Back in body

Just getting back into the blogging update as I’ve finally got the suitcases emptied, laundry done and newspapers read over the weekend. We arrived home about 8:30 p.m. on Friday in a satisfied but exhausted state.

Needless to say we had a wonderful time on the cruise – did you expect otherwise? The Sea Princess is a smaller ship than the Grand Princess although it still carries almost 2000 passengers and was sailing full. The service was very personal and friendly; the food was even better than the Grand (hard to believe that’s possible) and the entertainment management were wonderful, very laid back and accommodating. I agreed to do three presentations so had to do two the only sea day and one on the morning before a port call. Pretty good deal for the cruise for the two of us. The talks went very well and were excellent for my ego J well attended and no technical glitches. Managed to lose my glasses though as they fell under the footlights stage left when the tech packed up my laptop, notes and glasses and they went skittering away when I picked up the computer to put it in the bag. Thankfully daughter # 2 supplied the extra pair I’d left in the car when we got to Halifax so at least I could see the sights.

When I get the camera program figured out I promise to post some photos here. Suffice to say we had a great time with my travel mate reading all of 12 or 13 pages in her novel (she is an avid reader) and me gaining 4 lbs. Now this is considering that we just about walked our legs off on some days – good thing I guess or I’d have to add a zero to the right of that 4. We had a great visit in Sydney with a friend, entertained the kids in Halifax and had lunch with my cousin in Boston as well as just generally being tourists in all the other ports. We enjoyed afternoon tea with white gloved waiters, silver tea service, warm scones with jam and cream and little cakes – oh I’m making myself hungry – sat in the hot tub during sail away, checked out all the places to eat / drink on the ship, laughed till we lost our breath, took many photos and met lots of great people. Surprising about 2/3 of the passengers were from the UK, only 190 Canadians and the remainder Americans.

We had a wonderful ‘extra’ day in New York City with beautiful weather and walked down Broadway to Times Square, got discount tickets to The Phantom of the Opera (amazing is the only way to describe it – no wonder it’s been running for 18 yrs) Enjoyed a NY bagel with cream cheese and steamed almond milk (heavenly) Had a bicycle cart tour of Central Park so saw where Tom Cruise and Robert DeNiro live while we munched on a warm pretzel. Yum. We had a pre-theatre supper at The Russian Tea Room and I really will have to try to post a photo of that as there’s no way to describe it. The meal was amazing as well. By the time we flagged a cab down after the theatre (taking our lives in our hands) and got settled it was midnight and we were up early to catch our flight. Had an uneventful trip home, which was good as we were out of steam by then.

I took the liberty of heading out for a scrapbooking day on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed the Croptoberfest. Since I left in such a tailspin forgetting the project I was planning to take (Norway cruise album) on the counter I did make a good recovery and accomplish something – a nice 2009/2010-desk calendar so am quite proud of myself after all. And I’m happy to announce that I won the door prize which was a nice Creative Memories album cover – much nicer than I’d buy for myself – so a good day all around.

Today I had to head back to work at the district facility so that was not much fun but what can you do? Tomorrow will likely be less fun as I’ll be attempting to catch up a bit and start the flu shots. Off to the district facility on Wednesday again so this week is already a write off it seems. This is the way it is when you’re not retired like all those cruise passengers?

The shore captain is planning to head to the woods on Thursday so I’ll be on my own schedule for a couple of days (hopefully) and am planning lunch with a friend on Saturday among other pleasures. Sad to be looking forward to the weekend on a Monday eh? Since today is the only son’s 21st birthday I’m reminded of how frantic my life was a couple of decades ago so it’s all relative. However when the life partner balked at putting the dog out for the night saying to her “we had better rules than this didn’t we?” I asked for clarification and was told that he ‘put her out when he felt like it’ so I told him if I only did things around the house when I felt like it he’d be a lot smaller than he is – there was no reply.