A Fun Day At Sea

I thought there was something familiar about the calendar this weekend. It took me a moment, but then I realized that exactly one year from now, I'll be cruising my way south towards the Caribbean.

Yup, the sisters and I have planned another cruise vacation, and a couple of them have already booked their staterooms. Me, I'm waiting a few weeks because 1) I'm single, so I'll be traveling with my niece Diana, and 2) she's putting together her cruising fund as I write this. We're not going to be piling four people to a room this time, like we've done in the past. Yeah, it was fun and all, but you gotta have the right mix of people. Me and three of my sisters can pull it off, and one time I even bunked up my Amy and two of her friends, causing everybody I met that week to think I was a pimp. But as fun as that was, I prefer just having two people to a room these days.

Looking at the calendar, I see that if it were 2009 instead of 2008, I'd be spending the day lounging by the pool sipping rum-based umbrella drinks after a nice leisurely buffet breakfast, maybe hitting the casino for some mid-afternoon blackjack, and then joining the gals in one stateroom where we lounged around laughing it up and ordering a tray of cookies from room service. Kinda beats what I have going on today...

I think it would also be the first 'formal night' of the cruise, so I'd have to bust out the tux and go all James Bond for the evening. That's always fun, and it kinda feels like going to the senior prom, except now you don't have to hide the booze.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm looking at probably taking ten days off from work, spending a couple of days in Nashville at both ends of the cruise before coming back home to Vegas. Ten days away... Oh man, that's almost too much to contemplate. Since I've been here, my longest vacation away from the city has been four days. And seven days of sand, saltwater, rum, and palm trees is just what I need.

It's going to be a long year, followed by a short week.

Mikey