A Time For Everything

 

I had planned to have a post ready for Monday, March 10, but I just couldn't get the post written up and scheduled. The primary reason for that is because I was super busy preparing to be away on vacation.

Remember that cruise I mentioned exactly once a year ago? I didn't think so, but that cruise was this past March 9 through March 17.

We went on a eight day cruise to the Western Caribbean aboard the Regal Princess (image below) to celebrate my in-laws' 40th wedding anniversary. DH's sisters and one of their husbands was also on the cruise. We had a grand time relaxing and trying some new foods.

Image courtesy Wikipedia.

DH and I chose a cabin with a balcony this time around and that was super lovely. So three cruises, three cruise lines, three room types:

• Royal Caribbean with a port hole.
• Norwegian Cruise Line with an interior room.
• Princess Cruise Line with a balcony.

The small balcony was definitely the way to go, no matter what cruise line we cruise with in the future.

I'm leaning toward Princess Cruises again mainly because we can be cruise ready as far as boarding the ship well in advance of the sail date goes, and their Medallion system is awesome for ease of navigating the embarkation process as well as entering your cabin and any onboard purchases. I'll go into more detail later. But yeah. Other cruise lines supposedly have similar systems in place, but they may not yet be used as widely during the pre-cruise process or during the cruise itself. I'll have to do more research when we get ready to book the next one.

I have no preference between a seven-day versus an eight-day cruise. The seven-day cruise is contained within two weekends and a work week. The eight-day cruise needs an extra weekday.

In case you're wondering, the day of embarkation is Day 1. The last full day at sea is Day X of however long your cruise is. Ships almost universally return to the port of origin early in the morning, like five or six AM, and so that day is not counted on the "X-day cruise" line of information. That day belongs to the incoming wave of passengers.

* * * * *

Cruise ducks are a thing!

Apparently, passengers leaving little rubber ducks around the boat for other passengers to find is a thing. I never even saw a rubber duck on my first two cruises. This time, I found two!! You're supposed to take a picture and post to social, tagging your cruise or the person who left the duck. Then you either keep the duck or re-hide for another passenger to find!

(People create Facebook groups for specific cruise dates--WHO KNEW?!)

I was tempted to keep the ducks, but I gave away my rubber duck collection years ago. (Yes, I had one.) And I really didn't need to start a new one, so I left them in a different place for another passenger to find.

* * * * *

^ see the first magnet above ^

Cabin door decorating is also a thing. Not everyone does it of course, but I thought it would help me to locate my door from the lineup of identical ones along the corridor. Turns out I had a couple of easier ways to do that this trip, depending on which bank of elevators we approached our room from. Which is neither here nor there. We saw lots of different kinds of magnets, with messages like "My First Cruise," and "Our Retirement Cruise," or they were just cruise related images / sayings like mine.

DH also came across small magnetic white boards with poll questions on them of the "Coke or Pepsi?" variety, which he wants to do on our next cruise, lol.

* * * * *

I'm gonna post again about our cabin at some point but I wanted to share this one thing--

I wanted our cabin to be cozy and have a taste of home. Basically, fairy lights. We have a string of fairy lights around three walls of our living room and they're on a timer. They provide nice evening illumination for watching TV and generally moving through the house. I wanted to recreate that ambience in our cabin, so I bought this willow vine light set to take with us and place across from the bed and around the TV set. The only problem was--no outlets / USB ports on that side of the cabin. We ended up hanging them above the bed instead so they could be plugged in. As I was taking them down, I realized I could have run the power cord across the ceiling using the handy-dandy metal hooks I brought, lol. Well, I'll know for next time.

* * * * *

All right--that's all for now. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with some more random pictures from the boat and port stops.

Catch you later!

 

Several people, and probably more, but including Bill Gates five years ago, predicted a pandemic.

Why was the United States, then, not prepared to handle a) testing, b) vaccinations, c) the needs of the health care system to handle those infected...at the very least?

Because politicians / the government are / is generally more concerned with their own wants and needs, as well as the here and the now issues of their constituents. While the government has a role in these types of extraordinary events, and while I'm disappointed in our preparedness, is it solely the government's responsibility to be ready?

What about the health care system itself? What abut the pharmaceutical companies? What about private companies and organizations? How much falls on an individual?

I don't know the best answer, of course... No one wants to prepare (i.e. spend money) for something that seems so unlikely to happen.

Being prepared aside, it's satisfying to hear / read about how people from across all manner of industries are doing what they can.

For example:

The family distillery who switched to making hand sanitizer and offering it to their community for free; they did ask for donations, if they could be spared, but they are not refusing to give out their product.

Bauer, a sports equipment manufacturing company, who switched to making face shields for health care workers instead of hockey masks.

There are more, but you get the idea.

Anyway, it's the weekend again. So here's to that. here's hoping my local grocery store won't look so bare Sunday morning. And here's to writing time, which I will have an abundance of tomorrow morning.

And finally...the last of the cruise pictures.

From our stop in Belize:





Next time we cruise and have a stop in Belize, I'm gonna spend the day on the beach. It was incredibly beautiful there. For the rest of the Belize pictures, click here.

From our stop at Costa Maya:








I might consider swimming with the dolphins on my next trip to Costa Maya--that looked like fun. So one of those dolphins was playing catch with those people up on the walkway in the background. For the rest of the Costa Maya pictures, click here.

 Have a great weekend. :0)

If there was ever a time to say Thank Goodness It's Friday it's now. As things continue to slow and shut down, I'm glad it's the weekend.

A handful of our clients have decided to work from home, but that doesn't affect us much. We're still showing up every day and taking care of the back end side of IT.

I spent some time project planning yesterday as I mentioned Wednesday I needed to do. Looking at the breakout makes me want to not do at least one of them... If you're so inclined to see what my project planning looks like, it's here. The verbiage (project / phase / task) is taken from our software at work and worked well for my purposes. Plus it's always nice when my two worlds can cross-pollinate.

Home life is back to normal. The last piece was finding my charger cable for my car, and now that's back in the car... I'll go grocery shopping early Sunday morning as per usual and hope that the shelves look closer to full than to empty. But we'll make do with whatever I find. The dog will get her first bath in probably 4 - 5 weeks, poor thing. I'll prep food for the week. Laundry will get caught up once and for all. I can hardly wait.

I might -- MIGHT -- start on that garage project.

I'm already working on the Holiday / Disability Anthology.

Aspects of the weight loss project will be put into place.

And now...more cruise pics!! These are just general pictures from time on the boat...





For the rest of the randomness, click here.

Have a great weekend!

My monthly writers meeting has gone virtual. Our speaker for this month will be speaking to us via Zoom. Bars and restaurants in Tarrant County are going to be shut down at some point today, so the decision is definitely out of my hands now, but we'd already made the decision so that we weren't scrambling super last minute to put plan B into motion. I'm really going to miss seeing my friends this month though. These women are my people.

My thoughts about what's going on due to COVID-19 have spanned the gamut all week as I read this article and that article and the other article. I've finally come to the conclusion, however, that a) while all these closures are tragic and spell hardships for a great many people, they're necessary; b) social distancing is unfortunately necessary primarily / especially to manage the impact on our health care system; and c) many people want to blame the government and / or the media for various things going on such as panic buying, but I honestly don't know how things could have gone any different. People are still gonna over-react, people are still going to make decisions based on fear and not facts, people are still going to get their news *not* from appropriate sources.

We're a mere three months out from the first confirmed case in China. Were we supposed to shut down everything mid-January when we didn't know much? Sure, that would have been better. And what exactly caused people to think toilet paper was the can't-live-without item?

I really don't know.

But for good and for ill the world has been forced to hunker down and so we shall. We all have a chance to reconnect with our families, we can catch up on reading and crafts, television, and maybe get some spring cleaning done.

My plans include getting the garage cleaned out and getting my two books written and some other writing/publishing related stuff that I need to decide upon and write down.

Anyway...I was on a cruise to the Western Caribbean two weeks ago. That seems so long ago at this point, but I promised pictures. Our first stop was New Orleans, though, and I shared a few pictures the other day. Here are a few more from DH and my morning trek through the residential portion of the French Quarter. I have a love of architecture and I fell in love with the area. If I had money to spare, I would buy property in the French Quarter and try to infuse the area with small businesses and small living spaces...

Someday.

Here are just a few of my favorites:






There were so many building for sale and / or boarded over. It made my heart hurt.

But if you want to see the rest of my random photos, here's the link.

Take care and be safe!

DH and I were on an NCL cruise of the Western Caribbean along with my mother- and father-in-law.

We embarked from New Orleans--a city I'd never been to--so we traveled a day early so that we could explore the French Quarter a little.

There will be pictures and tales of our adventures coming soon. I meant to pre-schedule some posts for last week, but just ran out of time.

But I'm back and ready to get back into the regularly scheduled rhythms and routines of life.

Hope you're well and had a good week last week. See you Wednesday...

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas to me!! So, yeah...I'm going on my very first cruise with all of DH's family on a 7-day cruise to the Western Caribbean. Wow! Even DD has been on cruise. Sonshine's on a cruise on steroids right now. Not sure about my Brown-Eyed Girl.

Nope, I've never been on a cruise. I'm definitely excited, but I'm also a little nervous to be away from home for that long. House, dog, business... I know it'll be fine, but still.

Have you ever been on a cruise? Any suggestions, tips, advice?

This is going to be a crazy week, what with Fourth of July on Friday, so I'm going take a vacation from blogging this week and I'll be back next Monday.

Have a great week and a wonderful holiday. Be safe!

Yeah, for the most part.

After most of nine days away from work, I am back. What I wouldn't give for another nine days and another nine and another. In other words, I wish I didn't have to work. DH keeps promising that eventually he'll hire someone to do most of what I do and then I can work from home. And I'm holding on to that promise.

So if I did work from home or was able to give up work completely, what would my day entail?

Well, cleaning for one. I'd definitely get back on a regular cleaning schedule and those once-in-a-great-while tasks would happen more regularly. I had a schedule once upon a time and it worked really well.

I'd cook too. It's hard to cook a tasty delicious meal when you get home at 5:15 and are already starving!!! If I were home I'd be able to start soups and stews and casseroles in the middle of the day and have them ready at a decent mealtime.

I'd exercise everyday. Well, I'd intend to, anyhow, since I'd have all those lovely hours to fill. Plus, then I could eat all those tasty meals I'd be cooking without worrying too much about carbs and calories.

And, of course, I'd proofread and write. There'd definitely be time for one or both everyday.

I'd do crafts and bake and basically be Suzy Homemaker. I should have been born in the 1930s or 40s when it was expected and acceptable and not frowned upon to aspire to that. But you know, I like being at home taking care of my family.

What about you?

Career Woman or Suzy Homemaker?