... about the cruise ... part I

Ok, I admit I have been lame on posting our cruise pictures. I haven't even gone through the pics from the wedding we went to in October! Due to this laziness, I pulled out my 2 page "journal" from the cruise, so I can at least give you a few highlights to nibble on!

* Famous Author Alert:
On our previous cruises, we brought a chef along for cooking demos, special lunches, recipes, and the like. After 6 years, the group was ready for a change, so we had a best-selling author join us for this one, with him giving lectures on how he started, publishing secrets, and his personal experience in today's crazy literary market. He is 43, so he and his lovely wife were more on our age level. He spoke of how scary it was when he told his family that he wanted to quit his stable job and write full time. I was totally in awe of him - a real live author!! I was like a giddy school girl, and ak was my dad telling me to calm down before I peed my pants.
John Hart is the son of a wonderful woman we have known through Ak's mom, and have done the other cruises with. She is quite a gal - she has macular degeneration (wet) in both of her eyes, and can barely see. Recently, her doctors were able to operate on one of the eyes, and her sight improvement is extraordinary; unfortunately, that same surgery would do nothing for the other eye. John prints extra EXTRA large print manuscripts & books for her - what a good boy! If you met her, you would have no idea of her sight problems. She is completely adept at recognizing voices, and she is confident when walking, and doesn't let it slow her down. She also is a smoker, so Ak & I always spend extra time with her.
Anyhoo, I am attaching a link for John. He has already written 2 novels that were on the NY Times Best Seller list, he has his third coming out in early May, and is working on his fourth book. I highly recommend the first two - fast paced murder mysteries set in Salisbury, MD, where they are all originally from.
http://www.johnhartfiction.com/

*Our new good buddy:
Finally, after being the only youngsters by several years within this group for 6 years, our favorite couple, Jerry and Carol, had their daughter come with them on the cruise. Christin lives in Boston, and is the Irish-Catholic version of me. For example: she reads several books at one time, dotes on her parents (watching her and her mom together is like a Seinfeld episode, and very similar to Jojo and Felicia), fantastic dresser, has a strong command of cursing, and knows how to have a good time!
We had so many good laughs together, and it was nice to actually meet a new friend that you want to keep in touch with, and develop a realtionship with. Christin's ultimate goal on the cruise was to find a man that was old, rich, and terminal, so it was a veritable DisneyLand for her. Ak and I were tasked with scoping out any prospects.
Christin and I were constantly trying to scheme a way to get John's 4th book from his step-father, Bill. Bill is a true Southern gentleman, but the attention of 2 Yankee dolls could not part him from his advanced book copy. Bill could possibly be as old as Moses, but he is one of those precious "elders" that you want to take home in your purse. Although I sometimes had alterior motives, I genuinely enjoyed talking with him. He celebrated his 86th birthday while on board. Christin flew directly to the cruise, but came back with our group on the bus. We dropped her off in Jupiter, FL, to visit with her dad. As we watched her getting her luggage, we commented how funny it was that we had the same luggage - haha! We got back on the road, and 15 minutes hadn't passed before Carol made her way back to our seats to say that Christin ended up with one of our suitcases - haha - and that we'd have to meet her and pull a switch the next day. All of the adults were all like "oh, you have to drive 1 1/2 hours to meet tomorrow, how awful," and "what a shame", when I was pretty excited to see her again! Everything worked out perfectly at our luggage exchange the next day, and it was great to see her! She headed back to Boston the next day where lots of snow fell, and she hasn't been heard from since. jk.

*CODE BLUE
One evening after dinner, Axel, myself and Christin were at the casino bar (another designated smoking pit), and suddenly an alarm sounded, followed by the announcement of a "Code Blue". We were quite enthralled, and kept at our Australian bartender Ricky until he admitted that a "guest" was down, and possibly dead! I felt like I was in a surreal episode of ER where all doctors and nurses were in formal dress. As it turns out, a poor passenger was very sick and was in a diebetic coma, probably from the desserts. We actually changed direction to get him to the closest hospital, and it completely changed the itinerary for the rest of the cruise! We had been heading to St. Barth's, where we were going to be there from 9am to 11pm, giving us the only opportunity to have dinner off of the ship. Also, St. Barth's is akjn's favorite Caribbean destination, so we were so happy to have so much time there. Well, we ended up going a few days later, and only had from 9-5pm.......there was some mumbling and grumbling from everyone about that.
Barbara was on the same ship this summer for 40 days, doing Dubai, the Arab Emirates, and those other scary places over there, and 3 people, all dudes, croaked on the cruise. One got off with the wife and flew home, the others were kept on ice in the galley until the end of the cruise. That is surely the only downer to these cruises - the chances of one of the fossils taking the next step is extremely high.

* Hulking Out:
I was on my usual cocktail of regular meds, plus the ones for the neck surgery, then add some tropical alcohol on top. Ak has mentioned in the past that I tend to get pissed-off faster on Vicodin, as though it blocks out my patience meter. I think we were in St. Marteen, and ak, Barb & I were shopping and looking for a good lunch place. It was REALLY hot, too. We found a cafe, and had a delightful lunch with lots of lovely wine to top off the pill cocktail. Then we were brought complimentary homemade banana liquer with the bill, and we were trying to decide whether to pay in Euros or Visa. Ak is brilliant with accounting and currency exchange, so we always rely on him to figure things out. For some reason, my math-challeged skills tried to match his, and failed miserably when I came up with my solution. Well, I didn't take my failure too well in my vicodin-ed out, hot, wino-d + banana-liquored mood, and I totally Hulked Out on the two of them. Told them I'd meet them back at the ship and cruised out of the restaurant. Tried to get a cab back to the ship, but the cabs were set out for groups of people, not individual riders. Basically, my trip back would be $25, compared to $5 if I had 2 more people with me. With my tail between my legs, all bitter, I walked back towards the restaurant until I ran into my peeps, and informed them that the only reason I came back was economic - the single taxi ride was a rip off, and I needed them to lower the rate. Well, we all fell out at that point, laughing and grabbing our bellies at the sheer stupidity of it all! Now I was back to normal and properly focused, I was able to shop in the gorgeous Murano glass store, which restored me to my regular self.

*The Houston Ladies:
Again, as smokers who get corraled into room corners, the back part of the pool deck, bars, etc., we got to meet so many wonderful characters. Two absolute sweethearts that we met were Allison & Shirley from Houston. They are best friends, and both divorced well, so they live together in a huge mansion. They had the biggest cabin on the ship, and invited us to a cocktail party one night in their cabin. The cruise supplies all the appetizers, bar and bartender. We had a blast! Axel fell immediately into deep conversation with Bill, a retired NYC detective who worked on John Lennon's murder case. Allison actually lived in the Dakota from 1966-69. Ak and I love stuff like that!
These ladies were the tops, and we will defiantely be keeping in touch with them.

*The (Older) Newlyweds:
Another smoking couple we met had actually gotten married 3 days prior to the cruise. She looks like a Barbie doll that has aged VERY well, and the husband was a silver fox, and very tall. He worried me, though, because a good gust of wind could take him right over the side. We met them the first day at the pool bar, and she asked about the scar on my neck, and said she had some cream from her last "plastic" that would make the scar disappear - I was all ears!
Early the next morning, I was having my celebratory cigarette after my 7 mile walk, when she came out to join me. She looked fine - flowy bathing suit robe thing, hat, and huge black sunglasses, just the outfit I wear to the pool. We exchanged morning pleasantries, and then she pushed up her sunglasses, and HOLY SHIT!! Black eye, cut across nose, and whole forehead bruised!
Apparantly, after closing down one of the bars the previous night, they cut through the pool deck to get back to their room, and he started to fall over a deck chair, so she jumped in front of him to cushion his fall (he would have broken like match-sticks), and ended up with a concussion and broken nose. Happy Fricking Honeymoon! You really couldn't tell when she had her glassees on. Of course I ask her what the ship's doctor gave her, and Doc only gave her 3 Tylenol with Codeine (all I could picture was that dude Doc from the LoveBoat who had no skills). I told her to buzz me if she needed anything. About 3 days later, ak and I were waiting for one of the elevators, when the doors opened in front of us, The elevator was full, but I saw a flash of blonde amid the gray, so I said "hey _____" (I feel so bad as we completely forget their names), and right away she yelled out "Joanna, I need you. Room _____". I immediately returned to our cabin, prepared her a goodie bag from my pharmacy, but then realized I was drunk and forgot their cabin #. I felt really bad. By the time I woke up the next day, I remembered, and headed up to the deck with the second largest cabins aboard. I rang their doorbell, and the maid answered, and was totally giving me the eye and the room block. I called out "It's Joanna with a care package" and I heard my girl say to the maid "That's my sister, please get what she has, please". Two days later, her and her husband were at dinner, and stopped by our table. Ak and I were amazed-she looked fantastic, and mostly all of the bruising had subsided. She thanked me over and over - I told her she didn't ever have to thank me, that I understood pain management, and that I was so happy to have been able to help.
I still can't believe we can't remember their names!

OK - this is long, and I have a few more notes, so we will break it into part one and two.
Stay tuned for PART II, sometime soon......

One more very recent funny from ak's mom.....She and her best friend from Germany spent this past weekend in South Beach. They had dinner Sunday night the the new restaurant in Versace's mansion.
http://florida-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_history_of_the_versace_mansion
Ak's mom asked to speak to the manager to inform him of the following: although the food was spectacular, the service was not up to par. They didn't get butter knives, and Gudren needed a finger bowl, napkin or something for her hands after eating stone crabs. The manager starts giving excuses, to which she replies "that is not my problem. my friend and I are writers from a German magazine, and we are going to write about the private dinner we had here tonight". She also told him how displeased she was that most of the mansion was closed due to a private party, and that wasn't dislosed to her when making the reservation. Needless to say, all their booze was comped + dessert, and the manager gave them a private tour of the entire mansion! She called us after they got back to the hotel, all buzzed up and excited, as she knew how proud I would be of her for her manipulation skills, and my motto of believing something makes it true. She has requested a set of business cards for all of us, fake last names and fake German magazine. I am on it!!!

... xoxo Jojo ...