Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Mexican Wheelchair

In Costa Maya, we split up into two groups, since Scarlett had already been on the tour of the Mayan ruins that The Weege and I wanted to do. And thus the day began.

The Weege and I got moving pretty early since we'd spent the entire cruise to date saying "hey, we have to sign up for the ruins tour" and then forgetting to do so, so we wanted to make sure that we would be able to catch one of the non-Royal Caribbean tours in some semblance of reasonable time. We went up to the Windjammer for some breakfast, where we were able to look out over the rainforest-y areas along the coast, and check out the Mystery Cruise Ship docked next to us (it was some kind of foreign ship we couldn't identify). We walked off the boat and down the seven billion miles of pier to get to the orgy of Mexican consumerism that awaited us at the end. Some of you may understand how I get about large crowds, especially when said crowds are comprised of the kinds of morons who stop dead in their tracks, effectively bottlenecking the entire entrance to, you know, MEXICO, because they can't figure out that the appropriate place to read a map or decide what to do is not the MIDDLE OF THE WALKWAY, so I got kind of scary and bullish and dragged The Weege through to the clean, demento-tourist free air, where we were promptly accosted by nine hundred Mexican men, all of whom were saying "hola ladies, come buy something nice for yourself? Something nice for your boyfriend?" All Mexican salesmen were like this, which was kind of cute and charming once you realized you could ignore these people and they weren't going to chase you down the street (for the most part). The Awesome Mexican Salesman Dude of the Week Award definitely went to this one guy who entreated us to buy something nice for our EX-boyfriends, which I thought was pretty excellent. God only knows what he was selling in there.

We went right up to a kiosk and a nice guy told us the tour ran $45 a person (which was about what it would cost to go through RC, so we were okay with that) and took about 3 hours. Presumably since the ship was docked instead of tendered in this port, we actually had a lot of time - the boat didn't leave until 6. So we handed over our money and he gave us tickets and instructions to come back and see him in 20 minutes, since he needed to rustle up a driver. That made me mildly nervous, but I evenutally decided that having someone steal our $90 was better than having them steal US and either kill or ransom us. Interestingly, this was one of the few things that The Weege did not get all weirdly paranoid about. We headed over to the shoppy-shop area, where there was more hola-ing and more stuff to buy, and I bought a pretty yellow dress with emboidered flowers. The stands were actually pretty cool - lots of pottery and these dresses just hanging from the rooves - although rife with assorted inappropriate crap that I couldn't imagine anyone who hadn't recently married a close relative buying. On the other hand, imagining rednecks going back home with a twisty Corona bottle with a pair of clay Mexicans having very flexible sex attached to it thinking it was the funniest goldurn thing they'd ever seen did give me considerable entertainment, and filled the times where I was avoiding making eye contact with the shopkeepers lest they try and sell me more crap.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Scarlett tried to decide what to wear on her pseudo-date with The DR, which mostly meant that she danced around the room whild singing to herself. When we did the pre-blogging recap, she felt it necessary to list in detail what she wore, so I will do the same: red and pink bikini with little beads on it, a jean skirt, and brown espadrilles, and she carried a tee shirt in her purse. I'm sure your lives are better for having this knowledge. She then headed up to the pool deck and hung out for a little bit, which was apparently not that great since there were mostly little hoppy children shrieking around, which helps no one. So she went to the Windjammer for lunch and was accosted by one of the Angry Royal Caribbean Female Staffers who told he she needed to have a shirt on to go in there, so she shirted up, then headed in, where she was then stared at creepily by an odd staffer and then by UnShy who wanted to know where The Weege and I were and also to inform Scarlett that everyone would be by the pool that day. Having run out of conversation, he then went away, to the relief (probably) of all involved. She then proceeded back to the room for more aimless dancing while waiting for The DR to call and set up a meeting point. Regrettably, The DR was not very bright, and decided that the best idea would be to arrange to meet at these trolleys which run up and down the pier, apparently not understanding that trolleys move. Naturally, the excecution was botched, wherein Scarlett had used her logical reasoning skills and gone way the hell down the pier to the only trolley that was STATIONARY was parked, while The DR waited at the trolley pickup point shortly off the boat, thus demonstrating that he did not, in fact, understand that whole part about trolleys being mobile. Luckily, logic prevailed when the lightbulbs went on at either end of the pier and they both started walking towards the trolleys they had respectively NOT chosen initially, and met in the middle, whereupon they headed for the shops and The DR used the excessively odd word/sentiment choice of telling Scarlett "I feel like big man when I'm with you" which made no sense but really was no more bizarre than the rest of the stuff he said over the course of the week.

After I bought my dress, we decided to head back to our friend at the kiosk since a.) it was about time, and b.) the woman I bought my dress from was extremely aggressive and wanted to sell The Weege "very sexy dress" like you would not believe. Very dedicated to boosting The Weege's foxiness quotient, this woman. Once she pulled down a pant suit with a very large crocheted acreage, we both kind of thought "right. not." and made our excuses, although we did have to SWEAR we would come back to see her and buy very sexy clossing for The Weege on our way back before the woman looked like she wouldn't chase us. We met up with the Kiosk Friend, who took us around to the back of the shops where the parking was, where we walked past several big tour busses and vans to arrive at.......a small red car. This was one of the things The Weege was nervous about, but I felt that if someone wanted to kidnap us they would be shadier about it and not have a kiosk. There was also another pair of ladies in the car with us, one of whom was from DC and worked for the State Department, and she was with her mother, who I think lived somewhere else, but was awesome, as you will see later. So we all packed in the car, and proceeded to set out for the Chacchoben Ruins, which have remarkably only been...known about, I guess, for something like 4 or 5 years. And if you check out that link, you'll understand why that's doubly amazing - they are ENORMOUS, so the idea that something on that scale could just be hanging out in the jungle without notice is pretty cool. We drove to the ruins at about 150 kilometers an hour, which would have been a lot more horrifying if everyone else wasn't driving the same speed, and the driver was this really sweet, great guy who gave us some info about the area and answered every single one of our dumb tourist questions. He was also very cheerful about pointing things out en route, i.e. "that place, it has crocodiles. We can stop on the way back."

We arrived and hopped out, and spent about an hour roaming around the ruins by ourselves, having eschewed the services of the guides, who were available at about $35. Per person. Yeah, no thanks, Ruins People. The ruins were, as we had guessed, really one of those things where the oldness and still-standing-ness of them is the main point, and walking around under the canopy of the trees, and touching the ancient stones that made them up really got the meaning across as best as any guide could. Shortly after hiking our way up a path to a pair of ruins atop a big hill (that may or may not have been and Official Path - we kind of looped around a back way), we ran into the DC woman and her awesome mom, who had just come up another way. The mom was probably in her eighties, and looked quite frail, but when we ran into her she was kind of like "damn, I'm hot. How about this humidity? Good way to break in my new knee." I'm just saying, it takes a special kind of lady to get a knee replacement and then not even flinch at the idea of hiking up ruins in Mexico. Good on ya, DC Lady's Mom. We headed back, apparently completely missing Neil Diamond and the Missourienne - they saw us but we were far afield of them and they didn't want to be weird by bellowing across the open space. I picked up some cool figures of Mayan warriors for Speed and Dad, and then we sat down to have a soda and water. The Weege was resisting consuming pretty much anything in Mexico because of the usual hyper-paranoid DON'T DRINK THE WATER hysteria, which apparently, at least in high school has been expanded to include not eating meat or bottled water, either. Yeah, I don't know. Our driver came over and joined us at the little cantina and chatted while we waited for the DC Lady and her mom to rejoin us, then got back into the car with it's sweet, sweet air conditioning, and headed back towards Costa Maya at the same speed as before.

Already back at the port, Scarlett and The DR were entertaining themselves by roaming around to the shops until they decided to go to the beach, which of course meant that more insanity ensued. The DR asked some folks about how to get there, and then they took the same general "possibility of kidnapping" route towards the back of the shops to catch a cab, at which point The DR immediately latched onto Scarlett like some kind of crazed octopus. After fending him off at least so there didn't wind up being baby-making in the cab, they arrived at the beach town and started walking endlessly through an area noticeably devoid of beach. They finally found it, and to Scarlett's disappointment this was not a Grand Cayman style gorgeous sparkling beach, but instead was grubby and populated by one-legged dogs. I didn't see it, I'm just reporting the facts. They stopped by a Corona Dispensing Establishment of some sort before walking to find a place where they could at least sit down, if not actually lay out or do any of the other things you would associate with tropical beaches, and once they had popped a squat, The DR offered up the highly entertaining line "why on the ship you look like you want to attack me and out here when we can do something you are so different," to which the answer is presumably obvious. As Scarlett put it: "to which I wanted to be like 'well duhh it's just a game,' but I just smiled and took a swig of my beer," and as I will add: "[DR], perhaps you should not hang your romantic future on drunken women on cruise ships, no matter how crazy they act." After a while of chatting and making out, they headed back towards the cabs, being hailed by the various people from the cruise who The DR knew, because he was pretty much in the Mafia. I am not sure I'm kidding about that. Most of his time on the ship, while not being attacked/accosted by Scarlett, was spent shaking hands with assorted mafioso types and old biddies, and he's generally known by everyone, but not in that "hey, dude who serves me booze" way, but more like that creepy "those people totally kill people for a living" way. The recognition promptly activated the Paranoia Sector of The DR's brain, and he began briefing Scarlett on her cover story, which was that she worked on the boat in the Kiddie Corner. This was the lamest story ever, and also not The DR's first foray into intense paranoia, as he had decided at an early date that Scarlett's Actual Boyfriend worked for Interpol and thus would be able to hunt down and kill The DR. You can insert your own snide comments about how perhaps if he thinks it will result in his death, The DR might want to STOP MESSING AROUND WITH SCARLETT. As the cab was pulling away, The DR realized he had lost his wallet, and instead of thinking the rational thing (that being "my wallet is lost, because I am AT A RANDOM BEACH IN MEXICO") he decides that they need to go back and find it. He wound up going into the little Corona Dispensery they had visited before and asking about the wallet, at which point someone COMES UP WITH IT, and The DR pays them and leaves. Because he is in the Mob.

In any case, they get back to port, and The DR heads back to the ship while Scarlett decides to do some shopping but instead runs into The Weege and I, where we have been hanging out at a little cabana bar since returning from the ruins.

And now we return to black text since the stories have rejoined, and also to add emphasis, because in a short while something awesome will happen. So, The Weege and I were hanging out, ruing the decision to not bring bathing suits because there was this really cool pool/bar thing in the center of all the shops where you could swim right up to the bar and then (presumably, although it looked like most people were sticking close to the bar) float around in wonderful Mexican bliss with your refreshing beverage and think about what a lucky bastard you were to be in Costa Maya with your daquiri. In any case, we were chilling and people watching while buying beers and margaritas from these two nice though low-key Mexican guys. The three of us hung out for a while, and then were joined by these other girls who we would see around the pool deck primarily, but who also seemed to turn in around the same time as us (i.e. usually pretty late), so we'd often have in-transit stairway conversations with them. So they pulled up to the bar and we all started chatting, which needless to say thrilled the bartenders who now had not three but SIX American girls hanging out with them. This is where the awesomeness begins, and for this reason I will quickly name our soon to be notorious friends Nancy, George and Bess (from Nancy Drew, DUH. And George is a girl).

I missed the actual source of the fun when I decided to just go hit up a couple stores since we were clearly not going to make a full tour of ALL the seventy million little shoppy-shops before we had to get back on the boat in a few hours. When I left, the scene was as follows: Scarlett was sober but was having a drink, The Weege and I had a buzz on but were a couple beers short of actually drunk, Nancy was also buzzed but maybe only ONE beer from drunk, Bess was sober-seeming but drinking pretty quickly, and George was quietly drunk but slowing down. Everyone was chatting and having fun. Fine. I left for maybe 20-30 minutes, and when I came back, all hell had broken loose, in the MOST awesome way possible. While I was gone, apparently the Nancy Drew Trio immediately busted out their secret booze IVs and had the bartenders give them tequila bottles to attach to them, because the drunkenness went up SUBSTANTIALLY. Let me say here that I bought myself a lovely tanzanite and coral ring that I enjoy very much and thus my shopping was successful. On to the crazy.

What happened was that shots were ordered in great volume, by our party and also a gentleman wearing a mint green shirt who for some reason thought that telling us to stop swearing because there were kids around would be the best way to ingratiate himself into our gathering. He then got all "ha ha, PSYCH" and then began with the shots. Then two guys from the ship arrived, having recognized us all (since we represented about 90% of our age group on the ship), and Bess proceeded to demonstrate the level of drunkenness she had achieved by randomly making out with one of these men, who was about 45, WHILE still drinking her beer. This eventually devolved into her sort of aiming the stream of beer towards her mouth but mostly missing and watering her shirt with it. Having used up one beer in this manner, she promptly picked up SCARLETT'S beer and began "drinking" that. Having finished my shopping, I'd headed for the pool bar, first to put my feet in and then thinking "oh the hell with it, it's Mexico, I'm on vacation and we're going back to the boat," so I hopped in in my clothes, foolishly assuming that there was only a smooth stroll back to the ship to follow.

My first indication that this was not to be was the crashing sound of Bess eating pavement in an attempt to come chat with me at the pool, which left her spread eagled on the ground, in a skirt. Meanwhile, at the bar, this odd Navy Man (his claim, we have no verification of his affiliation with the Navy) is talking to Scarlett all "I WILL HELP YOU TO THE BOAT," assuming that EVERYONE is as demented drunk as Bess. Scarlett described this conversation as being capped with her looking over towards the sound of Bess' poolside crash. Nancy and Scarlett swooped in at this point and wrestled Bess towards the bathroom, where she proved to be unable to do much, including peeing, throwing up, or talking, so Scarlett came bombing out to get me out of the pool for backup. Luckily, the port security folks had been alerted, and there was one person waiting outside, who eventually produced a wheelchair for which we will all be eternally grateful since there was no way in hell we ever would have gotten Bess back to the ship without it.

So I came over and helepd get Bess into said wheelchair, then Scarlett, Nancy and I rounded up George and The Weege and all our assorted purses and shopping bags and began the long and incredibly hilarious travel to the ship, which was marked by all the Mexican shop owners emerging from their shops to take pictures and video on their cell phones and all of us basically talking crazy with double checking that we had everything, etc. At the start of the pier, the port folks put Bess on the trolley along with a drunken George, which proved to be the Number Two Worst Idea of the day, the number one winner of course being allowing Bess to get that ripped. Many of you gentle readers may have been drunk out of your mind at one point and then needed to get on some form of transportation...do you remember what happened?

That's right, you puked all over the goddamn place, which is exactly what happened. The non-trolley gang was trailing the trolley a little, so all we saw was Bess and George getting off the trolley and promptly spackling the sidewalk with tequila-scented puke. One way or the other, we hauled Bess back to the ship, with her and George merrily recoloring the walls as we passed people going to dinner, and got them situated in the room. Scarlett actually even thought to call the ship nurse, who was a devil woman - we were basically asking her if Bess was going to vomit herself to death, and instead the woman wants to say helpful things like "well, no one was forcing the drinks down her throat," which of course just blew our minds because that was ENTIRELY not the issue, but eventually she left and we decided that Bess would probably not die.

So once we got everyone settled and were reasonably sure that George would be able to react to any further puking incidents that occurred in a useful manner and reassured her that we would come back, our gang plus Nancy headed for the Windjammer for a theraputic dinner. Naturally, the REDNECKS from the SuperBowl of all people walked past us and asked us how our friend was doing. We told them she was fine, and they proceeded to maintain their complete lack of social skills by basically grunting that the information had been received and wandering off. We headed back to check on George and Bess, and Nancy decided to peel off then and keep an eye on them. "Good times, good times" type pleasantries were exchanged, and we went on our way to the theatre, obviously to tell everyone we could find about the adventures.

The first person we ran into was The Peruvian, who we forced to listen to the whole story, and who laughs and generally takes the story in. There was obvious comprehension. This is important to note. So then we saw The Mexican and go tell HIM the story, at which point he freaks out and asks how old Bess is for some reason, and then weirdly goes "I made her a flower," which we had to ask him to explain because what? So he demonstrates by making a rose out of a cocktail napkin, which he then gives to The Weege. Methinks he had a bit of a crush on Bess. So anyway, we sit down, and he's all "you look tired, are you ok? Do you want a drink?" So we ordered some drinks and watched part of the show before getting bored, so we roamed around a little bit before running into...George and Nancy! We all chatted a little, then again broke off to go to the Schooner Bar, where there was the usual karaoke and games, and where we also ran into The DR, who Scarlett was quick to update on the events. So on our way out, we saw Neil Diamond and the Missourienne, who also had run into the Nancy Drew Girls, so after a short description of them to get Neil and the Missourienne on the same page, you guessed it, we told THEM the story, to which the ever-deadpan Neil responded "wow, thanks for the update," and then gave Scarlett a "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" look to indicate that they knew EXACTLY what was going on with her and The DR.

On our way out of the Schooner, we saw The Peruvian, who asked us where our friends were, which was insane because a.) it had been maybe an hour since we TOLD him and b.) clearly some remnant of the story had stuck in his brain since we didn't hang out with the ND Girls all the time and thus it was odd for him to ask about "our friends." So we go over the story again, and then promptly run into the cruise director, who ALSO got told the story and appropriately cracked up. This was all really hilarious once we were sure Bess wasn't going to die, although it was scary there for a bit.

On our way to the elevators, we see none other than ALL THREE Nancy Drew Girls chilling out in the atrium! Apparently Bess woke up after a few rock-hard hours of sleep as though nothing had happened, and Nancy and George were now recapping the day's events for her, so we stopped to chat and also to give them the list of people we had blabbed to. After a short time, we headed off, thus ending the brief but thrilling period of being actively involved in the Nancy Drew Girls' adventures, although we did see them frequently in the usual places in the following days. The Weege and I were fairly pooped, but Scarlett wanted to go up to the Viking for a bit, so she went up and had one drink while apparently being ogled by one half of the two shaved-head security guys who we referred to as The Russian Mob because that's exactly what they looked like. Eventually, UnShy comes by and Scarlett asks him what his plans for Cozumel are, to which he replies that he will be on the internet for two hours. Naturally, Scarlett asks WHY he will be on the internet in a sunny Mexican port and also why it's for exactly two hours, and he answers that he has people to talk to and "many many things to look up," the latter part of which he said in a tone that seemed to indicate "and the things that I will be looking up will be your home address, because I am weird and maybe a stalker."

Needless to say, Scarlett lost the desire to just lurk around the Viking, so she came back to the room, where she and The Weege decided they were hungry, so they attempted to hit up the Solarium snack bar, only to be foiled by the curse of the Solarium. On the return, I understand that for some reason they decided to be ballerinas, and did some fantastic footwork while jumping wildly down the stairs. Ballerina style. Whatever that means. Just reporting the facts.

That would be me, The Weege and Scarlett in the non-insane portion of the day, before the peace of beautiful Costa Maya was forever shattered! The pool bar is in the background. This pic is nice because you can't really see how sunburned I was from Cayman and The Weege was from her "Tanning With The Germans" day.

Don't Give Up The Ship

We woke up to mild confusion, because we were supposed to arrive in Grand Cayman on our third day, but the boat was still distinctly rocking. Not at all as badly as the past couple days, but still moving. We did hear the tender boat tickets being called though, so we sent an ambassador (The Weege) to go get us some tickets. That sounds like we forced the foreigner to do our bidding, but it only sounds like that because you haven't ever woken up in the same room as The Weege. She's up maybe 10 minutes before she is like "OKAY LET'S GO" which I guess is a combo of her perpetual energy and her deep and obsessive love for food and resulting need for immediate breakfast. It's a little scary. So we distracted her with the ticket mission, and lolled around for a little bit before she came back for a second round of pestering that finally got us out of bed. We walked upstairs to see the amazing Caribbean water and a small fleet of cruise ships waiting out the windows with the sun shining down over all of it. It was so freaking cool. There were probably about 6 other cruise ships out there, all anchored.

On Scarlett's last cruise, the timing worked out perfectly where they got their tickets and then did breakfast...they finished their meal just as their number was called. So we attempted to do the same, but I think since we were on a later tender boat, they were really zipping them out, so we had barely sat down before our ticket was called. When we heard it, The Weege started SHOVING food into her mouth, as though there would be no food for the REST OF THE DAY. I had a couple portable food things, so I just took those for the walk down to the tender, but The Weege was harfing down piles of pancakes, everything, until we finally just grabbed her and hauled her down to the boat. It was still fairly rocky, so you had to do a sort of trench run across the gangway - I almost had to double up to get under the porthole-door-thing of the ship as the cruise ship went down and the tender boat went up. It took about three YEARS to get to the island, which was mildly infuriating since...let's get to the BEACH already, people, but I was so fascinated by the color of the water that I kind of tuned out. I would like to note that on this tender boat, no one tried to sell us any fucking jewelry or tee shirts, for which I am grateful.

Got off the boat, got attacked by cameras. If you haven't been on a cruise you may not know this, and for all I know, it's strictly a Royal Caribbean thing, but they LOVE taking your picture. Every time you turn around, some RC person is shoving a camera in your face. Now, at this point, we have my standard aversion to cameras, and The Weege's face has now BLISTERED and she's extra-super self-concious about it, so we both reacted to this poor RC guy like we were vampires and he was wielding a garlic braid with a mirror taped to his forehead. There was also some dude dressed as a pirate, which I obviously loved because I am five, so I gave him a good "ARRRRR" before Scarlett finally caught up with us (she got stuck behind some old people) and I figured I should cut the pirate crap. This is why I should go on a cruise with The Marine and Diamond Lil...they would be right there with the pirate adventures. We headed up the street to browse the stores, and that was when I sort of figured out how this whole port city thing was going to be.

I had a recurring issue with the port city concept, that being that I desperately want to visit every place on the planet. My grandmother has given me a subscription to Smithsonian magazine for several Christmases now, and it is both the best and worst gift ever...on the one hand they always do SUCH awesome stories on all these exotic locales and stuff, which are interesting and unusual, but the problem is that I then want to GO to all of these places. So, when we were going to Cayman, I wanted to see a little bit of the actual Cayman Islands, which is definitely not what Georgetown's port area is. It's basically like taking the Natick Mall and painting it bright colors...there were plenty of little souvenir shacks with hand made stuff, but it was the SAME handmade stuff that you see in all tropical areas. Little critters made of coconuts and shells, stuff like that. So anyway, as much as I would LOVE to own stuff from Mikimoto, if I decided to buy it, I would go to a mall AT HOME, when I wasn't in the middle of the spending orgy that constitutes a cruise. I felt like I wasn't really seeing Cayman, which I guess is not why you go on a cruise if you're smart, but I just thought it was worth noting. NOT that this means I didn't have a blast, because I did.

We finished looking at the shops without really buying anything, and then headed back towards the pier to catch a cab to the beach. En route, we saw this one woman completely randomly fall over and crash land at the feet of this giant pirate statue, which was more hilarious than I can probably explain here...she just LAY there, spread eagled, clearly in that kind of total "how did I wind up on the GROUND" shock that you usually see in kids. We found this total sketchpad of a taxi, which I was pretty sure was going to kidnap us, driven by one dude who was obviously the driver, and co-piloted by some weird guy who we couldn't firmly identify as a driver or a random tourist. Quite the mystery. In any case, they did NOT kidnap us, and took us to the beach at the Royal Palms where we paid $5 each for a goddamn beach chair, and spent a few hours alternating baking in the sun and going in the wonderful cool, beautiful, EXTRA salty water...it was so buoyant that I could hardly get my feet down when I floated on my back. At one point I told The Weege the salt water would be good for her face, which prompted her to go in the water and REFUSE TO COME OUT. Good times. Scarlett and I had a beer, then we all headed back to the taxi stand, where we got placed in a bus carrying more people than you would ever have thought possible. It wasn't quite the Egyptian levels of people hanging out of doors and windows, but you all sat in seats, and then there were FOLD OUT SEATS in the aisles that people got put in! It was insane. We then walked back to the tenders from the taxi drop off point. Now, as we've established, The Weege was paranoid about her face. It honestly did look pretty bad, but at this point, pretty much only WE knew it looked bad because we inspected it up close at various points when she was freaking out about it in the room. To anyone else, who didn't know to look for stuff like blisters, she just looked sunburned, which EVERYONE ON THE SHIP WAS. Nevertheless, she continued to act like a complete psycho about this, and was walking around with her baseball cap pulled SO FAR DOWN ON HER FACE that she couldn't even see anything above like...knee level ahead of her. If there had been a mailbox or something sticking off a building at chest level, she would have gotten clotheslined and never seen it coming. Scarlett spent the whole walk back to the tenders yelling at her that she looked like an escapee from some kind of institution (she did) and that she was going to get us all arrested just for looking suspicious (amazed we didn't), and to stop looking like a goddamn weirdo. She declined on all counts.

Back on the ship, The Weege and I went to check our email while Scarlett headed for the pool deck to lay out. We all reconvened on the pool deck, at which point The Mexican stopped by and asked Scarlett if she was "okay today" which impressed me because if I had dealt with her in psycho mode as she was the night before I probably would have either run or thrown a drink on her. When she answered in the affirmative, he asked again, just to check, and then chatted shortly before he went off to bring drinky liquid joy to other, non-insane people, and we headed for the hot tubs. The DR appeared shortly, and The Weege and I made eye-rolling faces while Scarlett pointlessly grilled him on why he had gone to the beach with The Mexican instead of with her, until he left, presumably also to get a break from the crazy. Shortly thereafter, a bunch of people NOT WELL VERSED IN HOT TUB ETIQUETTE decided that although there were three adult women in the hot tub, it was as good a time as any to try and cram about 8 other people in there, so we left to go to dinner, where we heard from Neil Diamond and the Missourienne that their credit union didn't accept transactions posted from Mexico (I have no idea) so they tried to pay for something that of course was like $3, and the card was denied so they had to look around for anyone from the ship who might decide to be their friends for a $3 friendship fee and needless to say they were a little stressy. It all worked out in the end though.

We then headed for the Schooner Bar for some drinks, but I was feeling icky so I went to crash. I really only needed a little nap, I think, because when I woke up I felt fine, but I was SO PISSED that I missed out on the hilarity that ensued once I left. I was also pissed because SEVERAL TIMES, Scarlett went to our cabin and harassed The Weege about sleeping and hauled her out of bed...I wish she had done so with me that night, but it was not to be, apparently.

As previously noted, The Weege was just getting to know Scarlett, so I guess they started chatting about Scarlett's past, present and future career situation, which started with an aim towards news, currently is at a DC think tank, and the future is in flux until she figures out how she feels about a variety of variables. The mention of news, however, prompted a seriously insane man to come over and abruptly announce that he could not help overhearing them, had worked at K-something-or-other in New Orleans for a number of years and that they should "feel free to pick his brain." And then sat down and remained perfectly silent while awaiting questions. I can only assume that Scarlett was not drunk enough to either tell him to get lost or just flat out ignore him, because she started asking him questions, mostly for politeness' sake. With every question it became more apparent that if in fact he HAD worked for K-whatever, he'd probably put them out of business, since he knew nothing despite Scarlett's tossing him total fluff questions. Luckily, Scarlett and The Weege didn't need to agonize over the debate between whether he was so drunk he couldn't remember anything useful or whether he'd just never worked in news, because his equally nutty wife showed up to join the party. The Weege was fascinated by these people and started asking the WIFE questions, at which time the wife declares that she used to be an opera singer but now works for the Department of Homeland Security. Oooookay. So naturally at this point they asked her if she was going to sing in the karaoke (we all got a little obsessed with the karaoke once we discovered how GOOD the contestants were...seriously, these people rocked. Not that it was 100% suck free, but still...by and large there was awesomeness.), and the wife said no, there was some tragic accident and she doesn't sing anymore. Scarlett, presumably at this point lubed up enough to call bullshit, asked why she didn't sing anymore, since clearly she could talk, et cetera, and the woman launches into this whole "oh it takes me a month to even train for a performance and it just became too much" routine, which...hold up here for a minute.

First of all, don't be That Guy. This is KARAOKE ON A CRUISE SHIP. It's not a performance. It's karaoke. Sucking is half the fun. If you are That Guy, the one who gets all "it is my craaaaaah-ft" about any aspect of singing no matter what, just stop. No one's coming to you begging you to put on Carmen because the on-board lounge singer fell overboard. It's kara-fucking-oke. Second of all, bullshit. Total bullshit. Many-to-all of the people reading this know that I sang in high school. I did a LOT of singing, and I was good at it. I did a HELL of a lot of opera, and I did it as a soprano. It DOES take a lot of work to stay loose and to rehearse for a performance, but it does not take you a fucking month to be able to sing, which is basically what this woman was insinuating. And especially if this is your JOB as this woman was claiming, you're not starting from scratch. You have rehearsals and practice time and daily routines, and that keeps your voice loose. So don't sell that shit here, we're all stocked up. Needless to say, I wish I was there.

Back to the story, the waitress comes over to take drink orders, at which point the Weirdo Couple insists violently on buying Scarlett a drink, which prompted a certain level of concern that these people were going to proposition Scarlett and The Weege for some kind of deviant sexual activity. They then proceed to get even weirder by explaining that they never get off the ship, at any of the ports, and that the mere concept of getting off the boat is stupid. They then went on to explain that Scarlett and The Weege should ALSO never get off the boat, and for every thing that Scarlett and The Weege said they wanted to do off the ship, the Weirdos had an answer:

The Weege: Well we want to see the sights and do some shopping.
Weirdo Lady: But you could go to the spa instead!

Okay, Weirdos? STAY AT HOME AND GO TO THE SPA. Lord. So odd. After discussing the reasons to never ever leave the ship (I'm sure there's some kind of commentary on how Americans drive everywhere and don't like leaving their vehicles in here somewhere), the female psycho hops up and is all "well this has been great but time for bed kthxbye," stops to HAUL her passed out husband out of his chair, and the wander off merrily into the night.

The ladies, having survived the Psycho Family Encounter, moved on to the South Pacific lounge for the Karaoke, where they ran into a woman we nicknamed Texas because every time we saw her (and this held true for the entire cruise) she had GIGANTIC BOUFFY HAIR of the variety you see at Texas Country Fairs. Now, if there is anyone who promotes big hair it is me (I more or less want to look like the Country Music Awards every day) but this was not the good kind. It just looked so odd and outdated on her. But in any case it turned out she was fairly nice and Scarlett actually chatted with her a bunch of times during the week. They sat down with Texas and her boyfriend who I guess we'll call just plain Tex, and Texas was all excited because she was going to sing karaoke, and Tex was Cheerleader Number One all talking about how great she was and how Scarlett and The Weege were going to be blown away and fall off their chairs from the sheer fabulousity of it all. She headed up to sign up for karaoke and in the meantime, presumably to keep himself occupied, Just Plain Tex decided to start hitting on Scarlett and The Weege. This continued EVEN WHEN TEXAS RETURNED (and at other points during the cruise)...he would be sitting there WITH TEXAS BETWEEN HIM AND SCARLETT, with his arm around Texas but like...caressing Scarlett's arm. I think we can all agree - total creepster. However, this was NOT the man who would win the Creepster of the Week award! That is a story for another day.

Texas comes back and details how the crazed woman who ran these karaoke shindigs got shirty with her about her song choice, telling her that the Whitney Houston song Texas had chosen was "very difficult" and thus Texas had to sing Cher's "Believe" DESPITE the fact that Texas had informed this woman that she was MISS TEEN LOUISIANA thank you very much and she could sing her ass off. Let's just talk about the Karaoke Lady for a sec. I know that it's a cruise ship and it's a jokey, fun competition, but this woman was just INSTANTLY irritating. Her persona was "Flashy" which necessitated dressing in head-to-toe zebra print and black and white polka dots, and her gimmick was that she was a talent agent, so she'd have a little patter between contestants about how she had a great offer for them like...a Waffle House tour. And then there was this horrendous shit about how she would yell "Howdid'edooooo" at us each time (you might have to say that out loud to understand that it's a bad-Southern-accented bastardization of "how did they do") and insist that we reply "great!" not once but twice after every performance. I'm sure she's a lovely woman in person but I definitely spent about 3 total hours of my week hating her with a passion, and 3 hours in a week is a lot for someone who I saw in maybe 2 minute doses.

This was the night that Neil Diamond sang, too, so you can see why I am pissed I missed it. The judging was done American Idol style, with three judges and they actually did NOT pass Neil through to the finals (to be held on the last night of the ship) which by all accounts was just foolishness because he rocked it out. Scarlett went to the bathroom at some point and got distracted by The DR on her return trip, so she stood at the back to watch the Grand Performance of Texas, which was in Scarlett's words, "HORRID" but according to The Weege was fantastic so I guess it evens out to mediocre, although it is worth noting that singing makes The Weege giggle uncontrollably (I....don't know). I first discovered this phenomenon when we were at a Sharks game and she giggled through the whole National Anthem. The ladies departed, discussing the outrage of Neil's non-finalist status with him and the Missourienne, and headed for the midnight pool party.

We were met with varying degrees of actual concern over The Weege's age over the course of the cruise. By the end of the week, we're fairly sure that the whole bar staff KNEW she was undersage, but were so awed by the general ruckus-raising that they didn't really care. This still didn't really lead to a lot of drinking on The Weege's part, for some reason...that remains kind of mysterious to me. But in any case, they ordered up two rum and Cokes from one of the few blonde waiters on the ship, who asked The Weege if she was 21 roughly eighty seven million times, OCD-style, until Scarlett finally made the College Roommates Lie stick.

On a side note, to really appreciate the College Roommates Lie, you need more information. One night when we were at the Schooner and Scarlett was extremely drunk (possibly our second day at sea), she was pushing the CRL on The Peruvian very hard, because he got kind of "but you look kind of young" about it...not like he'd stop serving her, but just observing. It did help our case that Scarlett looks youngish for our age, too. But anyway, Scarlett pulled out HER drivers license to show The Peruvian, which reassured him and ended the discussion. Well, Scarlett's drunken brain logged exactly one piece of information from this experience - that her ID would work as proof of ALL of our ages whenever necessary. Thus, later in the trip when we were questioned about it, I believe at the Viking Lounge, a Once Again Drunk Scarlett bellowed "we're college roommates! Wanna see my ID?!" while waving her license around. Luckily, the bouncer remembered us from previous nights and just said "she's okay, I got her the other day, let them in," probably while adding on "even Drunkie over there" in his head.

In any case, the blonde bar guy comes back with the drinks and asks AGAIN if The Weege is 21, at which point Scarlett has Had It with this and is like "okay, the drinks? They are poured. Just hand them over already." About three seconds after this victory is secured, The Weege decides that she has to leave because her face is hurting. She did this a lot - "but my face really hurts!" "you're SUNBURNED." - all of a sudden although nothing had changed, she would maybe just remember that her face was sunburned? And go...tinker with it? Of course, for all I know, the pain level DID change, but I think she was also fairly worried and neurotic about it, along with a dose of self-conciousness, so she just would reach a breaking point and want to be out of the public eye for a bit as it were. Scarlett pointed out that she had JUST ordered a drink for the The Weege, but she insisted on going back to at least put water (???) on her face. Scarlett finally gave in but told her that she absolutely had to go back to the pool party and TELL Scarlett if she decided to change her plans and go to bed or something. Since Scarlett and I have been discussing the trip to fill our lonely, non-Caribbean workdays, I'm realizing that The Weege must have wanted to murder us because every single time she was going out of arm's reach, one or both of us would tell her that she HAD to tell us if she was going somewhere else. This started after the Great SuperBowl Disappearance of Ought Seven, and while I understand it must have been annoying, holy bringing it on your self, Batman. Don't want people to get paranoid about you going to the bathroom? Don't mysteriously vanish. I just never realized we were doubling up on this kind of warning until a couple days ago, but I kind of love it.

"Needless to say", as Scarlett so aptly put it, by the time The Weege had returned, she had finished her own drink and moved on to The Weege's, and had also located The DR, so the poor Weege trekked up to the 9th floor from the 3rd (we generally resisted the elevators because they took forEVER...the stairs were pretty tiring sometimes, but on the other hand, I credit them with my only gaining about half a pound on the cruise, so I'll take it.) only to be told to go away by Scarlett. Good stuff. Eventually, Scarlett came back to the cabin, and after taking a phone call to arrange their sneak-date for the next day in Costa Maya, peacefully drifted off to sleep after frantically recapping the events of the night.

The picture of sobriety in the Schooner Bar...actually, and I know this sounds like bullshit because I have said it twice now, but I don't actually think Scarlett is drunk here. I think she's mostly just making a weird face. We have discussed this and while we do admit the POSSIBILITY of intoxication, but agree that we don't think she was that hammered that early.

Reason Why. We Don't Want You Fallin' Off De Ship.

Our second day at sea was both smoother and MUCH sunnier, so needless to say, we bombed out of bed and up to the pool deck to start the day. We had breakfast in the Windjammer (I will probably forget to mention breakfast a lot, but we DID have it every day...we just tended to be just waking up and fairly low-key, so I forget it happened and move right into the more disreputable behavior.) and then headed for the Solarium since it was still fairly early. The Solarium unfortunately smelled like a wet dog, presumably from having water slosh around everywhere on the rough seas, but it was all right, and we wound up hopping in the hot tub after Scarlett failed miserably at, you know, sitting still for more that 30 seconds. At some point on the first day at sea, the Weege had discovered the Compass, which is a rundown of all the events going on on the ship each day, and kind of got obsessed with it. She decided to try a yoga class, and began - seriously - about 30 minutes of dithering around all "I'm going...no I'm not" before finally starting out in the direction of the yoga class, only to return about 15 minutes later because as with many activities on the ship, it was expensive and needed to be paid for for the whole week, so she decided against it.


We eventually migrated outside, where it was beautiful and sunny. Unfortunately, the cruise people had turned loose an insane Jamaican man to dispatch the pool rules, which were extensive. The brilliance of it was that this dude would tell you the rule and then say "reason why," then explain why the rule stood. For about FORTY SEVEN RULES. And the "reason why" was in exactly the same high-low cadence every single time, like some kind of demented internal skipping record.

"We ask that you don' reserve da seats for ya friens. Reason why. Some-a you friens dey want to sleep in and come up later, but you good people and de odder folks up here, they got up to be in de sunshine. You friens, they can find a seat when dey wake up, and mey-be de early birds take dey naps den."

*pause*

"We also don' wan' to see you jumpin into de pool. Reason why. De pool is shallow, and you know de ship has been rockin' and rollin' so we don wan' you fallin' into the side of de pool."

*pause*

"We don' wan' you ta bring your drink glasses in de pool. Ree-son why...."

It went on forEVER. I was ready to start heckling. He finally shut up and went on his way, never suspecting how close he had come to death.

The Weege had been roaming freely for a while and rejoined us just before the rain. We decided to do some shopping while the weather was gross, so Scarlett and I agreed to meet The Weege in the shops after she went and dropped her yoga clothes in our cabin. Scarlett and I had been in the shops for about 30 seconds when a child started crying, at which point we just looked at each other and went "no," and went up to check our email, which of course screwed up our gane plan with The Weege, but since she is an Internet addict we assumed she would eventually shake out up there. It was not to be, though, so after a while, Scarlett and I went to grab lunch at the Windjammer and return to the pool since the sun had re-emerged, under the assumption that The Weege would eventually arrive THERE, what with the getting of a tan being a secondary obsession. She didn't show up for a while, but eventually found us at the poolside bar, having managed to deepfry herself to a degree not normally seen outside of the application of a frying pan directly to someone's skin. She'd vanished for this relatively short time and came back the color of a lobster and talking about some annoying Germans. Still don't know what was up with the Germans and how they were annoying - I think it was just annoying talking - but the sunburn was QUITE spectacular. Meanwhile, Scarlett had been drinking QUITE heavily after we'd checked our email and was already feeling pretty good and passing the time by flirting with The DR at every available opportunity, so clearly despite it not being quite 5, it was already shaping up to be an evening of legend.

We headed down to get ready for formal night, which was a lot of fun. It was QUITE the process to get ready, and I also don't think I have adequately explained the conditions of the room. It's well known travel lore that women have a lot of crap. We had so much that as soon as we unzipped our bags to find our first change of clothes, the room looked like a bomb had gone off in a clothing store. It was s bad we could hardly walk through the room. This is only part of why Super Steward Alex lived in terror, by the way. We eventually asked him to pull down the OTHER bed in the room so we could throw our luggage up there, which helped considerably, but it turns out the three of us are all slobs, so by the time it came to packing it was quite the ordeal...all of our clothes intermingled and strewn around. After a certain point, I'm pretty sure Alex just gave up, despite his having several extremely awesome and sweet moments, one of which being the finding of Scarlett's aquamarine ring which we thought she'd lost. So eventually and in spite of our room, we got all decked out and headed out for a nice dinner with Neil Diamond and the Missourienne, neither of whom we now thought was a serial killer. At the end of the meal, we did our first round of shots in these glasses we were INCREDIBLY entertained by for no good reason at all. The allure was, mysteriously, that they said "Loving Cup" on them, although WHY they said this I have no clue...it's not like it was a cup you and your significant other could both drink out of or anything, it was just this funky little shot glass. Who knows. Anyway, we downed our Grand Marnier-based shots and headed out in search of the champagne bar.

....and some how wound up at the Captain's Ball. Ashley, already with a significant buzz on, with her drunk batteries quickly recharging thanks to having to DOWN her martini before we left dinner (despite it being portable? I don't know?), dithered around in about eight different directions before deciding we should stand in this completely mysterious line, which turned out to be the line for pictures with the captain. The woman in charge of moving people through the line was HORRIFYING and would demand your last name in order to introduce you to the captain, except she didn't tell you that was why she wanted to know, so for all you knew, there was just this crazy lady taking your purse and demanding to know your name in some kind of identity theft scheme. It was unnerving at best, but we met the Captain, had a quick picture snapped, which turned out AWESOMELY because it looks like The Weege is actively trying to escape. We then went on in to the theatre where there was free champagne (and free drinks as provided by the ship are HARD to come by, so in a way this was even better than going to the champagne bar. Which we never made it to, the entire trip.) and hors d'oeuvres provided by the captain, with ballroom dancing up on the stage. Scarlett and The Weege decided they wanted to go dance, which was entertaining because they were totally doing the Middle School Shuffle while there were these insane "We take lessons for fun and quite possibly run a dance school" type dancers all around them. Apparently as they were ascending the stairs, Scarlett asked The Weege if she was drunk, to which The Weege replied that she wasn't, but was Scarlett? Scarlett then said "well yeah, of course" and bombed up the stairs, and well...of course. After they came back, The Weege spilled a glass of champagne down my dress and then proceeded to FREAK OUT despite my telling her it literally cost me $6 on eBay and to please for the love of god forget about it, but she wouldn't shut up until I agreed to let her pay to dry clean it. Then the captain spoke VERY SLOWLY for about three days and introduced his crew and gave some trivia about the ship. He's a very dry, funny guy, but he speaks like you took the midwestern farming community and the deepest parts of the Deep South, linguistically, and mushed them together so that every word takes thirty seven minutes to get out. I imagine that his sense of humor keeps him from being slapped a LOT.

One thing I waited to mention is that we were welcomed by the wonderful, wonderful cruise director. This guy was SO great...very energetic and perky without being obnoxiously so, smart and well spoken, JACKED like crazy, and freaking adorable. Throughout the whole cruise, anytime you saw him, you just got this warm, fuzzy feeling of abject joy. He was awesome, and he took care of us when we walked in. We're working on forming a fan club.

Once we were able to escape from the stultifying introductions ("And this is our head chef. He manages all the cooking on board."), I headed for the cabin to change my dress both because of the Champagne Incident and also because it was a long Chinese silk dress which crinkled when I sat down, so it was getting kind of tired. Scarlett and The Weege headed to the Schooner Bar and began harassing the Peruvian. Scarlett, being shitfaced at this point, was in full-on Auto-Flirt Mode and thus rendered him into a sweating ball of nerves with a series of questions about whether he wanted to go dancing with us (no idea), to the point that he was bringing drinks and forgetting to have them sign for them, and then having to come back for more abuse. Poor child. When I got back, Scarlett has worn him down and he was like "I would love to go dancing with you," but using "you" inexplicably to refer to all of us I think? Because he shook all of our hands??? It was odd, but understandable, what with Scarlett having broken his brain. It was in the Schooner that Scarlett consumed the martini that put her over the edge into "wildly unmanageable," which was a result of The Peruvian thinking we meant lemon drop MARTINIS rather than lemon drop shots. Whoops.

We headed out for the show, which was in the theatre just across the way, and Scarlett stopped in the hallway to pick a fight with her actual boyfriend - as opposed to her cruise ship boyfriend, which, demented - about some drunken MySpace shenanigans, so The Weege and I headed in and struck up a convo with an ADORABLE Mexican guy who was on bar staff. We chatted with him for a while since there was still a fair amount of time before the show, until Drunken Unmanageable Scarlett came in. At that point, The Mexican asked if she "was okay" which is bar staff guy speak for "would you like a drink," but Scarlett, being already hammered, interpreted this as him asking if she was hammered and took offense to this and responded with "I hate you," complete with a Look of Death. The Mexican's face immediately just crumpled into the most crystal clear expression of "oh my god I am NOT trained well enough to deal with this person," and promptly tried to escape, at which point Scarlett grabbed his arm and said "No wait! I like you. You're cute. Where's [The DR]?" Obviously the poor guy had no idea, so she eventually released him as The Weege and I laughed and tried to send sympathy rays in his direction. We then sat up in the back row so that Scarlett could hold hands (just like grade school, eeeeeee!) with The DR throughout the show (a medley of music through the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s - pretty good, nothing spectacular). At the end of the show, The Weege and I made a bathroom run, then returned with some urgency to where Scarlett was hanging out, to make sure she hadn't attacked The DR and thus gotten him fired, only to find that she had migrated downstairs and was harassing the cruise director, so we went down, chatted with him for a little bit, then proceeded to the Viking, where he swore SEVERAL TIMES he would go, but never materialized. It was so odd. Probably 3 or 4 times throughout the cruise he ran into us and was all "so...see you ladies in the Viking tonight?" and then we would NEVER EVER SEE HIM.

In the Viking, we had a great time dancing and drinking and hanging out with Neil Diamond and the Missourienne. For some reason when I was ordering a drink, I asked for a "Diet and Coke" - and this is particularly embarassing because I wasn't that drunk...crazy drunk talk is one thing, crazy sober talk is a problem - and just COULD NOT make my brain stop thinking "Diet and Coke" to the great amusement of everyone there. Finally we sorted it out and I got my RUM and Diet, but it was hairy there for a minute. The Weege and Scarlett did a TON of dancing, while I stayed and chatted with our dinner friends, but eventually we even got Neil out there to dance! It was a great time, and Scarlett was again in Auto Flirt Mode, having cheersex with the DJ all night. We latched on to really wanting to hear "Ghetto Superstar" for some reason, so we requested it, only for it to come on after The Weege and Scarlett had come over for a breather. Scarlett and I FREAKED SHIT when we heard it, and dragged The Weege out on the floor while I yelled at her that "it's a rap song about POLITICS and that is awesome let's GO." The Weege and Scarlett left before me for some reason, and when the Viking closed, I left with Neil Diamond and the Missourienne to wander downstairs, and en route I found one of The Weege's blasted earrings, which had been driving her and everyone else insane all night with falling out and getting tangled in her hair. Most of the way to our rooms, Neil and the Missourienne told me how we had to make sure we were on the first tender boat in the morning to get to Grand Cayman, which I promised to do, knowing in my heart that it was a boldfaced lie. Sorry, Neil and The Missourienne. It was nothing personal.



These would be the infamous "Loving Cup" shots - this is seriously one of maybe two photos where The Weege looks sane and sober. I would also like to note that during the cruise she really didn't get to the level of drunk you would expect to produce most of the pictures we took. No idea what's up with that. Nor do I have any idea where my neck is.

You Bring the Bullet, I'll Bring the Wine

When we woke up on the first day, we could tell right away that we had cleared the canal and were officially on the Gulf of Mexico. The boat was rocking gently back and forth, and Scarlett and I were happy we took Miracle Product Bonine for motion sickness. I have been motion sick exactly one time, which was on an extremely rocky passage to Block Island on the teensiest ferry in the fleet. Since more or less every person on the ferry - literally - tossed their cookies on that trip, what with it being a trip through a freaking storm, I feel like I get a pass for that one. Seriously, it was gross. My brother actually puked all down the side of a Sysco transport truck, which added a certain level of hilarity to all future trips to the Block, since about 97% of "stuff that gets to Block Island," i.e. groceries, etc., gets brought over on Sysco trucks, so there was uncontrollable snickering every time we saw one thereafter, what with my family having a metal age of about five. Still, having never been on a cruise (or really a boat of any size on that kind of open water like the Gulf), I decided to be better safe than sorry and took the Bonine.


In any case, we got up all feeling fine, and headed up to the pool deck, where it was still kind of crappy, windy and cranky looking, weatherwise. Undeterred, we staked out some chairs and then after a short time figured out that the only reason to be up on the pool deck would be to be in the hot tubs, what with the wind and the slight chill still in the air, so we got in there and began a day of lounging. After we'd been in there for a while, I happened to look up at the Viking Lounge, which overlooks the pool area, and saw some odd individual sort of waving his hat around. Clearly I deemed him insane and assumed he was waving at someone else, so I ignored him, much as one would with your garden variety city dwelling homeless schizophrenic. I did look up one more time, and AGAIN this nutbar was waving, so again we had the ignoring, along with a dash of wondering why his arm wasn't getting tired.


Well, about half an hour and a trip to the conveniently located Windjammer lunch buffet later, this dude appeared by the hot tub all "didn't you see me waving?" Oh good, the schizophrenic KNOWS US. It was none other than UnShy, the tall bar guy from the Viking Crown the night before. Why he was able to spot us from the Viking when we were in the hot tub, I have no idea, but it did make me vaguely concerned as to whether any of us had engaged in un-spotted disreputable behavior, especially considering that after a certain number of drinks Scarlett goes into Auto-Flirt Mode where you yell at her for fully getting all Skin-emax biting the tip of her finger and grinning with the bedroom eyes at some CREEPY ASS MAN and she's all "what?" and you tell her she was having cheersex with some dude and she's like "no I wasn't!" and it's a little difficult, is my point. So UnShy chatted with us for a while, although the convo didn't go much longer than establishing that we had in fact met before, since we'd basically just established names and nothing else at the Viking.


After that, clearly, there was nothing else to do but have a Battle of the Dueling Trays between UnShy and The DR, who had emerged on the pool deck. All the bar staff roam around spinning their trays on their fingers like you would with a basketball. It's actually kind of cool and requires (I imagine) the kind of coordination I can only dream of. They played dueling trays and at one point even tried tossing the trays to each other and catching them still spinning, which halfway worked - UnShy managed to catch his, but The DR missed. UnShy seemed to do a lot of practicing with throwing his tray in the air and catching it still spinning, so I suspect that's why he was able to catch it. To break up the Tray Show, we got a round of drinks bought for us by the weirdest man in the world, "Bob." This really nice bar guy brought them over and we fully had to call him back at least twice to figure out who the hell had bought us the drinks, since the guy didn't acknowledge us in any way. It was so odd. I mean, you buy a drink for someone who you're not talking with at the bar or something, you watch to see them receive it and give the head bob/drink raise of acknowledgement, maybe come over to chat, no? Did I hallucinate this CODE OF NORMAL BEHAVIOR? Because "Bob," IF THAT IS HIS REAL NAME, which it totally isn't, because come on, continued to sit at the bar, not looking at us, with his sunglasses on. What a weirdo. Oh, and by the way he was in his 40s, easily. The guy who brought over the drinks just laughed when we asked how old he thought "Bob" was.

"Bob." Lord, if there was ever an alias. I bet if we talked to him he would have told us he worked for the CIA.


Eventually, we called it a day and headed for the cabin to get dressed to go to the SuperBowl Party, which was in the theatre. Let me tell you about the theatre on board...it's really comfy, with almost lounge chairs and nice big armrests so you don't need to play Elbow Wars like you usually do in public seating. They showed the game on a giant projection screen that took up pretty much the whole stage, and had lots of Bears and Colts colored decorations, plus some good, solid tailgating food - chips and dip, lots of beer, hot dogs, etc. Unfortunately they were only able to get a satellite feed from Mexico so it was a Spanish-language broadcast and there were also NO COMMERCIALS which was a total bummer. It was still a fun atmosphere though, and that's what YouTube is for. We were seated behind a row of people who at best...no. Let me finish telling you a few more things about the game, then we'll talk about the people in front of us. One cool thing is that there was football trivia running on two side screens, and AS the Bears returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown (which was really exciting even though I could give a crap about the Bears outside of "please beat Peyton Manning"), the trivia was giving the answer to the question "How many times has an opening kickoff been returned for a touchdown in SuperBowl history," which up until that very moment had been "This has never been done in SuperBowl history." Sort of a neat History As It Happens moment...I wished I had a camera.

Okay, let's talk about the people in front of us. First, UnShy was working the party, so he took us to some seats behind these people, and one of them got REALLY AGGRESSIVELY PISSY about it. Not to us, but when their womenfolk arrived, he was all "well you COULD have sat there but I GUESS NOT." Secondly, every single one of these people was wearing some article of clothing that was camoflauge patterned. They also felt it necessary to bring their beer coolies from home, which was utterly inexplicable...can you imagine packing for a week in bags sufficient for you to get through your flights with minimal hassle and deciding "no, I really need to bring my blue foam beer coolie that says 'Joe's Place, Shitkicker, MO'," as you packed? My god. So at one point they turned around to apologize if they were "cussin" despite the fact that a.) I work bluer in my sleep, and b.) we were all "cussin" way more than they were in the first place, unless "crap" has been deemed incredibly offensive while I wasn't paying attention. They got completely fixated on The Weege being from Norway, but not in an "hey that's cool, do they wear socks in Norway" inquisitive kind of way, just more like asking her OVER AND OVER if she was from Norway.


Soon, UnShy came by with our bucket o' beers and promptly asked Scarlett to go off the boat with him in Costa Maya. She said she would think about it and then asked if UnShy had asked The DR if it was all right, which he said he did, and that The DR said it was okay. About three seconds after UnShy left, The DR came over all "what did he say to you" and then stalked off, presumably to find his dueling glove to slap UnShy with. A few minutes later UnShy came back over and Scarlett told him The DR had said that UnShy hadn't asked him about anything, and apparently ALL the male staff members of the ship's bar staff are socially retarded, because instead of saying something he just went away. Not a word, not a sound, just walked away. Because he's a goddamn weirdo. LEST you think that Scarlett does not resemble her alias-sake and that she is just a poor innocent woman being fought over by these bizarre men, I would like to present you with her comments as we were reviewing this day of the cruise so I could blog it today:


[Scarlett]: then we went and got dressed and went to the super bowl party where we were accosted by [UnShy] AGAIN
and he sat us behind the angry rednecks
then he came over with a bucket of beers and asked me out in costa maya
to which i said i'll think about it
excited about the prospects of this drama
when [The DR] came over and was like what did he say to you?
which i clearly explained hoping they would get into a PUBLIC brawl
but alas it was private haha


So there's that.


And god forbid we think that the rednecks we sat behind were only odd in APPEARANCE, they also had this mysterious chart, which I later learned from Speed was, as Scarlett and I had hypothesized, a betting grid. I guess what you do is make a bunch of squares which correspond to the score, teams, divisions, quarters, etc. and people buy specific squares, and it pays out according to all the factors on the chart. Fine. Except we didn't know that at the time, and we asked these people several times. And each time we asked what it was, they just stared at us and turned back around. Good. God. Where Royal Caribbean picked these people up I have no idea but if you told me they were stowaways I would have believed you.


I'd say about half the theatre cleared out after the halftime show, most of the departees murmuring about not being able to take it anymore - the theatre is at the front of the ship, where you can really feel the movement, and in fact that screen was swinging around a little. About midway through the fourth quarter, The Weege announced she was going to the bathroom, and then disappeared for about 20 minutes. Needless to say I assumed she had either fallen off the boat or that "Bob" had kidnapped her for some nefarious purpose. I went to look for her, having a series of heart attacks as new theories of misfortune popped into my head with every step. I started with our cabin, where I found her...asleep in her bunk. After informing her that I would prefer if she NOT make me lose my mind and figure out how to tell my mother I lost her Norwegian exchange student, I went back to the game and shortly thereafter Scarlett and I decided to boogie since the goddamn Colts looked like they were going to win and my hatred of Peyton Manning was starting to set nearby objects on fire.


We headed across the way to the Schooner Bar, which is a smoke-and-mirrors type bar presided over by an extremely odd pianist who wants to be Barbara Streisand in the worst way. We sat in the bar area, where we were out of range of the pianist's lounge singer patter and in close proximity to the booze. Scarlett's phone rang, which alerted the attention of none other than Neil Diamond and the Missourienne, who were sitting at the bar! Suddenly, the entire air of serial killer-itude dropped off of Neil as he chatted with us about how Scarlett could have service out on the Gulf, et cetera, and we wound up finding out about Neil Diamond's secret karaoke skills and that he was going to sing in that night's competition. We promised to be his cheering section. We went back to our own pairings of conversation, and then something awesome happened. Another bar staffer stopped by and said hi to Scarlett, who he recognized but didn't...well I was going to say he didn't remember from where, but I think the reality is that he was trying to figure out if it was possible that she had actually been on the same cruise ship twice in the short period he'd been working there. He then presented the line of the century, that being "I been here three months...I seen you twice!" Which...fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. He followed it up with the still great but not quite as spectacular, "she is well known on this ship. She is very...kind." Awesome.


So after the joy of that exchange, we headed to the South Pacific for the karaoke, which did NOT feature Neil Diamond...he signed up but they didn't get far enough down the list before the session was over. It was fun, and AGAIN the singers were pretty damn good. Karaoke was over around 11, at which time Scarlett wanted to go to the show, mainly in order to flirt with the DR, but I was zonked so I went to bed while she headed for the theatre.


You would think this would be the end of the day's story for me.


Clearly you do not know Scarlett if you are of this opinion.


Around 1 am, she came bombing into the room babbling about how she had a date with The DR, which I couldn't figure out the logistics of since by all accounts the punishment for staff-guest fratenization is death by firing squad. I am not kidding you when I tell you that the entire announcement went like this: "I HAVE A DATE!" The plan was apparently to go to the Solarium and then...do something, I guess. I wasn't clear on the details, but having had the Scarlett Experience of this variety (i.e. the crashing in with a burst of information/insanity at odd and definitely normal sleeping hours times) a couple times in college, I kind of went "okay then" and tuned back out. The Weege, on the other hand, who had never met Scarlett before we all reconnoitered at BWI and was as a result completely fascinated by her in the way you normally find kids being amazed the first time they see the baking soda and vinegar volcano at the school science fair, was leaning over her bunk watching this unfold with rapt attention. Shortly thereafter, Scarlett got a phone call from The DR and then vanished out the door.








...........only to return about 3 minutes later, having been foiled by none other than Horrifying Towel Lady from the previous night's Solarium adventure. Apparently she had been evilly patrolling her turf, rendering Operation Inappropriate Solarium Tryst impossible. Scarlett whirled around in her usual drunken flailing mode (don't ask me why, but after a certain point, Scarlett's limbs develop like...extra joints, and she kind of just whings them around with little regard to animate OR inanimate objects) for a while, then tapped out to rest up for another day.


I realize that it may LOOK like we're all drunk here, but in fact we were not. Yet. Actually I think Scarlett might have been a little. But The Weege's face did that all by itself.

Jumped Out The Window With A Guit-ar In His Hand And Said "Shoot Me Daddy, I'm Superman, I'm Superman, I'm Superman..."

So, I went on a cruise with Scarlett and the Weege to Georgetown, Grand Cayman and Cozumel and Costa Maya, Mexico. It was Royal Caribbean cruise on their lovely ship The Grandeur of the Seas, and it was truly a week of legend. Let me just explain the explosive mixture that was going to be dumped onto this boat even before we all met up in Baltimore.

Things I Have Done With Scarlett:
1. Danced/leaped/careened around our dorm room bellowing to the tunes of, amongst many others, "Muskrat Love," Elvis' "Blue Christmas," and "All I Want For Christmas Is You." This is how I met Other Former Roommate, The Pharmacist - he came up to investigate the giant crashing sounds.
2. Chased ducks through the United States Capitol Reflecting Pool in full-on going-out-wear. At one a.m.
3. Peed in the United States Capitol Random Stand of Trees, most likely while being surveilled by Capitol Police. Of course, in DC there is always the chance that we were being eyed by the FBI, CIA, DCPD, and any other variety of law enforcement officials. At one thirty a.m.
4. Met and hung out with White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in the West Wing of the White House.
5. Roamed the AU campus hugging and babbling about the Party Animals. At midnight.
6. Watched Gone With The Wind roughly nine hundred forty seven thousand times.
7. Spent the rest of the time watching CNN, the Discovery Channel, or the History Channel.
8. Assorted political/academic/public misdeeds, many of which we probably SHOULD have been arrested for but were not.
9. Developed an entirely new shorthand for language, so as to facilitiate easier covert mocking of people.

What you need to know about the Weege is basically that she'd never met Scarlett before, but that I had made her watch GWTW with me and explained her as "like Scarlett O'Hara, but without the...you know, evil." And also that she rocks extra super hard.

And thus the trip began.

Southwest was kind enough to fly us from Manchester, NH to New Orleans, LA for 137 bucks, so at 5:30 I picked the Weege up at my parents' house in the snow (naturally - 60 degrees through the ENTIRE DAMN WINTER and then it snows when I need to fly AND check bags AND transfer flights. THANKS, NATURE.) and we headed up north. Leg #1 went well, and we met Scarlett at BWI, to much screeching, Norweigan roaming and getting to knowing. We had used Miracle Product Board First, so we all had A boarding passes, which let us sit pretty far up. We gabbed all the way there, and good times were had by all, until we realized we were running almost an HOUR LATE thanks to a charming 200 knot headwind. THANKS, NATURE. Needless to say, we were informed of this by a completely annoying stewardess (N.b. - I usually LOVE Southwest employees, in general, because they tend to be infalliably cheerful and helpful. This goober was the exception, not the rule.), who couldn't just say "yes, we're running an hour late. We'll get you there," but instead felt that a good game plan would be to lecture us about how we should have come down a day early and gotten a hotel, and went on about this at SUCH A GREAT LENGTH that Scarlett and the Weege should be counting their blessings that I did not leap over them to slap her. Lady, I see your point. It's not a bad point. However, maybe instead of antagonizing people you should understand that people book flights with the expectation that they will be transported in a time frame SIMILAR TO THE ONE THEY BOOK THEIR FLIGHT FOR and just freaking say "I'm sorry, but we are delayed. We'll get you there." Needless to say, we were a little edgy by the time we got on the ground in N.O., and I muttered most of the way to bag claim about "god help the first Southwest employee I see if my bag does not come off that bleepety-bleep carousel." Luckily, there was no need for violence, and we jammed out to the taxi line and met Awesome Couple Number One, who said "oh come on, just cut the line. We'll back you up if people whine" as we started heading for the back of the (extensive) line. We ran into them again in the Royal Caribbean check in line and then never saw them again. We got in a nice truck with a Honduran driver who had TEN sisters and TWELVE brothers, for a total of a lot of goddamn birthdays to remember. He got us right over to the pier, and I overtipped him extravagantly because my fight-or-flight response was still tweaking out all over the place because of the delay.

Got to the stateroom unscathed, although we needed to fill out our check-in paperwork AGAIN despite checking in online. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Royal Caribbean, although it says NOTHING ABOUT THIS on its online check-in web page or anywhere else on the site, doesn't let you print your SetSail Pass less than 24 hours before you sail. Yes, this is demented. It does tell you you can't do the actual checking in less than 48 hours before your cruise, but if you are like me and do the check in, then print your assorted passes right before you leave so as not to spill liquids on them, lose them, have them get eaten by your pets, etc., make a note to do it in advance if you are going on an RC cruise. THANKS FOR THE STRESS, Y'ALL. And also for the scary, pissy woman who gave us the forms to fill out.

Now, when we got to the room, we saw only two beds, and couldn't figure out where the third person would sleep. We found Super Steward Alex in the hallway, and he showed us where the bed was (It awesomely folds up into the ceiling and needs to be unlocked to come down - supercool) and unlocked it for us. This marked the last time that Super Steward Alex did not live in stark terror of all three of us. We went up to the Windjammer, which is the buffet restaurant up at the top of the ship, and it was there was we ran into the reason Scarlett had wanted to come on the cruise - the Dominican bartender, The DR, who she had developed a life-threatening crush on during her LAST cruise, which was in..........December. (Her next cruise, for those keeping track, is in May. I don't know.) Needless to say, this was already an event of iniquity, but he then proceeded to QUIZ HER ON HIS NAME while covering up his little name tag like a complete weirdo. Also? Nappy hair. Un. Ack. Cepatable. Luckily the muster drill sounded, so we had to leave the bizarre scene to go stand out on the deck while wearing our stylish life vests and bounce off of people for a while. In a way, the muster drill was kind of fun because everyone's in the same "heh heh, sorry I keep whomping into you, but this stupid thing is messing up my groove" mode, and you can feel the excitement of being about to leave.

So we started off, heading down the canal and out to the Gulf of Mexico, and the three of us went back to the cabin to change for dinner. The dining room was gorgeous, all decked out in an Art Deco style...it was called the Great Gatsby dining room, and I have to take a side trip for a second here for a public service announcement - people, PLEASE STOP NAMING THINGS AFTER THE GREAT GATSBY. The Great Gatsby is a wonderful book and I really enjoy it, but it is a SAD, UGLY BOOK about the folly of decadence and excessive cash. It is NOT a celebration of the flapper era. STOP IT. Thank you. Our table mates included one nice older couple who had been cruising since 1976 and came to exactly one dinner before spending the rest of the week going up to the buffet, three mystery people who never came to a meal, and Neil Diamond and the Missourienne. We LOVED Neil and the Missourienne - they were this really fun couple who were celebrating their 10 sorta-anniversary. They weren't married but had been dating for 10 years, living together, etc...as Neil put it, "we'd rather spend money on doing cool travel and stuff than a wedding right now," which I think is a pretty good idea, actually. But Neil did not tell us this on the first night, oh no. We thought he was probably a serial killer on the first night, because the only thing he said the entire meal was "Bears" in reference to who he wanted to win the SuperBowl. Good times.

We had some time to kill between dinner and the next thing we wanted to do, and decided to go spend some time in the Solarium, a very cool area with a sort of Roman bath feel and a retractable roof, as we discovered later in the week. There's a pool and two hot tubs in there, and all the chairs have awesome cushy pads on them for maximum relaxing. We hopped in the hot tub, hoping we'd be able to find a member of the bar staff to bring us a bottle of champagne. Not only were there exactly zero members of the bar staff around, but there were no PEOPLE around except for the occasional passer-by. Eventually it got to be time for us to go get dressed for the next round of activities, so we started looking for towels. Scarlett lost the nose-touching/not-it round, so she got out to look for them, only to be told by the scariest, pissiest woman ever that towels were on the other side of the Solarium. She had been sweeping up the floor when she noticed Scarlett looking around, and got all "Looking for TOWELS? They're over THERE." It was just that...she was REALLY PISSED! We didn't understand it but we knew enough to fear for our lives so we got towels and jammed.

We then went and hung out in the South Pacific Lounge for a while, had a bottle of champagne. This was when we first discovered The Problem With The Weege, that being that every time someone tried to serve her, she would get this utterly panicked look and stare at us for approval and instruction. Now, bear in mind, we weren't planning on ordering her up seventeen shots of grain alcohol or anything, we just wanted her to have a beer. Furthermore, in this particular case, I had gone to go get the champagne and three glasses, so the waiters already assumed she was legal to drink since she HAD a drink already. But no, she did the freak out thing and they asked her for ID so that was more or less the end of that....now, I didn't have MY license with me either, since it didn't seem relevant, but the point remains that she never would have been given a second thought if she hadn't gotten all deer in the headlights about it. So we watched some suprisingly GOOD karaoke, including performances from both halves of a newlywed couple, both of whom were great.

Now, midway through our time in the South Pacific, we switched location in the room so Scarlett could better flirt with The DR. We also wanted to see if there was something on the Weege's SeaPass that identified her as underage...Scarlett remembered from the last cruise that most kids had their SeaPasses punched with a hole to indicate their underage status, which did NOT happen on the Weege's card, but we were assuming there was some other way to tell, and had noticed an "M1" on her card that ours didn't have. We sort of thought that told the staff she was underage, but it also could have been something connected to her being Norwegian and thus not a US-citizen. We decided that the safest way to find this out would be to ask Scarlett Crush and Skilled Communicator The DR about it, at which point we embarked on Stilted Conversation Number Two, to wit:

The DR: "Are you 18?"
The Weege, finally making a stab at bullshitting: "Yeah!"
DR: "No you're not."
Weege: "Yeah I am!"
DR: "You're seventeen."
Weege: *silence* *nervous laughter*

So we figured that out pretty easily, and then the note passing ensued. Now, the last cruise Scarlett had been on, the grand romance had been kicked into high gear with a note passed to her asking her to meet The DR somewhere off the ship in one of the port cities. She accepted, and fierce making out happened. They exchanged emails at the end of the trip, and she emailed him but never heard back. So this was Note, Part Deux, which asked which cabin number she was staying in, and why she didn't reply to HIS email. She wrote back, now several Diet & Cokes to the wind, "honey, I emailed YOU, and you never got back to me." So then he went over to snigger with his odd friends, and returned to say that he would call the cabin later. Clearly, despite the fact that she TOOK ANOTHER CRUISE TO SEE HIM, Scarlett apparently did not want to seem to codependent so she was all "yeah yeah whatever, I'll be at the club, call me in the morning." I'll let you digest all that.

After the karaoke, we roamed aimlessly a little bit, popped in briefly to the show that was going on, found the comedy show marginally entertaining (although the comic was roaming the audience doing some kind of interact with the audience business at the time so for all we know his actual standup was hilarious), and then headed up to the Viking Crown Lounge at the top of the ship, where we got the Weege's underage ass in the door by lecturing her all the way up the stairs to not get all freaked out looking and then inaugurating the "we were all college roommates" lie which proved to be successful throughout the trip. The very first thing - and I do mean very first thing - that happened was for this insane woman to throw a fit on us because her drink had been spilled. Now, as far as I know, I may have spilled it, since people were jostling around and stuff, but there is a basic rule of bars, that being - leave your drink undefended and be prepared for it to be spilled, swiped, rufied, whatever. This isn't a glass of wine in your kitchen...there are other people around, and if you leave your drink laying around....shit happens, is my point. So anyway this woman starts pitching a complete hissy fit and asking who DRANK her drink, which was straight up insanity since whatever was missing from her drink was ON THE BAR, and insisting that Ash buy her a new one, which, also insane. The bartender happily gave her a new one, but needless to say, the kind of Dirty Jersey chick she was, she continued giving us the stink eye for the remainder of the week. Because she's a crazy bitch. (NB - Don't start with me on the "Jersey isn't that bad" crap because I know. We have established that I have family in Jersey, and that there are beautiful, idyllic parts of the Jerz, but I think we can all be realistic and admit that there are some heinous parts of Jersey, too, and that those heinous parts produce some heinous people. Who cut their bangs with weedwhackers. I'm just saying is all.)

Once that got settled, by which I mean "we got our drinks and got the hell away from Jersey," we found some comfy chairs to hang in, and proceeded to get going on the drinking. At one point, a very tall dude named Elroy showed up to serve us drinks, and he will become important in later escapades. We drank, we danced, we had a blast, we finally got ready to leave because the Viking was closing, and we went back down to crash. Good times had by all, and we weren't even 24 hours into the cruise. FAB!

Thus concludes day sorta-one. Tune in tomorrow for the first days of at-sea troublemaking!



Here's our ship, the Grandeur of the Seas! I did not take this picture, but merely pilfered it from someone else. Thanks, Anonymous Internet Person!

Dear Boston Bruins Fans, I Am Wearing This Canadiens Jersey To Piss You Off. PS - Your Team Sucks. Don't Thank Me, Thank Sinden.

I am going straight from work to my therapist to the Sharks game tonight. Thus, I have my Canadiens jersey hung over the back of my chair, since I'll be changing in my office before I leave and it's a game worn jersey so I don't want to throw it in a heap. And of course - of COURSE - someone in a Bruins hat comes by and has to make the big freaking deal about how it's "black and gold in these parts, baby."

Okay, it can be black and gold. No prob. Meanwhile, I'll wear the red, white and blue of a team that has won TWENTY THREE Stanley Cup Championships versus the "black and gold's" four. Oh, and in case we're keeping track? Seven of the twenty three have been won since the Bruins' last one in 1972, so I think we can cut the shit and all run out to Home Depot and buy ourselves ladders so we can GET THE HELL OVER OURSELVES because the Bruins SUCK, guys, okay? The kids are exempted, because they don't know any better, but everyone who is old enough to vote really needs to take a look at the game of hockey and understand that Harry Sinden has spent the past however many years slowly screwing the franchise into the ground and more or less being the John Madden of hockey...formerly brilliant-to-at-least-tuned-in, currently a complete idiot and master of the obvious.

You know what my favorite team is? It's not the Canadiens. I admire the Canadiens very much because of the above statistics and the awesomeness that is was the Forum and possibly most of all their fans who understand both nostalgia and the importance of bashing someone's teeth backwards every now and then. My favorite NHL team is the Detroit Red Wings, not that I even bother that much with the NHL since the Powers That Be are determined to pussify the game by overofficiating it and instituting the most ridiculous new rules, like the goddamn overtime shootouts...great concept guys, play the whole game and one overtime period as a team, then scrap the whole concept and place the outcome of the game on individual effort - HOCKEY IS A TEAM SPORT, YOU MORONS! "It's exciting!" No it's NOT, because no one seems to know that your best chance is to get all barnstormer on the goalie's ass and go in there like you AND the puck are headed for the backbar - it takes away the tender's ability to read you, and since you are the ONLY person he has to read, you see why this is crucial, right? Right?

Anyway, my favorite team is the Red Wings, first because I am oddly nostaligic for eras before my time and thus am in love now and forever with Gordie Howe and the Production Line, and second because the franchise caught on quick and really mastered the trendy European style of play and I enjoy adaptivity (and the European style) very much. I wear the Canadiens jersey because a guy named Patrick Traverse is playing for the Sharks now, who used to play for the Icecats and also holds a permanent spot on my list of top 20 players I could watch skate for the rest of eternity without tiring of it. Even better, he's now developed what Speed correctly described as "the Ray Bourque thing" where there's zero wasted movement, just tiny adjustments and smooth swiveling turns. It's unbelievable. The Canadiens jersey I own is a number 54 game worn Patrick Traverse jersey and the HELL if you think I'm not going to wear it just because all of you black and gold mongoloids can't figure out your team sucks and will continue to suck for at the very minimum a three year redevelopment period AFTER Sinden has been ALL THE WAY removed from the organization.

So please do us all a favor and shut the hell up before I have to beat you down with my hockey knowledge.

The Battle of Home Depot

I went to Home Depot last night for a few items...some curtain rod equipment, an extention cord (okay...we don't have an outdoor outlet to plug our Christmas lights in to. How does this happen?), and I also found a metal hangar item to hang my bike in the garage. On my way in, I decided to take a look at thermostats, since the ones we have are original to the house (1954ish) and the whole heating system has been a little tetchy lately, which we think the thermostats are in on. I wanted to scope it out because I know that programmable thermostats can really help regulate your oil use and lower your bills. Let me point out that the reason I know about this is in large part because I process thermostat rebates at work, and therefore not only know the benefits, but also know stuff like model numbers and ranges. Remember that, it's important.

So I am standing in front of the thermostats, and the Home Depot dude asks if I need help. No problem, I tell him I'm all set, and go back to looking at the thermostats, because as we know,
"no, I'm all set thanks" indicates to English speakers that a person is...all set.

"So, looking at thermostats, huh?"

Oh, this is the game. Okay. "Yes." And of course that isn't enough to signal him to leave, either, because he then begins taking them off the shelf and explaining them to me, at which point I say "Yeah, I know. I work at an energy conservation company, and I process the thermostat rebates. I look at this stuff all day." I also touched the pad of rebate forms hanging right on the shelf to demonstrate that these, in fact, were the ones I processed, which they were.

What would you do?

Because I, personally, would go find someone else to pester, like the guy toting around a weedwhacker examining the oil line, or the guys with backwards baseball caps on at the end of the aisle. However, the Home Depot guy is clearly nothing like you or I, and instead begins explaining that you need thermostats specific to your heating fuel.

At this point I'd really had it. Just because I'm wearing a pink shirt and pointy shoes does not mean I'm a home improvement/heating/whatever moron, and I have just told you I'm fine SEVERAL TIMES and explained that I DEAL WITH THERMOSTATS AT MY JOB. So I turned around to him, and said "You know what, I KNOW that you need different ones for different fuels. I probably know more about it than you do, so if you could just fuck. Off. And let me look at the goddamn thermostats, that would be great." Maybe it was an overreaction, but I am pretty sure it was the only way I was going to get rid of him, so I was okay with the drastic action. He kind of shuffled away to go pester the baseball cap guys. I hope they did better with him than I did.

I don't get this whole thing of girls not being able to do stuff. I was flipping out the other day at a TV show where the insinuation was that girls don't like sports. I love sports. LOTS of girls I know love sports. My most frequent rival is the Sony Bravia TV, the makers of which believe that the gender line divides all, thus women like shoes and never, ever action movies, and men like action movies and never, ever shoes. They have this goddamn commercial where it's basically a long shot of the Bravia TV, and then there's a flash of something that you need to pause with your DVR to see. It's something where you have two options that you theoretically go to their website to vote for...one is one a blue background saying "would you rather watch some kind of action movie blah blah blah explosions blah blah blah" and the other is on a pink background saying "would you rather watch some movie about a woman marrying her prince blah blah blah shoes blah blah blah." What the hell? Maybe I want to watch BOTH. Maybe it's okay for me to simultaneously wear 4 inch heels while screaming at the rooted tree of a defenseman to move his ass and hit someone at a hockey game. Maybe you shouldn't assume that because I have tits I want to watch some boring ass romcom with Jennifer Aniston. Maybe the Transporter is one of my favorite movies. Maybe I have over 50 pairs of shoes.

Meanwhile, we also went out last night to buy $1000 of toys for Friendly House at Walmart, and one of the things I knew the girls would love but hated to buy were these stupid Bratz dolls...they are miniature hookers, guys. Seriously. Where is the one wearing soccer pants and a hoodie? Where's the one NOT DRESSED LIKE A HOOKER? Where is the Congress Barbie and the rock climbing Barbie? Where's the kick ass without feeling like your skirts need to be an inch below your vagina to make an impact doll?

Where are the real live versions of these dolls?