I'm a celebrity....speaker that is

Have been getting myself together with the documentation for the cruise speaking gig in October. Yes, you read that correctly, the confirmation arrived for October 3 – 16 on Celebrity Constellation round trip from Cape Liberty, Bayonne, New Jersey with ports of call at Portland, Bar Harbour, Halifax, Quebec City and Charlottetown. As I mentioned the travel mate scooped a good seat sale – a direct flight, leaving at a reasonable time on Saturday morning which gets us to the ship as required at least two hours before sailaway – as neither Aeroplan or Air Miles worked out for the dates/times. So we’re pretty much set. We’ll have to look at accommodation at some point but it’s early days yet. Memo to self - first I have to tweak my presentations and make one on PEI.

I was a bit discouraged when reviewing her email as I wrote down retired in her occupation block and then she tells me that she’s going rug hooking today and back and forth to the sailboat and then literary workshops on the weekend. My roadblocks to getting signatures are that I have to travel for pandemic planning for work. Sigh. I attempted several ways at work to get my DVD from the cable company copied to submit to ‘my agent’ but have now left my self promotion DVD burning at friends to be copied and picked up tomorrow.

I’m sure we’ll be far from picky eaters at the buffet, specialty restaurants or sushi bar but I was listening to a piece on the radio during my afternoon commute which referred to SED which apparently is the acronym for…..selective eating disorder – you know, picky eaters. Apparently our brain makes us think we don’t like something and then we convince ourselves. The part where your kid says “I don’t like it, no I’ve never tried it but I don’t like it” now has a scientific reason behind it. No fear of that on a cruise ship and especially with 50% discount on specialty restaurant drinks etc. And for me it’ll be nice to try out another cruise line as the last three have been Princess line.

Well as the countdown to the arrival of daughter # 1 gets into the ‘only about a month now’ mode the reason for her visit – the wedding of her friend – is approaching as well. So when a co-worker sent along this link I just had to share it. Make sure your speakers are on as it has to be viewed with the sound for full effect:

http://www.wimp.com/weddingentrance/

The shore captain was bragging that he gets to sleep in tomorrow morning until 4:30 a.m. so that is going to be a real treat after his schedule this week. They’ve been having a scramble to find crew to go fishing as two quit on one longliner and one on another as they “weren’t making any money” yet when 58 hrs of work gets divided into the $1300 they earned it equals $22 per hour – not bad for folks with a grade 8 education and lots of educated people working at land jobs would like that kind of pay. The biggest problem is they want to go camping and draw unemployment – no wonder we get such a bad rep in the east with this kind of behavior. The prodigal son is left with one fellow who will go but only for two day trips as the eczema on his hands is so bad. So, the temporary solution is that the boy captain (who has never been afraid of work) will go with the larger boat this one trip. He asked me “why do I have to be the captain out of the wheelhouse and on deck?” and I told him “because you’re likely the only one that will physically survive that exchange and it’s only for the one trip”. Apparently the lad is having quite a week for himself as last night at supper he told me, while slapping his knee, that the highlight of his day had been seeing his father wearing oil pants and a hair net. When I questioned a beard net as the man has more beard than hair he gasped “oh don’t, don’t I’m going to lose my breath”. So I guess a photo on the cell phone was out of the question. Well, my HR recruitment efforts on Facebook haven’t been successful for the fishing industry so I should call it a night.