vacation

On The Third Day, There Was Rain

Another sea day, folks. First things first, it’s our anniversary. Four years. J Secondly, lemon cookies. They’re awesome. Onward.

Yesterday we got a good bit of rain but it was still warm. I am still trying to stay away from wet decks so I don’t take another spill. The amount of walking we’ve been doing is slowly declining. I think we only did 5 miles yesterday as opposed to the nearly 10 the first day. I think that we’ll get those numbers back up in Belize though.

On that exercise type note, I got a body composition analysis done. It was kinda neat – the printout they give you, that is, the actual procedure is just like standing on a scale and holding handlebars. The bottom line of it is that I’m not retaining too much water, I need 1358 calories a day, and my body will give up 6 pounds of fat which should come from my legs and I need to go back to doing legs or running or something. No wonder I can’t hold my legs up in iron X……6 extra pounds.

And speaking of feats of wonder, we went to the ice show. The actual space for skating isn’t overly large so double axels were the biggest tricks that were thrown. But hey, it’s not like I can do one. It was still fun to see and then all of a sudden, it got awesome. There was a couple that came out and did German Wheel. Did you hear me? They did German Wheel. On. The. Ice. Yup, super impressive.

We signed up for lessons on the FlowRider. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to hear about that disaster. I’m just hoping to not injure myself. You’ll probably hear me screaming from where you are. Sometimes I wonder why I torture myself with these water activities. My rational, conscious mind keeps me out of the water for the most part because my irrational subconscious is ALWAYS trying to get me to jump in like I wouldn’t sink and die. Stupid brain.

Lastly, and most importantly, we went to Sabor last night. Yes, as a matter of fact, it was slap yo mamma delicious. Guacamole was made tableside for us. The queso fundido was sloppily delicious, and the tuna crudo, OMG so good.

Breaking It Down On Day 2

Welcome back aboard the Navigator of the Seas. I’m your cruise director and here’s a wrapup of yesterday’s activities.

Fresh squeezed orange juice. Do you know how much I absolutely HATED it when someone ordered this when I was bartending in Sandpiper? With every fiber of my being is the answer and yet, I’m an asshole and I order it every morning because it’s included in my drink package and I have to have at least $20 a day in OJ and bubble water and bottles of water and Starbucks to make this worth it. I’m doing ok so far, I believe. I’m going to have to try waiting in line for them to make my eggs as I wasn’t in love with the scrambled. But who am I kidding, I’m an egg snob and I like them to taste the way they do when I make them, lol. This is why I want to have a breakfast restaurant. All breakfast, all the time. Eggs, and bacon and hash browns and waffles and p-cakes (Ant shoutout) and French toast and grits and oatmeal. Man, I love breakfast. Anywho…

I had been reading up on people’s reviews of the ship and any little secrets I could find out before we came on board. Through this reading up I found a Facebook group and another group and found out that there would be a get-together here on the ship with RAFFLE PRIZES. Yeah, I’m all about getting something for free, even if it’s just the chance for free stuff. Off we went at party time to check out a part of the ship that we hadn’t yet seen. Cute little nightclub area. We dropped in out raffle tickets and had some punch. Some neat little stuff that was given away – mostly all RC branded stuff, but that’s to be expected. Hats, visors, shoulder bags, beach bags, a diamond pendant(!), and the thing I wanted the most, a bottle of champagne. Won it!

Rained quite a bit yesterday and I managed to not fall down any stairs so I call that a win. The show was one of the best I’ve seen on an RCCL ship. Really funny guy who did an Elton John show complete with flamboyant outfits. On that entertainment point, I was certainly spoiled by Club Med. My expectations are high which leaves me disappointed almost every time. Not by this guy though, and not by the comedian during his adult late night show. Funny guy also.

Still rocking out my vegetable love. Probably a little heavy on the potatoes, but they make them so many ways and they’ve all been good. And I just love potatoes. I cannot help myself.

I think that the best part of the night was checking out the outfits on the dance floor in the nightclub. It was formal night and, while some folks get dressed for their pictures and then go change (like us), some folks just stay dressed all night. This was the case with Captain Fly Katt Williams Wannabe Without The Hair. Brother man was rocking out his cobalt blue pants with his matching blue and white striped shirt AND his matching blue fedora. He’s gotta be 60, easy. And let me tell you, when Flo Rida says low, low, low, low, low, low, low, that is where Captain went. I should’ve videotaped it. It was awesome.

We’re still out on the water for another day. There are certainly some fun things coming up in the next few days. You’re gonna want to stay tuned. Until tomorrow.

The Day One Recap

Whew! Yesterday was quite lengthy. Up at 4 to catch the 4:30 shuttle for our 6:20 flight. Best. Flight. Ever. Only half full with the flight crew encouraging us to spread out. Gotta love that sort of flight. Plus it was nice and short so I barely had time to be distraught about flying. Win!

More shuttles from the airport to the port and finally we got to board the ship. The Navigator of the Seas is an older ship that just got a facelift a couple of months ago. It’s pretty decent. Our room is spacious and that’s all that really matters. Also, the balcony dividers are more top to bottom so it allows for more privacy. Nothing will ever beat the aft balconies on Carnival, but this balcony is better than the one we had on the Allure, oddly enough. I spend a lot of time on the balcony, usually, listening to the siren song of the sea.

We walked around the ship. A LOT. My step tracker on my phone says that I walked 18,911 steps which it equates to 9.3 miles. Granted, that’s the whole day of airport and such, but I’d venture to say that most of it was on the ship.

Food! All of it! You’d think that I’d be getting nutty, but no, only in my own special way. I eat vegetables like they’re going out of style because I don’t have to cook them. And I get to have all kinds of fish. So, yeah, I eat like a pig – a really healthy one, lol. It makes for eating more than 3 times a day though. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m still gonna have some sweets, like the Starbucks I have included on this package, but I’m in veggie land. Ohhhh, and guacamole! We were walking around and one of the folks from the Mexican restaurant, Sabor, was out taking reservations and giving out guacamole samples. Delicious would have been an understatement. I really wanted to just eat it directly out of the huge bowl it was in. Perhaps with my hands. I’m so stoked that we’re going there for dinner. We may have to go twice.

I guess the biggest difference on this ship is the lack of “big show” entertainment. Granted, the last RC ship’s entertainment was awful, so maybe we’re better off without it on this ship. I’ve heard that the ice show is really good though, so we’re gonna check that out.

After a long day of traveling and walking, we called it early (after the Pirates game that we so awesomely could watch in our room). More fun and adventures tomorrow!

Here’s some water behind the ship (since you’ve never seen water, obviously) and the Promenade on the ship.

Another Day in Pair Of Dice

No, I’m not in Vegas and it isn’t looking like I’ll get there in 2014. We certainly want to go back,though. It’s been 4 or 5 years since we’ve gone. This time, we’ll do it in the summer though so we can check out the pools. No swimming in January, that’s for sure (at least not for me).

Others on my list of places to go include, from near to far more or less, Garden of the Gods, Crested Butte, Park City, pretty much anywhere in Cali since I’ve never been there, Banff, New Orleans, the northeast adventure (PA/NY/DC), and pretty much all of Mexico. I’ll leave my outside of North America list for another day. Have passport, will travel!

Yes, I’m on that vacation kick because, well, I like vacation and work is slowly driving me insane and I STILL haven’t even started doing the new position yet, at least not full time. When I get to doing this full time, they may very well put the pedal to the metal and bump that mother up to 100, making my drive to insane a heck of a lot shorter. I’m hoping that isn’t the case, but a very wise man once told me “wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up faster”. Translation: yes, it’s gonna suck. You said you’d go all in for a year so have at it. Just keep dancing.

Dancing. Exercise. Zumba. I love that class. And now I have something additional to work on because I can’t just go in there and move around and sweat and be satisfied. I want to actually LOOK LIKE I’m doing it right. Tough one since I’m not Hispanic nor do I have more than one ounce of rhythm. Such a shame. I did get a hint to help me along my way from my instructor (whose hips NEVA lie) who is also a Samba dancer. He said, and I’m ~~making this up~~ paraphrasing, get out of your gringa ways and move your hips in the way that is completely unnatural to you! Yeah, yeah. I get it. In my head. Now what my body wants to do is a totally different story. Just keep dancing, just keep dancing.

From dancing to other fun physical stuff: handstands. They’re something that I’ve wanted to be able to do for quite some time. Why? No reason. Just thought it would be cool to be able to bust one out whenever I feel like it. Maybe on the mountain with my snowboard on, who knows? I suppose I’ve just never really put the effort into working on them (and this week I haven’t been putting in effort to working out very hard), BUT, Aerial Amy (over there in the blogroll in case you don’t want to search for this post again) mentioned how she’s going to do the 28-day handstand challenge. We have different obstacles to overcome, but she’s starting on Feb 1 and so I think I’ll join her. Perhaps Nina would like to join too. 🙂 Still a couple days to figure it out. Yes, I am going to add one more thing to the daily repertoire. Workout, stretch, handstands, write, breakfast, work, lunch, work, Zumba/pole/aerial, dinner, write, sleep. Totally do-able (insert eyerolling emoticon here). If I were feeling really outrageous, I’d add the 750 words a day challenge for February as well, but I think I’ll stick to just getting some (at least 100) words down a day.

Yesterday I realized that I hadn’t broken my goals down by month. Today seems like a good time to do that since there are only a few days left here in January. So let’s see. What should we do in February?

28-day handstand challenge
28 days of working out. Preferably P90X3, but snowboarding can substitute if I ride hard
12 split-specific days of stretching, 20 minimum total stretching days
28 days of blogging
28 days of writing lab assignments
Set up private and find my place in PDP with the L’Ru ladies

I’d go on, but I’m sure that’s ENOUGH! Just goals. I’m going to aim for them but I’m not going to beat myself up over missing any of them. Maybe blogging, but not the others because these are lofty goals. I swear a goal should be to clean the house top to bottom, but boy is that not fun. It isn’t even that it’s so dirty, just dusty mainly, but that’s gonna have to wait until a warm day where I can open windows and not be a dust-sneezing monster. I’m not entirely sure why this house has so much dust, but it does. It’s literally dusty within an hour after cleaning. Air ducts need cleaned much? Probably. Are we going to pay for that in a rental? No. And neither will the owners so we just have a dusty house.

You know how I enjoy my morning chats with you four, but the time has come for me to get a move on. Happy Hump Day!

Getting back to real life, grudgingly

This post comes with a disclaimer:

Writer will not be held responsible for any feelings of boredom, jealousy, anxiety or anything else of the reader upon finishing this post. Oh, and it'll probably be long.

Thursday: I couldn't bring myself to stay at work all day. Excitement had finally caught up to me and I was ready to get going! Even leaving work at around 1:30, we still couldn't manage to get over to the hotel before about 5:30. We had an early dinner at Chili's before leaving and then went to raid the candy section of the Hudson News in the terminal we were in. Happily watched Smallville and called it a night.

Friday: Ah yes, I hate flying. So that's why I was chugging a beer at around 6 am. Flights were quite uneventful which is always a great thing. We arrived at the house at a little after 2pm.

The House

There was no unpacking to be done as we wanted to get over to the mountain right away to take advantage of the free lift ticket that you could get in exchange for a copy of your boarding pass and showing your ID. What a great offer!

We took a few runs and then stopped by both the liquor store (for Devastator) and the grocery store (for the box of cereal that I housed that week). By this time, everyone had made it to the house; we were a party of 10. Btw, the house was super sweet. That photo shows the front and you walk into a mudroom with a master bedroom off to the left and to the right. A staircase takes you to the second floor which has the kitchen, dining room, living room, doors to that little balcony you can see, laundry room, a bathroom, and the steps to the thrid floor. Up on three were two more bedrooms and a small loft area with a Ninetendo 64. Oh, out the back door on the second floor there was a jacuzzi and a sauna (neither of which I used..I'm weird like that). We called it a little early.

Saturday: I woke up to pee thinking it had to be nearly 7:30, but no, it was only about 2:30. UGH!

Saturday: For real this time, we went to breakfast over at The Clockwork Cafe. I really love egg sandwiches. We took the beautiful ride up the Town Lift and spent the morning hitting the slopes. Odd, I really forget to eat when I'm up there. I chug water like it's going out of style, but I have to be reminded to eat. I'm a nut.

Due to some folks within the party taking some spills, we decided that it would be best if we all took a lesson on Monday and we went back to the house after lunch.

I went for the annual best-massage-of-my-life massage. Let me just tell you that you might think you're in heaven if you spend a little time over at Aura. I had the Third Eye Package. Fell asleep once during the wrap and THREE TIMES during the massage. Seriously, to the point that I was snoring. Fantastic!

Sunday: THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS ARE THE SUPERBOWL XLIII CHAMPS!!!!

Monday: Mmmm, more egg sandwiches! The lesson was great. I got some pointers and I'm feeling more confident on my board. Superb pad thai for dinner. This is the week I eat more food than I really should. 🙂

Tuesday: [this day kicked ass] Know why? Do ya? Do Ya? Huh? Huh? Huh?!?!? Okay, because I'm so slow to post about vacation, you may already know. 😛

I had the pleasure to be a part of a Mountain Meetup and the Utah Sisterhood of the Steelers was formed. Should I make a t-shirt that says "I met Kevin Wolf and all I got was this crappy t-shirt?" Nah, he might like that too much. :-P Much more imiportant on a chick level is that Jillzey kicks ass! I triple dog dare you to say anything different! You guys rock and made my vacation a happy place. As if you haven't seen their photos, I'll post mine of the group as well.

That was pretty much the face Kiddo had all the time so no offense to the company.

IMG_1227

I think she's trying to be the next generation's surly bastard.

Lovey and I have long been discussing moving out of Miami. Our first choice was to the Salt Lake City area, then we switched to outside of Boulder, but now I do believe that we are back to the SLC area. Because that much coolness over there —————————–> cannot be limited to once a year.

Wednesday: Another great day on the mountain. Let me tell you something. I grew up eating venison and it's damn delicious. I haven't had it in quite some time, we're talking 10 years easy and I miss it.

Well, that all got taken care of on Wednesday night. Lovey and I went to dinner at 350 Main.

OMG! It was friggin delicious!

We shared a bottle of Hess chardonnay (yummy) and had the Four Cheese Ravioli (L) and the Tower of Ahi and Hamachi (me). Great Googly Moogly best Ahi ever! Lovey had the Steak Frites and I had the Venison Medallions hold the pepper. Not even joking, I think I wet my pants a little. It was THAT good. Don't let the lack of a listing of desserts fool you. They had them and they were good too. Oh, creme brulee, we are good friends.

Thursday: Last day out on the mountain. It was the first day where we had some overcast yuckiness which means flat spots which means I can't see things until I'm right up on them and then face down in the snow. Um, no thank you. I have some shopping to do before we go.

Thought about buying a sweet Roots Park City sweatshirt but couldn't bring myself to do it. Got some yummy sweets from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.

All that was left was dinner and packing.

Friday: All week, the sky was blue and there was hardly a cloud to be seen. Great for me but not so much for the rest of the group that wanted to see snow. So as we are up bright and early to head to the airport, what do we wake up to? Oh, around 3 or 4 inches of fresh powder. Ha! Someone's got bad karma.

All in all, a really good time. And no, I don't know what you're talking about…we aren't already starting to plan for next year!

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vacation

On The Third Day, There Was Rain

Breaking It Down On Day 2

The Day One Recap

Another Day in Pair Of Dice

Getting back to real life, grudgingly

You Missed

Nothing To See Here

Too Damn Slow

Ghosts (of Days Gone By)

Raunchy Activated