We're home

Why is it that the fun parts of returning from vacation such as showing off a tan, getting materials ready to scrapbook organizing photos don’t take as much precedence as laundry, groceries and unpacking?

We arrived home this morning at the same time I usually get up for work so all my ambitious thoughts of getting in late and still making it in today evaporated. SNOW delayed us in Toronto as we made our connection to Halifax on April 6th if you can believe it! We were in the queue for deicing for an hour before takeoff so landed at 3 a.m. where we were not impressed with 3-degree temperatures and waited half an hour for luggage. Found the car which daughter # 2 had kindly left in the airport parking lot for us (the construction zone that it is made it feel as if we should’ve been wearing hard hats) and had a really windy, rainy and foggy drive home. To top it all off I had a back spasm – can’t imagine that was from being packed in as if we were in a cattle car for hours and without food too even on a 5½ hr. flight, but I digress – so had trouble even sitting still let alone napping. So I left a whiny message for the coworker covering for me to opt out of today as well and crashed until the shore captain woke me at 1 p.m. to say he was running to the plant with the car. Okay, enough snarling.

We are just back from a wonderful vacation and it will end abruptly tomorrow a.m. as I head back to work for sure. I came home to find the house and critters all in good shape so that was a relief. The dog wasn’t too antsy or overweight as she’d walked one of the teenaged neighbourhood animal lovers and the kitty boys have gotten over their initial annoyance of being abandoned and have stopped ignoring us.

We had as should be expected an amazing (if busy) time. The weather was wonderful, the ship’s staff (a number I remembered) was still great, the passengers were predominately from the UK and the destinations were all…Caribbean. What more can I say? I will post some photos and travel notes tomorrow when I have the domestic responsibilities under control. A favorite island well…. Barbados was a sure hit but we did get to spend three days there as opposed to only one in all the other destinations. Hmm.

In my haste to reduce the amount of work required for presentation preparation the selection of a 12 island, 14 day cruise may not be something we repeat though as it was a bit hectic. We’ve decided that we like the sea days, as they are great for R&R so it may be the trade off to do more than two presentations. I was almost completely ignored by the cruise director and his assistant (which was fine by me) as they’d changed from the October outing and since I was competing with the Caribbean sun I felt I did well to have about 40 and 50 attending the respective sessions. The netbook was fantastic to travel with – both for the presentations and checking email etc. I’ve had a flurry of requests for gigs from Alaska to the Mediterranean with a focus on Canada/US so am sure something will come up for the fall – one yesterday was for 14 days out of NY but that’ too much in our backyard – keeping those eyes open.

Well, must haul this carcass to bed in preparation for my two-day workweek. It was very heartening to hear peepers and see crocuses this evening when I was dog walking. Perhaps spring really is here and about time too!