) The closest we've come to this before may have been Comala, also a designated "pueblo magico" of Mexico, but Comala doesn't have the "charm on every corner" that TS has. You get a true "artist colony" feel without having that HI! WE MAKE IMPORTANT ART! AND TAKE VISA! vibe. (Remember when Hank Hill visits the artist colony in the strip mall? Or was it Peggy? Is there not a King of the Hill allusion for every occasion?)

(The cathedral was plainer than expected.)

Todos Santos is tidy, but there are ruins:

But even the ruins seemed tranquil - places biding their time until the next idea comes along. Not evidence of poverty and neglect. Todos Santos is much more like what I expected La Paz to be: relaxing, no pressure, pretty.

We decided that maybe the restaurant was called the Cafe Todos Santos. (Or maybe someone suggested it was, I forget.) We asked for directions as we walked around. One woman said it was two blocks away. (I barely heard her because I was so pleased with myself for addressing her using the "usted" form. Eighth-grade Spanish, represent!) No luck. Mike asked at a real estate office. They didn't have any ideas. He asked a New Yorker who now lives in La Paz. The man didn't know, but he could suggest another place on the next street, which we kept in mind. Meanwhile, I peeped into shops and other hotels:

One street had different saints above each door:

You could make several lunch-trips to Todos Santos and still not visit all the little hotels, galleries, eateries, and stores:

Not our restaurant, but I liked the sign:

Coming around a bit in a circle, we found "Caffe Todos Santos," just steps from where ten minutes before we'd turned a corner and decided to try elsewhere. But when we went inside, we discovered it was truly a cafe of the "coffee first" variety, and not the establishment we'd been seeking:

Pretty menu, though.

So much interesting architecture:

We decided to find the last person's restaurant, on a street parallel from the sort of main drag on which Hotel California and the Cultural Center are found and at the bottom of a hill.

I liked the steps leading up to this corner grocery:

(Not enough to correctly expose the snapshot, but you get the idea.)

I think those nachos are American as well... if we're defining "American" as "K-Mart cafeteria fare." Not the most appetizing sign, and a good reminder that just because it's "authentic" doesn't mean it's "tasty."

(But, one of the best plates of nachos I ever had was butt-ugly, and made in Utah, so who knows? But that sign? No bueno.)

We kept seeing twisty little staircases outside of small buildings:

And the small buildings we kept seeing now weren't restaurants. Hrm.

(But what we did see was still pretty cute.)

We came to a park:

And to our left?

Las Fuentes. Was this the restaurant we'd found online? No, but it had the rockwork, shade, fans, and courtyard aspect we'd been seeking.

(Why didn't I just turn on my smartypants phone and look it up? Because I live in mortal fear of three-digit cell bills... or worse. Yeah, I know you can arrange for special plans before you leave the country, but what if there was some misunderstanding? Also, they still make you ring up and talk to a human to get that done. Then again to get it undone. Easier to just explore and keep the world at bay.)

As we entered, the hostess was so still and oddly posed in the center of the room, looking at nothing, that we felt like intruders. (Actually, Mike wasn't even sure she was a real person. It was shadowy. Could've been a cardboard cutout.) But no, there was another small group here (also gringos), the restaurant was open, and we took a table for two near the back.

Mmm, chips.

Mmm, two kinds of salsa.

Mmm, real Coke for Mike and blurry lemonade (carbonated, lightly sweet and tangy) for me.

The hostess-now-waitress took our orders efficiently despite my poor but serviceable Spanish. Her English was limited, so if you go to TS, don't assume everyone is comfortable with English, and be sure to know all of the good tourist phrases, like "uno mas, por favor." (But at least mentally put an accent over the /a/ in "mas." It's too late/early for me to be looking up these things, but know that someone out there is holding you to a higher standard.)

Mike had the chicken enchiladas.

I couldn't decide, so I ordered plain quesadillas to share.

Obviously this was not a tapas bar, and the appetizers could serve six. Oops. We nibbled, but they were a bit on the plain side (yeah, I know that's how I ordered them) and couldn't compete with our other food, which was fresh and delicious.

I had the potato tacos:

I want to grab another one (uno mas!) out of the photo right now, they were so good. Light but thorough seasoning on the non-greasy potatoes, cotija cheese, crema, a little lettuce for crunch and sprinkling of tomatoes for a juicy accent and.... happy slobbers...

All around us as we ate were little chickadee-like birds hopping up and down off the tables. We took pleasure in watching a plump one scout everywhere for cast-off tortilla crumbs. (But of course all of those photos came out too blurry. The birds were darling, though.)

Mike makes a delighted face:

Todos Santos isn't on a beach, but it is right by the sea. Many restaurants boast fresh seafood, including Las Fuentes.

Sated but not stupidly so, with nothing but raves for Las Fuentes coming out of our mouths as eagerly as lunch went in, we continued to wander.

I failed to take a photo of an iguana as long as my arm, but here is a pharmacy on the opposite side of the street (and a non-sequiter - I'm not suggesting the iguana used steroids or anything):

We thought about getting some Omeprazol (an OTC anti-reflux/acid drug that I've probably misspelled), as it's so much cheaper in Mexico, but the pharmacy we visited was cash-only, and we wanted to save our cash. Plus it just felt a bit dodgy. (The place, not the drug buying. I said OTC. Federales, stand down!) I'm sure the product is the same as in the cities with their clinical-looking stores meant to make you feel like you're at an open-air doctor's office (why do retailers in Mexico so often not have a front wall?), but it's also cheaper in the city, with all the competition, so we decided to wait. (The pharmacy shown above was closed, actually, but I didn't take a pic of the one we considered. We told the guy we were going to an ATM and would be back, and then we ran away. No, I don't know why I can't just say, "I've changed my mind." Lying just feels more polite at the time.)

Hmm, what is this?

It's behind this:

The inside of which looks like this:

(If you abuse the HDR settings in Photoshop.)

Next to the building were two shoes by the side of the road. Two! Truly this is a magic town, if roadside shoes come in pairs.

Oh look, the other side of the building... and the chimney-thing again.

More about soaking in the tranquility than shopping (we're not really art people most days anyway), we found ourselves back at the bus without any souvenirs.

That wouldn't do! Even in La Paz we managed to find a magnet in the port terminal. Not being time to leave yet anyway, we walked on down to the Hotel California. I mean, it's not about the song, but it's an attraction in its own right. And we needed to buy something.

Perhaps not that.

People seemed to be having a good time in the bar.

Do you ever find yourself wondering how many pictures are out there of you, in the background of someone's snapshot? I think Flickr already lets you search by tag + date taken? But I wish there was a master search engine that looks at tag, date, and lat/long, and gives you results, be they on Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Webshots... (And why is Webshots still seemingly #1 with cruisers?) It would be even neater if it could look at your recent uploads and say, oh, it looks like you were at lat/long blah-blah at noon on July 14 - here are some other pics that match that description.

Neat, yes? So, venture capital: who has some? And programming skills? And a lawyer for when people start freaking out to see unflattering shots of themselves across the internet.

I talked myself out of the salt. No prices, and it seemed more exciting in theory than in reality. I saw some soap that caught my eye, as exotic bathing stuff always does, but I wanted to check out the set of shops across the street first. (There's a lot of first-person singular pronouning happening here. Mike is happy for me to be the bossy tour guide, although he can take over when the BTG is freaking out that we'll never find the restaurant and we'll have to climb back up a hill with post-pneumonia lungs and low blood sugar just to eat some butt-ugly nachos that aren't even Utah-good, which is only two steps away from dying in a ditch alone. With an itchy nose.)

The shops were mostly the usual souvenir mix of fire opals and leather sandals with embossed beer logos that we'd not seen much of elsewhere in town, but I did see a piece of stone art that spoke to my rodent-loving heart:

Awww!

But nowhere in Todos Santos did we get the hard sell until we came to this place. When I first admired the swingset mice, it was $120. (Yeah...) Until I heard the price, I was even half-considering it. So cute! A pain to schlep back, but cute!

But by the time the seller was suggesting $40, despite all of the awkward no-thanks'ing and excuses we made because we're polite like that (and also didn't want to alienate someone whose numbers were getting better by the minute, and everyone does have their price), Mike had pointed out all kinds of chips and missing parts to me. Drats.

Maybe for $15? Or $20? But then, the missing bits... the hauling... the fact that we don't have a house with a yard, or even a house. (I have been thinking about synthetic grass for the balcony. Now how can I turn the busy traffic into ocean waves?)

Oh, and there was also the moment when the seller said, "let me show you where I make them" and took us six steps away into a jewelry showroom, got behind a glass counter, and started talking about fire opals.

I'll make my own swingset mice someday. Put it on the list.

So, back across the street to the Hotel California gift shop to admire the locally crafted soap again, in its artfully distressed box:

(I'm saying "artfully distressed" because I mostly believe it, and because Mike asked and they said they didn't have any others in better condition.)

Despite all appearances of having only remedial grooming knowledge, I'm a fiend for those bath products that manage to combine homespun earthiness with a little sophistication. We leave farmers markets as often with soap as with food, which is weird because I have this whole "soap scum bad, bath gel good" thing about the bathtub that I'm sure Mike will speak about at length when I'm dead, probably in the arms of his second wife who will never nag about housework because they'll have a maid, a maid whose salary will come out of the insurance settlement from where I was hit by the truck while wearing imperfect underwear* and left to die in the aforementioned ditch, but I digress.

(*I'm going to come back to the topic of underwear. I'm just saying this now so you don't go hunting all around this shoddily organized post looking for the follow-up asterisk.)

Wasn't one of these on Antiques Roadshow?

A better view of the Emporio:

Mike waits to pay:

Back on the bus, with the soap. It's all about the soap.

Roadside fortress:

(Here I had to look up "crenellate" to see if it meant what I wanted it to mean to describe the building above. Would you believe that Merriam-Webster's site requires premium membership to see the definition of that particular word? The term "five-dollar word" has new meaning. Dictionary.com will tell you for free, but I used my semi-stolen OED access instead. But is it really stolen if it's a taxpayer-funded institution that accidentally shared the password on the internet? In the end, I decided I didn't even want to use a word that is, frankly, too close to "crinoline." Are you also imagining a battlement made of stiff petticoats? And by the way, have you ever met Caroline, one of our dwarf hamsters?)

Tagging. I hate it. Cabo is no Mazatlan, though. (And I like Mazatlan, but if the amount of tagging there has any relationship to the amount of crime, I can see why cruises are being rerouted. Does tagging = heavier crime? Wait, tagging is a crime, so duh. I really hate it. Overlapping balloon letters are so 5th grade, right? And the vandals who don't even try to make puffy letters - the ones who just scrawl their gang's initials - you just know they don't even have matching satin jackets.)

And that was our day in Todos Santos! We came back to Cabo, bought some acid reflux drugs like old gits, and felt pleased to have found another way to enjoy this port we can't seem to shake. (I realize that toward the end it seemed more like our day in the Hotel California gift shop, but all of my other photos are easily duplicated by using Street View in Google Maps.)

Speaking of Google, did we ever remember which restaurant we were looking for? Sure, as soon as we looked it up at home. It's called Los Adobes and is on this page along with Caffe Todos Santos (where we thought we were going) and Las Fuentes (where we ended up).

Hopefully we'll get to try Los Adobes sometime, but I wonder what will get us back to TS? I'd be happy to return, but when will we even vacation in western Mexico again? Those same-old cruise itineraries are getting pretty played out for us, and I have a long list of land-based sights on my wishlist ahead of our southern neighbour. Would we want to ride the bus again? (I'd rent a car, corruption worries aside, but why risk being an hour and half away from the cruise ship when you get a flat, knowing the ship won't wait?)

But who knows?

On the bus ride back, Libby - a former teacher - gave us a quiz on Baja California, covering topics from earlier. Part jokey, part serious, all multiple choice. Fun way to pass the time, and I could see she probably had no problems with classroom management in her teaching days. (Yes, I'm jealous.) At the end, when she gave out the comment cards, the two people with something written on the back of their surveys received prizes from the glassblowing factory. (Some day I should talk about the glassblowing factory.) Very sweet. Mike was a winner and got a glass heart.

This was all a neat experience, but we did feel tired from the sunny/bumpy drive back, so we decided against the spa - beloved spa! - in favour of naps and reading as it was only a few hours until dinner.

Such laziness ended up extending to dinner. Tonight was Mike's favourite dish in the main dining room: jerked pork loin. But, everything else on the menu was same-old, especially for me, with that single vegetarian dish on the menu each night. It's not the same menu every night, of course, but it's the same set of menus every cruise, and we just eat too well at home to be excited any more. Maybe if we had amazing waiters like on previous cruises or Your Time Dining or just a table with a great view or a less noisy restaurant...

Anyway, I never thought we'd miss the MDR on JPL night, but the jerked pork loin happened to also be available on the Lido buffet; we decided to see if it tasted the same then decide from there. Sometimes the buffet items just aren't as good as what you get in the dining room. It's not just the presentation and pacing of the MDR experience; the way they can be served differently sometimes makes a difference. (Baked stuffed mushrooms? The same. Vegetarian pot pie? Doesn't even look the same let alone taste alike.)

Mike pronounced it good (and three months later promises he wasn't lying for my sake), so we kept it low-key and stayed on the Lido, with apologies to the Mike and Shari of a year ago who would be aghast.

Not that I'd remember to ask Mike about the pork loin now if I didn't just discover that I actually took some notes on this day. Notes! What else do these notes say?

Oh yeah, earlier that day unattended kids were cannonballing into one of the hot tubs on the deck above the pool/big screen. Grrr. No one was around. I asked the kids their ages to scare them into settling down (ha), then meaningfully said to one, "So you're the oldest?" After that I nodded and walked away as if I was going to do something official.

But what? Set myself up for parent drama for the rest of the cruise as soon as a kid outed me for telling them off? Or have the kids ignore me/be disrespectful and make seeing them later always be unpleasant? Why should I even have to deal with this?

But 1) what they were doing was dangerous in that little tub, at that angle, with the very slippery deck, on a moving ship, and 2) if I were an adult who wanted to use the hot tub, I'd be pissed off to find a group of pre-teens and younger treating the hot tub like pool/splash park. Unsupervised children aren't allowed. The sign is right there. It doesn't matter that adults get their own tub in the back (as some would argue) - this tub has rules.

The sign is also right here:

No jumping. No unattended kids. No horseplay.

Someone came up to mop the floor (like a small lake from the jumping kids), and I described what the kids were just doing and that they were alone. Alas, the person didn't seem to speak English. This is usually never a problem on the ships, but I think this person - nice though he was - also didn't want to venture outside the scope of keeping his head down and mopping, which may have been the real issue.

We went to a house phone, but these have no option to call anyone other than housekeeping, the steakhouse, etc. unless it's a 911-type emergency. Argh!

So. Trek down to Guest Services, queue up, and describe everything (while the kids themselves may have since moved on), or shrug and go back to the room?

Option two it was. Sorry, kids. If you break your necks, sue your parents.

One thing we missed while ashore was the urban myth trivia. That sounded original and interesting. I'd like to know what kind of questions they asked. (Especially since folklore changes as it goes along, so couldn't you just say, "Well, the version I heard from my aunt's brother-in-law's dentist, who was actually there...") Was it classic stuff like, "How much did the cookie recipe from Neiman Marcus allegedly sell for?" Did they get edgy at all? You know what I mean... the toothbrush one? *shudder*

We really like how Carnival now has a comedy club with performances from two comedians most nights. El Morocco is a good space for this, too, although it has "wings" at the back where you can't see the stage so well, at least compared to the more straightforward (but more cramped) Versailles Lounge on Carnival Spirit. Each comedy set runs around 30 minutes with a break in between, with "family" shows on earlier and R-rated shows later.

So far no comedian has held much back at those later shows, and some of the topics are so out there you can't help but be entertained if only from the novelty. (If you're as filthy-minded as I am, at least.) On this cruise, one comedian even did a bit about "period underwear." (I told you I'd get back to the topic of undies.) Sir, men are not to speak of such things! Even Mike, who usually does our laundry, is expected to ignore the greying stains on what were once festive cotton prints. (His second wife - the one with the maid who probably makes jerked pork loin using authentic imported hand-pestled spices - probably doesn't even wear underwear. Or have periods. Hey, I hardly have periods either these days, but that doesn't stop nature's panty pranks.)

TMI, right?! So no, don't bring your kids to those late shows. (They aren't allowed, but then neither is doing cannonballs into the hot tub. At least the comedy they've probably already heard before on South Park.) Strong visuals may happen.

Shocking or barely R-rated, the comedy was much better than our first Splendor cruise, before the fleetwide launch of the "Punchliner Club," when all we had was some grouse miserably abusing the crowd. This time we saw Russ Nagel again - his show held up quite well the second time - and Merl Hobbs, who was also funny, but he needs a website. (MySpace doesn't count, mister.)

Two observations: One, it's odd how everyone clears out of the lounge between shows. The break is only 30 minutes. We preferred to keep our good seat (or find a better one). Maybe most people don't bother with seeing the late-late comedian?

Next, and here comes the whinge, the bar service in this room was as bad as it was the last time we were here on Carnival Splendor two years ago. Once they know you're a soda drinker (with a pre-paid soda card), you won't see them again. It would be one thing if they were busy (more drink sales = more tips, I get it), but several times we saw servers just standing against the wall, watching the show, or at least keeping their eyes averted . The dining room started out just as bad but was much better near the end. (But still, no one was as great as Maria or Denis on Carnival Spirit.) I don't think it's a ship thing, just bad luck, but I don't know? Maybe bigger ships promote that kind of work ethic? The room was only half full for the last show on this night, but we couldn't get anyone's attention - at the wall or on the floor.

I did try to talk Mike into getting a Shirley Temple - he's never had one! - but he couldn't handle the embarrassment of ordering something called that. Pft. (Remind me to get cherry juice at the store. We got a new "Ninja Warrior" immersion blender from Woot.com - half off! - and it makes genuinely excellent smoothies and slushies. Don't ask how many frozen hot chocolates I've had this week. Anyway, wouldn't a frozen Shirley Temple be tasty?)

I see from my notes there's another moment to chat about. After boarding or after dinner, I forget which, we came back to our room only to discover that some rooms around the corner had their doors open so the occupants could yell back and forth to one another. Such a breach of etiquette in my spa cabins? Say it isn't so!

This happened more than once with these cabins during the cruise. On this occasion, we could hear a young boy tearfully screaming, "IT'S NOT FUNNY!" over and over at the top of his lungs while a bunch of adults laughed at him at the same volume. This went on for ages. I swear. No uptight hyperbole from me. It wasn't the kind of gentle laughter that's meant to calm a tantrum, either, but rowdy, boisterous laughing from people who sound as oblivious to the kid's feelings as to rest of the hallway's peace and quiet.

I wasn't figuratively elected Miz Passive-Aggressive 2011 for nothing. Eventually I stuck my head out the door and yelled, "It is TOO funny!" then let out a roll of over-the-top laughter meant to imitate the adults. (The kid I really felt for, and I regret that he may have thought my response was for him.) Not pretty. Not proud. I just wanted the adults to become shamefully aware that they were being idiots to a point where strangers were mocking them. (It did get quieter, but I think it was dying down anyway.)

Maybe it's time to sail HAL so I can be the one getting told off. (Is it true that you can't wear jeans in the public areas anywhere on elegant nights?)

I wonder if HAL has as much of this:

(To be fair, what do you do if you drop an ice cream cone in the middle of the night? Maybe the person went down to guest services and help was on the way. I can't even say I'd go very far to let someone know. So, I apologize for the cheap shot that implies Carnival attracts a tacky breed of people who leave a trail of dairy-based crime scenes in their wake (or is soft-serve non-dairy?)... even with all of my grumbles, I don't really think that's the case. I still like the pic, though, so it stays.)

Reclining Bunny played us off to sleep. It looks like daylight in that photo because I actually took it the next day, details of which will come "later," but our second day in Cabo is best described by referring to my previous 1,001 mentions of the thalassotherapy pool. (The good thing about repeating a port for the fifth time? Giving yourself a vacation from that vacation and staying onboard!)

Previously: Carnival Splendor Again: First Sea Day

Carnival Splendor Again: First Sea Day

Previously: Embarkation Day.

On Monday morning, a sea day, I woke up before Mike, and as soon as I saw the early hour I had a plan: "Morning Trivia!"

How great would it be to slip down to the big theatre, win the 9 a.m. trivia contest, get a ship on a stick, then tiptoe back into the room where Mike would (let's face it) surely still be asleep, then wait for him to wake up to his surprise?

Plus, then we'd have a ship on a stick, and we wouldn't be pining over getting one from Carnival Splendor, which might lead to missing valuable thalassotherapy pool and aroma steam room time in order to play trivia.

(Don't get me wrong: we're mad about trivia. And as I've said on other trip reports, as fun as it is to win, if you're with a good group of people, winning doesn't really matter. It's just fun to play and discuss the new things you learn, etc. But this cruise was supposed to be all about the spaaaaaa... and as much as winning doesn't matter, it's hard not to want to collect a s-o-a-s from every ship.)

A photo I took of the edge of the stage while waiting:

Yesterday we'd told Simon (Chocolate Thunder) how glad we were to encounter new trivia questions because getting the same ones puts you in a dilemma as to whether it's fair to compete. It's still a touchy issue, I think. Simon felt that, hey, if you know it, you know it, and it doesn't matter if you learned it on the last cruise. Yeah, but then you hear stories of people who cruise with the same lines/hosts/whatever all the time and know all of the answers and win all of the prizes, which doesn't sound like it's fun to play or very sporting to claim a prize over.

At this trivia session, run by... Patty, I think? (We had two female social hosts: one from Brazil, and one from Michigan who wore stripper heels. This was the Brazilian.) Anyway, at this session two questions from the last cruise popped up. Whatever your moral position is on staying in a game if the questions (even if only two) are the same, let me tell you: in my case, it doesn't matter. Why? Because those were the two questions that absolutely stumped me.

I guess this proves the popular point in pedagogy that you can't just be told an answer to something and be expected to have learned it? Still, you'd think I'd have an inkling. But no, nothing at all. Of all twenty questions, only those two plus one other stumped me, and the other one I was 99.5% close on. (Alas, that's not 100%.)

I don't usually share any cruise trivia questions when off the ship, not even the ones leading to anecdotes of triumph or irony, but I'm going to make an exception for not one but two today. I don't know why. Blame it on summer break. Plus, it's not like I'm posting a list of questions and answers. (Which I totally could do: I save all the answer sheets for my scrapbook. Sick, huh?) I figure that if you've waded through this much rambling from me, you deserve this.

So, it was pretty big group in the theatre for trivia. I'd say fortyish people? Fifty? Most were in small groups. When it came time to rattle off answers, a family of four (two parents, two adult children) that had been very vocal in their responses and were clearly doing well, were the only ones who shouted a response to "How many bones are in the human body?"

One thing that bugged me about that question was that I seemed to recall that the answer could vary. But, I didn't really know why, plus I knew there was a "commonly accepted" answer, so the question was fair.

206? 208? 209? 207? I just knew that one of these was right, but which one? Argh! Have to pick something... okay... um. um. um. 207!

Well, the answer was... 206. Dang! Still, have to be happy to have been close.

The family of four got this one right. Now here's the bizarre part: after they shouted out the correct answer, everyone was gasping and whispering. Patty joined in from the stage, "How did you know that?!"

"I'm a doctor," the father answered.

"Ahhh," came the knowing sound from everyone else.

Huh? Sure, I ballsed up the answer (off by one number is still wrong), but c'mon, it's not arcane knowledge from lost library of Merlin. It's one of those things you learn in school. I felt foolish for not remembering. People, you scare me sometimes.

Now here's the other question I'll reveal: "What is the only Disney character to promote a food product?"

I wrote down "Donald Duck orange juice." Yes, correct. The doctor-family wrote "Peter Pan peanut butter." Nope. It's a good answer, especially since (as I see on Wikipedia) the Disney artwork for Peter Pan is now used for the peanut butter.

But! The question said "Disney character." Peter Pan isn't really a Disney character - no more so than Winnie the Pooh. Peter Pan was created by J.M. Barrie when Walt Disney himself was still in diapers. He's not like Goofy, Mickey, Pluto, Minnie... or Donald. I know you could make a case for changing the definition of "Disney character," but that doesn't really fit the spirit of trivia. (Just like apparently I could make a case for 207 bones being in the human body.)

Well, the doctor-family wasn't happy, but Patty ruled that the answer was Donald Duck. (Probably more out of wanting to stick to the answer sheet than any executive decision on what constitutes a "Disney character.")

So, of course it came down to a tie. 17 out of 20 for me, and 17 out of 20 for the doctor-family.

No sooner was the tie announced when the mother of the family shouted out, "We should get a half-point for the Peter Pan peanut butter!" Wow. Well, then I should get... quadruple points for playing by myself? It's not even like they lost. I didn't care for these people very much.

I thought there might be a tiebreaker question, but Patty had medallions for both of us. The adult son from the family and I had to mount the stage and have them put over our necks, end-of-Star Wars style, and say our names and where we were from.

Darn, another medallion! No surprise for Mike. But I was glad I went, if only to make that poor family suffer the injustice of a tie. Ha! (But the spa was looking better than ever.)

I forgot I was wearing the medallion when I got in the elevator, so I wasn't prepared for all the questions by the other passengers. (Ah, day one of a cruise!) "What kind of trivia questions?" one asked. That's how I started hosting a quick trivia game in the elevator. We had to hold the door on one floor so one person could answer, and everyone kept asking for more questions. It was fun, more fun than the actual trivia game, and if Carnival is interested in an elevator trivia hostess...?

I tried to sneakily hang the medallion next to the one from the day before, but they clanged, which woke Mike up enough to say, "Where'd the other medallion come from?"

Otherwise, he slept through all of my comings and goings in and out from the balcony - for socks, for a jacket, for the camera. I was trying to read Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter out there, but it was a mite cold.

What did wake Mike up was the knock on the door from room service. Huh? Room service?

The waiter had a tray with several plates of chocolate-dipped strawberries. He handed me one.

The card is blurry, but it says, "A Gift for You" with "John Heald" written on the line. How nice! We'd asked if he could help with a table for two, so this was really above and beyond. I know John gets a lot of criticism from people who think people just use him for requests or gifts, but John says to please ask him for help with tables-for-two (or anything), and the gifts are all his idea. We certainly didn't expect this generosity.

Okay, we didn't expect the strawberries. After getting the first medallion, we kind of joked, "Well, maybe John Heald will send us a ship on a stick." That's what he did the first time we cruised Carnival Spirit (and had a table request), but we didn't expect it... but it would be nice. :) Oh well, guess if we really wanted a Splendor s-o-a-s, we'd have to swing by another trivia game... assuming they'd ever stop giving out medallions!

Because we were still making posts on Funville Forums at this point (Why have I become so lazy about taking notes these last few cruises?), I can recall that we had a good lunch:

The Tandoor's vegetarian selection was, as it would be every single day, the dry paneer tikka with acrid chickpeas, and that disappointed me anew every time (It's Indian food! It's supposed to be a vegetarian delight!), but it's not like I could go hungry. In the photo above you see I visited the burrito station, grabbed both iced tea and hot chocolate, and had two pieces of dessert on stand-by. Mike's plate is piled with Indian with a gyro from today's Taste of Nations, "Mediterranean."

(The worst thing about taking photos of our buffet choices is that it leads to comments from anonymous losers along the lines of, "That's y ur so fat!" Yeah, I'm fat, but I'm also wasteful. I get two desserts because I want to try both, not because I plan to eat all of both. Use the right perjorative for the occasion, buster!)

Afterward we visited the Shore Excursion desk because the tickets for Todos Santos said that closed-toe shoes were required, while the catalog said no such thing. I had only sandals. The SE people assured us that it wouldn't be an issue. The bad news was that only seven tickets had been sold since yesterday for the Todos Santos tour. We needed 20 in order for it to happen.

You know how people do things on a cruise they wouldn't do at home? Drink into oblivion by noon each day? Wear big hats and mismatched prints? Have sex with near-strangers?

Well, we became spammers.

We started by speaking loudly and excitedly about Todos Santos whenever passing groups of people. Then, Mike ran back to the SE desk to grab a few TS brochures, which we then carefully placed in the most public areas of the ship. Then we crossed our fingers.

So it was a bit ironic when, as we walked down the hall to our room, we could see there was something in our mailbox and we started grousing. Were people putting their empty bottles in our mailbox?! Trash!

But wait, it was...

A bottle of Italian champagne (Santero Brut) and... and... YES... a ship on a stick! Thank you, John Heald!

As I wrote that night in the Funville Forums, "So, the pressure to get a trophy is off, and maybe everyone can feel free to go to trivia without these two nerds keenly showing up and offering unsolicited feedback (I'm telling you, no one has even proven that Anne Boleyn had six fingers), and/or we can be humbled a little less frequently, especially on sports questions."

The beauty of that shimmering plastic!

You know, I think I'll just let my FF post take over reporting most of the rest of the day:

"Now it's late afternoon which means... that's right, Mike is having his nap. (I wish the same could be said for the crying baby next door, but the soundproofing is mostly good.) We just did a full session in the thalasso pool and the thermal suite. Watched a few more people try to sneak into the facilities - I don't think the word is out that the spa has gone to a key card system. Nearly fell asleep on the heated tile loungers with the ocean view. One of the reasons (or justifications?) we booked this cruise was to see if the thermal suite might help me finally get rid of the lingering wheeze from last month's pneumonia. Can't say if it's helping yet, but as Mike's "ashy" arm has started to peel, the humidity is restoring our crusty desert skin. I'm sure we'll go back after dinner tonight."

(The meal in the steakhouse was as beautiful as before.)

Mike wrote:

"Back from another long soak in the thalasso tub after a delicious dinner in The Pinnacle Steakhouse. Was funny seeing the same hostess there from our Steakhouse dinners on Carnival Spirit at New Year. She seemed genuinely amazed to see us again. The meal was an incredible as I remembered from Spirit.

"We've tried some more to work out how to upload photos here - it doesn't seem to be possible without paying for wifi, so we might be limited to text updates -- unless Cabo somehow has some free or affordable wifi we can pick up from the ship or the port. I guess all we have to do is locate a Starbucks. :)

"Off to the evening show in a little while."

(Then later, also from Mike:)

"The end of another day. The show was a bit "meh" - As much as I love Carnival Splendor, Spirit does have better shows. This 'The Beat' show had too many similar songs, not as much chemistry between the singers, and I had trouble staying interested, although it did pick up a bit in the middle third. The comedy guy at 11:45, Russ Nagel, was funny so that made up for it. All in all a great day."

"Time for bed. Cabo in the morning. So far there's no 'Sorry, we didn't sell enough tickets to your tour' message, so it looks like we'll get to go to Todos Santos."

Previously: Thomas

Thomas

Thomas, you were the oddest hamster we've ever had. You always seemed to have trouble walking, and the fatty tumour that came later didn't help, but then you'd run with such casual joy. (Rarely, but enough to dispel any rumours.) I'd think you were in the final days of bedrest, then you'd toddle over the to large beach we made for you, climb into the sand, and roll and roll. Look around and roll some more. Milkbones would appear there when we weren't looking.

You weren't into getting picked up, but you didn't complain when it happened. You didn't ever clamor for the hand... but last month, I put my hand next to you, and you gave it a speculative look and climbed in. Then out. But then back in. But then back out. As if to say, "This hand-thing is overrated, but it's not bad."

You weren't a petting hamster, but there was one thing that drove you to a sunken stillness we always hoped was bliss: Feta's old head trick. When you came to us from the SPCA, you were a bit of a biter. But even then, the very first time we rubbed your head a little, you stopped, closed your eyes, and wouldn't move until we stopped, be it five seconds or five minutes later. The biting went away, but the head trick worked all your life.

Including last night, when I gave you your special mix of oats and millet on top of your regular seeds. (Mike had already made you a tofu treat for breakfast.) I said that you were looking pretty old, but you still climbed right on top of your seed pile to eat. (I had to pour the millet around your fuzzy feet.) I couldn't resist giving you a little head pat - but I let you get back to your dinner.

Last night we slept so long, almost a dozen hours. I don't know why. When I woke up and staggered into the bathroom, I looked at all the nearly empty toilet paper rolls lined up that we keep for you guys, and I wondered if you'd like a new roll. You hadn't really done much with the old roll, but maybe a thicker one would be more inspiring.

But when I went into the living room, you were on your side with your upper body in the clubhouse, as if you were just too tired to climb all the way into bed. I stroked your side a few times, finally able to do so.

Later, when it was time to bury "our Thom-nas," I noticed that you had a little piece of fluffins in your mouth. You'd been building up your nest. It must have been quick.

We will miss our strange little fellow.

? 2009 (adopted 11 March 2010) - 18 June 2011

Previously: Carnival Splendor Again: Embarkation Day

Carnival Splendor Again: Embarkation Day

You know, Dickens cranked out his installments faster than this. I only know that he even wrote serials because of when Stephen King did it for The Green Mile and mentioned people waiting in the harbor for news of Little Nell. Let's get one thing straight: I aced-with-grease the GRE Subject Exam (in Literature) not because of what I'd read, but because of how well I researched what I was supposed to have read. And since Mike recently wrote a paper on Hard Times, I am that much more of a Dickens Dilletante, which would be a wonderful book blog name, by the way.

Which is how we come to this question: if Dickens were naming cruise ship workers, what sort of names could we expect? The stewards would surely be something like "Mr. Nebbersnuze" and "Ms. Yessington" as I don't know when they sleep and have never heard one say "no" to a request.

When last we left off the story, we were in Zone One (but barely):

In fact, all kinds of folk called Zone One home. Special needs, weddings, early birds like ourselves... and every single person who was waiting for their loved one to disembark. Which meant that sitting space for those waiting to board was sparse - a shame considering that we arrived just before noon, were already checked in, and (thanks to thorough Customs) still waited an hour and a half before the last person was off and all the wedding people and VIPs were on.

If you're staying on the Queen Mary, Carnival's Long Beach cruise terminal is startlingly convenient, but the terminal itself is the poorest of... well, of the other one we've actually visited (San Diego - a snap!) and those I've seen on TV. You mean it's not the norm to prop yourself against a large concrete wall - under full sun if you're not lucky - for a couple of hours until you can board? You mean other terminals have chairs with... padding? Air conditioning? Faaaaaancy!

We did get a spot to sit, only by being a bit pushy with the "just here to greet someone" lot who are so prone to sprawling.

One problem is that everyone kept trying to form lines.

And as soon as people started doing that, everyone would get anxious and leave their zones/spots to join a line... only to have that line be meaningless as soon as a Carnival employee walked over to a spot away from all the "lines" and called for a certain group to board.

After the wedding folks and the VIPs, Zone One was called. What about Special Needs? We told some disabled people by us that surely it was a mistake and they should come with us - on principle if not by rights. A minute later the announcement was adjusted to "Special Needs and Zone One." Heh. And of course the checkpoint person was on the opposite side of where all the wheelchair-folk had queued up by the rope as requested. This terminal is a mess... right up there with all the Zone Not-One people who were sent out of the Zone One line. People! I don't know what to say.

Once inside we were briskly through the X-ray machines, past the (not being used) check-in area (is it ever used? Paradise?), and up to the photography cattle-run. We were directed to the longer line in the back. "We don't want photos. Can we just cut through here?" We pointed at a gap in the whole business. "No. You have to wait in line." Harumph. So not San Diego. We defiantly went to the shorter line in front and, as soon as the people in front of us were done, walked through. Ridiculous.

I've since heard that you can take the elevator to avoid all this. I don't remember the elevator being convenient, but it's something to keep in mind... should the price ever be so right that we sign on for yet another same-old west coast itinerary. (Yeah, we're a little jaded.)

Then it was up the escalators and out to the bridge to the ship - argh, sidestepping another jam of photographers - but at least this time we didn't have to queue up.

And then we were there. Back on beloved Splen-Splen.

Since it was after 1:30, Mike hustled to the maitre d' to see if John Heald had been able to help us with a table for two. Good ole Miguel from last time was there, and he said we would've had a table for two anyway - something about how since Mike is "international," this is the custom. (Yeah, but he's Australian. It's not like it's a huge language gap. Still, no complaints if it means we get our own little world.)

Somewhat disappointingly, we would be in the Lower Black Pearl again. I really wanted to try something new, but again, can't argue with a table for two.

While Mike took care of that, I (and all of our luggage) visited the Steakhouse line to confirm our reservations for Monday and Friday and to make sure they'd noted that I'm a vegetarian. Done and done. Mike arrived and we were more or less moved along into the flow of traffic - hmm, the ship sure didn't seem this busy last time.

Although the wait outside was unfortunate, it was nice to be able to board and already have our room ready. (Well, mostly ready. Once again Mike had to spot-clean the window... and this from the man who cannot seem to see dirty laundry on the floor at home.)

Lunch? We left the bags and decided to first get our spa bracelets. The little elevator around the corner from the Panorama Deck to the heart of the spa was as convenient as I'd hoped. Last time we were very pleased to be on the Spa Deck, and I'd stay on it again any time, but if you're near the elevator on the Panorama Deck, it's nice to not have to walk by the forward elevators or in so much of the "public" area. (Maybe that's just a Fat People Concern.) I also liked having the extra cover over our balcony in cabin 1017, this time with no danger of being pelted with candy by teenagers on the Serenity deck above.

"Hi," I said to the English woman at the spa desk. "We're staying in a spa cabin, and I hear the policies have changed since the last time we did this, in 2009. In addition to needing our bracelets, I guess we now also turn in our Sail and Sign cards for a key every time we visit?"

She got us our bracelets and confirmed that things have changed. That was a bit of a bummer - how nice would having an elevator (almost) right from our door to (totally right in front of) the thalassotherapy pool have been? But, the new way wasn't so bad (especially since I'd always send Mike to turn in the key while I dripped by the elevator), and if it keeps out the losers who delight in sneaking in without paying, huzzah.

On to the Tandoor! I panned the grill pretty hard last time - the only veggie option then was a block of sawdust seated in an acrid smear of chickpeas - but this time I was reapproaching the grill with a blank slate. After the tasty Indian meal we had on Spirit (in addition to the usual yummy Indian Vegetarian Dinner on the first night), I told myself that maybe I just had bad luck last time.

We took a moment to marvel at a check-in/embarkation line that now went all the way to the Queen Mary stairwells and wrapped around:

Okay, time to enjoy some Indian buffet...

Here it comes...

Okay, it was better this time, certainly with the naan (not shown above - that's fried bread) and even a bit with the paneer tikka... but as the menu changed all week, one thing remained constant: the vegetarian option. And this is Indian food, known for its variety for vegetarians. But no, every day it was the same "choice" for me: dry block of paneer with garbanzo beans covered in a smidge of acrid sauce. (I don't mind heat or spice, but this was just a sharp taste.) It wasn't as bad as last time, but it wasn't good enough to have twice. Meanwhile, the other dishes would all change and have lovely gravies, but day after day, always dry paneer tikka for the vegetarians. Even the samosas had beef (beef?!) in them.

This is one area where, as John Heald would put it, Carnival "can do better." Something with a sauce, that's all I ask.

I couldn't keep track of the number of times we said, "Can you believe we're back on Splendor?" We walked around admiring the ship. Here was a giggle:

We saw that trivia was happening by the casino bar, so - being nearly there anyway - we decided to check it out. Mike bought a soda card (that's right, we didn't wait until out of port to save money) and ordered a lemon, lime, and bitters. Here's the happy man:

LL&Bs, as we call them, are what Mike usually makes for me when I get home from work. Refreshing with just that little edge of complexity that gives you the pleasure of sipping slowly. Pour in a couple fingers of lime juice cordial (if making this at home, try to get the imported stuff made with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup), add a splash of Angostura bitters, then fill the rest of the glass with a beverage like Sprite. (Here I don't mind the HFCS because I like Sprite's carbonation, but Mike prefers Sierra Mist - which is now only made with sugar - for its less artificial and more mellow taste.)

Soon a member of the entertainment staff joined us - Simon from England, who later we learned also goes by "Chocolate Thunder." Just when we thought Trivia wasn't going to happen, another couple came over, so Simon hustled us through 20 general questions, all pretty fresh, which we commended him on. (One reason we weren't planning to do trivia on this cruise was because it seemed on the last cruise like Carnival only had so many questions. Thankfully, Simon likes to make his own.)

A photo of always-friendly Simon, taken later in the cruise:

We did well, getting about 17/20 if memory serves, and beat the other couple by more than twice as much, but Simon gave them medallions as well, so that was more fun and less awkward. (Alas, Simon said that ships on a stick wouldn't be given out for trivia until later in the cruise. I wonder why?) I won't say what any of the questions were, but it was amusing to hear Simon rant against Hershey's chocolate; he and Mike could almost do a duet: "Cacao Apoplexy in Stereo." I guess those Commonwealth peeps just don't appreciate waxy plastic chocolate like we Yanks do.

With Indian in our bellies and and a medallion to rest on top of them, we returned to the room to unpack.

There's Mike, unpacking just the electronics. (Kindle... book light... another Kindle... another book light... netbook... camera... camera lens... camera lens... camera lens... a thousand different chargers...)

(And yeah, I know I use the old kit lens in P-mode 99% of the time. I suck.)

Time to mosey to the Safety Briefing. We decided to hang out in the Alexandria Library.

I need to see the library on Carnival Magic because if Elation-Spirit-Splendor have taught us anything, it's that the newer the ship, the poorer the library. But, Splendor's seemed more well-stocked this time, and we looked forward to checking it out. Alas, when we stepped inside, we discovered that it reeked, and I mean reeked, of cigarette smoke. The smell was so fresh and strong that we couldn't even suck it up (so to speak) and try to get used to it, like we do when in casinos at home. Pee-ew.

Mike let someone know, and we went early to our muster station, even though this time we'd vowed not to (for once) be one of those suckers who gets there so early that you end up squished and gasping for breath in an obedient sardine line in the back while glaring at the drunken late arrivals who stumble in to the spacious front, oblivious, and get to leave first, too.

To our surprise, our line was around the corner on Deck 3, in the front part of the ship, and in some sort of wind tunnel. This short corridor only permitted three rows of people, so everyone could breathe easily, which is important when you're laughing at everyone's hair standing on end. Really, I guess there was some kind of huge fan blowing somewhere? We never did tried to check it out later; I think this whole section was in a non-public area anyway, by the way the crew was hanging back to make sure we all left after it was over. The noise of the fan made it almost impossible to hear the announcements. I was aware of talking, but that was about it. It didn't help that the drunks (there are always drunks) were crabby about having to be there at all and kept groaning and shouting whenever announcements came on or continued after a pause. (As much as I respect and enjoy Carnival, I don't think this is what the Coast Guard expects to be happening during these briefings.)

But, uselessness for hearing anything aside, this is my second fave muster drill spot ever. The strong wind rushing past us at all times kept things refreshing and not physically unpleasant, which is the norm. (My fave spot is on the Lido deck on Elation, gathered around the stage.) Mike had just had a haircut, so he doesn't really do justice to the hair-on-end phenomenon:

Now what? Well, I don't remember the exact order of things, but I think it went like this: "Hey, spa tours are over, right?" "I think so." "Let's go!"

Everything was exactly as exquisite as I remembered. The aromatherapy room seemed more citrusy than eucalyptusy than last time, but Mike isn't sure I'm right. Still, it was just as perfect. Once again (since I assume people who are reading this probably didn't read the last Splendor trip report), we are NOT NOT NOT spa people. I'm 41, Mike is 38, and we're both big fatties who normally cringe at the idea of massages, pedicures, facials, or being seen in public in swimwear. And yet, the Splendor's spa is so great that we just ignore all that and enjoy.

Having researched a bit for a possible Alaskan cruise with my father-in-law next year, here is where Carnival Splendor's spa (and I assume the other Cloud 9 spas on the newer ships) has an advantage over, say, Princess or Royal Caribbean or Norwegian or even Disney. Everything is co-ed. The thalassotherapy pool is co-ed. The steam room has aroma AND is co-ed. The different saunas are co-ed. Often I'd see great facilities on ships from those lines, but every time, some of the thermal suite facilities (usually the steam) would be single-sex.

(That said, due to completely being sick of Carnival Spirit plus it not having a thermal suite, we're leaning toward the Norwegian Pearl for Alaska. Thoughts?)

When we got to the thalassotherapy pool on this first night, it was already occupied by three bobbing kids as their father sat on a bench and watched. A spa worker was speaking to him, and he was joking with the kids, something about how they'd have to wait until they were 18 to enjoy it. At first I thought the tours were still going (and some kids had decided to make the tour more interactive than usual), but it turned out that some guy had simply brought his three kids there to enjoy the thalassotherapy pool, which they were doing - with squeals and dives - even as the spa worker was trying to kick them out. I don't know how he got in, but it's not like the pool is that easy to get to. He knew better and must've hoped they wouldn't get caught. Asshole.

(Later that week we saw another person with his young son being told - as they headed into the locker room to change - that the son couldn't stay... this was after the son had enjoyed the pool and the steam room. So, the new system if turning in a Sail and Sign card isn't perfect, but I can only imagine how bad things got before they felt the need to change it.)

Refreshed and already looking forward to ending the week with skin that doesn't flake to the touch (it's a harsh life here in the desert), we dressed (with a lowercase-d: capris with blouse for me and dark jeans with Polo for Mike) for dinner and headed down to the nook-like entry where one queues for the Lower Black Pearl.

The table for two we had last time on Splendor was okay. Not great, being hidden behind the stairs and wedged between the waiters' computer and a table where the huge biker guy always not only sat behind me (instead of his petite wife), but always sat a foot from the table at least. We really hoped we might have a table for two by the window, such as we enjoyed at breakfast on Splendor one morning, but we were grateful for anything we might get. (Nothing can really compare with the lovely tables for two isolated along the upper rail in Carnival Spirit's dining room anyway.)

So, when we found ourselves at almost the same table as last time, except hidden behind the other side of the staircase, we had to laugh.

Hey, a table for two is a table for two - for those of us who would skip the dining room without one, you have to be grateful. And if I did harbor a teensy bit of disappointment, as the volume level in that section was very noisy and our waitstaff ended up not reaching the expectations set by previous cruises, such thoughts disappeared when I saw these two-tops nearby:

Bleh. Now I see why people complain about tables for two on Splendor not really being tables for two. We did get lucky. (And that table-for-two in the Lower Gold Pearl that I coveted from last time? Not even there this time.) Oh, and I have no idea why that couple in the photo decided to sit next to each other at that table instead of across, but I'm sure the gentleman to their right was thrilled.

We had the late seating for dinner, what with Your Time Dining being all booked up, and the way events were scheduled on this particular cruise, for the first time we were really aware of how many activities we missed. All of the game shows and evening trivia, for one thing. This didn't happen the last time we had late seating (on Spirit), and we were definitely into the trivia on that cruise. That's another reason that I'm eying Norwegian for Alaska: no assigned dining times. I really-really hate to stray from Carnival, especially before we make Platinum status and especially when we can't beat their spa without bumping up to HAL or Celebrity, but again, this cruise really felt like it was planned around the early dining set.

You know, a couple of cruises ago, I said I wasn't thrilled with Stephanie Meads' onstage persona. It seemed very arm's distance, scripted, and corporate. (Although I'm sure she herself is a great person.) I thought her demeanor was more in keeping with leading activities for a company retreat than a Fun Ship, which is not meant as a put-down, just an observation that her skills may be slightly misplaced.

Anyway, two cruises later, I have to give her kudos if she's the one who did the scheduling on our Carnival Spirit cruise. Plenty of trivia scheduled (as is appropriate for a crowded Spring Break cruise, just like the one we were on now) so no one missed out, events always started on time or at all. On our last cruise, we had three occasions where no one showed up to run trivia (or arts and crafts) with zero or little explanation. (Once an entertainment staff member said there must have been a printing mistake, and another time he said they were short staffed.) On this cruise, as I said, all of the gameshows/trivia (except sports - yuck) coincided with late dinner, as opposed to an hour earlier so both dining times would be satisfied. There would be doubled-up trivia/similar events in the morning, but then dead patches in the afternoon. The focus seemed to be much more on music, which held little interest for us. (But, per last spring break cruise, why not both?)

So, a belated thank you to Stephanie Meads for her organization skills. I can see now why John Heald is a fan. Since we see more of the entertainment staff than the CD, I'd rather have a well-organized, thoughtful CD than an entertainer who isn't managing things behind the scenes. (But what I'd really like to have is !)

So, scheduling aside, how was our cruise director this time? (Felipe.)

He was fine. Not really our type, but I'm sure he's popular with people who look for someone to be very hyper in order to get excited themselves. I like the more low-key stylings of Stu Dunn and even of Goose, and on the videos John Heald looks pretty perfect in terms of understated comedic timing and showmanship. It takes all kinds, though. No complaints, always seemed very nice on the morning show, just not the kind of person where I looked forward to an event because he was running it. (Compare to, say, Sam Pile, aka Sam Stephen.)

For the first time ever, we caught the Welcome Aboard show. It wasn't as easy to get a good seat in Splendor's theatre as it was on Spirit, but after enjoying The Big Easy and other shows on Spirit, we were determined to not walk away this time, as we did on Elation and Splendor before.

Mind you, it's hard when people are literally setting their children down in the aisles for people to step over. (Not just any aisle, but the main thoroughfare, right next to the stairs.)

I have to say, my allergy to people really reared its head during this cruise. Our last Spring Break cruise was one of the best. Our first two cruises, including the previous Splendor cruise, were wonderful, and they were during June and full of kids. But nothing on previous cruises that made my eyes roll (including being bullied by teens as described above) really worked my nerves like some of the thoughtless happenings on this cruise. Maybe the ship was just more crowded this time, but I think it's me. I think my tolerance is getting lower. Am I ready to put aside my casual wear and sail Holland America? (Am I ready to put aside everything in the pantry except beans and rice and sail Cunard?)

I don't know. Maybe we just need to mix it up a little: new ports, maybe even a new ship. The west coast itinerary is just... OLD.

The show was okay. This towel animal, the one we call "THAT Towel Animal" because we have no idea what it is but it seems a bit rude, awaited us:

Before the cruise, we became aware that you can make a thread in Carnival's "Funville Forums" before you go that can be accessed later onboard, even if you don't buy a WiFi package. Unfortunately, you can't add photos straight from your hard drive to the thread, so our plans of sort of "sharing as we go along" were thwarted.

(And here it is June, and I can't even get past day one. Now that school's out, perhaps that will change. Ever since the last cruise, I find myself not blogging because I feel like I have to finish cruise reports first, so the posts won't be all out of order and hard to follow. And so life marches on, unrecorded.)

Anyway, here's what Mike posted on the Funville site before we went to bed:

Just before midnight and officially without Internet.

Had an extremely enjoyable return to Carnival Splendor's amazing thermal suite and thalassotherapy pool. Every single other person who entered the pool commented that it "wasn't hot" - It's a common misconception that it's supposed to be a hot tub - this is good because I love the tepid water and bubbles and if the crowded tubs on other decks are anything to go by, I'd prefer this one didn't share their appeal for the other guests. Kudos to the spa staff member who promptly booted out the cavorting young teenagers from this peaceful, over 18s pool.

Finally saw Carnival's "Welcome Aboard Show" which was quite fun.

Now it's time for a little reading and finally - the chance of some sleep. I was still awake at 5AM this morning, even after only 4 hours sleep the night before. 7 hours of sleep in two days doesn't seem to have caught up with me yet, but all the same I'm hoping for 8 hours tonight and a restful day in the spa tomorrow.

Previously: Carnival Splendor Again: But First, Queen Mary (Again)

Carnival Splendor Again: But First, Queen Mary (Again)

So, I haven't really even finished scrolling through my hasty notes for the New Year cruise, and here I am with a Spring Break cruise to yap about. But at least this time I took proper notes, like I used to, and can give a full trip report to my cruise-minded friends, right?

(Well, I started to, and... honestly, I don't even need notes for most of this cruise. Went to thalassotherapy pool. Went to steam room. Went to cabin for a nap. Shuffle and repeat.)

During the cruise Mike and I both tried to keep a bit of a diary going over on the Funville Forums, one of the few places you can go for free on the ship's slow Wi-Fi, but that was no fun because I felt like I had to keep my manners on and couldn't bitch properly what with being in someone else's living room. Meh.

Look, let's start where Sister Maria would start, at the beginning. No, not the beginning where we indulged in another cruise as an attempt to help me finally beat my post-pneumonia wheeze (in the spa's thermal suite), but the beginning where - because the Long Beach Grand Prix meant almost all rooms in town were booked up - we indulged in a stay on the Queen Mary the night before...

This was our second stay on the QM. I documented the last trip in the following posts:

• How to Park at the Queen Mary if You Are a Hotel Guest (This time, though, we parked in the cruise terminal structure then walked across to the ship.)
• Waiting to Check In to the Queen Mary (Kind of a "photos from around the ship" post.)
• Our Room on the Queen Mary (M149/M129 - per new/old numbering - on the starboard side. This time we were in a deluxe stateroom again, but one of the opposite layout with the bed by the window, and on the port side in M154/M134).
• We All Live in a Soviet Submarine B-427, a Soviet Submarine B-427 (Fun, but we skipped it this time).
• The "Ghosts and Legends" Tour on the Queen Mary (Complete with scary propellor shot. We didn't do any tours this time. Well, not any official ones, but as you'll read, I tried to create my own with the help of an iPhone and a certain amazing website that has all of the original deck plans.)
• Sunday Morning on the Queen Mary (more wandering around, breakfast, and the moment when I saw my first cruise ship, Carnival Pride)

This is going to be One Stinkin' Long Post. No sensible breaks this time. Sorry. (It's the only way to be sure I'll get around to finishing. Lately I'm lucky to get out a post or two each month. Strike while the keyboard is hot!)

Our start was rough with a stop in Primm to try the Mad Greek Cafe there. Sacrilege, perhaps, not to stop in Baker at the original, but once we pass the California border I always get tetchy about stopping except for the usual Victorville gas (Chevron, north side of Bear Valley exit). Plus, in Baker I always feel like I'm one bad pothole or one misjudged speedometer reading away from an Unexpected but Significant Travel Delay.

So, we stopped in Primm to recapture the magic of the strawberry milkshake we'd shared in Baker at the Mad Greek on the way to San Diego in December.

Problem 1: Mike, out of habit, ordered the large size. I guess we got a medium last time, because the large comes in a "collapsible to the touch" styrofoam two-hander with no lid.

Problem 2: Anticipating a thumb covered in whipped cream at best whenever I'd try to grab the drink while driving, I opened the car door and spooned a few inches of the shake onto the parking lot pavement before we left. (It looked gross, I know, but it's not exactly littering.) Then I decided to get something out of the trunk, and stepped directly into my pile of strawberry muck. With the only pair of (non-dress) shoes I was bringing on the trip because I was too lazy to go back upstairs and grab another pair to throw into the trunk, just in case. Blegh and argh!

Problem 3: My grr-fest over and us finally on the road and finally past the border and into the mountains, we had to suddenly pull over to the side of the road:

No one was getting away unscathed from dairy-based drama today. I don't think either of us ever wants to see a strawberry milkshake again.

But here's a photo from about an hour before that, at the gas station around the corner from the house:

The rest of the drive was uneventful. We skirted all of the downtown Grand Prix traffic by taking a more direct and logical route than usual: I-15 out of Las Vegas to 210 west to 605 south to 105 west to 710 south all the way to the end, which is the aforementioned parking garage. Easy all the way, despite it being Saturday, plus we got the thrill of zooming right past (what the map said was) Compton. (Seriously, I'd deliberately avoided this route in the past, but the highway is its own world.)

Already we could see some changes from our visit three years ago: new hotel sign, and the elevators to the gangways have some plush red seating and decor nearby on the ground level.

Otherwise everything was pleasantly familiar, and we were excited to be back on the lovely (for all the shuddering mistakes made in the restoration process) Queen Mary. The staff, while fine on the last trip, was beyond courteous in every way on this visit. (With the exception of some critical misinformation, which I'll describe later.) It was the kind of hospitality that you notice, from reception to restaurant to the people you just pass in the corridors.

The only thing that wasn't familiar was the throng of people. On our last visit, we came away worrying about the hotel/attraction staying in business. This time the joint was jumping, as they say. If you know us at all, you know we hate crowds, but we were too happy to see the QM doing well to really mind.

Last time our room had a bed by the door with a sitting area by the portholes. The QM's deluxe rooms, former first class rooms on the Main Deck by the suites, follow an interlocking pattern that you can see on this excellent (insert 30 more bonny adjectives here) website. This time our bed was by the portholes (along with a new, sizable flatscreen TV) and instead we had a wide corridor between bed and bath with a chair, several closets, vanity, writing desks, etc. (None of which I seem to have really bothered to photograph. Laziness or distraction?)

If you look at the old Main Deck blueprint, ours is the room on the top row, at the end of the corridor just above the "G" in "Gents Lavy" on the far left, and it's the room on the left at the end of the little hall. Or, more or less the fifth room from the left, marked "2." The cabin to our left is shaped like what we had last time. (Which, if you're just desperately into these things, was the cabin on the bottom row, under the second "L" in "Ladies Lavy," also on the left at the end of the corridor.

The first thing I noticed is that this time our room had period books:

I really liked the title of the one of the left, A Guide for the Bedevilled, but it wasn't what I expected.

We had a Harbor View last time, which was nice for peeking at the lights of the shopping area called The Pike (and reminiscing about the real Pike, not that I was around for that), and I requested the same view again, but it wasn't available. We didn't mind - trying something new was interesting, too. We ended up with a spacy look at the Carnival cruise terminal, aka the old Spruce Goose dome:

The room, more or less:

The old callboxes (I think?) remain outside of each original cabin. (I only know about Main deck. From the previously linked website, it sounds like only the M-deck cabins are original. The lower deck cabins are all reconfigurations of smaller cabins. We were offered a B-deck room, which would be less noisy, but we wanted to be in an original cabin.) When the renovation was done in the early 1970s, the rooms were renumbered. Outside our room, you can see where the new number plate for M154 (which was glued over the wooden original, ew) has fallen away to reveal the cabin's original number, M134:

Also in view from our room was the now-decaying shopping village from the Disney-era of Queen Mary ownership.

Strangely, this is still advertised as an attraction in the hotel book inside the room although it's been defunct for years. (And it's described as "Dickensian." Is it not Tudor? Or at least what's left of the building on the left? and tilting churchy-looking towers behind it?) Does anyone know if anything is happening in these buildings now? It seems silly that the cruise terminal waiting area should be so exposed, packed, and miserable when here are some structures that might at least give respite to the more ambulatory or well-wheeled special needs guests who board almost-first or even the wedding parties who board before everyone else. (VIPs do have their own building.) Or just for me, because I hate standing in the sun. (We didn't have to this time, though. Later!)

Or if Carnival doesn't want to do anything with it, some enterprising person could make a killing selling soda in just one of the shops. Everyone seemed to be carrying on soda on the cruise, and I'm sure more would if it was more convenient for those who fly in to acquire it. (Not that Carnival would want to encourage this, but then maybe that's enticement enough for them to do something with it. How about a Shore Excursion desk? A bar? A gift shop? Something that only operates three days a week - embarkation days - but could generate revenue for them and alleviate boredom for those who are victims of Customs' new, time-consuming procedures?)

People on the various forums (Mike thinks it's pretentious when I say "fora") are always asking how close the Queen Mary is to the cruise terminal. It's this close:

Just a hop across the parking lot, and you're there. Mike had to walk back to get the bag we'd decided to leave in the car... which ended up having the hairbrush and toothpaste in it. (I didn't ask him to walk back again when I remembered I'd left my jacket, too.) Check-in is just outside the dome... unless you check in early (Carnival Paradise) or you check in early and the weather is bad (Carnival Splendor). Then it's on Queen Mary at the back part of the museum, but OH OH OH, I have a story about the misinformation spinning around all that. (Later.)

I took photos from the gangplank while me and my newly bad knees (don't even ask - I know the last cruise report was like a Physician's Desk Reference) waited for Mike to walk back.

While Mike took the bag to the room (yes, I expect his sainthood paperwork will be rushed through even faster than John Paul II's), I started taking my "homemade" tour, based on the (again, extraordinary) website linked earlier.

Like, I wandered into a gift shop by the main gangway...

...that used to be the radio telephone room. The original clocks remain:

As do the etched glass panels by the ceiling, depicting wireless (mid-20th-century-style) technology:

Note the souvenir mugs just below. I wonder how many people think to look up? If I have one complaint (and of course I do; it's what I do), it's that the Queen Mary's free "self-guided" tour is very thin on information. I'm sure the guided tour is great and of course the management rightfully has every incentive to encourage people to book that, but I wish the QM would sell, for maybe even the cost of the tour, a softcover guide to all of these little tidbits around the ship. (At this point I'm very tempted to develop an app for smartphones, but I really couldn't do it without negotiating with those who've provided all of this information online, and I don't want to undercut the seemingly always-endangered QM revenues in anyway. Now, if the Queen Mary would like to hire me for a reasonable pittance to make one...)

Mike thought maybe the Promenade floorboards were shinier this time. I don't know. The ship looked great in the late afternoon light, though:

We were hungry by now and strolled over to the Promenade Cafe, a restaurant that sits on what used to be the starboard side of the Promenade deck. The location of the restaurant, when there is so much under- or weirdly used space inside, seems to me to be Yet Another Unfortunate Decision Made 40ish Years Ago when the Queen Mary underwent her renovation into a hotel/attraction, but we had an excellent breakfast here in 2008, and a look at the current dinner menu lured me in with talk of onion rings and a creamy pepper sauce.

We were seated at a lovely table by the window, overlooking the lights of the shore and the green/purple glow of the Queensway Bridge. Oops, no tripod:

Once again the food was really delicious. The low-light photos are not very flattering, and I'm afraid our "down-home" choices (the onion rings, chicken wings then chicken-fried steak for Mike, mac and cheese for me) for once fit the stereotype of what people often assume we (as fatties) usually eat. But mmmmmmm! The onion rings were crisp but not oily with actual flavour, not just texture. The creamy pepper sauce was spicy but not too hot. The macaroni and cheese was a nice back-and-forth of crunchy topping and silky cheese with the buttered toast making an unexpectedly good (if carbtastic) accompaniment:

We enjoyed it all with pink lemonade and superlative service from the main waitress to the hostess to the drinks-and-bus person to the manager-type who wanted to make sure all was delicious since we had so much food left over. The drinks-and-bus guy (okay, what's the real title?) even got us plastic forks to go with our (bagged in a paper QM-logo tote) leftovers so we could enjoy them in our room later.

Now we could walk off dinner on a beautiful ship. So different from the cruise ship we'd board the next day, yet the satisfaction was so similar. I discovered that the Google Docs spreadsheet with my tour notes wasn't loading well on my phone (I've heard about a proper app but can't find it?), so instead I pulled up the (please don't be sick of hearing about, but it's just that good) website by Julian Hill and tried to guide us around "the ship in hiding."

Obviously, money for repairs remains an issue:

See the horizontal board at the top of the window? There was one of those just lying along another windowsill. "Mike! I could totally come back down here at 4 a.m. and hide it!" Except then I'd be one of the Bad People, so of course I wouldn't. But the temptation was there.

My "tour" mostly consisted of standing outside of places, like the Observation Bar, and pointing at locked doors saying, "This? This used to be the darkroom!" The shops were all closed (except the central shop with the Asian goods, but it has always been a shop, so...), so I'd press my face to the dark glass and say, "I think this was a writing room!" (Then spend ages on the slow internet trying to find out if it was 1st class or 2nd class, while Mike waited. Might explain why he didn't tip at the end. But kudos to him for recognizing a statue of Guan Yu in the "Dragon Shoppe.")

Here's a shot from earlier in the day of the souvenir shop on A-deck. It used to be the ship's bank:

I like how the British shop - site of one of the former funnel hatches - has family crest plates for both GonzaleZ and GonzaleS. (Somebody savvy is working in that marketing department.)

Then it was back to the room for reading, a little television, talking to Mike's mom on Skype, and enjoying part two of our dinners. The neighbours in the cabin to the left (aft) were drunk and easily heard through the walls. When their smoke alarm went off I got dressed and got ready to let them have it, but it turned out to be an honest issue with the alarm itself. Security came up and I heard everything through the walls (okay, so I had to press against the wall a bit), including the part where Security said that it was a known issue, and that he was going to just disconnect the smoke alarm so it wouldn't happen again.

Great, now we'd have drunk party people next door (and their seeming revolving door of friends) who could set the room on fire, but no alarms would go off until the flames reached our room. Isn't there a fire code or building code or hotel code or something against this?

One guy started going on about being too tired to have sex, so he was going up to the Observation Bar to find "two chicks to **** each other while he watched." After he returned from what appeared to be a failed plan and it was getting quite late, I was desperate to start making light ghost noises through the wall. Mike said no. "Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?!" But Mike again insisted that I not. And since Mike usually encourages me to make most of the decisions and to choose to do what I want, I had to respect his rare request, only squeaking out one tiny demo-howl to show him how fun it could be. (He still said no!)

The walls weren't the only place woods talking. The ceiling was tap-tap-tapping with every footstep that crossed the Promenade Deck. Ah, so this was what the desk clerk meant by B-deck being "quieter." Chalk up another reason to book a Harbor View room instead. (Then you'll have the restaurants above you instead of foot traffic.) But even this wasn't so bad once I got used to it, and without much effort we fell asleep.

Well, I did. It was around 4:30 when Mike finally was able to settle in... and that's when I decided to get up. Empty Queen Mary to explore!

Outside our room was a staircase:

The elevator next to it was long out of service, with only its old buttons recalling its purpose:

Earlier we'd gone down these steps. This time I went up, vaguely noticing the "Crew Members Only" sign, but thinking it had something to do with the broken hole in the wall.

So, I was a mite surprised to be greeted by this:

Well, I guess it wouldn't hurt to walk a little further...

Now I was standing in what used to be part of the Long Gallery but what is now a small hall around a conference room, looking at the hall and entrance to what was once the Cabin Class (First Class) Smoking Room, but what is now... another conference/catering room. (Here's the full explanation with before and after photos. I'm telling you, you could spend days on that site.)

Not much to see (and not much permission to see it), so I walked back down our deck, past the former first class entrance...

... up to the Promenade Deck.

There I glanced at the former cigar shop:

As well as the former flower shop on the other side:

I turned back down a little corridor to some displays by the ladies' room. I looked at the exhibits (including a selection of postcards, including one just like my lucky one), coveting a few items:

Notice the etched glass above what used to be Writing Room (and is now a restroom).

Each panel represents a form of writing, in this case cave paintings. There were actually two First Class writing rooms, one on starboard side (this one) and one opposite on the port side. After the war, the etched glass was put in, and the port-side room became the radio telephone room described earlier. (As always, I only know all of this because of Julian Hill's site.) I couldn't get good photos of any of the panels, but you can see more by looking through my Queen Mary set on Flickr. (Note: covers both visits... or even "all three" visits, if you count a "professional" Polaroid from my 1989 drop-by. I only wish the photographer had posed me in such a way to remind my future self that I once had a waist to go with those nice legs.)

I took in some of the "grottiness" along the edge of the Promenade Deck:

I feel a little bad for enjoying the decay, but I think it's only because there's so much on the ship that's been taken away or strangely redone that it's exciting to get little glimpses of the "real" QM. It's not quite an accurate perspective, but this is how I always start to feel as I look around. The polished woods are luminous and rich, but the ruins can't help but be compelling.

Still blurring despite the 1600 ISO, I admired the original doors:

I stepped out onto the aft gangway, where the tourist (2nd) class and cabin (1st) class promenades used to divide, looking at the main gangways and elevators between the parking lot and the decks of interest to tourists (R-deck for Sunday Champagne Brunch, A-Deck for hotel, Promenade Deck for touring).

I think the second set of double windows from the right, just under Promenade Deck, is where Mike was getting a cherished four hours of sleep before Early Check-In, but I'm not 100% sure.

I decided to stick my head into the hallway by the wedding chapel (former Second Class Smoking Room), when I saw these elevators:

Notice the old buttons and the metal plaque welded to the doors. I wonder what the inside of the actual elevator car (presumably resting on the lowest deck?) looks like today.

I started walking down the steps by these elevators, toward the (open) "Hotel Guests Only Please" gate, and past several etched glass panels. Hmm, this wasn't something I'd noticed on the Hill website...

All of the panels, winding around the derelict elevators from Promenade Deck to B-Deck (where I ended up later), featured something to do with transportation.

(More photos of the stairwell glass is my Flickr stream.)

As I already described, Mike and I had toured around after dinner, pondering one locked door or empty space after another. I wanted to see the outside of the former library, now a chair storage room, hoping the door would be unlocked and I could see the rolling glass cabinets for myself. (The glass covers over the cabinets rolled, not the cabinets themselves.)

Alas, when we opened an unmarked door leading toward what is now the Brittania Room - available for your next catered affair - and was once the Tourist Class Lounge with a promenade on each side, some event was in progress and it looked like, from our hasty glance down the corridor, we were in forbidden territory.

However, following the glass art like a white rabbit down the staircase, I now found myself outside the Brittania Room in what is surely an allowed tourist area, unless all the displays are just for those who wander past on their way to their function.

More goodies:

Looking inside, it's nothing like it used to be. Just a blank canvas at best.

More obvious in this photo is the part of the promenade area that has been carpeted over and made part of the expanded room:

Turning back, I did get to see the covered windows of the library:

This is the hallway back to our room, only a few steps away from the door at the end. This is where we'd originally stuck our heads in then scurried back. What you should notice in this photo (and what I didn't fully comprehend at the time) is that this hallway was added later, and it cuts through part of the original library. The wall to the left was added later to create the service space for the Brittania room, and as you can see, it doesn't reach the ceiling. The light fixture is one of the library's original fixtures, as shown on the Hill site.

Of course, at the time I just took the pic because I thought the wall was funny. But hey, something to be said for instincts.

I tried opening the door to the left (not seen above), where the remaining bit of library and promenade would be... and this time the door was open!

I was too nervous to stand still for a proper photo, though. In fact, I didn't even shut the door tight before running away. Wuss! In case you don't click on the link, the octagon was a painting frame. (The paintings were cut out of the frames - there is a matching one in the chair storage area - and are now in yet another conference room. At least they were saved.)

Down on B-Deck, I finally got the shivers.

There's something about that tile that says "insane asylum, unvisited for decades" to me. I looked around a little, but everything felt very closed and isolated. I (alas) don't get "creepy vibes" of the ghostly sort on the ship, but I did think "you know, there are a lot of non-ghostly reasons not to wander around in dark corners of hotels before sunrise on Sunday morning."

So, looking with regret at the shut-down elevators, I exercised my wonky knee with a climb back to the Promenade deck, where I was about to go check for our incoming Carnival Splendor out on the aft deck, but nature called, so I decided to check out this original lavatory:

The photo on the wall is of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip visiting the Queen Mary.

Long Beach was all misty.

The Spruce Goose dome looked very dirty (especially in black and white).

And what was emerging through the fog?

Okay, so, I left out the whole bit where I loaded one of those "Where is the ship now?" sites on my phone, got the impression that Carnival Splendor was delayed by a few hours, and went back to the room to open up a decent computer (one of the few times you'll hear me call the netbook that) to investigate things further. I figured out I was nuts and sprinted (okay, gently walked in a brisk fashion) up a deck and to the back where I was rewarded with the above scene a few minutes later.

In the middle of this drama, I had also tried loading Splendor's webcam on my phone to see what she was seeing. That's when I got an idea.

So, as soon as Splendor did this:

I fumbled with my other hand to get a screenshot of this:

That's Splendor looking at me, and me looking back at Splendor, or vice versa, depending on how you think about it. True, you can't see me on the webcam, but if you were to enlarge (like on the cop shows), you might find a few out-of-place purple pixels belonging to my shirt.

And that's my ship, parallel parking as only a cruise ship can. Our Beloved Carnival Splendor. See the dark spa windows at the top of the ship, up front? See the deck of cabins underneath? See the third cabin from the front? That's going to be our home in six hours! (Except it turned out to be more like eight hours. Again, a story for later!)

Having greeted our old friend, I went back downstairs for a little reading before it was time to wake Mike for Early Check-In.

Ah. Early Check-In. So many questions, so many opinions, too many official answers.

Right before our sailing, John Heald - Senior Carnival Cruise Director - confirmed that while Carnival Paradise (sailing Fridays and Mondays) always offers early check-in on the Queen Mary, Carnival Splendor only does so in inclement weather.

If you want to know whether Carnival Splendor offers early check-in on the Queen Mary, go back and read that last bit over and over and over. Ignore anything else you may read online, hear from your travel agent, or are told by the Queen Mary staff herself.

Flashback to when we checked in. Although Heald had made this definitive statement, right before that, the QM staff had told me to ask them when I checked in, as different factors were at work. I respect John Heald more than I can adequately express here, but he does get bad information sometimes. (And he's to be commended for always sorting it out quickly, but - for example - today I'm grumbling over his announcement that jeans are now allowed in the steakhouse on Cruise Casual nights... which people on the internet are freaking out about... but no one is responding to my or Mike's WTF where we point out they've been allowed since at least December. And yes, we both keep sharing the photo, and we have a near-twin of the one we saw on Carnival Splendor a few weeks ago. This is not news. This is not a change. No one should be having a meltdown. But Heald is dutifully reporting it as a new policy when someone in Miami has it wrong.) So, sometimes it pays off to ask more than one person, as we all know.

At check-in on Saturday, we were told that yes, tomorrow there would be Early Check-In for Carnival Splendor. Okay. But, cynic that I am, I called the main desk at about 8:45 (15 minutes before ECI would start) to ask again: "Is there Early Check-In for Carnival Splendor today on the Queen Mary?" I was assured that they were definitely doing it, and I was again given directions to where it would be held. Okay. Hey, it's Southern California, maybe they count fog and chilly weather as "inclement"? She said ECI started at 9:30 (as opposed to the 9 a.m. I'd read elsewhere), but we chose to start down early in case she was wrong.

But first, a few shots from the bathroom while Mike took his shower:

We decided to walk back to the Brittania Room so Mike could see all that, then go up the stairs and across the aft gangway to what looked like four flights of stairs to the lower deck where the museum is and Early Check-In is held.

When we got to the bottom, we saw that the gate to the parking lot was still locked.

However, it wasn't quite 9 a.m., so maybe Carnival would be opening it after they were ready to go. Here's Mike standing by the door that leads to the stairs back up to the gangway:

We decided to go up to the main museum doors to wait.

When we got there, we found that one was partially open. Well... ECI is actually a separate room in the museum, so maybe it was okay to just go inside? We did, and we walked over to look inside the "Early Cruise Check-In" room.

Things looked dead. But, the door was open. Should we? Nah, more fun to look around the museum. Maybe Early Check-In really didn't start until 9:30.

It didn't seem right that we should be in the museum, but standing around outside wasn't every appealing, either. At least here there were benches.

Mike posed by the ship's heavily painted anchor - the cruise check-in is just past the glass on the right.

We sat for awhile. I snapped a photo of a dreadful typo on one display: "Queen Mary moved to it's final home." (Sideways text.) It's ITS, people! I know all other possessives get an apostrophe, but "its" is the weird one. I don't make the rules; I just have the temper flare-ups when I see money spent on poor punctuation. (Knowing I would've spell-checked it for a cheap price. That said, this post is so long that I can't bear to proofread it, so maybe I shouldn't offer any punctuation advice lest irony strike.)

Besides, as Mike pointed out, "it should be her final home, not its." That's right! Disrespectful on two levels!

People started coming in, and we would look at them hopefully, and they would say hello, and we would say hi back, but then they'd walk through a door somewhere and disappear, sometimes with cleaning carts in tow. We started to wander around the main room some more.

Hey, that's my birthday:

Our room was more or less around "56":

So, at around 9:20-something, we're just standing around when a guy walks up, looking a little unsure of this situation. (Or maybe very sure of the situation - INTRUDER ALERT! - but not sure how to handle it.) "And who are you waiting for, again?"

"Oh, the cruise people, so we can do early check-in." I say this in a breezy voice that I hope makes us seem non-threatening, and not like the reenactment of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I have come to realize that we are.

And then the guy, relieved but still with a problem on his hands, tells us that the cruise people would be here by now. And I agree that it seems odd, but then I tell him that the front desk insisted just half an hour ago that it was happening. And then he starts to reach for his cell phone like he's going to phone them, but he cocks his head and says he really thinks it must be happening in front of the dome. We cheerfully agree that it probably is, thank him for his help, and wander back outside, a bit put off to have wasted all this time, but a little chuffed at our little adventure as, basically, maritime museum ninjas.

The only problem is that, once we're outside, the gate is still locked. Oh no, don't tell me we have to climb all those stairs, walk the length of the ship, go all the way back down, then cross over to the dome? It's nearly 9:30! All of the Zone One cards will be gone, and our plans to grab one, go back to the room, then get on the ship early (and avoid what have become legendary long waits for getting on to Splendor)? Grrr - stupid QM! (I have to say it!)

But Mike, ever the hero and still the ninja (or just the guy with good powers of observation), found a way to walk around various walls and get out after all. We trotted across to the dome, feeling sorry for the few people disembarking, rolling their mounds of luggage like refugees from paradise, and managed to get the VERY LAST Zone One card.

(Oops, haven't uploaded that pic yet. We'll save that for the Embarkation Post. Which will be much shorter. Pinky-toe swear.)

Check-in for Carnival Splendor only took a couple of minutes and everyone was very friendly. I especially liked the guy who shook his head sympathetically over our tale of where we'd been waiting. "We tell them and tell them, and I used to work over at the Queen Mary, but they just can't get it right!" So, once again, let me confirm: there is only early check-in for Carnival Splendor if the weather is bad. No matter how it was in the past or how it is for other ships, this is how it is for Splendor.

The plaza by the dome was nearly empty, and a stand for sunglasses and other items began to open up. Cruise! Cruise! Cruise! Time to get excited!

But first, a nap. Carnival's people told us to return at noon, so we could now reclaim a couple of hours of missing sleep. We took the long way back to our room because I wanted to see Queen Mary's dining room; it's usually inaccessible, but it would be open today for weekly Champagne Brunch.

That's all I saw. I assume it's more interesting once you get inside?

And with that, it was time to have one last damp snooze (the portholes don't fully close) before leaving the old for the new.

Previously: Carnival Spirit: Notes on Such-and-So

Carnival Spirit: Notes on Such-and-So

Now we'll pluck out some miscellany:

Mike couldn't find toast on Carnival Spirit this time. Weird.

In addition to the killer headaches I brought with me, I developed a fluttery eye twitch for the whole cruise that beat on the bongos like Mark Knopfler's chimpanzee. Oh, and it was invisible, so I would feel it hopping up and down, but Mike couldn't see a thing. At the other end, my feet swelled up to where some of my shoes didn't fit. ("Oh, that happens when you travel," said my doc, later. "What, even when you don't fly or sit still for long periods?") But, know what? So sick of talking about being sick. (For April Fool's I should've changed the banned to "FAT and/or SICK: a two-topic blog!")

Related, in "such a fool and fool-me-twice," once again I missed the Austin Powers Dance Class because I went to the theatre instead of the Lido Deck. Learn to read, woman.

Kindle-love/Kindle-hate: Plenty of Kindle users on the cruise, including a big DX sighting by the pool with an older gentleman, but the Kindle users themselves? Not so friendly. I think the Kindle demographic has slipped from "enthusiastic convert" to "people who just want to read and wish you'd go away." Me, I'm of the opinion that if someone is reading in a very public space, you're allowed to make one meaningful comment if something about their reading is obvious (device or cover).

So, if I'm walking past you to take a seat a trivia, which you are also there for, I'm allowed to point at your Kindle and say, "Aren't they great?" And you must be civil and smile and/or nod and/or gush, depending on whether you'd like to be left alone or like to swap a hallelujah, just like if I saw your book cover, noticed it was the latest Terry Pratchett, and said, "Isn't Pratchett great?" Especially if I'm continuing to move, so there's no risk of being trapped into conversation.

One woman brought her Kindle to the lounge for the Super Duper Trivia game, then sat apart from everyone and read. The man who noted her Kindle with the excitement of one who has heard of such things and would like to know more got only a huffy "yes" in response to his question about whether she was liking it. No. You're not allowed to do that, not when you inexplicably bring your Kindle to a crowded, noisy room. People! Pft.

As I wrote on my phone, "Sometimes a travel diary is just a report of slights."

Someone wore a baseball cap to the steakhouse. I don't get that, but then I'm the one who posted this photo to Cruise Critic as soon as we were back, figuring it would end all the "Are jeans allowed in the MDR?" threads. It didn't. (Note: the steakhouse is more upscale than the MDR.)

I don't mind nice jeans. I do mind baseball caps. We all have our lines.

Tide Stain Sticks totally work.

Shout outs: Ryta from Russia who had to put up with our asking to be no, not at that table, no, not at the next table, yes, please, at this table, where the chairs don't have arms. Maximo from Peru, the waiter who was so nice and always so concerned. Our other head waiter, Ramona from Romania, who was feisty and fun, and very informative about ordering Indian meals. Oh, and Ruwan from Sri Lanka, the assistant maitre d' who went around greeting people and always took an interest in our dining experience, especially after we ordered the Indian meals, and who waved to us when on deck.

We never saw Desi, the actual maitre d', except when she was performing. She seemed nice, but Carnival needs to stop confusing people by offering pre-paid gratuities, but then surprising everyone on the last night with a special envelope for the maitre d', implying that if you don't tip, you were unsatisfied. I know the maitre d' works hard, and we definitely tip if they do something special just for us, like get us a table for two at John Heald's request, but again - pre-paid gratuities. It's confusing and feels scammy, and it's not fair to the maitre d' to have this all be so poorly explained.

The first night of dinner, the lights in the Dining Room went out. I couldn't have been the only one thinking, "Oh crap! We're not the new Splendor!" A second later, they were back on. Everyone just kept eating - no explanation.

So, every jewelry sale can get announced twice, but a theatre full of people are left waiting without word for a half hour due to a "misprint" in the Fun Times. The official answer later was that they were short-staffed.

As the cruise went on, and this happened two more times, some people speculated that the "short staffing" was a result of Pip's girlfriend being on board that week. Later, some people we'd hung out with now and then during the week (and who seemed trustworthy) told a tale of riding in a taxi in Mazatlan (which are like golf carts in the tourist zone), only to look over and see Pip and his girlfriend in a taxi in the next lane. Pip saw them, was clearly "completely drunk," and - as his taxi sped off - stuck his ass out the side of the taxi and mooned them.

Pip was an odd one, anyway. One-on-one, he seemed like a nice guy. On stage? Well, I don't mind a snarky persona at all, but on a cruise ship I feel that it needs to be more of an "us versus the world" than "me versus the lot of you, our guests," the latter being Pip's stance. As Mike put it at one point, "No one but Pip is allowed to be funny." So, when we'd go to something Pip was hosting, the laughing and joking among passengers seemed to end so he could be the main man, whereas Nathan and Chantal would joke with people while doing their own bits.

Motown Trivia: Okay, some may think it's wrong to laugh, but when one young white guy beats a group of ten black people who are singing along to the songs during Motown Trivia, that's funny.

Perhaps next time I can yak on about the disco dance class and the guest talent show...

Previously: Carnival Spirit: Notes on Trivial Pursuit

Carnival Spirit: Notes on Trivial Pursuit

Another sound cough, another day off.

(Slightly related: don't you hate when you're in the middle of telling off a student and you start coughing, and you think it will go away with a few delicate barks as you continue your speech, but no, it's a bend-from-the-waist and give over to the gods kind of deal, not that you can stop the telling off for this - pause once and they just turn around and talk to each other - so now you have tears down your cheeks and a cough-cough every few words as you unwrap the cough drop and pray for the end of the sentence soon, soon, and some kids look worried and some are debating whether to risk a run with the "teacher's crying!" jab, and the one you are telling off will only stay told off for ten minutes tops anyway, and no wonder this recovery is taking forever, with the stress and misery and naps in the stairwell, and then there's also the lingering bits of illness itself.)

Back to my phone for more notes from the last go on Carnival Spirit.

Trivial Pursuit

On Spirit, this is the multi-day trivia. Have the highest score after three days, get a ship on a stick. (As opposed to getting a ship after each trivia session... yeah, I know. But we just care about the trivia. And the seven or so ships we brought home, yes, but mostly the trivia.)

First we were Team Hamster. Then Team Balcony. Then Team Vegas. I swear we're not cruising again without coming up with five less-obvious team names first. But! The next cruise will be back to Splendor for The Return of the Spa Cabin this summer (yes, yes, yes!), so perhaps we'll be too busy in the aromatherapy room to have people think we're cheaters because we know Elton John's real name and who Farrokh Bulsara is. (Okay, so we're Queen fans, yes, but I don't think the Elton John question should've prompted a "Who knows this stuff??!!" from people in their 40s/50s.)

Gratuitous Elton John link?

One problem with the trivia on this cruise was that so much of it seemed to be scheduled during the brief period that the dining room is open for lunch, then there would be a dead zone in the afternoon.

Trivial Pursuit was quite full, probably because it immediately followed sports trivia. I'd say we had about 15 teams playing of 2-6 people each.

So, Team Vegas won the first day! And was immediately booed. WTF, people? The second time, Team Bay Area - four young women from San Francisco who scooped most trivia events - won. We had a lot of great competition on this cruise - it really seemed like the ships on a stick were being given out right and left, and everyone who regularly came to trivia surely got at least one if not more. (I think Bay Area won at least a dozen or so.) Plus, things like multi-day Super Trivia ran concurrent with other trivia games, so it's not possible to win every trivia trophy. Later in the week, though, a family that had only been to a couple trivia games, one of which we'd won, got upset after we won again and started muttering things like, "Way to spread it around." I'm glad I didn't hear as I get a bit pissy at the idea that better players should sit out.

(Plus these people were just idiots - they became offended when there was a question about a country with a violent event involving a sport spectators, and Mike suggested the answer could be India. He wasn't saying India was the only place with crowd incidents at games, but heaven knows Mike has shown me article after article over the years of Throngs Gone Wrong in India after an event. Er, not because he's some kind of India-hater, but because he madly follows cricket news. Here: 1996, Cricket World Cup, match actually abandoned and awarded to other team after angry India fans can't control themselves. And that was with 6000 policemen present. Nobody is saying that violence is exclusive to India - ridiculous - but in the context of the question, India was a fair guess, and anyone protesting that no-no-no, such things don't happen in India, isn't going to win any ships on a stick unless more people than the two of us sit out. Not to mention the irony of being a poor sport after arguing that people of your cultural heritage are never poor sports.)

On the third day, the last sea day, of Trivial Pursuit, Pip announced that we'd be playing for double points. Arrrgh! Scary, but exciting as it meant people who didn't do well on the first two games or missed a game could now catch up. Believe me, Mike and I were scratching hasty notes to one another on our scratch pad with speed and exclamation points. Too many times we disagreed, or convinced the other then started doubting ourselves, often changing our answers once or twice. The tension! The drama!

And because we'd been the last to register our team name on the first day, Pip asked for our point total last. Tension and drama! Bay Area had stumbled hard, but many others had made leaps.

(But we still won by miles.)

This time there was some clapping as people quickly got up to leave. (With a laugh I thanked everyone for not boo'ing this time, but I don't think anyone heard me as the shuffle to the next thing was on.) We would've done better without some of those second guesses (that's what everyone says), but despite Regis Philbin's standard advice to Millionaire players, some of the second guesses saved us. The theme was Animals (Mike had actually begged Pip earlier in the cruise not to make it sports), so I like to think we were rewarded for being critter people.

We each got a ship on a stick, as did the runner-up. Huzzah! Even though Trivial Pursuit has the worst odds of any trivia game if the prize is your goal, it's a very satisfying win to have played so long against so many. We were certainly humbled enough times in other games to not mind the ego stroke, either.

But next cruise? Thalassotherapy.

Previously: Carnival Spirit: Notes on Dancing and Bananas

Carnival Spirit: Notes on Dancing and Bananas

I didn't keep the usual handwritten daily diary, not even scraps of bullet lists, on the last cruise. Instead, I fashionably tapped notes into my phone, which was convenient at the time (not having to try to remember when back in the room later), but too tap-tap-tedious for me to write much. This may be why I only wrote three posts upon our return:

The Nouveau Steakhouse

La Paz, Baja California

Cabin 7258 - the Best Cabin on Carnival Spirit.*

*(Not including the aft wrap, but that's assuming you like the sound and vibration at the back of the ship, and that you don't care about balcony privacy or don't care about being on Deck 4, just like booking 7258 assumes that it's just the two of you and neither of you need wheelchair access, and you're really into balconies.)

Now that I'm finally feeling better after nearly three months of either being sick or catching up from being sick, I thought I'd go through those notes and share whatever memories spring to mind.

Cha-Cha Drama

This time, not the %$#@# text/answers service. On the first night, Beth-the-Aussie-dancer gave a cha-cha dance class. I didn't go up on stage because my dance partner doesn't dance. Yes, I too am disappointed. Mike's lucky that I got fat, or I'm sure I'd still be taking a jillion dance classes and probably trying to enter ballroom dancing competitions. (I have this whole side theory that I subconsciously stay Stay-Puft-fluffy to avoid chasing stupid dreams and/or going broke with last minute travel and other things you can do when you don't have to worry about the hass and expense of getting an extra seat, just in case.)

So, we're up front, watching the class, which is the compromise between me pulling Mike on stage and grinning a lot, and him looking around with mortification and nervous shifting because someone might notice he's there and, I don't know, blog about it or something. He doesn't mind singing showtunes in public or snidely dissing the hurf durf booya mentality found in sports bars, so you've got me on why dancing makes him miserable. I think he was traumatized by the square dance lessons in elementary school. (Which I, of course, loved, and Mike need only say the word and I will start researching all of the square dance calls. As soon as I lose 100 pounds. Then maybe 30 more. Those skirts are pretty short. Thank goodness I have so many hobbies that I seldom notice that how much of my life is indefinitely on hold.)

So we're watching the class, and there's this older couple who come off the stage and sit in front of us. I figure it was too crowded or tiring or uninteresting for them, but this woman - who is dressed like she's trying to land an Astor, and keep in mind that we're on Carnival and it's the first night, before most people have their luggage - she is just fuming.

According to her, Beth is teaching the steps backwards. I have no idea if this is true because my dance experience is limited to the 1970s suburban standards of tap/ballet/jazz/modern plus the 1980s ex-suburbanite standards of belly, Bharata Natyam, and miscellaneous folk. I.e., dances you can do by yourself. I mean, I did once keep renewing a book from the library about how to tango, but it worked about as well as could be expected, plus it's surprisingly hard to tango to Fleetwood Mac's "Tango in the Night." (Hey, Falco had a song of the same name. Not a great song, but I miss Falco.)

The best bit came when the woman, who was rather audible there by the edge of the stage, finally sniffed and allowed that maybe Beth wasn't trying to undermine decades of dance etiquette but was only doing the steps backwards because she is Australian.

That's right. Australia: where the men are men, and the women are also men for the purpose of dancing, which I guess makes the men women, and no wonder Mike doesn't want to dance.

For what it's worth, here are my notes on how to do the cha cha:

• Ladies back - right foot first (men forward left)
• Four counts of back-together then cha-cha-cha (it made sense at the time)
• Switch (feet?)
• Switch sides (what?)
• Cross with everyone right first (diagonal?)

Next time I'll practice what I write, as now I just don't quite know what I'm talking about. (And no, I never learned Labanotation, although I checked out plenty of books on that as well.) Should I go to Wikipedia to see if the female starts right-foot-back? Did Han Solo shoot first?

Wikipedia is with Beth. Damn. I so wanted there to be regular cha-cha, then Australian cha-cha. Maybe Mike would've danced it out of national pride. (He tends to show that by buying a lot of "really Australian and not just Australian-style" licorice online.)

How Country/Western Brawls Start

Skipping over notes on trivia cheaters, two days later I did go on stage for boot-scootin' dance class, led by Brett-another-Aussie-dancer. Mike spent the time ironing his shirt for the steakhouse. Fair trade.

Brett was a good teacher, but there were too many of us on the stage. People didn't have room to do the moves, and then when Brett divided the groups for more room, there were plenty of people who hadn't learned the moves in the first place, so it was a little unsatisfying for all. (Plus add in your usual drunk contingent that doesn't mind taking up extra room no matter what.)

So, I learned the steps, tiptoed off the stage halfway through, and practiced them on the balcony later... and it was fun, but - let's make this clear - it was fun as total camp. I don't endorse modern country music, no matter what the ship's security cams imply. My students always ask what kind of music I like. When I say, "All kinds - name something," -they always start with country. Why? "Because you're white." Argh.

(I do like some classic country - pick any K-Tel 8-track commercial song list - but the Achy Breaky Heart scene and everything after it makes me want to slice my ears off. More for the rest of you to enjoy, I know. The music, I mean. Not my ears. Those can probably be sewn back on so I can keep listening to "So Far from the Clyde." I can't believe that some day my beloved cruise ships may be on the beach at Alang.)

Notes on "Country Line Dance" class steps:

• R (where?), L beh(ind?), R together
• Right heel out, feet together, left heel out, "lift" (IIRC you lift the left heel behind you, not unlike a flamingo, in anticipation of later slapping you left boot sole with your right hand.)
• All of the above, reversed
• Step back: R L R, feet together
• Step forward right, scooch (drag) left foot to right, repeat step and scooch
• Heel right, heel left, heel right, heel right side, tap heel left hand then right hand, and turn (You are on your own here.)
• Left before belt buckle grab and "yee haw" on shunts and lasso on final heels before turn (I'm sure it will all come back to me someday.)

Bananas - Do They Grow Up or Down?

Normally I don't give away any trivia questions, but "Last Man Standing" is a bit of a different game, and this isn't really obscure knowledge. Or is it?

This cruise had about as much trivia as the last cruise, but it also had different games, like Carnivalaire (multiple-choice trivia where you do a body position to signal your answer, and heaps of stinky people cheat and copy you and refuse to close their eyes even when told, but still fun), and a game show with buzzers and a soundboard (and limited participation), and Last Man Standing. For LMS, you are asked questions with two possible answers, and you stand on the side of the stage assigned to the answer you believe is true. If you're right, you get to stay. If you're wrong, you sit down.

I think this game has great possibilities for the classroom, except in my classes everyone would just follow "the smart kid," or use it as an opportunity to follow their friends and talk. Or sit down as soon as possible and talk. But those of you who are better at your jobs may wish to try it.

Anyway, one question was, "do bananas grow up or down?" I immediately thought, "Up." Then I thought, "Oh crap, or is that pineapples?" Suddenly all smoothie parts are blending together. (So to speak.)

Then I did that awful thing where the answer seems so obvious that you switch answers. "I think bananas grow up," says my brain, "so I'll go stand over with everyone who thinks they grow down, because surely I'm being stupid and missing the trick part of the question." By now I can even sort of imagine how they'd look, growing down, despite having eaten bananas right off the tree as a child.

Of course I've made a mistake, and I'm left standing among people who are saying things like, "A fruit that grows upward? Who knew?!" Apparently not me, foiled by a curious combo of doubt and imagination once again. Which is to say that skepticism is good, but I take it too personally.

But the worst bit is that today, when I saw "bananas grow up down" in my brief notes, I had to go look up the answer. Because, thanks to having doubted myself at the time but at the same time knowing(ish) the answer, my memory is all cross-wired, and I no longer trusted any of it.

Just so you know, world at large, bananas grow UP... unless you're of the camp that feels they grow down but swell up, sort of doing both. I did find a letter to the New York Times' editor, dated 1902, that gets nicely snarky at someone for suggesting that bananas grow down in Bermuda. However, the writer does accept - per an earlier letter to the editor from an Australian - that bananas grow down in Australia.

(A banana tree in Queensland.)

And the circle is complete.

More notes some other time - Saturday is on.

Previously: A Little Sneezy, Not So Wheezy

A Little Sneezy, Not So Wheezy

Have you heard Duran Duran's new song? If you only like the first, say, six years of a thirty-year music catalogue, can you still call yourself a fan?

So, life after pneumonia is... well, life still with dobs of pneumonia crust here and there. Remember how (or play along) I felt like I had a cold, but I stuck with it and went to work, then I worked late in my freezing classroom, then I did have a cold, and by the end of the weekend it was pneumonia? Well, yesterday I was only a few minutes into first period when I just felt so exhausted that I seriously thought of asking to go home at midday, but I stuck with it, and then I worked late in my freezing classroom because it's the end of the quarter (and I'm still catching up with grading from the two weeks mostly off), and... yes, by the time I got in the car, I was wheezing it up, but today I'm just snuffly. I even did six minutes on the Wii Fit. (Which was a huge mistake, and I'm now bundled up and puffing on a Ventolin, but I am getting better.)

The cutest thing is the way on the last visit to the doc, they said my blood work was all normal (as always), blood pressure good (as always), no wheeze (usually true now), and I'm a healthy young woman. "So why am I still so exhausted?" *Shrug.* And Wii Fit says my Wii age is 23.

Maybe I'm just imagining that I'm 41 and that my weight is near the trois cents arrondisement.

Otherwise: weird facial rash (got better), migraines (fixed with barbituates - you heard me - and ibuprofen), allergies (Allegra = magic), scaly skin all over my face (moisturizing like mad, which probably got me the rash), and - oh - I kept smelling something weird (like cigarettes, actually) for weeks, regardless of where I was, and then I lost my sense of smell almost entirely for a couple of weeks, which was kind of a relief by then. And then I got it back a bit... with the cigarette smell. Now - at least until last night when the drippy nose started - my sense of smell seems normal again. Touch wood. Knock wood. Kiss wood. Whatever works.

I'm beginning to understand why old people are often accused of just talking about their illnesses and friends illnesses. It's because it's hard to stay quiet when you're riding on the back of the WTF Scooter. "WTF is this? The hell!"

OH, and my two bottom front teeth changed position a little. My tongue still isn't used to it.

WTF. The hell.

(Okay, now that this claptrap is out of my system, I can speak of other things, but not the new Duran Duran song.)

Previously: Stanley

Stanley

Adopted March 2010 - the fattest dwarf hamster we'd ever seen. By that time he'd been at the SPCA (and without a wheel) for at least five months (they said).

In November we adopted the very young Clark to see if he'd be a little friend for our Stannels who, so sweet and dear, also seemed like he could use even more attention.

To say that Clark was devoted to Stanley is like saying that refried beans are often available in Mexican restaurants. If we still don't know Clark as well as we should, it's because we couldn't compete with Stan.

Every day was a very good day for Stanley. Tofu, seeds, wheel-and-saucer, tunnels, naps, and jumping on his bed. Clark to snuggle near and the two of us to chat with him all day if not most of the night.

On Sunday Stan went for his morning nap, and that was that. We miss him, but - as the song says - it was a very good year.

Previously: Pneumonia

Pneumonia

I finally did it. I finally found out what lies on the other side of "You'll catch pneumonia!"

Last weekend's bad cold transformed into Tuesday's "I'm just here so work won't think I'm skiving around, taking two days off, although breathing is still kind of tricky" evening clinic visit and surprise proclamation of "pneumonia."

They plugged me into a Phillips hookah device for ten minutes and everything.

"Your lungs sound like shit." (The first time the doctor held back on the s-word. After the session with the breathing tube and no change, he was pissed off and let loose.)

"Um, does this mean... I should stay home tomorrow?"

"Take the rest of the week off."

I think I'm doing better. Other than insomnia. (I rest, but I can't sleep more than 4-5 hours. A day. I think it's the puffy thingie. Or the steroids. I just know that I'm breathing better but getting more and more tired.) No, I'm definitely better. A little scared that Monday I'll be not quite right enough to walk around the classroom and rejoin freshie stress and such, and a lot scared that - this being "evaluation season" - I'll not be at my best when my boss comes in.

But at least I finally got over my guilt. You know, for the total elation that came with finding out I could stay home from work. The wheezing and puffing cured me of wondering if the doc was playing it too safe, maybe thinking he was taking pity on someone who no longer realizes she broadcasts "save me from the system!" with every glance.

Anyway, this is not bedjacket-and-an-Oscar pneumonia. (Every Liz Taylor joke I've tried to make since getting The Diagnosis has gone unchuckled. So disappointing.) This is obviously "walking pneumonia," although walking is a little ambitious. Better to call it "slump at the craft table and quietly hinge postage stamps into their albums pneumonia." It sounds a little more noble than "blow glue out of nose on the sofa while queueing up one Desperate Housewives after another pneumonia." (1. Blame Mike. 2. We're halfway through season six - no spoilers!)

This is also "for some reason reread your last few blog posts and wonder if you've become incapable of posting a complete sentence pneumonia." So, I'm posting a complete sentence. I still have nothing to say, but I just want to prove I can be properly boring and not mislead people with excited fragments that reveal nothing but my own terrible enjoyment of everything and nothing in particular.

Tonight I'd like to post some thoughts on scrapbooking and on the resurrected stamp albums, but I feel like either topic needs illustrative snapshots, and right now it's time to force snuggling onto Russell or Teddy. (Far more comforting than Richard or Eddie.)

Previously: We'll Call It 'Insipia,' a High-Energy Yogurt Drink

We'll Call It 'Insipia,' a High-Energy Yogurt Drink

No matter how often you publicly proclaim that you're not going to be bogged down by "catching up," that you're just going to write when the spirit moves, that you're not going to feel guilty because you stayed home sick from work (again) and thus shouldn't be up doing anything remotely fun... it is still hard to return to the blinking cursor.

I say, dang, just pick one photo and write about it. Since when do you need a topic?

But then I shrug and run off to the craft table to work on stamp albums (a hobby resurrected after 12 years - anyone remember my very, very brief philately blog?), or to work with rubber stamps (a hobby resurrected after half as many years - stamps are all clear and acrylic now! and people stamp with glue and microbeads instead of ink!), or to organize loose stuff for scrapbooking (but never quite get around to actual scrapping), or read a book (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks = thumbs up), or play with the zillion hamsters we now have, or... let's face it... spend an hour playing Farmer Barbie, which is to say... FarmVille. (I would try to look ashamed, but I'm really pleased with my peacock garden and leprechaun treehouse.)

For those of you who have lost count of the hamster situation, we now have:

• Stanley (the very old) and Clark (his young ward and devoted companion)
• Thomas (the very strange and tumorous but also simple and sweet)
• Saffron (the winter white with the orange streak) living apart from his brother
• Truffle (the winter white who has lived up to his name, and now we wonder if soon he'll turn sapphire again, which is ham-speak for "a semi-iridescent grey")
• Paul (the father of Alys' gummies, who lives alone as every other hammie couldn't resist bullying him, including his near-infant sons, WTH, hammies?)
• Glenn (the huge opal who naps in wheels), Roy (the light opal who is too territorial and is surely a brother of Glenn), Dudley (aka "two-tone," a younger opal of uncertain relation to Glenn, Roy, Paul, Alys, etc.), Julian (a younger opal who is a bit rumply), and Neil (who used to have a funny eye and be skittish, but honestly it's almost impossible to tell him from Julian nowadays)
• Charlotte (the one opal female of the above lot, now living on her own because Alys and the new babies upset her - she's much happier now that she's queen of her own nest)
• Theodore and Russell (the young sons of Alys and Paul, one blue, one umbrous, and both skittish, which is bizarre in "homemade" hamsters - they are friendly once they get used to you, but every day is a new day)
• Alys (who came packing squiggling heat from the SPCA) and her young daughters Adora Belle (aka Zippy for her white zipper), Caroline (very affectionate and identical to), Madeleine Aurora (all three of these girls looking black but actually being umbrous normals or opals), Vanessa (always tucked away with BFF Madeleine), and Lauren (a normal like Vanessa, but a nippy one to Mike - however she also keeps Zippy in line as Zippy has lately become jealous of Caroline).

Now I'm tired just from typing that. I think I have a bronchitis-thingie. Or just six days of deep coughing that sometimes turns into vomiting and sometimes also takes cruel advantage of six days of on-again off-again diarrhea which - whoa whoa - TMI - I'll stop typing now. As soon as I get another nap under my belt, I think it's off to the clinic. (I'm getting better, but this is my eighth sick day in two months. I feel like a note is in order. And maybe a telethon.)

Look, here's a picture of Stanley, isn't he old and dear:

Happy March. The tax refund is in today. Mike is taking interesting classes this semester, and he let me show off my knowledge of things like trochaic tetrameter. We have pretzels in the freezer. Each of my classes is in the middle of a unit they don't completely hate right now (novels for each AP class, poetry for the freshies). Oh, sure, I'm just up from promethazine dreams about hamsters dying of neglect and students being out of control, and heaven knows what's waiting next on the pillow, but it's March. You know what that means. (April is next. Then May. Then I get stitches from where I ripped my face open from smiling so much.)

Previously: Carnival Spirit: Let's Talk about La Paz

Carnival Spirit: Let's Talk about La Paz

The first thing you're going to hear about La Paz, perhaps, is that it's "unspoilt" and has "Carribbean-blue waters" and is some kind of paradise, etc.

And the first thing I'm going to say is that we enjoyed La Paz, but all of the above are lies. And while I wouldn't mind going back, I wouldn't go out of my way to do so. Now, Zihuatanejo? I'd paddle my own tender to shore.

We arrived at the terminal in Pichilingue (sp) in the morning, although we had the view of the land on the way to La Paz proper, and the ferry that I think goes to Mazatlan.

The marketplace outside of the terminal had all of the usual souvenirs, things we were actually hard-pressed to find in La Paz. No come-ons from the sellers, which is nice. (And just like Zihuatanejo.) If your experience of Mexico so far has been gritting your teeth on the beach or streets while being approached to buy something every other minute, then you will love La Paz. (And you would also love Zihuatanejo.)

(Sorry. I just love Zihua.)

Here's a glimpse of the area outside the terminal that I took later, after we came back, from the windows in the Fountain Cafe:

The terminal had a lovely lounge, although no bar that I noticed, for those of you spoiled by Mazatlan.

There are two free shuttles, nice air-conditioned coaches - one to the beach and one to La Paz. Either trip is around 20-30 minutes.

Not being beach excursion people (although I do like staying on beaches if my car or hotel room is right there), we went to the city. The shuttle drops you off at a bus depot right across from the malecon (boardwalk). Inside the bus depot is a convenience store and some free maps with points of interest noted. (Marketplace, cathedral, museum, etc.)

Now, I realize you can see a ribbon of some nicely pale blue water there, but that's all we ever saw - a couple of ribbons. The water wasn't bad or anything; it just wasn't different from the rest of the Pacific. Maybe it's crystal blue up by the beaches, I don't know, but Caribbean blue? (Or, as Mike would put it, Australian blue?) No, not here.

(And again, that's okay. I'm just saying that some of the hype may raise your expectations unfairly.)

We walked along the boardwalk for awhile, dodging several fashion plates with little dogs, one of whom deliberately grumbled about tourists as she passed. Nice. I may be a little sensitive because nothing drives me nuts like a Las Vegas native grumbling about tourists (what is our economy based on, again?), but unless I'm acting loud/obnoxious/in defiance of local custom, or what have you, I'm unimpressed with people who look down their noses at tourists. (Although which peeve me more - tourist-haters or tourists who go to great lengths to not look like tourists because they have some bizarre tourist shame - is always debatable.)

The attitudes of the ex-pat Americans and diva-styled chicas didn't really affect my enjoyment of our visit, but I'd be remiss not to note that those attitudes were the first we encountered.

And so long as I'm bitchin', maybe La Paz doesn't have a Senor Frog's (yet), but any place with a Carlos and Charlie's a few steps from the depot doesn't get to put on "undiscovered gem" airs.

A run-down carnival of copyright violations was on the boardwalk.

Birdies!

We crossed the street away from the ocean and started to wander the streets, glancing at the map and figuring we'd probably hit a marketplace or a the plaza with the cathedral. After passing between the hotels and eateries along the main drag (parallel to the sea), the first thing I saw was this edifice:

Wonder what it was? That was on our right. Straight ahead, the view was like this:

I smiled to see the sign for the Chinese restaurant. I'd recently finished Jennifer 8. Lee's Fortune Cookie Chronicles, an insightful look at Chinese food and restaurants in the West.

What you aren't going to see are most of the other photos I took of the Chinese restaurants we saw as we walked around. (Because I'm too lazy to upload them all and link, and also because at some point I became too lazy to keep taking photos of them.) Considering that we only covered a small portion of the city - stopping one block short of the marketplace and the cathedral in the end - the density of Chinese restaurants and gift shops was quite surprising.

Above is a view I caught to my left as we walked the shabby streets, looking for a farmacia so Mike could get some throat-numbing drops like last time. (Yep, like last time, he got a cold... but he's lucky because he didn't catch the death plague I had for most of January. Maybe he got a lighter version, or maybe his immune system was still battle-ready when it came.) Still, having a cold while on vacation isn't pleasant - poor Mike. Here's a photo I took in the security mirror at the drugstore, which was much like a Walgreens or CVS.

I didn't try my fancy drug-dealing Spanish moves like last time, figuring Mike would be fine on his own with the cashier. However, this time he was using a credit card (since we weren't packing pesos), so of course the cashier asked (in Spanish) for his identification. I didn't actually hear what the cashier said, but some things are just international, right? Not for poor Mike. He literally threw his hands up in a panic and started repeating "I don't speak Spanish!" "Honey," I nudged in my fit of laughter "He just wants to see your ID."

Ah, tourists. :)

So, around the streets we went, glad for the mild weather but not seeing anything of particular interest. I didn't feel my cultural horizons broaden any more than when we wandered the streets of Puerto Vallarta, say.

We did cut through a tunnel of shops that included a beauty salon, some half-hearted souvenir enterprises, and a tiny Radio Shack:

We came across the Cultural Center which had art from students on display, just past a bookshop with your usual classics and best sellers (in Spanish).

If you were from somewhere without Amazon or somewhere where every-other-thing is in Spanish (not Las Vegas, not California, not Texas...), the book selection was very decent and not a bad way to brush up on your Spanish. (Says the person who chickened out of reading Harry Potter in Spanish after the first chapter. What's the point? It's BritLit to begin with. Now, Don Quixote would be more the thing... and I'll get to that as soon as I lose 100 pounds, reorganize my stamp albums, and write my lesson plans for next year.)

The Cultural Center is attractive from the outside:

Across the street is a Sears (a Sears!):

Across the street is also a you-know-what:

Down the street was another Chinese gift shop, and guess what Mike spied in the window?

When Woot.com sold Snuggies last year, they had a deal that was, like, two Snuggie Deluxes with booklights for $6. Or maybe it was $4. It was really cheap. So were the Snuggies (one with half-sewn pocket and weird glue blotch, but the other a perfect cult-crimson model). So were the booklights, too, but at least they have this cool Doctor Who-vian move when they open and shut.

And now there one was, in the window of a Chinese gift shop in Baja California.

Well, it was hilarious to us.

We wandered back to the bus depot and grabbed a bus back to the terminal. I saw some beautiful mother-of-pearl dominos with owl designs but the price was ouchie beyond the realm of haggling ($150). We instead got a magnet (after Mike went back and bargained the man down to $3) with the moon on it, to remind us of how we'd been chased us the night before.

(Okay, it was late at night. There was this fuzzy red ball on the water in the distance, past the back of the ship. A fire? It disappeared. After awhile it reappeared. It was getting closer! Jeezums, what fiery glob of menace was pursuing us?! Some kind of satanic air balloon of ancient Mexican lore?!)

(Oh, wait. Just the moon. A full red moon, rising from the horizon, sometimes obscured by clouds.)

(Whew.)

Back on board we... well, I don't really remember what we did, not feeling like checking my notes, and the La Paz account has pretty much ended, I suppose. We spent a long time on our long balcony and got to see the Baja Ferry leave:

And then we sailed away. This is the industrial area you pass on the way to La Paz:

And now, in the distance, kinda-sorta La Paz:

We like seeing new things, so this was a good trip, but if we ever return, we'll probably stay on board or make a token sightseeing visit to the beach. (It's hard to justify the excursion to the artist colony when, if you take the same excursion from Cabo, it's three hours less in travel time.) But there is plenty to do if you're content to eat, drink, or sunbathe, which is all most people want. I'm sure there's also plenty for the more athletic types to do, but I don't know how much is unique to La Paz.

La Paz: a peaceful place to visit, just like its name. (And that's about it.)

Previously: Carnival Spirit: Cabin 7258 aka Balcony Porn

Carnival Spirit: Cabin 7258 aka Balcony Porn

For the first time, I'm not really going to do a trip report. (Well, this is what I'm saying now, but you know I'm wordy.) We went on Carnival Spirit again over winter break, trying to end our cruise blues with the new-to-us port of La Paz and the angel choir excitement of legendary cabin 7258. "Aaaaahhhhh!"

Let's run over the features of 7258 again:

• Extended-width balcony
• Triple-length balcony
• Same price as a regular extended-width balcony (although this may have changed with the new booking system)
• Did I mention TRIPLE-LENGTH?!
• Which means loungers on the balcony and the ultimate in chairhogdom?
• The cabin is not handicapped-accessible, unlike most of the other special balconies, so no worries about possibly having to switch for someone who truly needs the cabin.
• The cabin only sleeps two, so no worries about possibly having to switch to another cabin so a family of four can be accommodated.
• Only one neighbour. (The steward's work area is on the other side, and it's silent.)
• Right next to the elevators to (admiring intake of breath) the fooooood. (But around a corner so no elevator/traffic noise.)
• And again: EXTENDED TRIPLE-LENGTH BALCONY!

The only way you can do better on a Spirit-class ship is to have a lovely aft wrap, but for many this is a matter of preference. Aft wraps mean more vibration, a view of the wake, and - unless you're on Deck 4 - less privacy when standing at the rail, plus the possibility of ash and trash floating down from people at the back end of the Lido deck.

Some people like the vibration, prefer the panorama of the churning wake, and don't stand at the rail, and just get lucky re: other people's droppings, and some don't. Me, I'd love to do an aft wrap to Alaska, but (having never stayed in an aft wrap), I'd happily do 7258 anytime, especially since it's not the price of a suite.

Here you see that the cabin itself is quite ordinary... unless when you send your husband back to the cabin to drop off your gift shop purchase, you madly run to the Formalities Shop and breathlessly ask if someone can come decorate the cabin for your anniversary ($35) while you're on a whale watching tour:

(You can arrange this online before you sail, but then the decorations are up at embarkation. I didn't want to be ducking streamers for a week first. Good thing, too, as the centerpiece peeled off and fell down within an hour of us returning.)

We started out with one lounger, but the wonderful Sai brought us another.

Oh yes, there was a lot of reading. Purr.

Just like last time, the lifeboat view was a non-issue. (You only see them when standing at the rail and looking down. I usually saw nothing but pretty blue ocean from my recliner.)

Usually it was nice and shady, but of course that always depends on how the ship is angled to the sun. It was rather toasty in Cabo:

No, we weren't the kind of jerks who have the balcony light on when others are trying to enjoy the stars. This was just for a few minutes while Mike worked on a stain on my shirt. (He who scoffed at the Tide stain sticks before we left ended up becoming a master of them.)

7258: The most romantic non-suite cabin on the ship. (Even if your husband won't use the balcony practice all the moves you learned at disco/cha-cha/line dance class that afternoon. There's room! That's okay - plenty of space to twirl on your own, too!)

Previously: Fiddle-Faddle

Fiddle-Faddle

This is going to be one of those early 21st century-style posts, all babbly and mindless and cathartic, without an ounce of photography or consumer input or philosophical balance and all of those other things we've (yon bloggers) matured into.... not that those things aren't also babbly and mindless and cathartic, especially in this space.

What I mean is that tonight, as I scowl at the screen with a migraine remnant and a puff of will keeping me from starting to freak out that it's 2 a.m. and I get up for work in four hours, I'm writing as if it's 1997 and the background is repeating and the buttons are beveling.

Saw The King's Speech the other day. Really excellent. (Thanks K... er, "Lucy"!) I know it's not possible to go wrong with Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, but I've come to dislike Helena Bonham Carter's recent characters so much that I thought she could possibly ruin it, but this movie reminded me that there was a time and reason when Lady Jane and Lucy Honeychurch could be watched over and over and...

On the other hand, neither Mike nor I could stand The Social Network. Walked away after an hour. My students are appalled, but I found the main character so underwhelming (and worse), and not in a good way that keeps you watching. Darth and JR he is not. Some of the dialogue didn't even make sense - people just seem to respond to the delivery. (Like when he cheekily chastises the head of security for not knowing to look in his window instead of taking four hours to track him down. WTF? What is that supposed to prove? Nothing more irritating than someone thinking they've pulled off an OH SNAP! when they haven't.)

However, I'm willing to concede that it's a work done well (if you say so) in a genre not to my taste, like a Ke$ha song, so in "real life" I try to just say it's not my cup of tea... and then duck as the abuse comes. People sure do like that movie.

Maybe I'm just a crabby old lady, especially now that I'm a junior member in the migraine club. The post where I went for the MRI over Christmas break still has yet to show up from my supposed smartphone, but as I think I mentioned in one of the (two? pft!) recent posts, everything in my brain is normal. Yay!

(I mean, obviously not everything. According to a student on the yearbook committee, I was just voted the "second-most creepy teacher" at school. What? Second place? I don't even want to be on this list unless I'm going to win! Then I found out who won first place, a person I don't think of as creepy at all, which I suppose only shows how far gone I am in my own creepiness. Except apparently not far gone enough because I can't even appreciate the mastery of the category winner. I think it's because he's tall. I can't compete with that. I'm doomed to be Mary Todd to his Abe Lincoln.)

So, my doctor basically said, well, that's that, the MRI is normal, nothing to talk about here. And I was, like, "um, I'm slamming down the full prescription dosage worth of ibuprofen day in and day out, and I'm still in pain, so what's what?"

Plus at that point my feet were hugely swollen and my heart kept fluttering and I'd had a rather full-on panic attack the night before. Mike - literally running his hands through his hair - thought to look up ibuprofen overdose symptoms and wondered if this was a possibility, as swollen feet and palpitations and panic attacks all go with that. but that just got us a long homily from the doc on the perils of looking things up and making assumptions. ("Are you taking more than 2400mg/day? No? Then you aren't overdosing. And have you ever reacted to ibuprofen before? No? Then that's not it.")

We kept interrupting with, "We know we're not doctors and can't trust Wikipedia on this, that's why we're asking" but the most the doc would say is that feet often swell when a person is "chubby." (It's sweet the way the doc ignores the elephant in the room on more than one level.)

I stopped taking the ibuprofen about 16 hours before the appointment, and the swelling finally went down a little at the same time, but then I was unhappy with pain... The doc said I should keep taking the ibuprofen and if my feet stayed swollen (not that they were anywhere as big as before) then we could look further, but I didn't want any more ibuprofen. He sighed and said that headaches were just part of getting older (big long story about his own headaches) and then he gave up and prescribed some preventative medicine that his wife takes.

Look, I just wanted to talk about other possibilities for the sometimes raging and debilitating pain: my back injury (which re-flared up around the same time), menopause, chiropractors, acupuncture (he does this), special exercises, special pillows... I mean, the waiting room was empty...

One trip to the drugstore later and I had an acetomenaphine-caffeine-barbituate combo pill. Mike and I: "Barbituates?!" I feel like Patty Duke.

But you know what? I took one, and the next day I only had a little headache. I took another one the next night, and the headache disappeared. For the first time in weeks, months, I was headache free!

But it's been trickling back, a little stronger every day. I guess that means I should pop another one. Maybe it is just a migraine - sunlight is still bothering me more than it ever has before in my life, and I do feel the "waves" come back when I'm more stressed.

The Bloggess (I won't link because then she'll see this lame post and I can't be so spazzy in front of her) used to have a wonderful commenter on her site - Nancy Kappes, paralegal - who passed away late last year. The inimitable Nancy liked her pills and would, via The Bloggess, refer to them as her "Judy Garland Trail Mix." I love it. And the phrase just echoes in my mind as I contemplate the notion that I have a prescription for barbituates.

I am my own special episode of Maude, really.

(I wish.)

(Hey, I led our guys vs. girls trivia team on the last cruise to a victorious first point by knowing Maude's last name. Normal Lear Cred - I haz it.)

Now, I do still like my doctor, who is also Mike's doctor so I don't want to piss him off, and I appreciate that even though a clear MRI means "case closed" to him, he did write up an order for an EKG because of the fluttery feeling in my heart at the time. (I don't even want to talk about what happened when he tried to administer the EKG in his office. Just picture the four of us - me, Mike, doctor, nurse and/or receptionist - in a tiny room with what was surely and ancient dot matrix printer and everyone trying not to look at my floppy breasts as I get more and more defensively cheerful by the moment. I'm already cringing at the memory.)

Unfortunately, I didn't get to the hospital for the EKG the nexy day because I was back at work and had to catch up from missing two days, then the day after I had my after-school club, then the next day was Friday and I didn't feel well so I came straight home... and by midnight had launched into a new one-woman show called The January Plague.

It's a very hot script at the moment; almost everyone I know has taken on the lead role recently. Performances began January 7th. I returned to work the following Friday after four days and a weekend in bed.... and I still felt cruddy. It's the 28th now and the cough still lingers.

I'm a mess.

"You know," says my dad, "you're not supposed to start falling apart until you're sixty or so." I laugh. "I mean it. You need to... you know... do what you have to do to get better."

And, for the first time in ages, I'm sort of jazzed about taking some steps to improve my health, now that I'm in the interesting position of actually being too unhealthy to just jump into exercise - let's not even get into the knee I smashed into my desk last year or the arm I banged up after a fall on this last cruise - both of which seem to have bumpy bone chips floating near them, but whatever, have I mentioned how a few months ago a tooth that was displaced by a never-removed wisdom tooth suddenly crumbled out of my mouth?

(This is where I joke that I'm glad that my mother never saw what became of all of those dentist visits made dutifully every six months, of the jeopardy I've visited upon my "naturally straight" teeth. But - hoo boy - do we even want to get started on my mother? Ben Weatherstaff will brain us all with his rake if we try to scale that wall.)

As long as you're all taking notes, if my period is 79 days late but I swear (super-swear with implied pinkies) that I'm not pregnant, does that mean 79 more days of winter or February showers bring March dours or what? And yes, I've seen those television shows where women have to go to the bathroom and - SQUOOSH! - unexpected baby, but I swear (and super-swear, and imply the pinky, and OCD-wash my hands in limited edition cranberry Method again) I've used all available science to make sure that Alys (Remember Alys? This is sometimes a blog about Alys.) is the only one birthing young around here, so we all need to clap or not-clap or whatever J. M. Barrie hoohah-hoodoo works to ensure that this is it at last, the Menopausening, even at the earlyish 41. (Hey, I'm "chubby"; it could happen.)

As for my health: too many variables! Worst sudoku ever!

But to speak of pleasant things, last night - after nearly seven weeks - we finally named the last of Alys' surprise gummies: Teddy (Theodore), Russell, Lauren, Vanessa, Adora Belle, Caroline, and Madeleine Aurora.

Who, for those who've lost count, join their mother Alys and their father Paul, and the six opals from the SPCA that are probably a previous litter of Alys' from two months prior: Glenn, Dudley, Roy, Julian, Neil, and Charlotte.

Who, for those feigning a deep interest, came with an order of Clark on the side, who moved in with old Stanley and they are best friends.

And Thomas still lives alone in his weird way.

And the two Djungies (Winter Whites) also live separately - Saffron and Truffle. Truffy has actually turned nearly all white and is gorgeous.

(But, like I said an hour ago, no photos at this time.)

(Yes, it's a lot of hamsters, but Mike being a uni student again makes that easy. For me, anyway.)

I have a feeling that some of my lesson plans might change for tomorrow... er, today... er, three hours from now.

The curtain falls while the chicken and egg are still spinning...

Previously: Carnival Spirit: The Nouveau Steakhouse

Carnival Spirit: The Nouveau Steakhouse

Okay, so I did that thing again. That thing where I suddenly show up here saying, hey, I'm home from a cruise! The thing where I don't tell anyone in advance because I'm scared that the Internet will try to break into my home while I'm away and steal something... like our nearly 20-year-old television or one of our eight bottles of watermelon syrup from Torani. (Sprite + syrup = something I dare say is even better than Watermelon Fanta aka Smart Watermelon. Yum!)

We were back on Carnival Spirit again, this time taking advantage of a new port (La Paz) and - through a little honest-but-sneaky website wiggling - scoring the legendary cabin 7258. Being on the same ship twice in a row gave us some issues, to be be discussed someday in another post, but we did try to notch some new things, including the Nouveau Steakhouse.

I posted my report on the Steakhouse on Cruise Critic in a post titled "Vegetarians - Don't Fear the Steakhouse! (Or the dress code.)" However, what with being home sick (again) today with a very lousy cold (but I'm glad it's just a cold after the recent scare that... hey... more stuff I never talked about here), I'll also post the review here and feel like I'm doing my 21st century duty to generate original content... or just that I like to share. Here we are!

For our New Year's cruise on Carnival Spirit one of our "to do" items was to try the steakhouse. We'd been skittish about it before; I'm a vegetarian, and Mike doesn't like seafood, fish, or any meat with more than the barest glow of pink. People on CC said that you could arrange for veggie fare in advance, but how much of a hass would it be? (After all, perhaps Carnival removed the vegetarian option from the printed steakhouse menu for a reason.)

Still, after four cruises in 18 months, the MDR menu was getting a little samey. (It doesn't help that we eat out quite a bit at home in Las Vegas, usually trying a new restaurant if we can.) In addition to giving the MDR Indian a go (which Mike already posted about and I'll add photos to later), we decided to buck up and make Nouveau Steakhouse reservations.

As soon as we boarded around 1 p.m. we joined the short steakhouse queue. (Good thing, too, as New Year's Eve was down to only 5:30 and 6:00 reservations.) While waiting for the couple in front of us to finished, I glanced at the steakhouse promo sign and did a double-take:

Wait... "Jeans allowed on Cruise Casual evenings"? Do you mean to tell me that while emotional "Are jeans allowed in the MDR?" threads regularly bring out the raging ugly side of Cruise Critic, Carnival is going around making it explicitly clear, in 100+-point type, that jeans are specifically allowed most nights in the... the... the holy cathedral of Carnival dining... the steakhouse?!

(I almost ran to the closest barstool to post the photo on CC right away, but - you know - vacation to enjoy and stuff.)

Now, Mike and I are casual dressers and we like being casual dressers, but we don't like being inappropriate dressers. We'd read mixed reports on CC about jackets being expected in the steakhouse on Cruise Elegant evenings. This was troubling because Mike doesn't have a jacket (and at his cuddly size, I'm not sure Formalities could rent him one), but the Cruise Elegant evenings were the evenings we most wanted to get away from the MDR menu. (I know, I know - some of you are horrified that people actually run away from lobster night!) Still, we wanted to play by the rules, so as we made our reservations for both elegant nights, we asked if jackets were required for Cruise Elegant evenings.

The hostess looked a little bewildered, like we were talking crazy talk, and reassured us that this was certainly not the case. Just no shorts, flip-flops, t-shirts, jeans on Elegant night, etc.

Of course, she may not be speaking for all Carnival steakhouses, but if you're on the Carnival Spirit, rest assured that they don't require a jacket - ever.

We ended up being somewhere in the middle in terms of dress compared to other patrons. For the Elegant evenings Mike wore dark pants, button-down shirt, and a tie. I wore a tea-length black/floral cotton dress. (Nothing sparkly but my shoes.) On the Casual evening, Mike wore a black polo with his black pants, and I wore a black blouse with stretchy cotton pants and blingy black sandals. We were like the Johnny Cash ninjas of the foodie set.

And yes, if you just caught the math, we ended up eating at the steakhouse THREE times! But first let's cover how the veghead fuss played out.

When we made our reservations at embarkation, I asked the hostess if they could accommodate me as a vegetarian. "Sure," she said. "Would you like mushroom strudel, some kind of pasta - what would you like?" She intimated that the chef could make just about anything; I just had to say what. I said I'd try the strudel for the first night, so she wrote that down and we decided to discuss the menu for the second evening after I'd tried the strudel. She asked me to make sure that I was fine with all of the starters/soups/desserts, and that was that.

It was just that easy.

(Pictured above: ~5:45 p.m. New Year's Eve - second elegant night - ship just outside Cabo San Lucas.)

So, the first night came and we had a lovely table for two on the lower floor by the window, looking at the sea as the sun set. (And also looking at a family of sunbathers, but they packed up a few minutes later. Other than the very occasional jogger, we never saw anyone on the deck.)

We were asked if we wanted still or sparkling water. (We always chose still, so I don't know if they charge for sparkling.) Alex the (amazing, jubilant, debonaire) sommelier came by to consult with us on wine. Neither of us really drinks, but Alex still gave us excellent service, happy to keep Mike in constant Mr. Pibbs instead and to throw us some cheerful banter whenever he passed by.

The main server (I've regrettably forgotten most of their names, but I think we met them all over the course of the cruise and they were all exceptional) brought us "complimentaries" from the chef. I got a tiny roasted red pepper soup that was full of flavour yet not too hot. Delicious! Mike pretended to enjoy something with lobster; after the first night, when we felt more "matey" with the staff, he let on that he didn't like seafood. After that they always brought him the same complimentary they brought for me - no problem. (We did appreciate that they tried to present each of us with something special and different.)

I didn't have a camera with me the first night, but below is what we had on subsequent visits.

Chilled Melon Soup:

Mike quite liked it even though normally he's not altogether keen on honeydew or cantaloupe.

Potato-Thingie That I Can't Remember Except That It Was, as Mike Puts It, "Freaking Good":

Just before the bread basket was offered (for the first time of the evening), one of the servers (sometimes we would have up to three) would bring this selection of tomato confit, butter, and eggplant tapenade:

It was all delicious, but we were especially crazy about the confit. We were trying to make the remaining spoonful last the first night when our server happily brought us a fresh bowl. Mmmm!

The breads offered each night were the same: a brioche and a rosemary focaccia. I didn't get a photo of the brioche because after the first night I always went for the focaccia. The brioche was good, but I enjoyed the slightly less buttery and more earthy taste of the focaccia.

Was it better than, say, the onion and bleu cheese focaccia served on the Lido deck? Well, it was much warmer, of course, but while we really enjoyed the bread, it wasn't much different in quality from the MDR bread. I'd file it under "Very nice but nothing to shake up your world" - and that was fine.

(By the way, the bread has been pulled apart in that photo, not bitten off. I don't want you to think I'm posting pics of gnawed-on food here!)

For a starter I ordered the Baked Onion Soup, but almost before the words were out the server warned me that the soup had a veal base. (I hadn't even mentioned being a vegetarian, but everyone there seemed to know.) Now, I know I surely eat meat products all of the time without realizing it, just like I know that some of the dairy products I so love probably come from the worst of factory farms, but I'm just a person who tries her best to meet her own expectations. (And they're just mine - I don't expect anyone else to meet them.) I only bring this up because sometimes when you admit to being a vegetarian people get huffy, and they seem to take glee if you don't conform to whatever standards they think defines a vegetarian. So, some omnivores may find my objection to veal-based soup illogical, or perhaps some vegans will be horrified by my decision to eat in a restaurant where they wheel a big cart of dead flesh to each table to be admired before you order (even Mike was a bit squeamish at first), I'm just sharing what was what, and I'll let the reader decide if knowing that the onion soup has a veal base is useful or not.

Mike ended up having the Baked Onion Soup, actually, because it was the only starter that came close to meeting his own dietary preferences. He's lukewarm on onions soups to begin with, and not a fan of veal (although he couldn't taste it), so it wasn't surprising that he didn't like it. It was served in a beautiful, deep mini-tureen, though, and I regret not taking a photo.

(The server seemed concerned that he didn't like it, but he explained that it just wasn't his thing. He did visit the steakhouse later in the week to see if he could get a different starter for our next reservation - like, something served in the MDR that night - but they said only the menu items were available. So, the flexibility only goes so far. Quite understandable, of course. They make far more money off the vegetarians - if the maitre d' was to be believed when she told another table that all the fee really covers is the the steak - so it's no wonder they're willing to accommodate vegetarians but can't really get into tweaking the menu for everyone.)

Because I found that both a starter and a salad course before the main course was a little too much food for me (I'm just not as good at being a fattie as I look), Mike not having a starter worked out well. I only had either a starter or a salad on subsequent nights, so we went from four courses to three.

The vegetarian starter is the Grilled Portobello Mushroom:

This is served on tomato shaved so finely that at first I thought it was salmon. I thought I might get mushroom'd out, but the flavours of the starter and the main course were quite different.

My salad choice was the vine-ripened tomatoes with gorgonzola:

The tomatoes were delicious (actual taste and everything - not something I usually get at the local grocery store) and even though I'm not always a fan of gorgonzola, this was deliciously tangy stuff.

On the last night we saw someone get the Caesar Salad - made tableside with much elegance - and he asked for it without anchovies. I'm sure the staff would be happy to make an anchovy-free salad with a different kind of dressing if a vegetarian wanted. Mike had the heart of iceberg salad every night, and he really enjoyed the vinaigrette, which he found a little less sweet than the MDR vinaigrette (although he loves that one, too).

Now for the main course. By this point on the first night, we were already having such a wonderful time that we couldn't wait to return. The view, the general quiet, the spacious atmosphere, the service, the food so far... If the steak and strudel were good, then our whole future cruising experienced just changed.

As mentioned a hundred jillion paragraphs ago, Mike likes his meat well done. (Something I tease him about all the time, having come from an upbringing where "real" meat-eaters like their steaks red and rosy, and anything less gets called "shoe leather.") After Mike saw the height of the NY Strip Steak (the smallest option) on the preview tray, he had his doubts this would happen. He's certainly been burned several times before by high-end kitchens who consider "well done" to be the same as "light pink," when he'd rather be completely pink-free.

I didn't get a cross-section pic, or even a good pic, but here's one of three best steaks Mike has eaten in his life:

The other two best steaks were on the other nights in the Nouveau Steakhouse. Yes, says Mike, it's really that much different from the MDR.

I know that there's been a lot of arguing on the boards about Carnival's decision to offer these higher quality steaks for a fee in the MDR on ships that don't have a steakhouse. Well, after trying the steakhouse, Mike wishes he could pay extra to get that quality of meat in the MDR on ANY ship, regardless of whether they had a steakhouse. To us, it's no different in philosophy than paying extra for wine or a cocktail in the MDR instead of just drinking the included beverages. According to Mike, the quality of the MDR Strip steak and the steakhouse Strip steak is just worlds apart.

Sure, there's always the fear that such a practice could be a slippery slope leading to all MDR steaks costing extra, but Mike would definitely rather enjoy those high quality steaks in the MDR now and worry about a policy change later if it ever happens, and not succumb to "what if???!!!" fears while missing out. (Yes, we could eat in the steakhouse every night, but - cost aside - we'd miss our fave MDR starters, the Indian meals, etc.)

Anyway! Off the soapbox! I didn't get a good photo of my mushroom strudel (and accompaniments), but here goes:

This plate (more enormous than it looks) pretty much defines "savoury." The strudel was rich yet light at the same time, like magic. Dead center you see a tomato resting upon macaroni and cheese than had some deep notes I didn't recognize - perhaps truffle? The tomatoes and olives (blur in the far back) were marinated in something full-bodied and sour. Delicious. One of two pieces of thin garlic toast is resting on a larger (unmarinated) tomato that had been filled with a mellow cheese and peas mixture and baked with a little crust on top. Even though I could only eat about half of the plate at best, it was all so good that I ordered it again for our second night. Who wants to live in a world without getting to eat this at least twice?!

To the side you see the wasabi horseradish mashed potatoes, which Mike and I had almost every night as our choice of side. I definitely liked it, although I'm not sure if I liked it because it was really tasty or because the taste was really interesting. (Hopefully that makes sense.) The potatoes are spooned out of a little boat by the server, so if it's just you ordering them, you have to say "when."

On the last night Mike decided to try something else, just to see what it would be like, so he ordered the baked potato:

He described it as "okay, but just a baked potato." Keep in mind that for whatever wacky reason he doesn't really like the potato part of baked potatoes, so he's not really in a position to review this. I shared my wasabi mash with him that night, which he found as "awesome" as ever.

I also wanted to try something new for the third night, so I bid adieu to my strudel and, after some tableside consultation with the chef on our second visit, I decided to try his spicy pasta primavera.

I may be a vegetarian, but I'm very picky about vegetables. I don't like monster-size hunks of broccoli or cauliflower, and cooked spinach has left me gagging for over 40 years. Carrots and eggplant can't be too mushy, but I can't get enough onion or mushroom. Pasta primavera experiences have varied so much in my life that I knew I was taking a risk, but I was so impressed with the steakhouse that I decided just to trust the chef.

Mike later asked if I preferred the strudel or the pasta. No answer - it's impossible to choose! The photo doesn't really let you see the size of the portion (huge), but even though I didn't get all of the interesting sides with the pasta primavera, it was still wonderful. Fresh in taste, the vegetable sizes and textures delicate, and subtly spicy. (Spicy enough to make my nose run a little - sorry, but it's true - but not overbearing when in the mouth.)

YUM YUM YUM.

Finally, the dessert course. The first night we both had the chocolate sampler:

(Mike's belly looks pretty full, but believe me, we both found room for this.)

I don't know what to say - each offering is chocolatey but not too heavy. I believe that, left to right, it's the chocolate marquise (berries and what tasted like the inside of a truffle), tiramisu, flourless chocolate cake with can't-remember-the-flavour ice cream, and a banana pannacotta that wasn't really our thing, but the quality of the construction was obvious. The marquise was Mike's fave, but I couldn't decide.

The second night I decided I had to give the other desserts a chance. I got the Washington apples caramelized on puff pastry:

Again, terrific. I'm not usually wild about cooked apple desserts, but it was deliciously complex and yummy.

For the last night, we both got the cheesecake. Colossal mistake.

By "colossal mistake" I mean that "WOW! It's COLOSSAL!" and "it's a mistake for more than one person at the table to get this because each slice surely sates four. Maybe six."

The cheesecake itself was simply excellent, with a chocolatey rich crumble-crust, yummy hazelnut cookie on the side, and streaks of berry gel that was so tart and lovely that I kept scraping every part of the cheesecake through it.

We couldn't even begin to finish, so the server asked if we wanted to take what was left with us. Whoa, you can do that? (It was news to the couple at the next table who'd just reluctantly sent away the huge remains of their cheesecake, so don't be shy to ask if a to-go option isn't offered.)

Around this time the server told us about a passenger, a very slim and small woman, who - after having a full meal of two starters, two salads, and a steak - had ordered the chocolate sampler and finished it. Then she ordered the apple pastry and finished it. Then she ordered the enormous slice of cheesecake... and finished it! Incredible!

(Of course, all Mike and I could think when we heard this was... hey... wait a minute, you can order more than one of something?! What?! Good to know, but I don't know where we would have put it.)

I actually teared up a little when we left the steakhouse for the last time. It really added something special and new to our cruise. Service beyond par, food beyond the MDR.. I know from trip reports here that not everyone has been so lucky when visiting a Carnival steakhouse, but we were impressed well beyond our expectations.

If you've just scrolled to the bottom of the post and are looking for the "TL;DR" highlights, I offer this:

• For special diet considerations, Nouveau Steakhouse requires a day's notice.
• Vegetarians don't have to have the mushroom strudel.
• Jeans are specifically allowed, in writing, in the Nouveau Steakhouse on Cruise Casual nights.
• If you finish something (other than a steak, I assume) and want more, ask.
• If you can't finish something, don't be embarrassed to ask to take it with you.
• It can't be said enough: it's not the same as a steak from the MDR.
• Dining in the steakhouse is extra special at sunset.
• For $30, it's an incredible value, even for a vegetarian.

Special bonus photo of Mike at the steakhouse, looking out at Cabo as we sail away for New Year's Eve at sea:

Previously: Antiques Roadshow

Antiques Roadshow

Finally, right? All I had to do was skip my review of Old Town (chronological reporting is for squares) and get frustrated because I did actually write another post this afternoon while waiting in the doctor's office, a post that admitted to a little SPCA adoption madness after Evelyn died - plus the usual free bonus gift that arrived two weeks later, but the TypePad app for my phone is being stupid, and the post sits in limbo. (I bet Wordpress has a nicer app, but life keeps getting in the way of getting off the TypePad teat. If I wait long enough, perhaps an even better CMS will appear.)

But this post is not about Saffron-the-pudding or Pol-with-a-line-through-the-O-all-Norwegian-style or the baby fuzzy that is not named Ambrose because it reminds Mike of some sports guy. (I was going to push ahead anyway - AMBROSE BIERCE REPRESENT! - but then I remembered our Ambrosia. Oops. Sorry, Ambrosia. In addition to your mythological and amber+rose connotations, I will now remember you as the hamster who could write a damn deft surprise ending... which is quite appropriate, really.)

Back in June we journeyed to San Diego by way of Big Bear Lake and the Lawrence Welk Museum and the cradle of Euro-Californian civilization because we had tickets for... Antiques Roadshow!

Unfortunately, despite Mike being the son of an antique dealer and me being the child of a youth spent antiquing, we don't really own many antiques. (I could darkly mutter "anymore," but no one wants to get me started on that again. You know, a couple of weeks ago the top shelf in one of our closets collapsed. We decided to relocate most of the hanging clothes to drawers and get a game of storage-bin Tetris going. I have to say, between that and a strong sense of mortality of late, I was almost glad that I no longer had the contents of my storage unit. When I'm dead, who would care about my high school yearbooks or stamp collections or letters from old boyfriends anyway?)

However, you are allowed to bring two items each, and I was determined to do so, even if we had to go out and buy something. (And so passed one fun afternoon slingshotting around the antique stores on Charleston.) One problem was that Mike, a purist, would get twitchy over any item made after 1940, and that was his generous boundary. Antiques Roadshow often features stuff from the 1960s, though, so I was okay with vintage/retro goods. However, as much as I wanted to know more about (and know the value of) my Tarot de Acuario, its 1972 publication date even made me blush, so it stayed at home.

(Every time I write about the TdA, people find this site via Google and ask if they can buy it. Yes, you can... for an obscene amount of money. Leave your dirty talk in the comments section and we'll see if I get turned on. I'm talking real filth here - more zeroes to the left of the decimal, please!)

The obvious candidate was my pocketwatch, inherited from my (great) Uncle Pat who got it from his Dad who got it from a widow for "services rendered." (For painting her house, in a non-euphemistic way, I assume.) But I'd already found out everything about that. (See the linked post.)

But what about the pocketknife that was also my great-great-grandfather's? (Another gift from Uncle Pat.) Sure, it couldn't be worth much, but it would be nice to know the story. (No photo because the sofa is here and the knife is over there.)

The next most obvious candidate was the postcard typed on the Queen Mary and signed by Helena Rubinstein that I snagged when mindlessly checking eBay for QM postcards. Oh yes, definitely that.

The third item would be a blue vase given to me by my (great) Aunt Mabel. She sent it to me out of nowhere, after we'd exchanged a couple of letters, saying that an old friend had given it to her long ago.

Mike was a little mortified. The vase is chipped and is stamped as being made in Czechoslovakia, a country too young (while it lasted) to produce anything of "true" antique age. Plus it's dirty. No matter how often I gently work its floral nooks with a Q-tip, the grit of years remains. It's embarrassing. I can't even upload the image to Flickr. Here, show no one else!

Finally, for our fourth item we decided to bring the dwarf hamster print allegedly from a 225-year-old book.

To comfort Mike, I tried to convince him that our selections represented true funsies and no one would think we were just sad people who wouldn't know a hand-painted 19th-century Nippon chocolate set if it crunched to powder beneath our careless feet.

Our tickets were for the afternoon session - you have to pick morning or afternoon when you put in your (free) request. I took a photo of our (golden!) tickets in the car in the parking garage under the San Diego convention center because you're not allowed to bring camera to the event:

However, what I just said isn't quite true. You can take all of the photos you want while waiting in line. Once you're on the set, though, no pics. So, all of my pics are sneak-shots from my old phone... from before I knew that pics were allowed.

We arrived about 40 minutes before our 1:00 p.m. time slot and were directed into the one o'clock queue. There were already about ten or so people there. Each queue was separated by about 30 minutes. You can see the tail end of the morning sessions across the hall, behind Mike:

Here's our queue's sign:

Large screens around the room played episodes of AR while we waited:

We also had reading material:

Our entire wait was around 90 minutes. There were a few folding chairs set up to help with the demarcation of lines, but don't count on any being available. (You might get one for 20 seconds before the line moves or condenses.) We enjoyed looking at things other people brought, with our own shame left covered in a casino tote bag.

The good bit is when you get to the final turn and an animated woman explains what's going to happen next:

Nutshell:

• Turn off all cell phones. Turn them off. Off-off-off. This is a TV soundstage you're about to walk into, people.
• Before you enter the appraisal area (and soundstage), you must visit the tables at the end of the line and have the things you've brought categorized.
• You will be given one ticket per item.
• You will move past the open doors to the circular appraising area. There, you can decide which category to queue up for first.

These are the categorization tables:

Mike of course apologized at length to the woman for what we brought, making sure she knew that his mother has a career in antiques and would die if she knew we were bringing broken pottery, old knives, and rodent art to an antiquing event. The woman was nice, sympathized with the shoemaker's children having no shoes, and gave us tickets for Pottery (the vase), Prints & Posters (the hamster page from Schreber), and Collectibles (the knife and the postcard).

We decided to go with the Prints & Posters queue first. It was right there and didn't seem too long.

I'm glad we started here; not only was it the most satisfying appraisal experience, but we got to stand next to Mark Walberg as he did his intros/outros/fun facts... and did them many, many times, with hilarious ad libs after the goofs that would probably make for a more fun show if they ever aired.

I doubt any of them will make it onto the air, though, because I decided to wear my fave blue shirt, and Mike decided to wear his blue shirt, and neither one of us would budge in our decisions. Viewers would be distracted to see this enormous blob of blue (carefully looking anywhere but the camera, as the techs instructed), so I'm sure that footage will be cut. (And by "sure" I might mean "praying.")

Hot tip: Unless you're really curious about a painting you have, don't bring a painting. That was the longest queue of the bunch, and it stayed long the whole time. Like, so long that it stretched across the entire room - often ten times the length of other queues.

Eventually we approached a pleasant-looking man whose friendly demeanor matched his open, agreeable face. He seemed pleased with our print (how many hamsters does one see in the antique trade?) and, while he couldn't verify that it came from Schreber's book, he could verify it as being from the late 1700s. He asked us where we got it (eBay) and how much we paid (~$20), and I assured him that we got it because we like hamsters, not because we thought it had any value. "That's exactly what you should do," he said, nodding approvingly.

He valued the page at around $85-100 in a retail shop which, having read the criticism of the show's apparently generous appraisals, I think means that we got a fair price for it on eBay. (Again, not that we got it for its value; I just wondered if it really was that old. I'm such an American with my notions of age.)

After we left we were beaming - what a fun experience, what a neat guy! "You know," said Mike, "I think we've seen him on the show before." Mike and I aren't diehard fans - we know the furniture twins (and yes, we saw them - one walked right past us) and the rock-n-roll ponytail guy (more on him in a minute), but despite marathons of every episode our DVR could store, we're still pretty ignorant. Still, I agreed with Mike. The guy did seem familiar. Distinctive voice.

Ladies in the AR-know, feel free to swoon. It was Nicolas Lowry of Swann Galleries:

Next we went to the short line for Pottery. Even I started to cringe as I looked at the delicate beauties people were gingerly handing to the appraisers. Loupes and lamps ornamented a row of high-brow scrutiny.

Me, I stuck Aunt Mabel's vase out straight in front of me to the cool blonde who'd beckoned us over. "Hello!" I said. "I brought you a dirty, chipped vase!"

"For me?" she breathed, with almost a smile. See, Mike? It's all about funsies.

Obviously she spotted the Czech mark right away and, giving me a raised eyebrow, mentioned that it couldn't be older than 1918. I agreed and said it was my aunt's and I was just curious about it, and assured her that my expectations were low. She pointed out the (embarrassingly large - how did I miss that?) seam along the side, describing how that indicated hasty work, and she described a few other identifiers along those lines.

I said we'd had a bet, with Mike saying it had no (retail) value, and me saying there had to be someone out there who would pay five bucks for it. "Mmmm," she continued in her quiet way. "I'll raise that a bit... call it twenty."

(But again, those are AR-dollars, not actual dollars... not that I'd ever sell Aunt Mabel's vase.)

(Update: This appraiser was Suzanne Perrault.)

After establishing the vase's age (from around 1950), we left to walk around to our final queue, Collectibles, very pleased with our experience so far. Oh sure, nothing could top the encounter over the hamster print (which I didn't describe very well because it's all just a blur of cheerful conversation), but the pottery woman was instructive. Since Aunt Mabel didn't care to elaborate on who the old friend was or why she received the vase, my imagination will just have to do the rest.

The Collectibles queue may as well be called "Big Misc." It seems a little risky here, since you can't guarantee that your appraiser will know much about your particular item. Like, there may be a knife expert, but you may get stuck with the guy who knows all about troll dolls... or something like that.

The line works on a "go to the next available appraiser" basis, and for a whole minute I thought we were going to get the enthusiastic white-ponytailed guy who always does the music merchandise on the show. That would've been a treat in itself.

Instead, we got Mr. Sourpuss.

Alas, my overcompensatingly agreeable nature did not crack Mr. Sourpuss.

First I showed him my great-grandfather's knife. I said that I was just curious about its age, since my Uncle Pat gave it to me, and Uncle Pat had a tendency to tweak the historical details when it improved a story.

I think I offended Sourpuss with that, even though I was smiling, like I was some young chit (at 40 then) who doesn't respect the tales of her elders. Look, Uncle Pat admitted to me, once we became extremely good friends, that he romanticized some of the things he'd told other family members about our ancestors. He saw that I was serious about the research and was finding interesting stuff without the addition of any blarney, and Uncle Pat (born on St. Patrick's Day and more Irish than a leprechaun... despite being the product of four generations of non-Irish marriages in America) eventually sang true. This was after he gave me the knife and the watch, though, so I still had to take their provenance with a grain of Limerick-licked salt.

Maybe I'm just projecting. Anyway, Sourpuss quickly agreed that the knife was from "around 1910 or so" and that was that. No pointing to the grooves or the icon or the shape and offering a sentence of explanation. He was like one of those food/movie/whatever critics who yays or nays something without saying why.

Oh well. I didn't push it because I wanted to get to our most interesting (well, in terms of things other people value) piece, the Queen Mary postcard with the typed note from Helena Rubinstein, sent to a writer for a New Orleans paper. Here it is again:

I started with a vague, "We have this postcard sent from Helena Rubinstein and wonder if there's anything you could tell us about it."

He flipped it over and said, "It's an ad card." "An ad card?" I politely repeated. "Yeah, something companies send out to advertise. They're pre-printed. That signature is printed on there." "Ah, it seems... unusual... that it would be on a Queen Mary postcard. We thought perhaps she was traveling... we know she traveled a lot on the QM and was doing some work..." "No, it's an ad card. Everyone wants there to be a nice little story, but companies sent these out all the time."

The appraiser next to him, a woman of my mother's age who would have a very good idea of who Helena Rubinstein was and perhaps even know something of the dogged work ethic behind her company, tried to keep looking over at the card, but she was busy at the same time and this was clearly Sourpuss' territory. Sigh.

Maybe Sourpuss was right. Even if it's just the 1930s equivalent of spam, though, he needn't have been so shirty.

I may be long-winded here, but we weren't being overly chatty or insistent or anything. I mean, DUH, the card is clearly meant to publicize the new Riviera Tan foundation to a person who will hopefully pass the info along to her readers, and I don't think Helena Rubinstein herself was hunched over the typewriter, pecking out the message to every reporter of interest, but...

• The card is personally addressed to the recipient. Yes, electric typewriters did wonderful things with mail-merge (as I learned all too much about in the 1970s and 1980s, working with my parents), but this is from before those heady days. Some poor secretary may have typed up a mass of them, but it wasn't a mass printing.

• It's a real QM postcard. If HR had these printed up to advertise, wouldn't she have gone with something to do with the product on the other side? Sure, Rubinstein was frugal... but I still don't think she got a bulk deal on QM postcards then had her secretary pool get busy with them when she got home.

• She begins with "Returning from Easter on the Riviera," indicating that she is in the act of the return at this moment, meaning she is on the ship from Europe to New York. (And you can see that the card is postmarked "Grand Cent. Annex" in New York.) Alas, I can't read the year, and Google has failed me on finding a list of QM sail/arrival dates. Okay, so this could all be a lie (despite Rubinstein's well-publicized history of travel on the QM) to make a better back-story to the product. I don't think Rubinstein was that creative, but pretending to write to people while on vacation would be a clever marketing trick.

• I don't care what Sourpuss says, the signature looks real. It's a little more crude than some of her other autographs that I've seen online.

Maybe we're both a little right, and maybe one of us is more right than the other, and maybe it's Sourpuss who has the edge. (Although Occam's Razor says that my theory - the card was typed by someone during the transatlantic voyage and signed by HR - is the most likely, so at this point I'm just being polite.) What cheesed me off, though, was his dismissal and disinterest. Basically, "It's an ad card. Step aside, puny amateurs."

After that we signed up to win a few things but forgot to go to the booth to film our farewell. That's okay; we kept repeating "but we had a good time" just like the people on TV do, and Mr. Sourpuss and his terse disdain was soon forgotten.

Oh, and when I got home, I realized that I'd grabbed the wrong knife. The one my great-great-grandfather used? Still attached to his watch chain. I'd picked up the other knife, the one Uncle Pat said he bought at some point to keep the first one company. Oops!

We did have a good time, and we will record each and every San Diego episode next season, looking for our blob o' blue milling in the background. (And waiting to hear which Walberg takes were used.) I'll gladly enter the ticket lottery for next season if they're coming anywhere nearby... which means it's off to eBay to see what new tortures wait for Mike. Perhaps an old shoe or a broken teacup? And a fictional beloved relative to smear on the pathos? And then we'll send photos to my mother-in-law! I can't wait.

Previously: The Earth Bride

The Earth Bride

In 2007, overinspired by Goblin Fruit (the beautiful poetry journal, not Rossetti's sensual poem, but maybe both), I tried to write a poem. The result was, embarrassingly, a Persephone poem in a world that doesn't need yet another one of those, but there's something about the harder tugs on the seasonal wheel that makes Mrs. Hades hard to resist. Until she's as a tenth as ubiquitous as Santa Claus, perhaps no apologies are necessary.

Every year or so I have to get something out of the bottom drawer that holds the notebook that in turn jails the poem, and every year I have a peep to see if perhaps time has smoothed the awkward, obvious phrases. I like to think that sooner or later I will stop cringing at my failure to deliberately repeat into compelling saturation the imagery of "those things what do hang on the ends of ones arms, the ones with the digits and lifelines" without being, uh, too repetitive or using words I can't say out loud well, like "palms." After giving the poem its 2010 look-see, I think I must stop pinning so much responsibility on Time and settle instead for just being pleased that in 2007 I wrote a poem, for funsies.

And so, here is that poem below, in the spirit of the season, because apparently I will never make it better (and, having found another page in the notebook with an earlier version, may only make worse, although that didn't stop me from changing four words and two commas just now as I typed it).

The Earth Bride

When the Earth Bride
slid into his favoured clasp
it was four titan hands
against the curved hips
as bare as the chewed field above,
until his thankless hands alone
lifted her, did not touch the coated water,
and
placed the silent prize of her, dark and unbraided, where
it was four lost hands
pulling like mistresses
that set her to the roots,
each as limp and moist as her Mother's promises
and it was some mean hand,
some eager hand. on the knife
to saw the cold knob,
to hack the dry gnarl into
her two blank hands

Her two careful hands,
as she crushes the sanguine skin,
surrenders the borrowed seeds,
raising one distant finger to
wet her red lips in purple charm
and it is
one lying finger
that decides her eyes with thin stains
as the other hand
crosses its fingers into a knowing fist
and counts to Spring.

Previously: Road to the Roadshow: Cafe Coyote

Road to the Roadshow: Cafe Coyote

When I was researching our weekend in San Diego last June, the conventional wisdom on Old Town was this:

1. It's a tourist trap.

2. The Mexican food is shitty.

Second issue first. Our local restaurant critic recently summed up the Mexican Food Issue (MFI - this acronym seems to have such wide potential) succinctly: "Mexican food is like Chinese food, or pizza, or hot dogs in that the 'real' thing is what you grew up with and/or are used to eating, whether that stems from a region of Mexico or the Texas border or New Mexico or California or wherever."

Any time I hear people say BLAH BLAH REAL MEXICAN FOOD BLAH BLAH I just want to throw a sack of masa at their heads. Shut up. Shut the front door (up), even. (Okay, the freshmen are getting to me.)

Now, per the linked review, I think we can agree that while Velveeta-n-Tostitos are - technically if woefully - a subset of Mexican food, no one should be imagining a greasy paper dish of oily orange K-Mart nachos when someone says, "Let's get Mexican." However, all of the following can be acceptable forms of "Mexican" food:

• Items with cheese on them. People have this crazy idea that real Mexican food doesn't have any cheese on it. No, it doesn't have imitation cheese food. Although, playing the odds here, I bet somewhere there is a Mexican family that has had to get imaginative with a Kraft Single at some time or another. Is their food not Mexican? Anyway, my grocery store is full of beautiful Mexican cheeses, so shut up.
• Items cooked outside of Mexico. Cuisine, like syphilis and photons, travels. Shut up.
• Items cooked outside of Mexico by non-Mexicans. Show Julia Child some respect. Did she, a California girl, not master French cooking? (Or think of Diana Kennedy, if you want to be more relevant.) Just because you are Mexican with a lifetime of eating Mexican food in Mexico doesn't mean that you know what's conventional or what's delicious. I know a number of awful cooks with limited meal planning vision and wacky never-seen-elsewhere signature dishes that I would hate to have representing the United States. Your birth certificate is not qualification enough. Shut up.
• Tex-Mex. Cal-Mex. Mod-Mex. Fusion-hipsta-mex. Are these (again, subsets) traditional? No. But - much like every other country where Iron Chef is in reruns - regional cuisine adapts, transforms, reinvents itself... and that includes some acceptance if not embrance of what other cultures have done with one's dishes.Think Britain and curries and how you can get Chicken Tikka Masala in India.
• Items from all regions of Mexico. Okay, you know how in the USA we have New York and Chicago-style pizza? And they are both "authentic"? This kind of cosmopolitan mindset actually also works outside of pizza and outside of the U.S. The enchiladas of region A in Mexico are as authentic as the enchiladas in region B. They are. Shut up.

What does this have to do with Old Town San Diego?

Well, like I said, when planning our trip I discovered that people are often harsh towards the (many) Mexican restaurants in Old Town. "Food for tourists who don't know 'real' Mexican" seems to be a common vibe.

Now, I could see being critical about prices or ranking these places below other area restaurants in terms of service/taste/selection/value, but it's just bull-crappio to dismiss the restaurants as if they're slinging the aforementioned Velveeta.

Let's talk about Cafe Coyote.

Cafe Coyote was so good that we went twice. The other places in Old Town may be great, but... mmm... Cafe Coyote!

Of course, I was just excited to go somewhere where my vegetarian options weren't "cheese enchilada," "quesadilla," or the very suspect "vegetarian fajitas." (Problematic etymology of "fajita" aside, I recently ordered veg fajitas at a place in Las Vegas that I'd usually call "solid but unremarkable." I expected zucchini, mushroom, that kind of thing. Instead, it was a hamster-bag of broccoli and cauliflower served with tortillas. Gross. Maybe it was "authentic," maybe it wasn't, but I have this strange thing about preferring flavour to pedigree. Oh, and then a few weeks later I ordered veggie enchiladas at another place and got... yeah. Should have asked first. I'm an idiot.)

By the way, when I moved to Nevada I was really happy to have three options. My fave "Mexican-owned, Mexican-proud" restaurant back in south Texas only offered vegetarians cheese enchiladas... made with cheddar. I'm just saying. (To shut up about the value of "authentic.")

Okay, so here is our view of the restaurant, walking from the Best Western to the main drag:

We looked over the menu. I was sold when I saw some non-alcoholic drink (that I can't find on the menu right now) made with pineapple and... I forget what, but it was delicious. Look, here's a photo:

Nice chips. Pleasant, light salsa. (And normally I like a thick, salty salsa verde.)

I ordered the veggie combo.

Okay, that's a cheese enchilada you see, but I like cheese enchiladas. (Shut up.) Also on the plate is a potato taco, black beans, a small salad, and a guacamole tostada.

When we went to Manzanillo, I had the first guacamole that I've ever liked in my life. This was the second. And the potato taco? Lightly seasoned, mouth-filling but not dense, and the corn tortilla - mwah!

Was it just like the one I had in Manzanillo? No, it was better. It was a little more subtle and interesting, and not as greasy. If it's terribly inauthentic of me to prefer that, then I say let's save the authenticity cheer squad for Old Master paintings, not tacos.

And the cheese quesadilla was a delicious mix of light Mexican cheeses (um, I'm not savvy enough to differentiate them) with a kind of roasted sauce.

Mike also had tacos, but I guess that photo didn't come out. To quote from his brief review on Yelp written back in the room that evening: "I ordered a taco trio - carne asada, carnitas and beef, First two mentioned came in incredible soft corn tortillas and were amazing beyond words. The crisp beef taco was a mistake, but only by comparison to the excellence of the others."

(Mike doesn't say why they were amazing. Sorry. The rest of his review has some specifics, but I will hang my head in shame on his behalf.)

We never got to dessert; not that time, not the next time, although the next time I did order a side of corn tortillas with butter. Mmmm. Here's the woman making them outside their cantina next door:

We have Mexican supermarkets in Las Vegas, but every time I buy fresh corn tortillas they lose their taste by sundown. I think it's an ancient curse. Or food science.

I'm turning off comments for this post because I'm too fragile and dainty to deal with the eleven people who are going to write in and abuse me because...

• They have no sense of sassy whimsy or hyperbole and think I'm really telling them to shut up.
• They can't read and think I like Velveeta.
• They can't read and think I'm claiming that food invented/popularized outside of Mexico comes from Mexico.
• They just want to tell me how I could do better than Cafe Coyote when I know I could do better than CC because probably there is always a better place than wherever you're eating, but that doesn't change how much I personally enjoyed CC for the reasons described above.
• They want to explain "real" Mexican cuisine to me... then proceed to describe some regional cooking style in Mexico as if it's the One True Mexican Way, completely ignoring the MFI.
• They want me to sell my domain because they have a "better" use for it than "some personal blog." (These requests have died down in recent years, but I got one again just yesterday and may be a little snarky. I'm thinking that, unless the offer involves a number with a lot of zeroes before bumping into a decimal point, sales pitches premised on the "you should sell your land to me because I want to do something that I think is more interesting than your 15-year-old patch of creative expression" are just inherently flawed.)

I imagine that San Diego has countless knock-your-socks-off Mexican places of great variety. You could probably eat your way around the country without leaving town. But if you find yourself in Old Town and something on Cafe Coyote's menu appeals to you, go for it without shame. You may be amazed.

We have our next visit to San Diego already booked (for next year's cruise), and half of the planning seems to be whether to trek out to Old Town and eat at CC or eat by the hotel. If you know me and my hatred of California freeways, the fact that I'm undecided is huge praise for Cafe Coyote. No, no Mexican street corn or plantain empanadas (two things I've come to love at the more la-de-da joints in Las Vegas), but their offerings are still so delicious that, upon salivating reflection, I think I've just finished planning the San Diego trip.

Previously: Well, Evelyn.

Well, Evelyn.

 

I think you were the last of the girls.

Any more memories, however sweet, and my heart may just burst.

(adopted 24 July 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Previously: A Monday We Can Moon Over

A Monday We Can Moon Over

Life got better, after the last post. It usually does. The short version is that sometimes the good guys win, at least for awhile... (I'm happy, not delusional.)

It's been an interesting weekend. Mike contributed to the collective meme-o-sphere in a heady way, but that's a story for another day. (I just couldn't go to bed with that last crabby post splotching up my front page, so I have to type something.)

Will I ever finish the little trip report about San Diego and what it was like to not be on Antiques Roadshow? Of course. Trip reports are my little thing.

For now, here's a photo of a Sichuan takin at the San Diego Zoo:

It's Tibetan.

I only have a two-day work week thanks to a conference, Veterans Day, and what I'm calling "I Guess They Couldn't Be Bothered To Ask Everyone To Show Back Up After All Those Late-Night Veteran Appreciation Parties" Friday.

Oh, and we have fourteen "$10-off anything, no minimum" coupons to use at Kohl's this next week. Consumer purrrrr...

Previously: This is the November Post

This is the November Post

(I'm hoping the title will end up being ironic.)

I'm finding it difficult to slink into this space when one part of me is all "I have true love, a steady paycheck, affectionate pets, a climate-controlled bug-free home, an embarrassing stack of restaurant gift certificates, all sorts of gadgets and hobbies, perfect friends, and a humble appreciation for the last episode of Freaks and Geeks," but the other part of me won't keep shouting, "CAN I QUIT MY JOB? CAN I QUIT MY JOB? CAN I QUIT MY JOB? CAN I NOW? WHAT ABOUT NOW? CAN I? NOW? ... NOW?"

It's not that the kids are terrible this year. They're not. Oh, many things that should curl my stomach I'm just used to, but I've only written two referrals this year and don't really see any more looming. (And one of those kids has settled down quite a bit, knock textile-of-choice. Mind you, I expended quite a bit of energy in parent calls, parent letters, counseling referrals, and pleading with coaches before finally writing him up with a stack of this evidence attached. Was it worth it? Probably not to all of the kids who could've used that attention, or even to my family who had dibs on a lot of that unpaid time, but what else can you do? Kick a kid straight out when he's being a disruptive prat? Not in 2010.)

Funny ("heh" not "ha") thing a student said today: "Lots of kids have ADHD now. That means elementary teachers need to learn how to teach." Out of the mouth of one of my brightest freshmen. Apparently elementary teachers bore kids to such a degree that the kids develop some sort of, I guess, panic to find something amusing somewhere, anywhere, and that panic sticks, and the kids have ADHD for life. Who knew? As many of his classmates hooted in agreement, this theory seems to have passed peer review, and since the child is always right, well... sorry, elementary teachers. Looks like the days of kids fondly reminiscing about "back when school was fun" are over. Apparently, you suck.

Anyway, it's not my co-workers bugging me, either. Our "problem" assistant principal recently left our campus, actually. We may now be able to write a kid up without producing seventeen pieces of documentation (twice that if the child is of a certain... demographic).

The "system" is bugging me, I'll admit that. We're meant to upload grades every week, right? (Note: you can upload every hour and this has yet stop any child from interrupting your instruction to ask, "What's my grade in here?") I usually upload, oh, three times a week? Sometimes twice that. However, one Friday my grades did not upload. I don't know why. I didn't change anything. I pressed the usual buttons, but nonsense appeared on the website instead. The issue resolved itself after the weekend, so I didn't think anything of it.

Well. Now that the hot glare of "FORESHADOWING ALERT!" has faded away from the bottom of your vision, it turns out that the system put me on the "naughty list" as a "non-uploader." Whatever. It's fixed now, right?

No. This report keeps saying I haven't uploaded since October 5. Eventually, last week, after swearing that I could see the grades online - and so could my kids and their parents - I sent my supervisor a forward of one of my "successful upload!" messages... of which I have, I don't know, TWO DOZEN since October 5? And again, I can see the grades online? And so can the kids?

My supervisor said my upload was showing up that day, and my status was clear. (No "and it's duly noted that you were uploading all along," but okay.)

The next day I got an email from a different assistant principal's secretary, one sent to about ten people, saying that we MUST upload grades every week because we were being MONITORED. (Not because it's school policy, but because they were watching.) I figured that the secretary was acting on old intelligence, and... oh, I'm sorry, the FORESHADOWING ALERT just comes on automatically. Yes, it does blink awfully fast.

One week later - today - my department chair - who is completely cool and probably not in a conspiracy to gaslamp me - again sends me an email from my supervisor saying... yes... that I'm on the "not uploading" list. She even sends me the snippet of the report, showing that I haven't uploaded since...

October 5.

At this point I want to talk about life in 1982. The indomitable Ms. (you better get that title right) Wright's classroom. Romeo Junior High.

What was my grade in that class? Well, I had a pretty good idea, what with my ace ability to look at my returned work and regard it as a whole. I got As and Bs on everything (hey, it was English), so I knew it would be an A or a B. So, when Ms. Wright would have us shuffle up to her desk one by one a few times each year to look at the green columns in her ledger, I wouldn't be surprised to see an A or a B in the final box. Not every teacher took the time for this, but it didn't really matter - you always knew how you were doing in general because of your returned work.

If my grades had been more varied, like in Mrs. Rice's class on the other side of the country a few years later, I still would have understood my grade. I remember Mrs. Rice's trailing finger, pointing out where I was absent for three days and did not turn in my assigned work upon return, and how said assigned work was worth around 70% of my grade for the six-week period. (I think it was an essay.) So, despite all of the A's for the other classes, I had a D for the six weeks, and thus could not participate in any clubs due to the brand-new (and normally commendable) "No Pass, No Play" legislation.

(Haven't I told this story before? How I - fresh from a summer at fat camp and feeling frisky and keen in my new school - wore a denim miniskirt and near-Mormon short-sleeved sweater with little hearts one day - the skirt being longer than a cheerleader's skirt and not being worn to provoke anything other than cuteness - and there was a fire drill? And a teacher outside yelled at me that I was inappropriately dressed? So I had to go to the AP's office? And get suspended for three days for violating dress code? What with not having a change of clothes at school other than my PE shorts, which "would be worse"? Which sent me - already fragile with the whole move/life-upheaval-thang into a dark depression, a me who was always known as a brain and a good student, into a new headspace wherein I spent those three days trying to convince my parents that I was quitting school? Only to talk myself into coming back and trying again to fit in... only to discover that I've failed my best subject and have been kicked out of every single club I joined - at least six or seven - in the desperate hope of making friends and making the best of an unpleasant change? And now I was rebranded as an academic loser? THAT story.)

Yeah, so... point, point, come back, point... oh yes, the thing is that part of me wants to say, "I AM SORRY THAT THE SWEET CHILDREN HAVE BEEN DENIED THEIR ACCESS TO THE POINT-BY-POINT IN-DEPTH GRADE REPORTS THAT CAUSE MANY O FREAKOUTS ON THE PART OF THE SWEET CHILDREN SHOULD I NOT HAVE THAT DAY'S ESSAY IN THE SYSTEM BY THE TIME THEY GET HOME - EVEN THOUGH THEY SAY THEY CAN SEE THEIR GRADES JUST FINE, EVEN IF THE GRADES ARE ALL OUTDATED WHAT WITH BEING POSTED YESTERDAY - BUT #$$#%$^$! THE WORLD HAS GONE MAAAAAD, MAAAAAAAAAD, I TELL YOU! THAT'S IT - I AM WEARING A MINISKIRT AND THIS TIME IT WILL NOT BE CUTE AND WHOLESOME! I AM GOING OUT ON FIRE! WHERE CAN I BUY TAP SHOES AT MIDNIGHT?"

It's that sort of Caps Lock control problem that has (most recently) keeping me from blogging.

Because it's not my supervisor's fault that some stupid report has flagged me for special abuse, I toned things down in my actual reply:

"I'm freaking out! I can see the updated grades in ParentLink myself. The kids can see them, too. Why can't the program that generates this report see them? I have five successful import messages from the Staff Days alone, and oodles before that. Is this something I need to call in an old priest and a young priest to fix? *cue hysterical, unattractive sobs*"

You're probably thinking, "oh hey, blog-Shari is just like work-Shari!"

Oh no.

No, I'm not.

Blog-Shari and Work-Shari are sold separately with unmatching accessories. That's just how much crazy I've been subjected to - so much that it's now leaking from my fingertips.

Interesting fact: My supervisor? New to our school. I barely know him. His entire impression of me so far (according to my brain du jour): "Some high-maintenance technophobe who can't get with the program and follow directives." Oh, plus now a dollop of "and she writes like she's texting her six closest girlfriends from under the barstool."

It's okay, though, because he and I have a conference together later this week. Oh, not about this. No, remember that other referral I wrote? Well, I guess there is to be a conference. Me, the parent, the child, a counselor... and my supervisor. I've only had my supervisor requested at a parent conference once before, and that was because of the (adjective deleted) ex-assistant principal who... come to think of it... no sarcasm, I am quite literally just realizing this... was the one in charge of handling this student's referral last week, the day before he left. 

CRAZY HEAD BANG GOES BANG BANG BANG SMASH.

Well, we all have to deal with assholes, don't we? Or even good people in asinine situations. It's no reason to quit the devil we know for a life of beans, rice, no prospects, and what would be a quickly swirling savings account.

Is it?

I have true love, affectionate pets, a climate-controlled bug-free home, an embarrassing stack of restaurant gift certificates, all sorts of gadgets and hobbies, perfect friends, and a humble appreciation for the last episode of Freaks and Geeks - even though no one is letting me play Mr. Rosso - I guess I can lady up and try to hang on to the steady paycheck, too.

I've seen worse, after all.

Doesn't mean I'm not dying here.

Previously: Road to the Roadshow: Best Western Hacienda Hotel Old Town

Road to the Roadshow: Best Western Hacienda Hotel Old Town

On our last two trips to San Diego, we got a good rate for the Kona Kai. This time, though, no such luck, so I started researching elsewhere. Everything by the convention center was sky-high, and everything in my "comfy zone" for which I could've strategically bid on Priceline meant possibly getting a valet-only downtown hotel. Have I ever talked about my fear of valet parking? Perhaps I'll save that rumination for whenever we make a proper trip to LA...

At some point I thought, hmmm, this "Old Town" place, would that be interesting?

And that's how I came to never stay at the Kona Kai again, even though I think it's such a great hotel in a great location. Once you go (deep breath) Best Western Hacienda Hotel Old Town, there's just no going back.

Although there are a couple of hotels almost as close, the let's-just-call-it-Hacienda is as close as you can get... oops, save the new boutique hotel on the main square of Old Town that I guess has opened since then, but that doesn't count.

The Hacienda sprawls along the bottom edge of Old Town, sitting directly behind the Whaley House and a mere couple of buildings away from the historic cemetery.

That's the lobby, around the corner from San Diego Ave, and across from the free parking lot (in case you don't want to pay for parking). We became more familiar with the pedestrian gate at the other end. You can't see it in this photo, but there's the hotel behind these retailers:

The Hacienda is no boxy rooming house; we were assigned to the building furthest from the lobby - both horizontally and vertically. That meant two elevator rides and a small mountain climb. Here's the view to Elevator #2:

Looking out toward the airport:

I mentioned the mountain...

Not so bad the other way, though:

Closer view of water wheel near bottom:

(And no, I apparently don't know how to expose photos taken during "June Gloom.") And who just became advisor for her school's photography club? Embarrassing.

The room itself was quite comfortable. Shutters on the windows (overlooking the park behind us - like Northwoods the night before all over again), little sitting area, plump queen beds:

This was Room 631, by the way:

The room also came with a safe, coffeemaker (unused by us, as usual - I wish more places would throw in some hot choc packets), and - the item by which Mike measures all accommodations - a refrigerator. Ours came with two complimentary bottles of water per day. (In theory. We only got one bottle the first day. However, we'd brought plenty of our own.)

We would soon discover that we really liked Old Town, so the location is fantastic. The property is truly lovely, too. Flowers, flowers, everywhere.

(Our building can be seen in the top left corner.)

The staff was nice. Sometimes we did get the last parking spot in the garage closest to our building, which was worrying, but I think there were plenty of spots in the other garage. We were given breakfast vouchers for a bar on the corner, O'Hungry's, but we never bothered going. Maybe next time.

Next time would be our next cruise on Carnival Spirit. (Ought I to mention Cabin 7258 again?) So, as long as the Hacienda Hotel stands, Kona Kai is out. (Sorry, KK.) But maybe, since we have so much time to plan, this time we should stay at the Holiday Inn directly across from the port terminal? Wake up, walk downstairs, walk onboard? But... but... it's not as pwitty. And we won't be able to stroll down to Cafe Coyote or meander by the "ghost" spots of Old Town. But it is dang convenient. I just don't know.

I think I'm still hoping to find a coupon code for Hotel del Coronado...

Previously: Road to the Roadshow: The Lawrence Welk Museum

Road to the Roadshow: The Lawrence Welk Museum

Remember June? When I was all "I went to Antiques Roadshow, and here is my tale! With a 'series title' in the blog posts and everything!" And then the Summer of the Sprained-or-Whatever Back took over. But look, now I'm blogging twice in one day because I'm a bit sick - ironic.

Except I'm going to be very cheaty and pretty much just re-post my Yelp review of the Lawrence Welk Museum, which is where we stopped after leaving Big Bear Lake and before reaching San Diego. (Don't ask me why I started Yelping and didn't return to blogging. It started with just needing to gush to a wider audience about restaurants I've already discussed here, and now it's all about becoming the Duchess of places when I check in with my iPhone. I was even briefly a Baroness, but it was in a scuzzy part of town that iPhone-using hipsters don't frequent, so I didn't mind the inevitable coup. Not that I'm taking it off my resume or anything.)

(Speaking of resumes, I have two hours left to complete a followup application online for a position at the new Cosmopolitan resort. I've gotten over whatever snit at school caused me to apply in the first place - and by "snit" I mean a tiny drop of the fog of despair that chokes me whenever I have to deal with people with no interest in listening, be they child or adult - so I guess I'll let it go. I guess. It does pay more. And I could trade ridiculous hours and tasks for the sane, straightforward life of a clerk. Well, maybe it wouldn't hurt to apply... but what if there were lay-offs? At least I have some job security right now... Hey, you know what's in the fridge? Chocolate egg cream soda!)

This is what I wrote on Yelp about the Lawrence Welk Museum:

Are you on a long drive?
Are you on I-15?
Are you approaching Escondido?
Do you need to pee?
Can you finish the following line: "Mairsy doats and doasy oates and _______"?

If you answered "yes" to the five questions above, then the Lawrence Welk Museum will be a fun pit stop on your way to somewhere else.

I'm not a huge Welk fan or anything, but I've seen enough cute clips on YouTube to block out those terrible pre-cable Sundays growing up when Welk was the highlight of early Sunday evening television programming. Dark days of the 1970s.

I can appreciate any kind of museum, really, if it's done well. I could go to the Museum of Hot, Manky Brussel Sprouts and enjoy myself under a devoted curator's care. So why not break up our trip from Las Vegas to San Diego with a stop here? (With a nod to the Roadside Attractions website for the tip.)

The museum, or "museum," is actually just a lobby display in the community theatre on the grounds of the timeshare properties built by Welk. The theatre is part of a not-unattractive but rather generic little shopping area that also includes a beachwear shop and a Pizza Hut Express. The hills to the east are quite tranquil and lovely, though. It's a better place to stretch your legs than some diesel-belched parking lot.

Very little interpretation happens in the theatre lobby. You've got the enormous champagne glass, a fake studio set with a cut-out of Welk, a recreated radio booth, a piano, a big screen playing faux-Beatles (what was up with that?) in front of some plush sofas, and many posters and photographs.

The staff at the desk didn't say a word to us as we entered. I got the feeling they were only there for box office concerns. Surprisingly, there are no Welk souvenirs. No pens, no biographies, no ornaments, not even a souvenir champagne glass or bubble wand. I'm disappointed. I expect more from my tourist traps.

To be fair, this isn't really a tourist trap at all - I think it's really just a very nice and absolutely free lobby display that someone unfortunately decided to call a museum, and now things are out of hand. But who can regret seeing the world's largest champagne glass? No one who needs to use a clean bathroom, that's who.

And now some photos:

It was an interesting thing to see once, but next time, we'll probably just wait to pee.

Previously: Don't Let's Start Calling Me Molly

Don't Let's Start Calling Me Molly

First, if my supervisor is reading this, I really am home sick. It's just it's that kind of home sick where you can prop yourself up and type but standing in front of people all day and being bright and alert is right out. Also, it's really hard to make it to the potty and back on short notice at school, you know? I do appreciate that, since the bathroom refurbishment, we have three stalls now, don't think that I don't.

This is why my email just says "cooties." You have to trust me on the rest.

I'm thinking about the grammatical construction of my title. I don't know what it's called. It's kind of like that They Might Be Giants Song, but it's also like this book I tried to read once. When I Google, I just seem to come up with ESL sites that assure me of the commonness of the construction. What? Isn't "don't let's (whatever)" something only posh flappers say? (I mean, in the United States, where the kids giggle appreciatively whenever I say "shan't." Look, "shan't" has too much pleasurable mouth feel for us to lose this one. Come on, America. Don't let "shan't" go the way of fortnight!)

Last night I watched, even DVR'd, Mike and Molly. The previews looked extremely mediocre, but Chuck Lorre is the guy behind The Big Bang Theory, and I do love that show. On the other hand, I can't get into Two and a Half Men at all, and Dharma and Greg left me somewhere in the middle. (More watchable, at the time, than TAAHM, but not even five-percent as clever as TBBT.)

Oh no," I said, when the previews came on. "A show about an obese couple? And one of them is named Mike? If this thing takes off, I'll spend the next decade cringing, hearing a hopefully silent "Molly?" whenever Mike and I meet people."

Still, I thought it might end up being a rather intelligent and insightful show that in the course of being these things raises awareness of a problem so many Americans have without the Very Special Episode vibe.

Heh. Not even close. More like "low-hanging fruit picked by heavy-handed skinny people."

Its greatest sin, really, is that it's just so pedestrian. The fatness of the two characters is all the show really has going for it, and their obesity is just tired vaudeville. The woman talks about her father, who of course died in the drive-thru (because it's cliche to choke on a ham sandwich), and of course it was his third lap around. Fat people have no control, amirite amirite? The guy breaks his diet and orders an armful of food because, again, that's what we're all busting to do what with all of that lack of self-respect and control and stuff.

Otherwise, he's on a new diet and just eating a hot dog weiner while his friend has a regular meal. Here was a great place to slip in the observation that fat people aren't necessarily more piggy than other people - in fact, despite all criticism that fat people lack self-respect and control (for which crucifixion is the only appropriate bystander response, natch), fat people are probably far more experienced in actively denying themselves. (Perhaps not whilst on the road to fatness, but once there and trying to solve the problem? Yeah, just look at the number of people who diet every year.)

The initial write-up of the show was that the guy was going to be someone trying to lose weight and the woman was going to be happy at her size and just looking to be healthy. For a sitcom, that's not a bad way to set up some romantic tension. Sexual tension, too, if she is more uninhibited. (Or maybe she wants to be, but isn't there yet, and he - despite his shame - is hot to trot - here come the male stereotypes - but his body image hasn't given her much confidence for getting nekkid with him.)

This "wow, not all fat people are alike" perspective sounded much fresher, what with the fat acceptance and Healthy at Any SIze movements generating so much controversy, than the slapstick that was actually delivered. I mean, the guy breaks a table because of his weight, and that's the joke? That's it? Why not have the table break for some other reason, and the guy panics because everyone will assume it was his fatness? Don't make it a major plot element, either, just something that happens on the side, and everyone who has ever been in a situation that just looks bad and is hard to explain will have that laugh in common, regardless of size.

(In real life, I had a student desk break last year, and I was paranoid that everyone would think I was sitting on it, as so many teachers do. However, unlike several of my fit counterparts, I don't sit on student desks. My co-workers, who come in a variety of sizes, did always sit on that desk when visiting. None of this is particularly funny, but if I were a comedy writer, surely I could do something with it. Show skinny person after skinny person hopping up on the desk to chat, and then the fat person leans a little against it and it finally comes apart. I don't know.)

I'm tired and - speaking of food and also, several paragraphs ago, of books - I think I'll have a lie-down and get back to reading The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. I can't believe I (once again) didn't quite make it a month without taking a sick day. I swear it has nothing to do with the 30+ kids who joined my three freshman classes yesterday, although that is its own particular sadness. Vive le stereotypes after all, and pass the lemon cake.

Previously: Lollygagging

Lollygagging

Whoa, I can lie in bed and blog from my iPhone? Or crawl under my desk during prep and post updates? I can reclaim my oversharing from Facebook and get it back on the blog where it belongs? THIS IS MAGIC. (Except the part where I realize that the iPhone doesn't seem to have CapsLock. Not magic.)

What will it look like if I try to add some photos from my camera roll, I wonder?

Hipstamatic in 3... 2..

Previously: Overspill

Overspill

It's the usual: I want to blog, I want to sleep.

Zzzz.

Summer ended better than it started. After weeks on my back, I was much better. My bloodwork was fine if not actually rather stellar, so with diabetes ruled out for my numb feet, we left it at that. I only have so much MD-momentum, as illogical as that sounds. My feet are now usually okay. Maybe if the symptoms return I'll look into X-rays. I like the way the tombstones absorb my whistling as I pass...

(Three days later.)

Right. Blog. HI, BLOG! Let's muse. I miss musing.

Work

So, I'm back at school and it's all business as usual, I guess. I'll have the annual sit-down with my new boss - I've had six supervisors in seven years - tomorrow. The kids are okayish so far - only four parent letters sent home, and here it is week three. Next week, after a month of school, half of my freshman are slated to move to either remedial English or Honors as we finally "level" the classes, but that's assuming that we have spots. I don't think we have the spots. I think I need more blank parent letters for all the third-grade (or below) reading level kids who are just in my 9th grade class to disrupt others. I think I need a million dollars. I think I need to stop thinking about this.

Hamsters

Evelyn, our little creambelly, is into digging these days. I fill half of her tub with Carefresh and let her play civil engineer. She still never gets enough of being held. Evelyn is my gazeybug. I wish she were bunny-sized.

Stanley? SO SWEET. Five months ago he was wild, wary, and hardly wheeling. Oh, and the fattest hamster I'd ever seen. Now he's half the size, alll about the saucer (and the cube - he's Stanley Cube-rick), and he's right into the hand, every time. I also think he's older than they told us at the shelter. He just has a bit of an older ham look. Hm. But dang if he isn't a happy little rodent. 

Thomas, call him Thom-nas, he is a great deal tamer but not like Stanley. Thomas has some bizarre inner imperative to maintain his dignity which means he enjoys a solid round of patting but isn't going to leap excitedly into your hand or anything embarrassing like that. Still, other than the odd "You startled me!" bite, he's docile and now and again runs a little. He likes to sleep in little kidney-curls under the water bottles. (Diabetic, yadda yadda.) There he makes fluffy little nests. Adorable.

Mike

Did I ever mention that this summer Mike became a uni student again? Yes, he's studying externally at Murdoch University in Perth, working on a second bachelors - English instead of Journalism this time, meaning that he still lives here, still at the other end of the sofa, and the Aussie government pays for it, and I'm a bit in love with his Popular Literature professor. (I don't care that the man is 80 years old. He went to Cambridge and knew Agatha Christie, and he thinks Communism is bollocks, which is a nice contrast to my limited experience of Australian university culture. Here's an article. Apparently I'll need to join a long queue if I want to fawn.)

Gadgets

I got the new Kindle - the cheaper wi-fi version. Mike got the old Kindle. We are both happy. I'm happier, but Mike doesn't know it because he hasn't tried my Kindle yet. It's best he not know.

I also have... an iPhone. Given that talking on the phone is one of my least fave things, the monthly bill and the stupid contract make me sick if I think about it, but I didn't get the thing as a phone. I got this as a "things to keep me sane at work" device. Lunch, prep, before school, after school, a few hours after school, another few hours... mmm sanity is being able to farm pinto beans on Facebook while waiting for my piece of shit work computer to load a document.

Yelp is fun, too, :) And FourSquare. And Epicurious. And Words with Friends. And whatever that gas mileage app is I downloaded than I'm sure will be edifying and totally justify, well, everything.

Travel

Ooo, just typing this reminded me to check Carnival's website today. Shazam - another $30 price drop! We've saved about $200 per person so far thanks to Early Saver, and my gloating just means The Ironic Thing will happen and we'll end up having to cancel and pay more than that to reschedule... or worse. But it's fun to check!

However, the cruise is so way far away and we've done Carnival Spirit before that the joy of planning isn't much comfort at the moment. Hmm. Maybe we need a Utah getaway, now that it's (slightly) cooler?

Books

I'm reading the new Terry Pratchett. Yes, I know it's not out in the States yet. Yes, I AM AN ELECTRONIC BOOK THIEF. Stupid publishers and their draconian roll-outs have forced me into this. (That includes their pricing roll-outs. I don't care how new an e-book is; don't charge me $15 for it.)

Okay, okay... it's my choice to be a thief. Can I claim that I'm sending a message to the publishers if I promise to buy the books properly when they come down in price (or come to this country)? I spent twenty-plus times my usual book budget on e-books last year. I think I'm a sure customer, if the supplier doesn't get Real Stupid Like.

Bibliopolitics and excuses aside, hmmm, what else have I been reading? The Harper Connelly mysteries from Charlaine Harris. (Odd, dark, intriguing... until the avalanche roundup at the end of the last book. What the?) Oh, and all of the Sookie Stackhouse books, too, but I won't watch True Blood because I can't accept that pretty boy in short hair as the manly Viking Eric.

People keep suggesting books to me, but - happy sigh- Pratchett. (I really will buy the book properly. Or could I buy a hard copy for the public library? How does that work, I wonder? Don't library books cost so much more? It seems like I read that somewhere? Because of licenses? But then, how is it different from selling used books? All of this has always confused me, but not enough to hit Google. I like to hold back a little research for a rainy day...)

Movies

What? I spent the summer watching Pushing Daisies and My Name is Earl. Oh snap...

FOOD!

We made up for lost time at the end of summer with some fun experimenting. I put reviews for a few of the places on Yelp. Look, it's me on Yelp. Highlights: Mario Batali's farmers' market (who knew?!), the place that sells chocolate egg cream soda (when they're not sold out), and another place that does - Finally! Hallelujah! - pizza that's not New York-style or Chicago-style. I also got stalked by the local pizza joint - hang up calls at 2 a.m. and everything - after I gave them a two-star review. Drama! Oh, and Vegas has a proper Indian supermarket now, too. Woot!

Oh yeah, Woot!

I'm addicted to Shirt.Woot.com. It makes me want to learn to draw and buy a graphic tablet and join derbies. Surely I can learn to draw? Surely I can't be completely inept at both singing AND drawing? Surely one has got to give? I don't think it will ever be singing. Look, I got this shirt and this shirt! I really wanted this shirt - wanted it so badly - but it didn't make the cut. Oh, Shirt.Woot. A whole new culture. Like I needed that when I have...

Genealogy

I used to mine census records for what would get me to the next clue: people's names, ages, birthplaces, their neighbours, and their county and state, and possibly city if known. (It's funny how seldom that info is actually given.) Thanks to a stray family tree that clued me to a marriage record, which led to me finally realizing that my father's mother's mother's father's father's neighbour was probably his sister, I did get what I think will end up being a new set of great-great-great-great grandparents. But, the luxury of summer mostly led to grand ideas... like, why not reckon out the small places in the backwoods where all of the ancestors lived across America... and then visit them? It's a bit of an excuse for a big road trip, and I don't like planning for The Time After Hamsters, but the idea is rolling around in the back squidges, and I'm looking at those old censuses a little more closely...

The Living Family

...is living. Someday, when Mom is no longer here, maybe I will have more to say about Alzheimer's without feeling exploitive. Or maybe I'll get over feeling like I don't really have a right to ramble on the topic when it's my Dad who does the heavy lifting while I'm 1,189 highway miles away.

Lighter Topics

Hrm. Still need to jabber about San Diego Zoo and, more importantly, what fun we had at Antiques Roadshow. However, tonight I also need to print out a bunch of crap (sorry, it is) for my meeting tomorrow, and our printer is a trial but at least it functions, unlike the printers at school. Well, to be fair, they mostly work, but they're either not in a room with a working computer and not networked, or they need toner. So, here at home we haul out the old-old laptop, not the new-old laptop, because the old-old laptop has a parallel port, and we print here. Yes, I know one can buy adapters, but we usually only print once a year, and I'm still on the original toner cartridge from eight or nine years ago. Yeah. So... yeah, I don't think I want to buy an adapter with my own money because our school district is broke. At least I am better off than my colleagues who are hand-writing their worksheets and tests. (And, like me, sweating to find ways to print things for our administration meetings when we've begged enough favours from the few with working printers. Is something backward here?)

Ah, look at me, all pissy and righteous again - all back to myself! This calls for some celebration Farmville'ing. World of Warcraft - what's that? Time to get a rainbow slide for my sheep!

Previously: But I'm Team Shaun

But I'm Team Shaun

So many photos rattling around the hard drive, so many posts twitching my fingers, so many ouchies holding my tongue. I finally went to the doctor earlier this week, about my back and some other symptoms, and I'll be back next week to see what the blood work says. (I think it's going to say, "Go get an X-ray, but mostly just prepare for a life of ibuprofen and crotchetiness. That is, prescription ibuprofen and extra crotchetiness.")

In addition to not feeling like writing (be it blog posts, lesson plans, or overdue correspondence) despite now having a new (dare I say, amazing and top-o-the-line-for-at-least-another-10-minutes) laptop (as we try not to think about how this was a necessary replacement and not a fun upgrade), my Kindle died. MY KINDLE DIED. And I can't have a new one until the new ones come out at the end of the month. MY KINDLE DIED.

Look forward to a post later called "How to move all of your still-unread back issues of The New Yorker from your DEAD Kindle to the new, alive, spunky, wifi-enabled, smaller-so-they-force-you-to-buy-a-new-case Kindle" because, despite what Amazon says about magazine back issues being the one thing that can't be transferred between devices, even if backed up to a hard drive, this will be happening. Oh yes, Garth, it will be happening.

We did leave the house this summer after going to Big Bear/San Diego (see "photos rattling" and "posts twitching" above) for something other than the doctor, the lab, and the grocery store: this past weekend we saw David Cassidy.

At some point in my youth I stopped spinning Barry Manilow Live and the Star Wars soundtrack over and over on the turntable to add Shaun Cassidy's Shaun Cassidy. I'm sure the gateway ditty was some fellow second-grader playing me Shaun's cover of Da Doo Ron Ron, but - being too young to know of A&R men and too sheltered to be guided by Top 40 radio - I listened to every track equally, like I thought you were supposed to. (Such instincts are the one thing that keep me slightly open-minded about astrology, Hello, Madame Libra here! Sucker for maintaining fairness and a friend to inanimate objects!) One of the real hits for me was Amblin':

("Sounds like Boy George," says Mike, without menace.)

At some point, somebody - probably a sloppy pronoun for "Tiger Beat" - mentioned that he was David Cassidy's brother.

Who?

The Partridge Family went off the air in 1974, the year before I entered Kindergarten and could be exposed to patchwork-schoolbus lunchboxes. Syndication wasn't the same beast it is today, so I didn't actually see The Partridge Family until several years later, probably not until after the Monkees had their MTV comeback. Oh, I'd heard of them, but without having them slipped into my afternoon lineup during the critical years, they failed to enter The Shari-Canon. I have only been able to watch them through the eyes of retro kitsch.

I always thought "Come On, Get Happy" was a fun song, but until Four Weddings and a Funeral came out in 1994, I couldn't have named anything else by them... and even then, when Hugh Grant stuttered, "In the immortal words of David Cassidy, I think I love you," some of the appeal of the moment was me believing that Grant was making one of those clever, understated British allusions.

I have since been educated through E! specials and tortured biopics that David Cassidy was, once, a huge panties-flinging deal. Oh.

"Mike, did you know who Shaun Cassidy was before you met me?"

"Uh... I think so. Vaguely."

And apparently that is the way of most of the world, unless you're a Stratemeyer enthusiast.

(Now Mike is humming "Amblin'," the one Shaun Cassidy song he knows. I feel like a sociologist with a rare and fragile opportunity to expose someone to only the non-hit songs of an artist. Next up, a trip to Papau New Guinea with a suitcase of B-sides.)

Somewhere along the way I heard "I Think I Love You" for myself and pronounced it "catchy." Then, a couple of years ago, Mike - being a little younger and perhaps living where the UHF programmers had different cultural values and slotted The Partridge Family as heavily as The Brady Bunch - exposed me to "I Woke Up in Love This Morning."

Hit!

Never mind that until recently the only version I knew was one on YouTube with the middle verses cut out. Now I got The Partridge Family. A frisky beat I could bop to!

(Eventually I started considering the lyrics more deeply. Is it me, or are they a little rude? A little "stalker masturbating with a pillow effigy"? It's me, isn't it? Yes, I disappoint myself, too.)

So, when Mike said we ought to go see David Cassidy (especially at $25 a pop, especially in the fun little town of Laughlin 100 miles away, especially in the pleasant, intimate venue of the Tropicana Express Pavilion Theatre), I was game. After all, I knew three songs, which is one more than I knew when going to see Blue Oyster Cult for the first time, and look how that turned out. (In case you don't follow my every Facebook update, it went well, and we'll be going to see them for the zillionth, or fifth, time when they do a free show on Fremont Street in a couple of weeks.)

I did try to bone up a bit before the DC concert, taking a little fancy to this song:

Hmmm, but it didn't sound right.

"Who is that?!" Mike yelled across the apartment. 

"Did David Cassidy not do all of his own vocals?"

"Not in the beginning. Is that the Partridge Family?"

"That, or the white Fifth Dimension."

I guessed he wouldn't be singing this one at the show. Oh well.

On the day of the concert, we started with buffet at Harrah's, which was so nice last time.

This time, no. Turns out that one gnocchi dish on the previous visit coloured our memories. This time, no gnocchi, and not a single good dish to replace it. Mike was woozy as we drove back down Casino Drive to Tropicana Express, and I had to catch up with him outside the men's room where he'd dashed as soon as we left the elevator.

I was okay because it's hard to get sick off of a few bites of salad, pizza, and mac 'n cheese. (None of which was worth a third bite.) Was I crabby that my brokeback summer of lying in bed and not going out for faboo Indian buffets and pasta stations and perhaps tapas was broken by the spell of culinary defeat? Yes, but $10 each in free slot play for signing up with Trop Express' new players' card left us six dollars richer and in a better mood for the David Cassidy experience.

Not long after sitting down in our carefully reserved aisle seats (that old trick of reloading before the website releases the non-aisle seats you just rejected), we became heroes to those around us for demonstrating how to unhook the seats from one another and grab an extra inch or two of clapping space. It's a small venue with very wide aisles, and the chairs are pushed together like a group of elephant extremists might be taking hostages later. Trick #2: If your legs are average-to-long, study the seating chart and grab those outer aisle seats with nothing in front of them. (Or maybe, like in our case, the people in front just won't show up.)

Now that it's time to talk about the actual show, I don't have a lot to say. I always thought that in interviews Cassidy came across as a slightly bitter person but not a bad guy, just someone with a rueful, short laugh who takes his work very seriously because others don't, someone who is perhaps still fighting whatever demons come with having once been Keith Partridge, Tight-Trousered Superstar.

I left the show with the same opinion. Cassidy, much like Davy Jones in this same venue before him, allows photography/video, so even when I wasn't very into the music, I at least could play with the little pocket camera. This doesn't mean that I took much video. Actually, for a few songs, I spent that time going through the cruise photos still on the pocket cam and idly delete some to make space. Hey, not everyone can be BOC. It's not personal.

However, I'm not an insensitive monster. A less kind person would've recorded David going on about his days of hanging out with BFFs John Lennon and Paul McCartney and his pathos-pathetic speech about the next song, which he would try to get through without getting too emotional...

The next song started out to be an off-key rendition of "In My Life." Cassidy stopped. "This has never happened to me before! Really!" After grins all around, we got the speech again, and he began again... still off-key (according to Mike) or at least butchering The Beatles soundly (according to me, with the tin ears). Oh, David.

Cassidy, despite his ego and his sins against Liverpool, isn't a disagreeable performer to watch, not even when a woman wouldn't stop shouting praise and song suggestions, and he finally yelled back, "This dialogue is over." (Then he stalked a few paces away from the audience and began the song.) The woman was out of line, definitely, but she was also clearly a devoted fan, not a heckler. After forty-plus years in the biz, he hasn't learned how to handle this better?

Mike thought that maybe he was just being dry, and I'm not saying he wasn't, but when you're playing the Tropicana Express in Laughlin to a small room full of people who mostly think you're awesome and sexy, you don't poop in the feedbag.

My one hope was that David Cassidy would be enough of a showman that I wouldn't have to be a big fan to enjoy the show. Take Wayne Newton. He can hardly sing a note these days, but his production is great; I'd happily see him again. Davy Jones had some long and not-so-exciting numbers that I'd rather not sit through twice, no matter what my inner eight-year-old thinks, but he had enough patter, variety, and charisma that I still keep tabs on his tour dates. Would David Cassidy prove to be just as capable?

No. And I'm not even counting that one number, the one where he played the drums while his drummer sang The Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket." I hate "Brass in Pocket." And? If you're singing someone else's song during another someone else's show, you are not special, so special.

Like I said, he wasn't unpleasant to watch, and since my appreciation of his work is pretty casual, I think I got my money's worth. Watching the women go nuts was worth half the price of admission. One lady just couldn't stay away from the stage and was eventually led outside for a discussion until the final number. Security and Cassidy had no problem with people approaching now and then for photos, but people who wanted to dance in front of those with front-row seats were appropriately scolded back to their own sections. (In retrospect, this is possibly the best concert security I've ever seen.)

Mike said he would go again if it was free. I said I would also go again.... that is, I would drive Mike to the free show then wait in the car. Cassidy takes himself too seriously for my tastes, but at least he didn't do any fake encores, which you have to respect. In fact, however sick he may be of singing the songs that pay the rent - he did rev up the energy and charisma for the final number:

Previously: Carnival Spirit: The Final Day

Carnival Spirit: The Final Day

As mentioned in the last post, we're booked again for another trip on Spirit after her itinerary changes. So - even though she's no Splendor - planning another trip on Spirit is perhaps the best testimony we can give to this class of ship.

If you're just now joining us, perhaps via the Google Express, the first part of this cruise report is here.

We won't be on Spirit again until 2011, so I guess this is it for cruise reflections, at least for awhile. Unless people want to hear about how I reload the cruise fare page every hour to see if our Early Saver fare is eligible for a rebate? Every. Hour. Since we've already gotten $60 off the bill in the past four days of checking, you can't imagine what kind of planning candy this is to a person like myself.

The Early Saver fare isn't for everyone, but we seem like good candidates for the ES requirements.

(If we cancel before final payment, our deposit is applied to a new cruise instead of refunded. That's fine - we hope to cruise again many times. We also can't downgrade our room. Again, fine - part of the reason we've booked this cruise is so we can have this one particular cabin. Club 7258! Can't wait! We can't change the names on the booking. Like either of us would cruise with other people? Or other people would cruise with us, more like? We have to pay $50 per person to make changes. If we're making changes, $50 is the least of our worries. We also have to monitor price drops for ourselves and submit the form ourselves online. Once again, fine. Like I said, reloading the rate page is like taking free spins on a slot machine. Plus, we booked the cruise ourselves, so we don't have to pester some poor travel agent then hope the TA submits the form before the rate changes again. Um, can you tell that whether to book ES is a highly contentious issue?)

Anyway, I'm just sooo glad that we've booked early enough to request Your Time Dining and won't have to make that harried scoot to the maitre d' on embarkation day like the last two cruises... oops, speaking of that last cruise...

On previous days, I zipped down the hall and up two floors to grab a breakfast tray for the room. We were lucky to seldom have much traffic on our floor, and I could be down the length of the ship and back again with scrambled eggs and buttered bagel in tow in under ten minutes. People complain about breakfast lines, but if you know what you want - and it's not an omelette - and you know where to get it (eggs and such are available in at least two places), you may find that you can Frogger your way in and out while people are still milling around the silverware rolls.

(Just be careful to not go too fast, or you may spill orange juice all over the lovely atrium elevator floor when trying to press the floor button while carrying a tray. Theoretically.)

Today, though, I was going to Arts and Crafts first then would collect Mr. Sleepyhead with his strange lack of interest in yarn and needles for breakfast.

Arts and Crafts was at 9 a.m., again in the Fountain Cafe.

We were making magnetic fabric-covered bookmarks on this last day. You can kind of see Krin in the background. It's a bit of a blurry photo because I'd decided to take some macro shots while Mike slept, and I wasn't paying attention for this wider shot. (Excuses, as always.)

Walking past the elevators, I saw that one was reserved for a priority call on Deck 6. Hope everyone was okay.

My fave chairs, in the Artist's (or Artists') Lobby, have portholes in the sides:

As incongruous as the steakhouse's location is, right above the Lido buffet chaos, the clear stairs between the two are quite lovely:

Breakfast was pleasant, one of our few outside of the room. Knowing that the chocolate buffet started at noon and that we wanted to go to three trivia games, starting at 12:30, we thought we better get in some exercise so there'd be room for treats in a couple of hours. We decided to walk around the top deck, where the sunbathers usually were.

Not today, though. The promenade (on Atlantic deck, not Promenade deck) had closed a few times that week due to wind, and after staggering around on the now-empty Sun and Spa decks, we were surprised these weren't as well.

Even the Lido was fairly bare:

As was the area about the aft deck pool:

Any tots in the kiddie pool, on the very top of the ship, would've simply blown away.

Mike took shelter under the funnel, lest his fate be the same.

The deck chairs must be heavier than they look:

The golf clinic runs behind a windbreak:

Mini-golfers are not so lucky.

Zephyrous constitutional over, on to the chocolate buffet!

Now, on Carnival Elation, this was so delicious. On Carnival Splendor, it was crowded and unpleasant, especially because by the time I got to the one thing I wanted - chocolate pear cake - the woman standing behind it said that I needed to ask for it at the start of the line. What?

On Carnival Spirit? I wish we hadn't bothered. Pushy. Shovey. Not tasty. The actual fare was the worst of the three cruises, and the queueing up took ages. Part of the delay was surely because you couldn't dip the fruit in the chocolate fountain yourself, so you had to hand your plate to a staff member who would slowly.... dip... one... piece.... of... fruit.... at... a... time. Now picture twenty people in front of you getting this done, and you have an unexpected period of vertical contemplation.

One thing Spirit does well, though, is to have some of the sweets in a different area, so check ahead of time and see if you even want to wait in the fountain queue.

Being forced to wait in this long, still line meant I had nothing to do but load my plates up. Oh, sure, I like doing that anyway, but on Elation we took two items each and called it good. Now, bored, we were in "let's own ALL the food" mode.

Trays full, we walked to the quieter part of the midship Lido deck and plunked into a table where we could take in the sea.

And that's how the table still looked a half hour later, except one small bite - only one - was taken out of everything and the hot chocolate mug had been drained twice. Even as carefree as I am about food waste while on a cruise, I felt bad to have all of this leftover without even the pleasure of a delicious meal to balance the shame. Oh well. As first world problems go, this is one of the better ones.

(It's just as well that most of this went untouched. My super-fluffy hips found those metal seats quite pinchy!)

The hot chocolate was nice, though. But it's always available.

Because of the long wait, we missed Know It and Show It Grumble-pumble. At 1 p.m., we caught up with things and gathered in the Fountain Cafe for something called Majority Rules.

Next to the Fountain Cafe is the Monarch Room, where cards and games can be found:

The sign says not to remove the games from the Monarch Room, but as the MR only has four tables, more than once we saw people playing just outside at the Fountain Cafe. Hopefully this honor system works. It's a very pleasant area, and hopefully on the next cruise - when we're on the opposite end of the ship - we won't miss being a straight shot down from this atmosphere.

When the Carnival Capers changed to the Carnival Fun Times, opinions were divided. Me, I love the new layout - so clear and well-formatted with far fewer typos - but I do wish they'd kept the old name. Ironically, "Fun Times" is far less fun.

However, a problem that remains in the FT is that some activities are under-explained while others are over-repeated. So, amidst two identical reminders to check out of the your casino account, and two identical blurbs on Groove for St. Jude (a very worthy cause, but the blurbs are about six inches apart and, as I said, identical in wording), and eight lines are given to a spa special that also was presented as a page-wide insert to the Fun Times the night before, plus all of the other shopping "reminders," and there is no space left to tell anyone what Majority Rules is.

Shari, you might say, why can't people just go and find out? Because sometimes you don't know whether to do one thing or another thing, and said things are a ship length's apart, and by the time you reject one, the other is well under way. Why can't whoever designs the Fun Times just do it better?

The middle page I'm looking at has a whole plus-inch of whitespace at the bottom that's not on the first page (which looks fine without it). Why not mention it there?

Okay, I'm getting all crotchety - sorry - although that is an appropriate mood for describing Majority Rules, which was quite fun, despite the efforts of others.

You know what's bad? When you would swear that you'd saved your work, would swear it, then your stupid reinstall of Windows that causes the cursor to wander and open or close random windows if you breathe too hard suddenly moves you out of the editing window and...

All gone. With about one paragraph left to go. I came back to this post late this morning (22 July) and it is now 2 p.m., and I think I very much need some chocolate hazelnut gelato.

I don't mind rewriting. I mind that when I rewrite I'll no longer be sure of what I've already written. Argh.

Whatever happened to auto-save? Or "Are you sure you want to leave this window with unsaved changes?" You know, all of those things that normally annoy me? Cry.

Okay! Here we go again, much abbreviated, which I suppose will gather no complaints. :)

...

...

(despair)

...

Much abbreviated.

Majority Rules is a game where you are given categories, like "something no one wants to eat," and you try to write down the answer that you think the most people in the room will pick. Like Family Feud, or a sort of reverse Scattergories, not that I knew that S-word yet.

Next to me were five people who were obviously a bit drunk. One, let's call her Madame Obnoxious, led the way in loudness and oblivion. The five of them write their answers then eagerly show them to each other, discussing them out loud. The whole point of the game is to guess other people's answers. Idiots.

I wouldn't care beyond the principle of the thing, except I couldn't think with all of their noise. I moved closer to Mike with one hand clamped over my ear, but I was still distracted. Not just by the noise, but by the information. Should I stick with my answer, or take into account what these guys were writing down? I didn't want that information, but I couldn't help hearing it. Finally, I put on a big smile and said to Madame, "We're not supposed to be sharing answers yet."

"It doesn't matter!" she laughed, like her little group was the entire universe.

Neither Mike nor I won, which probably would have happened regardless of the chaos to our left. This was a fun game, but Madame and friends were hard to suffer. Unfortunately, the high winds seemed to have driven everyone indoors and we had nowhere else to move.

Next up, Scattergories! We'd never played it before, but now I'm a big fan. (It's not a bad classroom game, either.) Sam read the categories, and individually we had to write answers that we thought no one else would guess, plus, all answers had to start with the letter D. (Sam asked a passenger for her name and a number between one and ten. Then he counted through the letters of her name until we got to D.)

Madame's group quieted down, relatively, for the actual composing of answers, but once we came to comparing answers as a group, the volume of her distracting comments returned to eleven. Several times Sam had to ask someone to repeat their answer so we all could hear. If someone else had the same answer, they would call "neutral." Inappropriate answers could also be disputed, then the whole group would vote.

I was having fun, but I had a pounding headache from Madame Can't-STFU. I accidentally let a Maggie Griffin-style "Jeezus Christ!" escape at normal volume, which earned me a startled glance from Pam who was sitting across from us.

Okay, in this kind of situation, you can't change other people. You can only change your reaction.

And my reaction turned out to be to... cheat.

I know I know I know. I don't even want to admit it, but if I don't write it down (and now have to write my shame twice, argh), I may someday forget.

Here's what happened. Madame wasn't winning overall, but she'd narrowly won a dispute over one of her answers, this outcome helped along by having four friends to vote on her side, of course. I know that's all kosher, but it wasn't improving my disposition toward her, either. A little later, she called out an answer that no one neutralized nor disputed. Given how vocally self-congratulatory she was over her responses, you'd think most of her answers were original, but actually it was a rare thing.

A rare thing that vanished when I said, "Neutral."

That's right. I sacrificed my own point to take away hers. In a moment of hot brooding I decided I'd rather take a swipe at her than try to win the game.

I'm not proud of what I did. It wasn't right. But I'm not sorry, either.

When it came time to see who scored highest, Madame was out quickly. Mike was one of the last to go. And so it came down to two people: me, and an eight-year-old girl.

A tie! Internally I begged Sam to not make us do a tiebreaker. Nobody wants to be the meanie who goes up against a third grader. (Still, it would've been pretty cool if she'd won against all of the grownups.)

Sam kept it at a tie and gave us both ships on a stick (Number Eight!) and had us announce our names and hometowns into the microphone. Whew. I couldn't help but feel like some people thought I should step down and let the young girl have all of the glory, but - my obvious love of plastic golden trophies aside - why would I cheapen her victory like that? Later, when she replays the moment, she'll only recall that she and I beat the room, not that some lady gave up so she could win.

Or am I overjustifying? Now that I'm exposed as a cheatypants, I can't even trust myself.

(Of course, if I hadn't sabotaged my own score to smite a foe, I would've been the sole winner. So, maybe my poor handling of Madame worked out for the best? I'm just saying. And shutting up now.)

We took the trophy back to the cabin. I decided to check out the dance class and told Mike to meet me in the showroom in half an hour for The Game of Love, which was hilarious on Splendor.

The dance class was couples-oriented, so I just enjoyed watching. Pharaoh's Palace began to fill up all the way back for The Game of Love. They have one of these on every cruise, a sort of Newlywed's Game ripoff where the most recently married couple, the longest married couple, and a couple inbetween is chosen to come on stage and compete, and it's very popular.

About ten minutes in, Mike still wasn't there. Furthermore, well, I don't want to rag on Stephanie Meads again. Every cruise director has his or her own style and it's not going to please every single passenger. If Stephanie Googles herself and finds this, I hope she'll just write me off as one goober on the Internet and not worry too much that I found her game hosting style so off-putting that when she mentioned in passing that Carnival Splendor could be seen portside, I took that as an excuse to bolt back to the room.

Carnival Splendor?! Carnival Splendor?! Our ship!

I found Mike in the room, lounging around, waiting for me to come collect him for The Game of Love. Looks like I have my own faults as a cruise director. "Carnival Splendor! It's outside!" We scrambled over each other to get to the balcony.

That's zoomed and cropped. It was really more like this:

Goodbye, beautiful Splendor. Goodbye, spa cabins.

We continued to enjoy the balcony, forgetting tea time, forgetting the farewell party. I made silly videos and photos.

What we did not forget was the final British Pub Quiz. The Shanghai Bar was buzzing this night - all of the regulars plus some others, including some new Brits. Ooo - an extra-worthy competition tonight!

Our usual booth was taken, so we ended up in the corner booth, across from the bar. The room was filling up, so tonight we had others join us, a mother and her pre-teen son.

As Sam began to read the questions, this young man would unfailingly yell out a joke answer. "CHEWBACCA!" Then he'd chortle himself almost to death. Almost, but not close enough.

This happened for every question. The mother gave me a half-smile with a "Kids!" shrug. If Mike and I hadn't been so busy trying to ignore this distraction and work on (and, thanks to the company, hide) our answers, I would have returned her look with a "Sort out your hollering example of fucking bad parenting."

Alas, Sam was keeping us busy. Some were very easy. Some weren't Some Mike knew with Commonwealth confidence while I hemmed and hawed. One in particular I once knew but couldn't remember and, after much joint brainstorming, Mike came up with an answer that we both knew was wrong, but it was so plausible that to this day I have to keep reminding myself that it doesn't exist. Haha!

I know that my being vague here is irritating, but I don't want to share the questions Sam asked and give someone an unfair heads-up for their next cruise.

Do you ever compose an answer with confidence then look at the question incorrectly later and doubt yourself? Then, duh, you realize what you did and you were right all along? Mike and I had some heated, don't-give-it-away whispering at the last minute when I misread the Cockney rhyming question when giving everything a final look, and the Cockney was usually the easiest part of the evening. We often wrote phrases or clues down as Sam read questions, just in case we had to come back. This almost cost us a point until Mike managed to show me what I was misreading. Whew!

I was particularly proud of two of my contributions. One was something I'd only read recently, and I would argue that the answer was more alleged than fact, like Anne Boleyn's sixth finger. The other answer required considering a bit of high school French and some English etymology, and what I came up with didn't sound right. Hmm. Hmmm.

When Sam finished rereading the questions and the answers were about to begin, it certainly felt like anybody's game. I knew we had one of the toughies, but there were enough easy ones that some sloppy thinking or bad guessing on the medium ones could slash our score.

Everyone was in high spirits as we shouted the answers. We were right there yay'ing and darn'ing with the rest. However it all ended, this had been a good game, a perfect sendoff to a week of happy mental churning. I was going to miss this group.

Dang! Someone else knew the toughie! Oh well, we were making a good show, even if we didn't win.

And now we came to the phrase I had worked out. Silent room. A couple of people shakily volunteered their answers. Nope. Close, but... nope. I hesitated. "__________________?"

Yes!

A woman at another table turned around, looking incredulous and even a little cross. "How did you know that?"

"Well," I started to explain. "I wondered if the etymology of the last word might be similar to that of..." but she had already turned back around.

(At least she wasn't one of the regulars. I like to think they would've geeked out with me.)

Now it came time to tally the scores. Twenty questions, with a few extra points here and there. Who would win this, the last game?

"Who has one right?" "Two?" "Five?" "Six?" Ten?" Sam kept counting up.

As hands went down, only the regulars remained... and a new person. A young English woman. Hmmm.

Out went the Temecula couple. Out went Mr. Colorado and friends.

"Nineteen?"

It was just us.
And the English woman.

In the late afternoons, near dusk, the last light of the day casts a shadow into the curve of our apartment stairwell. The silhouette comes from the shelf at the top of the stairs, and it only lasts minutes. Look up at the right time, though, and you will see nine ships sailing the walls in a duckling row.

Mike offered the English woman's team the Boddingtons beer for second place, and we carted the trophy, the medallion, and of course the champagne back to our room. What had started as a Customs problem was now becoming a luggage problem as well!

The Empire Room was a bittersweet place to be that night as we said our farewells to Zoltan and Mile and tried not to sniffle too much during "Leaving on a Fun Ship," but the fatoush salad was particularly excellent:

Afterwards we went to the $1199 bingo with a $20 triple-card. "How're you doing there, Mike" called Sam from the Pharaoh stage. "Okay," Mike called back, but not okay enough to win this one. Nor did we win the free cruise raffle right afterward. I guess our luck had run its course, but I think we'll always buy a raffle ticket and a bingo card on the last night. I know many people on the boards point out that what they've spent on bingo and raffles over the years would buy a new cruise outright, but there's just something fun about trying to win that offsets the math.

Immediately following this was the Legends show. We'd already seen our man Carlos, of the great mannerisms and spirit of Sinatra, lose out to a more placid, but smoother singer in the auditions, but it was a pretty good show all of the same. I could sit through the modern country ^%## like the song about friends in low places, knowing someone else was probably similarly yawning over the Elton John. In other words, there was a little something for everyone, and mostly it was nifty to see each performer - so recently just another passenger's face in the karaoke crowd - kitted out with costumes and accompanying dancers. I should look up some firsthand reports of being part of the show; I bet it's an amazing experience.

All that was left to do was go to return to the last bit of moonlight on the balcony, get a night's sleep, send Mike off to his early morning immigration meeting, then hope Customs wouldn't hassle us for toting off five bottles of champagne, which I'd dutifully recorded at zero value on the Customs form. (They didn't. The man took our card, didn't look at it at all, and on we walked, luggage unopened. A far cry from the baby powder interrogation in the special resident alien line in Long Beach.)

Oh, and of course there was Mike running down to the cafe five minutes before closing to fetch me a chocolate milkshake with hazelnut. Always the hero.

But otherwise, that was it. That was our Spring Break cruise to the Acapulco, Zijuatanejo, and Manzanillo on the Carnival Spirit.

And it was just great.

Previously: Carnival Spirit: The Third Sea Day

Carnival Spirit: The Third Sea Day

When last we left this tale, I had just finished the Behind the Fun Tour and was rushing to meet Mike outside the dining room for lunch.

Mike wasn't there. Well, I was running late, so he'd probably gone to Plan B - start without me.

I craned my neck around the podium, trying to peek all around the dining room without stepping foot inside. There? No. There? No. Hmm.

Maybe Plan C was in effect, and he was still at trivia?

Nope.

Okay, this is Mike. Maybe he slept in and never made it to trivia. Time to check the room.

Grrrr - this wasn't in any of the contingency plans. The combination of being hungry after four hours of tromping around the ship with only a cookie in the crew bar for sustenance, plus my general belief that Mike sleeps too much (compared to my too little), plus the fact that We Had a Plan, Mister, was starting to brew stormclouds.

But then I saw Mike, coming towards me. "Did you walk past a bit ago?" Turns out Mike thought he saw me walk by, so he hurried away from the end of trivia to catch me. Or "me." Then he lost me, so he checked the room. Now he was on his way to the dining room. "Mike, we had a plan!" "But I was sure I saw you!" "But we had a plan! It was a foolproof plan!" "But I thought I saw you!" "But we had a plan!" And so it continued all the way to the dining room, where - having both ultimately achieved our objectives of finding one another - we settled down to a meal of I-forget-what, because I didn't have my camera with me, what with just having come from the tour.

Mike had spent the morning in trivia, losing narrowly on the music questions and more widely on the cartoon questions, but still having fun as always.

"They sent something to the room," he mentioned. "What?" "I don't know. It's on a plate."

Ah, I thought. The chocolate-covered strawberries. I knew from reading posts on Cruise Critic that other people had received these after their BTF tours.

Later, though, when we were back in the room, I discovered that it was more than that:

Delicious! I really enjoyed the chewy cookies in particular.

On the Capers (sigh, Fun Times), I'd highlighted Arts & Crafts for 2:30. But, back in the room, I cast an eye on some of the junk mail. It's the same thing every day: spa specials, golf clinics, jewelry sales, and - always - an ad for some art gallery event.

Today they were advertising a "Lightning Fast Art Auction" at 2:30, with free registration, free champagne, and a free piece of art for all attendees. You know, why not try something new?

We went downstairs to the Versailles Lounge a bit before, just to look around. Oh, no, sorry guys. We're still setting up. No looking until 2:30. Okay.

We went outside and stood in a short line to register - basically turn in the flyer and get a number to hold up when bidding. Ha, as if that was going to happen. But hey, we're trying new things here, so okay. We then re-queued to enter the lounge at 2:30.

The doors opened and in we filed. Perhaps you remember this cruddy pic I took of the Versailles Lounge on the first night, when Mike was hunting the karaoke book?

Now those rows of cushy seats were covered in propped up paintings. To tour the gallery, one moved up and down the rows. (Not unlike Isaac in Children of the Corn.)

What we quickly realized is that these were prints. Not works of art that the artist's hand actually touched. Disappointing.

Maybe it was the post-BTF mimosas, since I don't usually drink, but I started narrowing my eyes in search of the free champagne. Dangit, didn't these people want to get me liquored up and ready to bid $600 on a really well-made poster?

After we dutifully looked at everything and declared most of it "not to our taste," which was just us being in character at this refined occasion and not wanting to say "crap," Mike felt a bit off and went for a lie-down up in the room. Now that we'd wasted almost 45 minutes with the the registering and the waiting and the looking around then sitting in the chairs up front and waiting some more for the auction to start, I was determined to see this through. Gimme my champagne and show me an auction! Yeehaw!

The champagne made a brief appearance at the back of the room, and I hurdled chairs and frames like the alky I know I could be if I really tried. (This is just hyperbole. I remember, in the early nineties, a summer when I was very depressed and thought I'd see if I could spin the spiral downward even faster with some willful attempts at boozehounding. Alas, the control freak within prevailed. Also? Loading the fridge with Zima in an attempt at alcoholism is a bit like planning a trip to the mountains... via a Yugo.)

Of course the champagne was nasty. (Rather like Zima, actually.) It was probably the same stuff we were winning at British Pub Quiz; later that night some of our BPQ companions said the crew wouldn't even accept those bottles as tips. But, I sipped in determination, living the fancy dream of attending an art auction, wondering if someone would scratch their nose and be $12,000 the poorer for it.

The "Lightning Fast Art Auction," scheduled for 2:30, began sometime after 3 p.m. It started out someinterestingly, with the Park West guys - a third party that handles the auctions onboard - showing little movies of Peter Max and discussing some of his work. "Oh, how nice," I thought. "We'll learn a little bit about each of these paintings." The auctioneer kept reminding us to let them know which paintings we were interested in, and those would be the paintings (why do I keep calling them paintings? PRINTS.) he'd show us.

HA.

Right.

Even I knew who Peter Max is, so the first five times his work was trotted out, then re-trotted out, for bidding, I kind of understood. Plus, they had actual paintings from him, and prints that were processed beyond just the photocopying stage.

(I took this the next day. Peter Max's "Umbrella Man" hangs in the casino. Or, you know, one of his jillion versions of it.)

I also understood why the Thomas Kinkades got their own section of sofa cushions. I'm embarrassed to admit it now, but the very first time I saw a TK, I thought, oh, so pretty! Flowers! Light! Now to look at a Kinkade is like pouring damp sugar in my eyes: I want to claw the sweetness out. I don't know if it's just oversaturation in the marketplace or some developing snootiness on my part, but I can't enjoy them at all now.

The auctioneer was running a "Thomas Kinkade Special," which is a blur now, but it basically amounted to the paintings not selling until he slashed the prices and made some "buy one get three" or such combo offers, then they started to sell. At this point we'd had very few bids on anything, but many, many, many paintings had been shown.

"We're only going to let you bid on the ones you expressed interest in, so let us know!" Shyeah right. As the twenty of us sat silently in the room for painting after painting in which no one had ever expressed interest, I found myself listening to the presenter's attempts at persuasive rhetoric, wishing my seniors could be there to analyze it. (Ooo, have I finally found the angle that justifies a field trip on a cruise? Meh... as if I'd spoil cruising by bringing work along.)

One technique I liked was when he had us all hold up our numbers and "practice" bidding. Then he'd offer a small print for, say, a dollar. Surely we could go a dollar. Five dollars? Six? We had a few of these, as if he was trying to get our arms into the habit, and sure enough - I ended up bidding $10 on one I sort of liked. That champagne! The lure of new experiences! Oops, outbid. "Miss, do you want to get back in on this?" he eagerly asked. I couldn't help grinning as I shook my head "no." As if.

By the time the first hour of the "lightning fast" auction had passed, a few people had plonked down serious money. (Serious by my tender pocketbook.) Some of the tiny Max prints of the Statue of Liberty went for around $4000 each (the opening bid), and one couple bid $8000 (the opening bid) on a painting they'd picked out beforehand. (Hint: except for when we did our group exercises, no one ever outbid anyone.)

I don't think the $8000 couple should count, though, because they were either a weird plant or too insane to reflect the general audience. I don't care that they'd pay $8000 for the art; that's their purse and their preference. No, the loony-evidence comes from when the woman said to the auctioneer, "The frame alone is worth that!"

Bingo had passed. Tea Time had passed. Trivia Rumble had passed. We were deep into the four o'clock hour and my glass of yellow fizz was long empty. When would it end? No one is bidding on your "very collectible steal at $15,000," mate. Every now and then a number would be drawn for free art. ("See Thomas after the show.") But what about the free art just for attending? I had to hang in there. Surely it would end soon.

At nearly five-something (you read that right) the Lightning Fast Art Auction drew to a close, and we were directed to see Thomas for our notebook paper-sized envelopes with a free print inside. AT LAST. Never. Again.

Now, if you ever get bored of arguing over dining room attire or chair hogging on the cruise boards, discussing Park West is guaranteed to be a hot topic. As in, "flame war" hot.

I didn't bring it up, but I did look up old threads when I came home and, yes, you could definitely say there are two camps when it comes to Park West.

Camp A: Rip-off. Slimy. The champagne isn't even worth it.

Camp B: Shut up! I've gotten great deals on art!

I'm sure that both camps are right. Well, I'm sure that Camp A is totally right, and Camp B is sometimes right. If people are buying art that makes them happy, art that they couldn't get at home or online for a better price, then hooray for them.

I hate when people tell me that something I've purchased is a rip-off: the Kindle, my World of Warcraft subscription, cage-free eggs, purty bath gels, whatever. A "rip-off" is when you're misled or taken advantage of, like paying a guy $100 for something that costs $50 around the corner, but you don't know it. Something isn't a rip-off just because you, personally, think the price is too high. Art is subjective, and although I may think to myself, "You paid what for what?", I know that I'm not the Queen of the Consumerverse who gets to decide what everything "should" cost. I love capitalism!

That said... Park West is so slimy.

First, we have the auction that was the opposite of fast. Second, we have the lies - sure, they're only going to show the paintings that the audience wanted to see. LIE. Third, let's talk about this "free" artwork from the raffle, shall we?

The next day, outside the dining room at lunch, an older woman asked me if I'd gotten my free artwork from the raffle. No, I explained, I wasn't one of the five or so people who had won. Oh, well, she and her husband had a story for me. As directed, they saw Thomas after the show to get their special free art from the raffle. Turns out, this art isn't actually on board. (By the way, neither are many of the prints - unless it's a specified "walk off the ship with it" deal, the art will be sent later to your home.)

So, Thomas told them that the art would be shipped to them... as soon as they paid a $35 shipping fee.

At no time during the raffle was a shipping fee mentioned. It's probably in the fine print, and of course there's no obligation to pay (this couple walked away), but it's slimy to omit this.

But okay, even if you have no issue with that, beware of the so-called "fast" art auction when on your cruise. I can't imagine what the regular ones are like!

I rode the elevator to our deck with two gentlemen. One was on the wiser end of middle-aged, the other was... would it be rude or just observant, or maybe even a compliment?, to say, "not the typical cruise demographic." It's not that he was black, although cruising out of southern California has so far been a very white and somewhat Hispanic experience. (To me, and the census, Hispanics are part of the multicultural blob we call "white," but I'm going for a rare moment of clarity over correctness here.) It was that he looked... "ghetto."

The puffy tattoo on his upper arm could have been carved with razor blades. The sagging pants. The wifebeater. Hey, I know my own fashion choices mark me as sad case from a hundred paces away. It's not fair, but I'd rather be judged harshly for being "clean and comfortable" than spend money and suffer discomfort to convince people to give me a chance even if I am wearing shapeless jeans with an elastic waist and a cotton print top made in China. (To say nothing of the worn-down Birkenstocks.) But you don't expect to see the gangsta look at an art auction, that's all.

Feeling bad for mentally pigeonholing the guy - hey, anyone on a cruise has to be at least a little bit Our People, right? - I piped up with, "Well, that was interesting." The older man nodded pleasantly, and Mr. Ghetto gave me a shy smile and agreed. To be honest, I was kind of hoping for someone to erupt with "WTF, TWO AND A HALF HOURS IS NOT 'LIGHTNING FAST'!", but apparently I was in better bred company than whoever writes dialogue for my brain.

"I'm glad I went, though," I continued, not lying. Ghetto started nodding. "I'd never been to an art auction before." Ghetto's face opened up, maybe with relief, and he said yes, he hadn't either. "Did you buy anything?" we asked each other at the same time. "No." "No." I sensed that Ghetto was now holding back the same comments I was. "I did," said the other man. "Oh," I cooed, "Which one?" "One of the Statues of Liberty." "Ah, the Peter Max," I replied brightly. "Very good!" No harm being happy for others.

Then the elevator reached deck seven and we all said goodbye. Ghetto stayed on my mind as I walked to the room, though. Shy, warm smile, curious but restrained, not what you might expect from his clothes. (Just like when I get a bit more involved in a conversation than usual and someone gives me that look. The "Oh, I thought you were just this washed-out obese thing whose days are probably filled with empty pork rind bags and Wheel of Fortune reruns, but hell, you're smart?" Which I suppose is the opposite of the look I get from people who've only met me on the phone or online, the "Crap, you're not what I expected at all" look.)

I found myself hoping that he had a great time on the cruise. Literally - yes, I mean literally - hundreds of bad experiences with people who emulate ghetto fashion have put me, I think quite rightfully, in a wary position. But this didn't stop me and this guy from becoming elevator pals for a short time, and that was reassuring to me. I may have experiences that will lead to private concerns when I see someone dressed that way, but those experiences haven't closed my mind or heart yet. I'm still waiting to see what comes out of the mouth. Sometimes, after a long day of babysitting gangbangers, I worry that I'm getting shoved into an "Us versus Them" mindset, so that little ride in the lift made me feel better. There's still hope for all of us.

Besides, the only "Us versus Them" worth discussing is people who stand to wipe versus people who sit. Did I ever bring this up here before? I think so, but here's a link to one of the best MetaFilter posts of all time. Until I read it, I thought everyone did this the same way. Amazing! And while I try to respect the other point of view.... I'm sitting with the sitters, thank you very much.

Back in the room (that was a long detour down the corridor, huh?), I checked out my free art. "Memories of Florence II," by Peter Nixon. You can see it here. That link is asking $50 (mustn't chortle after the diatribe about not putting a value on art), but this person is giving it away for free. Actually, that's Memories of Florence I, but I can't tell the difference without mine in front of me. Tell you what, if you want the matched set, forget those $50 folk. I'll sell you mine for half that. Plus $35 shipping, of course.

The next day I did step into the crevice by the casino that serves as the Art Gallery to look around some more. Or, more honestly, to take a photo of some print so I could feel slightly reimbursed for those 150 minutes spent in the name of trying something new. (I could do the same thing in Las Vegas and at least get free show tickets out of it.) So, here is my acquisition, a Kinkade after all:

Park West should be more careful about pissing people off. The Art Gallery is usually unmanned, and next time I'm bringing a tripod. Oo, burn!

I can't remember now if I hustled Mike down for Know and Show It at five and we didn't win, or if it was too late to go, or if we just hung out on the balcony. I'm pretty sure it was just balcony time. Next time, better notes, pinky swear. (Next time has been booked, actually. Carnival Spirit again. I love Splendor - love love love adore kissyface smoochiewoochie 4ever Splendor - but the twin lures of a new itinerary and a cheaper price made me submit to Spirit's call. Early Saver rate, even. Wow, our first cruise planned over 30 days in advance! No anxiety over getting Your Time dining! Also? Alsoalsoalso? Cabin 7258. If you don't know what that means, look at the deck plan. Now look at the Verandah deck. Now look at the Old Spice guy. Now look back at the deck plan. Cabin 7258. Also known as "triple the balcony for the same price." Now look at this photo. Now look at me. Now put on your sunglasses before my grin blinds you. 7258!)

We did make it to British Pub Quiz, though, which - due to an employee recognition event (for Carnival) in the Shanghai Bar that night - was taking place down in the Fountain Cafe this time. It felt odd, being with the BPQ gang somewhere new, like we were now in a traveling production. Competitors, sure, but also comrades. I won't pretend to have traded more than chitchat with most of them, except maybe Pam since she ran Arts & Crafts, but I'd come to recognize them and of course respect them for their part in making this trivia so interesting.

So, um, yeah, we did win again that night.

I hope my beaming delight was humble, I really do, but I just looooove those ships on a stick. And the medallions. And the champagne.

Now we had four bottles of champagne, and as the end of the cruise was reluctantly in sight, we realized that we had to get these things off the ship. We could manage, packing-wise, but what about customs? There's such a fuss about how much alcohol you can bring back, but we didn't buy any of it. Must it still be declared? Mike fretted to Sam, the trivia host, asking for advice on handling all of our liquid winnings. Sam gave him a funny look.

"Just drink it!"

Not a feasible plan for Mr. Three-Drinks-In-His-Life and Ms. Can't-Finish-A-Whole-Bottle-of-Zima-Let-Alone-Champagne, but we'd think of something. Then Mike had a terrible thought. "Oh no! What if we win another one tomorrow?!"

Back up to the room to unload our prizes:

Look at that young man, drunk with power... the power of knowledge!

As you can see by Mike's shirt, we decided against the second elegant night. It wasn't the dressing up but the menu that was uninspiring, plus playing hooky for one night from a drawn-out dinner had its own appeal.

Above you can see the winning champagne, John Heald's champagne, our monkeyhead (next time: whale tail), the soap swan on top of the Zihuatanejo dominoes before the poor thing crumbled, the medallions, the Behind the Fun goodies, our fun hairbrush with the squishy gel handle (is it weird that we share?), and a parade of seven ships on a stick... and yes, I did keep track of which came from where. Someday these babies are going to be on Antiques Roadshow, and the little sticky notes underneath will firmly establish their provenance.

I can't remember how we spent that evening, honestly, except for two things.

Late that night, I got room service:

You also see the two sodas Mike got (in two trips) on his soda card, as a special treat. He did have a sip of each, so it's not like he abused the system by sharing with me, right? I was just drinking leftovers? Okay, it's no use, we're bad people. But, karma got us because, by the time room service arrived an hour later, the drinks were just flavoured water. Touche, universe. Lesson learned.

The other thing we did, actually right before the trivia, was go to the early show.

I, with twenty years of "on-again off-again but mostly on-again" dance classes lurking in my early past, like to watch dancing. I'm too inept myself to be critical, but I spent enough time mucking around with it all to be very interested and appreciative. I always support the dance team fundraisers at school. You'd think that I'd be highlighting the shows with my little pink marker every day.

Nope. We tried to watch one of the "Vegas-style" shows on Elation. It was like a loud pep rally with feathers. We left. I think we may have watched a few minutes of one now and again from the back on Splendor? Not sure.

But despite this negativity, we are still "Why Not?" people, so we decided to kill some time before British Pub Quiz and watch some of the 7 p.m. show.

The title of the production was "The Big Easy," and on each little table were ropes of Mardi Gras beads. Do you know how many of those beads you can wrap around your wrist? Well, I don't, but only because I started showing some restraint after grabbing up the sixth or seventh one. (Maybe because it was Elegant Night, the showroom was only half-full.) Anyway: beads!

When the show started, it was fine. Then it was good. Then it was impressive. Nothing stands out in my memory, just the professional quality of the sets, the singing, the costumes, the choreography... wow! People would definitely pay to see this in Vegas!

Still, aware of Mike who - despite knowing a startling number of show tunes for such a butch guy ("Mum had the record," he always says), not to mention frequently singing them around the house with revised hamster-friendly lyrics - is not always show-oriented, I started to ask him if he wanted to go. Before I could, he leaned over and said, "This is good!"

Neither one of us had a watch or phone, though, so we had to guess when to leave for the pub quiz. "I kind of don't want to go," said Mike. That, Carnival, is an A+ testimony. Feel free to slap it on your website, perhaps along with the photo of Mike above. Passenger considers skipping the trivia for watching people prance about.

And that's all I remember, from the last night before the last day. Even with a future cruise booked, I'm sad to almost be done talking about this one. Did we win the final pub quiz? Tune in next time...

Previously: Flash in the Cake Pan

Flash in the Cake Pan

For this post, I've written and deleted several tedious accounts of how crappy I've felt this summer, how crappy Mike has felt, how crappy my computer has felt... it's like I'm playing the Be The Boringest game and - whoa! - they've just unlocked a new master level! I'm bringing hero class boringitudenesscence to my jibberjabber!

Delete. Delete. Delete.

Early yesterday evening I was sprawled in bed (backstory deleted), waiting for sleep, and I felt a bit hungry but too tired to eat, yet not too tired to fantasize. I called out to Mike in the next room.

"Mike?"

"Yes?"

"Are you making a cake?"

"No."

"This cake you're making, is it a layer cake?"

"I'm not making a cake."

"Is there fresh fruit on the cake?"

(Politely assuming I'm deaf.) "I'm not making a cake!"

[beat]

"This cake, does it have a sort of fluffy cream between the layers?"

"No."

"Dang," I whispered to my pillow, and fell asleep.

In the morning, I woke up to this:

Apologies for the flash, but I was groggy and taking groggier photos:

I am married to the best guy on the planet. The very best guy on the planet.

I had to share this, but - at the risk of getting back into deletion territory - I had to reformat my computer this week, and I don't know yet if it's worth reinstalling everything or if I should just suck it up and get a new machine. But, Mike's lemon poppyseed concoction with the strawberries, with the delicate whipped-by-hand cream, and with a surprise layer of cherries in the middle had to be celebrated, so this afternoon I reinstalled the camera drivers and software.

As I finished, a Windows dialogue box popped up. The message itself wasn't important, but what did I spy? One of Mike's pet grammatical peeves.

My offering below isn't on par with that delicious cake, but here you go, honey. Enjoy:

P.S. I forgot the part where, when I was reinstalling, I discovered that Canon won't let you have the new software unless you have the original CD in the drive - bizarre. Anyway, Mike got up from his sleep to pee while I was failing to find the CD in the usual places. "Mike, before you go back to bed, could you take all of these boxes down from the top of closet?" "Sure." BEST HUSBAND ON THE PLANET.

P.P.S. I hesitate to mention this because it's very likely that when he gets up he won't remember the boxes at all, and then I won't have to feel weird about asking him to do manual labor in his near-sleep. On the other hand, someone has to put all of the boxes back, so... BHOTP.

Previously: Road to the Roadshow: Big Bear Lake

Road to the Roadshow: Big Bear Lake

Having established that I'm not ready for or perhaps worthy of Los Angeles, our sights were set on Big Bear Lake.

We'd talked about going before, but every time I said, if I'm driving to Big Bear Lake, then I'm driving to Disneyland. Mike, who continues to leave fliers from Disneyland on the kitchen counter on on my endtable, was hardly going to argue.  

(I miss Disneyland, but until they sort out the "let's offer a cheap payment plan for the locals, guaranteeing that crowds are worse than ever" decision implemented last summer, it's off the table. Oh, and remember how I said I wanted to move to Florida to be by Disney World and cruise ships? Yeah, one trip to Texas and a jillion madly itching mosquito bites by the end of the first evening reminded me of why that will never happen.)

So the L.A. getaway was scrapped, but Big Bear Lake would be perfect! The more I read about it, the more excited I got. Nature? Cool temperatures? Halfway between Las Vegas and San Diego? SOLD.

Being unfamiliar with the area, I chose a hotel with good reviews and a professional-looking website: Northwoods Resort. They had a free breakfast special, plus the rate dropped by twenty bucks during the few days I spent weighing my options. A good sign. (You'll notice that I use "I" a lot here. Mike prefers to make token consultations in the late stages. Since he thinks everything sounds good, this is for the best. One of us must maintain persnickitiness.)  

Now that I've been to Big Bear Lake, I'm still pleased with our choice. It was about as close as you can be to the Village, and the lake was a short walk away. However, we saw several other places that looked just as good, depending on what you wanted to do. If we were to go back and spend a week (A fortnight, a month, a lifetime? It is gorgeous.), we'd probably look for a cabin right by a marina, maybe one with a big jacuzzi. (BBL attracts a lot of romantic skiers during the winter season.) But, I'd also be just as happy to stay at Northwoods again.

We started the journey as we always begin, sighing over all that's left of Nevada Landing in Jean.

It doesn't pluck my "senseless violence" vibe the way the Stardust does, but I hope in the future people will wait to tear things down until the day before new construction begins. Jean, about 20-30 minutes south of the Strip, is just a weird little spot in the road. Is someone ever really going to do something with the land where the Nevada Landing casino used to be?

Jean. Check. Primm. Check. California border. Check! (I always lift my feet when we cross, like kids used to do when going over railroad tracks.) Baker. Check. (Hey, the world's largest thermometer isn't working?)  

Next landmark: The Ruins of Rock-a-Hoola.

I was sure I had several photos of Rock-a-Hoola from five years ago, but guess what doesn't seem to be on the storage drive? The Disneyland trips from the summer of 2005. They're either on a CD somewhere, back when archiving stuff sucked like that, or... well, they may have been part of an unfortunate incident that also claimed my Halloween photos from the same year. We don't talk about it. But (cheerful look)! Here's a photo Mike took three years ago as we sped past the stand-still traffic in the opposite lane:  

I find it a little unnerving that the slide shown above, after sitting derelict for some years in the scalding Mojave desert between Las Vegas and Barstow, is now back in use in a Canadian waterpark. I know that this is just psychological, that the slide didn't become a worthless relict in just a few years, and I'm glad it has a new home, but still.

Normally the next landmark is just Barstow itself, as we take a moment to gaze at the Lenwood exit where we always get gas on the way back. Not this time, though! This time we exited onto CA-247 and drove into the Lucerne Valley.  

I can't believe we didn't take any photos. There would be nothing for a few miles, then a cafe with wifi access. Nothing. Nothing. Farms. Nothing. Nothing. Elementary school. Then Lucerne Valley proper, with its cute little bookshops and restaurants. (We thought about stopping, but we wanted to make the most of our night in Big Bear.)

In the distance we saw snowy mountains to the east and the a wall of mountains ahead of us. Wow, I hadn't really thought about how, to get into the mountains, we'd have to drive up the mountain. I tried not to think about it any further. My little hatchback complains on the gentle climb between Primm and Baker... maybe this was a bad idea.  

Now we were on CA-18, wending around, wondering where that mountain road would begin.

A few more curves later, and up-up-up we were going. Or "putt-putt-putt" we were going. Every time we were on the inside track, I'd express thanks to the universe for pull-out lanes (so the inevitable stack of cars behind us could pass) and for not making me drive next to the guardrail. (I hate driving by guardrails even on flat, empty terrain. And those concrete dividers? Shudder! I'm a gal who needs a shoulder for my car to cry on.)  

There are no photos of this part of the journey. Even though we were actually going the speed limit for most of the trip up, I was acutely aware of people hovering on our hammer (as Mike calls it), which always makes me feel like I'm farting at a tea party. I just want to apologize to everyone and bear the humiliation with an IV of chocolate. Then I start getting sarcastic and yelling at no one that - HELLO?! - I'm going the speed limit - HELLO?! - and everyone should back the $$#@^ off... usually. This time I was much more well behaved, having to save my breath for the "ohgodohgodohgodihatethis" and the leaning my body deep into the steering column because, you know, leaning forward helps the car move forward. Check out any book on Superstitious Physics. It's true.  

Thanks to my synchronized body movements and strategic loud exhales, it wasn't long before we found ourselves cruising around the "transient lake" of Lake Baldwin, actually the original Big Bear Lake until the dam was built. The drive around the marshy semi-lake was lovely - piney trees looked down at us, so much taller than the ones at the bottom of the mountain. My mood could finally match Mike's. (Who was as peaceful as usual for the haul up, pointing out the scenery and marveling at the turns in the road. Thank goodness one of us is sane, although I'll leave it to the reader to decide which.)  

Mike said he was sorry for ever mocking the "San Bernardino National Forest" signs when making our traditional drive along I-15. From the highway, it just looks like scrubby hills. But once hidden inside the forest, behold the towering Shangri-la.  

The drive from Baldwin Lake to Big Bear eventually took us past Starbucks, grocery stores, a KMart, and a middle school. Goodness, civilization? Up here? Why doesn't everyone live here, then?  

I mean, not long before, and just on the other side of the mountain, it's all tumbleweeds and brown earth and baking sun. But twenty twisty minutes away from that? Alpine getaway!

Northwoods Resort was easy to find. Follow the road along the lake; follow the curve; turn left into the Village. Voila. On the left.

As soon we parked and unloaded our luggage, some men came and asked us to move to the behind the hotel because a car show was setting up in the front part of the lot. We checked out before the car show started the next day, and at no time was there any indication that guests were supposed to park in the back. In fact, we saw people park there to check in every time we drove in or out, and as for the car show set-up, there was one trailer and one classic truck - that's all we ever saw. The woman behind the desk assured us that this car show was a huge deal, so all of this was just weird. No big deal to move the car, but weird.  

The woman at the front desk was a little weird herself. Normally I like that in a person (can't imagine why), and she was certainly friendly, but when I looked over one of the hotel fliers on display and asked her about something on it, she took the flier away from me and said, "Where did you get that?" I pointed to the display stand on the counter, right between us, holding fliers describing the hotel's amenities. She seemed nervous and the one I had taken to the side, away from me, and said it was for a convention group that was coming. Oh. Okay. Weird. Again, no big deal... but weird.

Our room was on the ground floor (rats), just down the hall. Everything inside the property strove for a rustic, ski-happy, hunting-amenable theme, with stonework and antlers and well-varnished log accents meant to reassure the traveler that the hotel is outdoorsy in spirit but modern and clean in deed.  

So, we opened the door to the room, and everything looked nice enough. The sink was separate from the toilet, which made me twitch with the hygienic implications, but Mike is Australian and used to it. (Later I scrubbed the handle to the sliding door. You cannot convince me that housekeeping does this, or that all previous guests are couth enough to wipe with one hand but slide with the other. I'm glad I didn't start thinking these thoughts until a few years ago. I like to think that I'm old enough to keep the germ squirms in check and not to someday end up on a reality show and made to lick shoes for therapy.)

The king-sized bed looked comfy:  

Mike was happy to have a fridge, although we both tilted heads over the TV in the cabinet, at a right angle to the bed. (No surprise that it swiveled to a tolerable angle for in-bed watching, but it was still odd, like someone was just set on making rectangles with the furniture and didn't try watching television from the bed, or maybe it's the hotel's way of discouraging television when there's a world of beauty outside. Bah, save it for the rooms with views.)  

Above you can see the most uncomfortable piece of furniture I've ever encountered in a hotel room. It faced the television like it was laughing at us,daring us to even try to relax in a chair the Puritans would've thought seemly. (Save for that heathen upholstery.) Not bad for holding luggage, though. That red bag is what was holding our four chosen antiques (or "antiques" - but that's a story for later) for Antiques Roadshow.  

And now it is time to reveal... THE VIEW!

Well, somebody has to have the crappy view. I guess. And if I were the hotel manager, I'd save the best views for people who weren't grabbing the (relatively) cheap specials, like us. Still, it was disappointing.  

(But if you look closely, really closely, you can see a squirrel! That was nice.)

Never mind the view - time to join it! Hmmm, should we look for that Indian restaurant? (We broke out the netbook and tried the wi-fi. Not bad.)  

Out on the patio by the pool, I took a photo of Mike in front of all the nice rooms with patios and balconies that we did not get.

(Don't worry. Big Bear was so amazing; it didn't take long to get over a puny view.)

We set out back the way we came, turned into the Village, drove up the road and discovered that we could have just walked around the corner the other way and been there. Oops!

Things were quiet in the Village. We parallel parked right out front of "Himalayan Restaurant" and looked forward to exploring all of the little shops up and down the street after lunch/dinner.  

(See the lake in the distance? It's even closer than it looks.)

No link to the restaurant's website; sometime in the past month the site reverted to a domain parking page, but here's the Yelp scoop. (Mike's review is the most recent, as of this writing.) I wanted to look again at their menu, as I'm not sure exactly what I ordered, but I'll do my best.

We started with some papadums. Papayums, more like. (*knee slap*)

Okay, I feel like when Derek Zoolander is explaining the "Earth to (Whomever)" phrase to Matilda, but about that "*knee slap*" gesture above.... Recently a certain mega-powerblogger had another mega-powerblogger do some guest writing on his/her blog. MPB #2 went out on a rant about people on Twitter who put an action between asterisks, like I did above. He or she went on about how people aren't really doing said action, so just stop, it's the downfall of humanity, everyone is a poseur, blah blah.  

Me, I went to WTF'ville. (In my head, of course, because MPBs - however enjoyable to read - can be vengeful. True, now I'm mentioning it here, but that doesn't count because it's really just me and you and the hamsters and eventually Mike, who always takes about a month to realize I've blogged because the man refuses to get with the RSS program, and the fact that I don't mention new posts to him makes me the saint of anti-marketing, but HI HONEY! and moving on...) That whole "action between asterisks" convention is ancient. I can vouch for as far back as the BBS days, and I'm sure it's older than that. How can MPB #2 fuss over this "Twitter trend"? And even if it were a Twitter trend... WTF, MPB #2? Parenthetically indicating action without literally doing the action (Laugh.) (Sob.) is an old writing device and really just the same thing.  

Also, for the record, I did actually slap my knee. You don't know, MPB #2. Just because your Twitter feed is dialogue-driven doesn't mean the rest of us aren't mixing in a little action. Oh, and if I do this? ♫♫♫ ♫♫? I may actually be singing. Stop assuming. *post-boggling smile of peace*

Okay, apologies for interrupting our lovely meal... We also ordered paneer (cheese) pakuda, which may or may not be like paneer pakora. No two Indian restaurants seem to spell things alike, but this one was very different from pakora I've had so far.  

It's really just fried cheese, but the chutney (Tamarind? I forget.) was nice and the cheese tasted light, considering the frying. Mike could only try a little, having been recently tummy troubled, but I scarfed away.  

Of course we had naan:

Mike had the chicken tikka masala - reluctantly ordered to be cooked mild - and he found it flavourful and perfect. I found myself wishing for a kofta dish or a paneer dish that didn't involve spinach; I ended up settling for some form of aloo mattar (potato and peas):  

Mine was also delicious, although it became sort of samey as time went on. (For the uninitiated, we spooned the food over rice, which was fragrant and not clumpy, exactly how I like it.)  

Usually we get water with Indian, but this afternoon we decided to try their ginger lemonades (described as being made with fresh limes, which I think may have been a translation error, of which there were several on the menu), and these drinks had a delicate taste, a very nice change. The ginger was subtle, and there were no refills, but it was a good complement to the meal.  

Full and pleased, we strolled down the street. Every shop was just adorable!

Quilt shops, scrapbook shops, yoga shops, culinary shops... but around this, a bowling alley like a big red barn, bars, the marina... something for all types and stereotypes.

Then there was this:

Oh, hey now. Hey, hey now...

We were so full from the Indian that we had to walk away, but not without checking what time they closed.

Yeah, that only lasted a few steps. Who were we kidding? Back we went. Fatties have an image to maintain, after all.  

We kept it simple: milk chocolate honeycomb for Mike and English toffee for me. Later, when there was room i my belly to actually try it, I wished we'd asked for fistful of everything. Mmmmm. (I'm only half-kidding. The price was low, the taste was spectacular, and we don't seem to really have a proper confectioner in Las Vegas. Or at least I can't find one. Chocolatiers, yes, and some fudge, but it's pretty limited. Maybe somebody will see this is and clue me in... although, fair warning, that would officially make you an enabler. And a beautiful person.)  

Mike, doing his Mugatu impression:

Around we walked. Big Bear Lake has two cinemas. Researching before the trip, I'd tried to figure out which one was closer to the hotel. Heh. You can run from one theatre to the other in under 45 seconds. Maybe 30 seconds. Each has two screens.  

We were tempted to go, but the last show was at 7-something, and then what if, in this small city, it was packed? And we had to sit next to other people? Gah! What is this, 1977? Also, I have short legs that get tired if I can't prop them up on a railing. (Or, I admit it, the armrest between the seats in front of my chair. The railing is better, though, and we always arrive early so I'm likely to get it.) Yes, it's very complicated living with me. I hope this makes people think that I'm terribly worthwhile and interesting in ways they have yet to get to see, but I'm probably not fooling anyone.

I'm sure it's a very nice theatre, but we decided to make the most of the non-punishing daylight and the non-desert nature.

I guess that's why we didn't go play Skeeball, either. Sigh. I do love the Skeeball.

Neither one of us was ready to stop exploring, so we decided to drive along the lake and find the Time Bandits ship. I had a general idea of its location from Google maps, but surely we'd just spot it as we drove along the water, right?

We headed west along the main road. We passed a tea room, several antique stores, a few grocers, some restaurants, and I don't think we'd eased through a half-dozen curves in the winding forest-lined road before we were both hollering, "Let's live here FOREVER!!!"

Gorgeous. Remote. Gorgeous. Remote. Gorgeous.

In addition to all of the above, we passed plenty of cabins for rental. We babbled about loading the hamsters in the car and renting a place for a month next summer, just relaxing and being where we're supposed to be, with cool air and pine trees and a place that makes chocolate honeycomb that tastes like happiness.  

What we were not really seeing was the lake, which was usually beyond the trees and the cabins. Thus, we weren't seeing the Time Bandits ship. When we got to the road that turns to go to the north side of the lake (which has a solar observatory, but it's not for the public), we admitted defeat and turned back, trying a few detours without luck. We could look up specific directions back in the room and stop by tomorrow on the way out. Maybe we'd catch that movie after all. It was a pleasant drive and then some, at least.

But we only lasted a few minutes back in the room before we decided to go back out and try again. Oh, outdoors! I've missed you sooooo much!

The ship wasn't far from the hotel, just a right turn down a road and up to Holloway's Marina. (We passed cabin after cabin for rent, and pictured ourselves in each one.) The marina is half boatsy and half RV park, and no one was around at the edge of dusk except one employee going about his business.  

To the south, looking back to shore, blue skies:

The northwest view was far more grey in the setting sun:

Yes, that's the ship. I could tell as we walked toward it that "ALL THAT" wouldn't be lettered across the prow. Even so, it's the ship.

There's Mike, giving us a sense of perspective. (Believe it or not, I actually lightened this photo. We were - just like the title of Time Bandits' director Gilliam's book - "losing the light." Also, I have a lot to learn about exposure.)

In the photo above, Mike is standing next to this weathered pirate statue:

For the sake of perspective, below is a clip from the movie where the boat is featured. (I don't know why it's on the cover of the DVD, really. It's not that big of a part - they should've used the map for the cover design. If I were senselessly rich, I'd have that map recreated as a mural on the ceiling of the rotunda entrance to my library. Or maybe the prop is somewhere, and I could hang it on the wall. This is why I can't daydream about impossible riches; I get too mired in the details. Like, just because I'm rich doesn't mean I'll know how to find someone who knows what happened to the map, so how am I going to sort that out? Should we get a personal assistant? Could I ever really trust an outsider to do that job? Wouldn't they be offended when I was there telling them about all of the little things they were doing wrong when acting as my representative? I have a critical but well intentioned nature - who can get that and get the oil changed in the car? And if they didn't, would they then retaliate in small ways, thinking I owed it to them for being so high maintenance? It's a difficult time to be in a position of power, however small, in this era of entitlement. I think I'll just print off a copy of the map and tack it to the fridge instead. Money is stressful.)  

If you look at the ship in that clip, especially around 5:40, it's hard to reconcile it with this:

No scooped sides, no spikes, different paint, nancy railing... surely Roadside America wouldn't lie? I guess not. I wasn't feeling it, but it was very fun to notch the experience. (You can tour the lake on it every day at 2 p.m., and sometimes other times, but we arrived too late in the day to go.)

We watched the fish in the water play, looked over the boats, and meandered back to the car, spirits still high.

Mike snapped photos from the passenger seat as we made the drive back to the hotel again, not at all sick of the sights.

Here's a ski slope that turns into a water park in the summer:

No vacancy at the Cozy Hollow Lodge? I'm not surprised, with such an adorable sign! (The word "adorable" is about as unavoidable as "cute" when driving around BBL.)

We were still ready to explore; it was getting dimmer, although not really darker (does that make sense?), and we weren't really sure where to go. We drove to the gates of the Big Bear Marina, at the end of the Village:

Going back further east, we turned at a light and found a ski resort, just right there.

Big Bear Lake must be stunning in the winter, but how our car would ever make it up the mountain is a question mark.

Back at the hotel, we still weren't hungry, but we stopped at Stillwell's to see how late they'd be open.  

I forget the exact time, but it came down to "not very late." We put on the TV in the room and took turns with the wifi. Eventually, our late lunch/early dinner wore off. Hmm. Where to?

We walked across the parking lot and around the corner, remembering a pizza place there.

The clock said 9:30, and the sign said they closed at nine. Dang. Well, what about the Quiznos we passed?

This must be one of the prettiest Quiznos on the planet. (Friendly staff, too.) I almost want to start a site called PrettyQuiznos.com and see if anyone can top it.

The walk in the brisk night air was worth the cussing up the mountain to get here. Big Bear Lake has a high school; I wondered what it would take to transfer there. (Probably less cussing.)  

And so passed an evening of satisfactory sandwiches, bad television, decent wifi, and good Kindle reading.

The next morning we took advantage of our free breakfast at Stillwells. I decided to go a la carte so I could have exactly what I wanted. (Usually I give whatever sausage or bacon is included to Mike, but he'd just had the bad reflux/whatever episode in Texas and was avoiding known triggers.)  

Breakfast wasn't bad, but those had to be the driest potatoes ever plated. And I know I ordered a la carte, but the three plates were strange to me. Free is nice, though.

We waved goodbye to all the little shops we never got to visit. We waved to the long-closed drive-in, with trees growing in front of the screen:

We were sad to be driving out. Excited that we were only a couple of hours away from San Diego, but sad to go without knowing when we'd be back. Since leaving Michigan 25 years ago, I can easily count the number of times I've been around really proper forest, not counting drive-bys and big campgrounds where no one ever gets near the woods. Let's see, a few days north of San Francisco. A couple of weekend camping trips to the Texas Hill Country. This overnighter. Okay, I'm done. That's it, and it's just not right.

My ongoing climate drama swooshed aside, time to get hyped about San Diego! Antiques Roadshow! Woohoo!

I remembered our 15-minute drive up the mountain and wondered what it would be like coming down the west side. Longer? Shorter? It looked about the same.

It was nice to be in downhill mode, that was for sure. It didn't stop people from whipping around us on blind curves, though. (Later we even got a rude honk when we pulled to the side to let some people pass. Grrrr - if I'm going the speed limit, get over it! Especially if it's downhill, just out of the fog, and with switchbacks every half-minute. Grrrr!)  

As we started down the mountain, Mike suddenly exclaimed, "Look at that!" Filling the valley between two mountain tops were... clouds! We were driving above the clouds! We'd never seen anything like it. Of course all of the places to pull aside and take photos were in the opposite lane, and it just wasn't safe to stop anywhere else, let alone U-turn. The view as we drove around the curve of the valley was just astounding, though. Clouds!  

Eventually Mike started to try to take photos. This shot is from a less dramatic part of the drive and doesn't do the view justice, but just to give a hint of how amazing it was:  

Eventually we were between mountains, winding around and around, passing Lake Arrowhead, which is supposed to be ritzier than Big Bear, but we didn't get to see that side of it.

What we did see were clouds, right in front of us.

I've never been so happy to see a school bus. I could blame going the speed limit on its leadership, and when it pulled over to let cars pass, so did we. It was a caravan of two busses and us, except for the first time they pulled over and we were left leading the pack through the fog. (Something we remedied at the next turn-out, where we waited to reunite with our big orange friends.)  

The fog! The clouds! Sometimes we could hardly see anything but the lights of the bus in front of us. We couldn't stop remarking on how the drive was so neat, it was like being on a ride, like the start of Pirates of the Caribbean (California version), perhaps. The road was smooth, the car was happy, the bus was setting the pace, and the world was impressing us.  

From 6000 to about 4000 feet, the mists were at their best. Naturally, 4000 feet is when we decided to turn on the video camera. If you want to pass judgement on me for needing to clean the windshield, here's two minutes and 25 seconds of opportunity:  

Short version? Big Bear Lake was a revelation. I can't wait to visit again.  

Previously: Road to the Roadshow: Planning