Cruise Pictures Online

 

I’ve finally put the pictures from our cruise online. Check them out!

Has Apple Jumped The Shark?

These guys seem to think so.  (clutches the statue, thanks God, Mom, my agent, and Seth Godin for the link.)

JTzzog

Props to JT.net for this excellent tribute to /parody of the blizzog as a result of our friendly wager on the State-Carolina game the other day.  Good times.  Check it out before it expires at 1:23 PM today. 

Cruisin’ - Days 5-7

Things have been up and down since my last post.  As I was boarding the ship about 5 minutes after I walked out of that Internet cafe in St. Maarten a few days ago, one of the security people on the ship dropped my brand new digital camera as she was loading it on to the X-ray machine. 

It’s broken.  It kinda works if all you want to do is take a picture and not zoom or use any of the other features.  I’m going back and forth with the cruise line right now about who’s going to be paying for it.  I’m not happy about it.

But, later that same night Ashley continued her unprecented streak in the casino buy hitting the jackpot on her “I Dream Of Jeannie” machine.  $800.  This brings her total winnings in 3 sessions of gambling to over $1200.  So things are not too shabby on that front. 

Don’t fret for the poor casino though.  I am doing my part to give back to them by shifting from being $100 up to $100 down on the black jack tables each night while downing $7.00 rum and cokes. 

That high was followed by the low of Wednesday’s experience in Antigua.  We were supposed to go on an excursion in the morning that took us to some phat beach, but they cancelled it at the last minute because not enough people signed up.  So we were left scrambling to decide on something else with no time to think it through.  We ended up deciding not to do anything and just explore the island on our own.

Big mistake.  The area around the pier was just beat down.  Antigua is P-O po’.  You couldn’t walk more than 3 steps without running in to someone with their hand out.  It was depressing and annoying all at the same time.  We ended up spending the day back on the ship by the pool so it wasn’t too bad.  We wished that we had been able to see some other parts of the island which we’ve heard are very nice.

The disappointment of Antigua was followed by the wonderful time we had in St. Thomas, USVI yesterday.  It was so nice.  We did this “Ultimate Island Experience” excursion where we got to see all these neat views of the island, then hang out at Magen’s Bay for a few hours, then do some shopping.  It was very cool.  We think we could come back and do St. Thomas for a whole week.

Today is our sea day as we cruise toward Nassau, Bahamas.  Then Sunday we’ll be back in Florida and reality.  :( 

Cruisin’ - Day 4

Hello from Phillipsburg, St. Maarten.  We had a wonderfiul Valentine’s Day dinner last night at one of the private restaurants on the ship.  Today we have been chillin’ all day at a place called Divi Little Bay Resort on St. Maarten. 

There’s not much more than that to report.  Despite some intermittent rain showers that last about 10 minutes at most, this has been our best day of the cruise so far.  We really enjoyed ourselves today.

Cruisin’ - Day 2 & 3

Hola from El Station Internete in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  At 6 bones for 50 minutes it was a bit more reasonable to post here than on the ship, so I thought I’d get a few more highlights of the trip in while AG prepares for tonight’s big Valentine’s Day dinner.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that on our first night here they had a karaoke night, so of course I got up to sing.  They only thing they had in my limited karaoke repertoire was EU’s “Da Butt”, which Captain Morgan and I were happy to perform for the good people. 

I went right after a guy who sang “Play That Funky Music White Boy” so the audience was good and primed.  I hammed it up and made a point of embarassing Ashley by shouting out to her before the performance and telling the cruise guy that she didn’t want me to sing, which she didn’t.  It was good times, especially since I’m a mini-celebrity on the boat now.  People keep coming up to me and telling me how much they enjoyed the performance and wanting to know when I’m going to do karaoke again.  If this whole programming thing doesn’t work out I apparently have a future as a cruise ship EU impersonator. 

I’m also trying to get used to people calling me Mr. James.  James Gaines is what they have printed on our SeaPass cards that you use for everything all over the boat.  The room stewards, the waiter at our table, and of course about 11 bartenders on board are always like, “Hello, Mr. James.” when they see me.  That’s pretty cool.

Yesterday I wore my Carolina Basketball School jersey out to the pool and had 3 different old men ask me if I played basketball for Carolina.  So now I have to remember to respond to people calling me “Da Butt”, Mr. James, and Scott Cherry.  I feel like I’m on Alias.

On the gambling front, last night I gave back the $80 I won the first night and kicked in another $40 for good measure, so I’m down now.  The slot machine juggernaut that is AG, however, is a different story.  She is currently up over $250 and has not lost yet.  There’s this one “I Dream of Jeannie” themed machine here that she is just owning.  She’s the Slot Whisperer.

Today we walked around historic Old San Juan.  It’s very pretty, but also pretty commercial.  There’s McD’s, Wendy’s and all that stuff.  We got to see this pretty bad-ass fort they used to use to protect the harbor from pirates and stuff.  Good times.

Overall we’ve been having a pretty good time on the trip, but as I just told JT.net on IM, I don’t think Ashley and I quite thought this cruise thing all the way through.  We both get pretty annoyed being around large groups of people, so paying good money to have yourself cooped up with 2498 other people for a week might not have been the best choice for us. 

It really isn’t so bad except around lunch time when we eat in the big buffet-style cafe with everyone else.  It just galls me how rude people are these days.  People just jump right in front of you in line, never excuse themselves.  It’s crazy.

That said, we’re still having a fun time.  We finally met the other 6 people at our assigned table when we showed up for dinner last night.  Much like the rest of the ship, I’d guess our tablemates average about 68 years apiece.  One couple are New Yorkers now living in Ft. Lauderdale, the other couple own a real estate company in Las Vegas (they seem loaded), and the last couple is Canadian.  We talked about everything last night from healthcare, to Clinton, to oil reserves.  It was like listening to NPR, but with Republicans.  :)  They are really nice folks and it seems we’ll have plenty to talk about all week.

Okay, I should go now.  It’s 4:45 PM here now and we have dinner reservations at one of the ship’s speciality restaurants at 6.  I still need to fight my way through the street vendors and back on to the ship.

Besides, Scott Cherry wouldn’t want to disappoint his sweet wife on Valentine’s Day, now would he?

Cruisin’ - Day 1 & 2

Greetings from the Caribbean!   I am currently looking out at the sea rushing past us as we cruise towards Puerto Rico at a brisk 24 knots.  I’ll have to keep this rather brief as I’m shelling out 50 cents a minute for the privelege of what is basically dial-up access.

The trip so far has been a bit uneven, but fun overall.  Our flight from Charlotte to Ft. Lauderdale was uneventful.  AG survived the trip with minimal freaking out.  We stayed in a super-ghetto AmeriSuites on Friday night.  It turns out I won’t be able to post pictures from here, but just remind me later to show you the picture of our room’s door.

We got on the ship pretty early since we were already in town.  Check-in was a breeze as we didn’t need to wait in line.  We were disappointed to find that we had not been assigned to a table for dinner yet, even though we had been assured a table for two when we booked our reservations.  We ended up having to wait in line and deal with the rather snotty maitre de (I’m probably spelling that wrong) who told us there was a waiting list of 10 for people that wanted two-seaters.  We ended up getting stuck at a table of 8, which I’m not too happy about.  We skipped dinner last night so I’m not sure what our table is like yet.

The combination of our ass hauling and a high pressure system in the southeast blowing cold air south has made it COLD on the deck today.  The sun is out, but it’s pretty windy and chill.  Hence, I’m inside on the Internet right now. 

There is much to be positive about, however.  The ship is gorgeous.  The staff are all very nice.  The food is pretty good, and in some cases very good.  AG won about $130 last night on the slots.  I won $80 playing blackjack.  Werd.

There’s not much more to report right now.  We’ll be in Puerto Rico tomorrow, so I’ll have to let you know what that’s all about.  I hope that everyone is doing well.  More later.

What Brown Did For Me

What Brown did for me
Originally uploaded by blizzog.

You have to hand it to my UPS guy. There is NO way anyone would suspect that I have a package waiting for me at the house.

UPDATE: I just posted this via an API call from Flickr.  Pretty kewl, for those of you that care about that kind of stuff.

Cruisin’

So we’re going on a cruise next week. We leave for Florida tomorrow night and the ship sails on Saturday.  We’re doing an eastern Caribbean deal on the Royal Caribbean “Jewel of the Seas”.

It should be pretty fun.  Ashley has never been on a cruise before and this will be my third.  I think we’re going to have a great time.  I’m not bringing my laptop with me, but I understand that we’ll have Internet access on the ship.  I just bought a huge 1GB CF card for my camera, so I hope to have lots of pictures to share.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to upload them to Flickr or not from the ship but I’ll try.  Failing that, I’ll still be posting an update or two if I can get access.

That’s all from here.  I’ll be in touch soon.

Flu Bug

Clearly the bad karma from my tongue-in-cheek yuletide post about the Salvation Army knows no bounds.  First I go home for Christmas and the Dayton-area is blanketed by its worst snowstorm in recorded history.  And now, two days before we’re supposed to fly to Florida for our cruise, I get socked with the flu bug.  Uncle!!!!  Uncle!!!!

I started feeling somewhat crappy last night and it got a little worse this morning, so I decided I didn’t want to take any chances and went to the doctor.  I rocked a nice 100.1 fever.  Sweet.  She told me that they were getting deluged with flu cases in the last few days and that there’s just something going around.  She prescribed some Tamiflu for me and told me to do nothing but rest between now and when we’re supposed to leave, and that I’d probably be okay.

I hope she’s right.  Stupid karma.