1. What is your first name? Carolyn 2. What is your favorite food? Chocolate Croissant 3. What high school did you go to? Sturgeon - yes it's named after a fish, shut up. 4. What is your favorite color? Purple 5. Who is your celebrity crush? Kenneth Branagh 6. What is your favorite drink? Lemon anything 7. Dream vacation? Volga River cruise 8. Favorite dessert? Tiramisu 9. What do you want to be when you grow up? Patient 10. What do you love most in life? Nesting 11. One word to describe you? Wacky 12. Your flickr name? Carolyn C.
This was the rarest bird - a fun meme. Go into Flickr, type the answer to each question into the search box and pick a photo that is in the results. Paste the URLs into BHL's Mosaic Maker and make something nice.
I'm a person who believes that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. That is why I spent a half-hour at work today researching the proper usage of aigu and grave accents. The Intertubes don't agree on the subject and neither do the Francophones, guessing from the number of message-board flame wars I encountered.
The consensus seems to be that the Anglophone ear can't hear the difference between è and é but I had an excellent French 30S teacher who explained the difference thusly: Say the word élève with a proper French accent, and there it is - the two different E sounds with their accents making a nice hat over the word. Now, because I have lost most of the conversational French I learned in school, you will still catch me using the karate-chop motion of the struggling French student to figure out which way it's supposed to go.
And here's the part where I tell you that it makes no difference whatsoever in the performance of my job and no one cares if I do it right, wrong or at all. But in my head when I read pique I think of a fit of anger so I learned to type piqué. Why does it matter? I haven't the first idea. They must have a pill for this sort of thing by now.
Fuck, I need to go back to work to get a break from the weekend. Once again winter has snuck up on us and we're running around getting things done, like the following:
• Staining the eastern side of the fence...by hand....two coats.....behind the fucking trees. I have "experienced" a lilac twig in every orifice on my head. It looks great though, very golden. Plus I used an environmentally-friendly natural deck oil so I wouldn't get cancer or something from eating my tomatoes.
• Taking back eight months' worth of cans & bottles. Good thing Mr. W works for a truck rental company. I nagged about this for the last three months and we do it the weekend before the first expected snowfall. Welcome to marriage, girls. At least I have my storage room back.
• Taking the last large sections of old fence to the dump. Is it wrong for a woman to love the dump, sorry landfill? Then I don't want to be right.
• And last but not least, Mr. W got Rock Band 2 this weekend. He went to a top-secret location (rhymes with "small fart") and didn't even have to wait with the teeming hordes. We played from 8AM until 2PM and my feet and hands are completely fucked. Good thing we live in a house or our neighbours would have smoked us out by now, what with all the noise. I probably won't be able to type a word at work tomorrow.
Cake's cooking at my house. Yes, that's cake in there, enough for two, fresh and hot with ice cream in FIVE minutes. My mom sent me this evil recipe.
MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE
1 lgeCoffee Mug <--mine works with a big cappucino mug
4 tablespoons flour (plain flour, not self-rising)
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
Small splash of vanilla
Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well . Add the egg and mix
thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.
Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The
cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!
Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
Would I go on a cruise again? Certainly, we both had a great time. I think it would be even more fun if we went with another couple.
Would I recommend cruising? Yes, if you do your homework carefully on all aspects of it, including reading cruise review sites and asking friends. Decide how much per day you want to spend and compare the value of a cruise to resorts and book-your-owns. I don't think I'd do it for every trip, like some people do who are bitten by the cruise bug. Some places are best seen on your own schedule. And watch your money like a hawk because the cruise lines will do their best to get it away from you.
I promise not to blame you if you don't read the whole thing, but there are people out there with questions, especially you readers who've never been on a cruise. Check my Flickr Page for the photos of our trip.
- Mr. W and I both had a bit of a nervous breakdown before we left, which is expected, since we don't travel much and have never been away from our home together for seven days. I cleaned my house top to bottom and packed within the last 48 hours. I was worried sick about the cats but they were fine, albeit a little pissed off that we were gone so long. My mother came to stay with them one night and she said Margo gave her the Puss In Boots Eyes as she left. We had a cat-cam but the Internet on the ship is patchy Alaskan dialup. Take a cellular uplink if you're on a cruise that's close to shore.
-There was a pea-soup fog in
Edmonton just as we were about to take off for Seattle.Our plane was delayed about 45 minutes on the runway as we waited for it
to clear.The American captain was a
douche about it because he said, “If it was SEATAC we’d be able to leave, but its
Edmonton so we have to stay”. Fuck off, Captain sir. We like to make certain we're safe before we leave around here. There may be ice particles settling on the runway that you can't see, which is something Canadians know plenty about.
-We spent a few hours in Seattle
at the Pike Street Market.It’s just
like Granville Island, only bigger and even more of a maze.There’s a fish shop there where they throw a
giant plastic fish at you as you walk by.They
nearly gave ten tourists a heart attack.We ate in a patchouli-scented place with a great bakery, just as you
would imagine a couple of Seattle hippies. I want to go back there someday even though Seattle smelled really foul that day for some reason - exactly like an open sewer. I have a sensitive nose.
-We were herded like sheep onto
the ship and we basically crashed after that, since we’d had four hours of
sleep (our flight was for 6:30).Then we got back up & watched
the departure.It was sunny, smooth and
clear.It was SUCH a cliché with
seagulls and sailboats and blue water, only I couldn't bring myself to be cynical about it. We laid on the lounge chairs and got too much sun for our Canadian skin. I actually got a bit red from the sun...in Seattle.
-The top four levels of the ship
are open to the weather, and it was great out so we spent the evening
up there, went to work out and hit the sack.We hit rougher seas during the night and we were up & down – Mike
could hear the ice in our fridge and our hangers rattling away. Apparently the motion rocked me to sleep quite well, though.
-The second day's seas were really rough – 12 foot swells.Mike had a
seasickness/sunstroke attack that morning but a combination of the patch (thank
you Boss Lady) and some painkillers straightened him out nicely.That, and a nice walk in the fresh air made
things much better. I heart the Promenade Deck. We were walking out there with no coats on and a couple walked by in parkas and toques (OK stocking caps, they were American).“Aren’t you cold?” they asked.“Nah, we’re Canadian,” we said.
-We met every stripe of
American and some Brits.Everyone seems to go into Cruise Mode where it's perfectly OK to ask complete strangers for their life stories in the elevator or the pool or at dinner. I thought we would feel isolated, being alone together on the ship. Everyone was just so freaking nice and outgoing. It took at least a day for my defences to drop. I made some good friends on that ship - and one of them was 50 years older than me.
- The service was impeccable, which is par for the course. It's a little weird to have people waiting on me hand and foot. I mean, my bed was made twice a day, as was the bathroom. Dirty dishes disappeared behind a revolving door. There was a chocolate on my pillow, afternoon fruit delivery, towel and blanket service, etc. etc. Not sure I can get used to that because the Scottish necessity of shifting for one's self runs strong in me.
- The ship's service crew is mostly Thai and Filpino and the rest of the crew is from everywhere else, with a strong Aussie contingent. Everyone was really interested in Canada, and believe me I know when people are just talking to fill the air. Almost everyone we spoke to had dozens of questions, like we were from deepest darkest Transylvania. We were two of maybe eight Canadians aboard out of 2600. One other couple we met told us of some bad experiences they had at the beginning of the war in Iraq, where they were ostracized by other passengers for being Canadian. How childish!
- And the food! Oh, I had a freshly-baked croissant on my breakfast plate every day, which is a lovely fantasy to me. One thing my Boss Lady explained to me that we passed on to the other passengers is that if you want seconds in any dining room, all you have to do is ask. They aren't allowed to say no to the guests. So we each had two plates of Alaskan King crab one night, and Mr. W had a lobster pasta entreé and a rack of lamb another night. We split three desserts most nights. And here is the part where I tell you we both lost weight!! No lie - the Wii Fit says so. Our room was at the back of the ship so there was a lot of walking, plus just strolling around doing stuff and seeing the sights.
- We did go swimming. A lot of people thought we were crazy and would come & ask us about the water, even though we were in the indoor pool. It was great to swim again after 20-odd years. We would jump from the pool to the hot tub while everyone else was out on excursions at Juneau.
- The towns were very nice but the only one that captured my heart was Skagway because it seemed to have a life beyond the cruise line-owned tourist trap stores. Juneau in particular is extremely touristy, and with three other ships in port at the same time as ours everywhere was jammed with people. I got to experience the American Sale Shopping Elbow. You guys really aren't as polite as we are but you do have some steel balls, elbowing a giant Canadian lady in the stomach. Haven't you heard about our fighting skills? We are mostly Scottish after all. We'll cut ya - and then apologize and apply some sort of ointment.
- They herded us out of our rooms at 8:30 am on the last day - heartless bastards! But we got to sail through American customs because we were foreign, hooray!
- Our flight back was oversold, apparently this is allowed on American carriers. (Just FYI, Canadian carriers are not allowed to oversell their planes, not even one little bit. American carriers can't overbook flights leaving Canada. Fly back into Canada on a Canadian carrier if you can manage it - take it from me.) We waited in SEATAC for four hours, a good chunk of that with no place to sit, to see if we could get on our flight. Thankfully because we were so early we didn't get bumped. Seattle, I'm sorry to say that your airport sucks ass. Really it is undersized for the amount of traffic passing through, especially on a cruise debarkation day. We flew home with a team of juvenile football players from St. Albert. They separated Mr. W and me on the plane, can you believe it? Fortunately the person sitting next to me was a 13-year-old football player and Mr. W's seat partner was the coach, so we swapped. It was like flying in a plane loaded with stinky monkeys.
-
We only bought dirt cheap souvenirs, and the fact that end-of-season sales were on meant that we only had $45 to claim, I shit you not. The customs agent in Edmonton was ready to strip-search us and check our various cavities for loose diamonds until we said we were already poor from paying for the trip, we couldn't afford much else. Thankfully he had an entire team of stinky monkeys behind us to question. Afterwards I thought we probably should've said something about the three bottles of Aleve in our luggage, which I forgot about. It is only available by prescription up here. I wanted to cry when we walked into a Seattle drugstore and saw an entire wall of it out in the aisle.
