Checking In

Hey, everybody. I just got e-mail from a worried blog reader who wondered what my absence here meant, and hoped I was okay.

I'm fine! Actually, better than fine, since we're leaving for another cruise on Friday. Yay!

I'm spending my time on Facebook these days because a) it gives me a sense of what my friends are up to and b) I get much more feedback there. If you're on FB too, please look for me. If you aren't on FB because you just never got around to it, think about joining: it's fun, and you don't have to spend vast amounts of time there. If you aren't on FB because you don't like it, I understand; feel free to shoot me an e-mail once in a while if you'd like to hear from me.

I'll still post long things like homilies here, although my new church -- which is having its own financial problems, and I'm praying won't go the way of the old one -- doesn't have me on the preaching schedule as often as the old one did. I'm only preaching about once a quarter now.

If there are any big publishing announcements, I'll post those here too.

Everyday nattering, though, is over at The Other Place.

Thanks! Be well, everyone!

Decadence

Because there's so much alcoholism in my family (and it's so genetic), I drink very, very little. For years, my only alcohol consumption was a sip of communion wine every Sunday. I never drink when we're out and about here in Reno, since Gary can't see quite well enough to get a driver's license, which means that I'm always the designated driver.

I like the taste of some drinks, especially cordials, but hate feeling drunk. Since I have absolutely no tolerance for alcohol -- a very good thing, if one has a genetic predisposition to alcoholism on top of a depression history -- my limit is something like two teaspoonfuls.

Over two hours.

On a full stomach.

On our Spring Break cruise, though, I didn't have to drive, so a couple of evenings I got an after-dinner drink while we listened to the string quartet. I had an Amaretto, which was yummy, and a few nights later I had a Kahlua, which was even yummier. Since they give you a bit more than two teaspoonfuls, I learned that I had to space these treats out over the entire evening, which was fine. I also learned, after a second Kahlua the evening after the first, that if I drank two nights in a row -- even slowly and on a full stomach -- my sleep would be disrupted. This is a well-known effect of alcohol, of course, but twice I awoke to hypnopompic hallucinations. In one case, I thought I saw Gary, lying face down, floating above me: I screamed, but when I turned I saw him sleeping soundly beside me in bed, and then the hallucination dissolved. The second time it happened, I saw a disembodied head floating above me.

Charming.

When I got home, I did enough research to learn that hallucinations upon falling asleep (hypnogogic) and waking up (hypnopompic) are fairly common and considered normal, although alcohol can exacerbate them. They often involve floating figures. I'll bet this is where stories about succubi come from; maybe vampires, too.

Anyway, these episodes were definitely enough to make me space out my after-dinner cordials! When we got home, I occasionally (as in once a week, max, but usually more like once every two weeks) had a tiny amount of a chocolate dessert wine a friend gave us for Christmas. No more creepy floating figures, so I must have gotten the interval right. I just finished the bottle last week, and Gary said, "You should get some Kahlua."

"Eh," I said, shrugging.

But today we were at the supermarket, and Gary got some wine for himself, and I went to browse the cordials section. "Are you going to get some Kahlua?" he asked.

"I think not," I said, goggling at the price.

"It's a premium liqueur," he said, picking up the smallest bottle, "and this will last you for a year."

The smallest bottle was under fifteen bucks, so I shrugged again, and we got it. I may even have a little tonight.

But if I start dancing on tabletops while wearing lampshades (a maneuver I'd consider highly dangerous even without distilled spirits, given how clumsy I am), anyone who cares about me is authorized to haul me into the Betty Ford Center.

Neat!

I just had a long chat with my sister, who told me that she and her husband have booked their first cruise (on my and Gary's beloved Holland America Line). They're doing a Montreal to Boston trip this summer. Liz went to college in Montreal, at McGill, so I think it will be a very rich experience for her.

I'm jealous, since I've been wanting to do that particular itinerary! Well, someday. I'm also delighted for them, and envy them the experience of cruising for the first time. I just hope they enjoy it even a fraction as much as Gary and I do.

She and her husband had been wanting to try cruising even before Gary and I became addicted to it, but she said, "I knew you'd be happy we're doing this."

Yes, indeed! I can't wait to hear about their trip.

But That's Why I Love Him

Have I mentioned that my husband's a little strange, although no stranger than I am? We're strange in different ways, though. He, for instance, is fascinated by bad weather, and actively looks forward to rough days at sea. I enjoy a bit of rolling just so I know I'm on a boat, but I don't want to go through anything too dramatic.

He's gearing up for the November cruise by watching videos of cruise ships in storms. His current favorite is this little gem. (The music's a disco version of the theme song from Titanic; how fitting!)

I gather that everyone on that cruise got 20% off their next one. No wonder! Geez!

Sweetie, you can go on that cruise. I'll take the calm boat, thank you.

Not Much to Report . . .

. . . but I'm posting anyway.

So far I've used the elliptical half an hour a day; two of those days, I've also done half an hour of laps in the pool. More would probably be better, but this is more than I was doing before we got the elliptical. Baby steps. I've decided that the most important thing is to make sure that I enjoy each workout, even if I'm not breaking any Olympic records, so I'll keep doing it. I'm having fun listening to music on my BlackBerry while I work the machine.

Mom died a year ago today. I'm sad.

In the past week or so I've written two new CHR columns and my Maundy Thursday homily; I'm fairly happy about all of that, but would be happier were I getting any fiction written.

The baby sweater continues. I'm now working on the first sleeve. This is a top-down project, which means you leave stitches on waste yarn for the shoulders of the sleeves and pick up stitches for the underarm. My first two sleeve attempts were disasters, because when I picked up the number of stitches specified in the pattern, I had huge holes. I increased the number of pick-up stitches and now have something that looks halfway plausible, I think. Whether this item will fit a human child when it's finished is anyone's guess.

Next week, the guy who built our deck last summer will make some minor repairs, and also pressure-wash and seal it for the summer. Today Gary met with the guy who's constructing and installing our 17'x13' retractable awning; that should be done in ten to twenty days. Of course, the minute everything's finished and we put the deck furniture out, we'll have a blizzard. (It snowed here on May 22 last year.)

We're going to try to pretend that our deck is the deck of a cruise ship. We're both in major jonesing-for-another-cruise mode, which isn't very practical given the financial realities of sabbatical (or of life in Nevada right now). But I still find myself obsessively searching Vacations to Go, and Holland America keeps sending us glossy brochures -- cruise porn -- which doesn't help.

That's my dull life right now, but there are worse things than dull.

Home!

We're home! The cats are delighted to see us. We're delighted to see the cats. We're really glad we went on the cruise, although the horrors of air travel rather destroy the relaxation of the previous seven days.

But we're home. And tired. I'll sleep well tonight!

Prow of Disney Wonder (docked next to us in PV)

Marietas Arches

Blue-Footed Boobies

Ah, Cabo!

This morning Gary and I woke up to find the boat anchored off Cabo. We ate breakfast on our verandah while watching whales and dolphins. Lovely!

We really liked Cabo (much better than Puerto Vallarta). The bay's so pretty, and it didn't hurt that the tender dropped us off right in the thick of the action -- bars! t-shirt shops! jewelry stores! ATM ATM ATM! -- so we didn't have to worry about taxis. As in PV, there were a lot of military around, but they wore simple sidearms and ambled along the boardwalk with everybody else, instead of wearing helmets and holding machine guns and generally looking combat ready.

Our second snorkel excursion was better than the first in a few respects. There were fewer people on the boat, and the boat itself was nicer: a catamaran with webbing between the pontoons, so people could sit there. On our way out of the bay, we watched sea lions playing in the water, and also saw a baby whale, surrounded by a ring of water taxis (no boat would have been allowed to get that close in the U.S.), breaching and slapping its fin on the water. One of the other passengers on our boat said, "Junior's doing tricks for the paparazzi." I just hoped that the fin-slapping wasn't baby's way of yelling, "Moooom! I'm being chased by those little boxes that travel on top of the water! Help!"

At the actual snorkel site, Gary and I were once again very glad we had our wetsuits. The water was cold. Also murky. Also, we'd been told to look for fish by the rocks, but we'd also been warned against touching the rocks, which sported sea urchins that could have pierced our snorkel flippers. The problem was that when we got close to the rocks, waves tried to smash us into them, so we had to keep a healthy distance. We still saw lots of fish, although not as clearly as we would have in Hawai'i. Mostly we saw other snorkelers; the site was a sea of waving blue fins and yellow snorkels. So it was still fun, but Hawai'i's much better for snorkeling all around.

Tomorrow's an at-sea day. Saturday morning, we disembark in San Diego. I'm sorry the cruise is ending, but it will be nice to be back home with the kitties. Our cat-sitter's been sending us photos and little notes to reassure us that all's well.

Oh, and we had no untoward effects from the Starbucks coffee. Thank goodness!

In Which We Become Ugly Americans

Our second day in PV has been a bit of a bust. We slept late, rolled off the boat around ten, and ambled down to the docks to see if we could find a short whale-watching trip. The only one we found was from one to five, though, and the boat's leaving at 3:30, so that didn't work. The tour operator offered us a private trip for $200. I know buyers are expected to bargain in Mexico, but I just wasn't up to it, so we told him we weren't interested.

Walking back to the cruise pier, we saw two Mexican soldiers with machine guns and grenades casually guarding the tourist docks. Mind you, this is inside the cruise complex, which is surrounded by fencing topped with barbed wire and guarded by private security guards who check cruise ID at the gates. (Getting off the boat, one of the HAL crew had told me, "Be careful with your belongings!") After seeing the machine guns, Gary decided that he wasn't up to exploring. I'd wanted to amble around old PV when I thought I could get there on foot, but having to take a cab -- and not being sure how reliably I could get one back -- made me chicken out, too. If I had more energy today, and if we'd had more time, I'd have gone for it anyhow, but I'm exhausted. I've been having a lot of nightmares on this trip (the nuclear news from Japan certainly hasn't helped), and last night's was a long, complicated dream about losing my job, so I didn't wake up feeling very refreshed.

So what did we do? We crossed the street and, heaven help us, went to the mall, where I bought a Nike swimsuit I've wanted and hadn't been able to find in the States. Then we went to the Starbucks and had iced coffee. I used my tiny bit of Spanish only to apologize for the fact that I speak only a tiny bit of Spanish. The Nike saleswoman and I communicated largely with hand gestures.

On our way back to the ship, it occurred to me that one isn't supposed to drink iced beverages in Mexico. I just hadn't been thinking: we were in an American-style mall, buying from an American chain, surrounded by Americans on their laptops, but that doesn't change the fact that the fauna's different down here. I'd committed the very definition of a stupid tourist mistake. Whoops. Back on board, I talked to a member of the crew, who rolled her eyes and told me I'd probably be fine, but that if I got sick I should call the medical department.

So far we're okay, but the crew member said it takes twenty-four hours. In the meantime, we ate lunch. Gary's pacing the deck; I'm blogging. I wanted to take a nap, but our stateroom's right above the showroom, where there's a rehearsal for some extravaganza with thunderously loud bass, so that wasn't going to happen.

The ship's internet cafe is ten decks up. From up here, the view's lovely, and I just saw two pelicans fly by. That's the highlight of the day so far.

I'm so glad we have an excursion booked for Cabo tomorrow. I just hope we're healthy for it.

Exuberant Ocean

Today was our first day in PV and also our first snorkel excursion. The cruise terminal is across the street from a mall and a Wal-Mart; we'd think we were back in the States, if it weren't for the huge Mexican flag flying at a nearby park.

The snorkel excursion was quite delightful, though. We love our wetsuits -- the water was cold, so they were welcome! -- and Gary could see some fish even without a corrective mask. (HAL had told me the excursion company would have some, but they didn't.) The water here's not nearly as clear as it is in Hawai'i, but we still saw a lot of pretty fish. Other snorkelers and divers saw manta rays and an octopus; we missed those, but we'll be snorkeling again in Cabo the day after tomorrow, so maybe we'll have better luck there.

Above the water, though, things were hopping, literally! We saw several diving whales, lots of dolphins, and baby manta rays flinging themselves out of the water and diving back in. Groups of them did this, as if they were trying to imitate the dolphins. I asked one of our guides why they jump out of the water -- it's not like they need to breathe -- and he said they're building up their muscles so they'll be strong enough to migrate to Argentina. (I'm not sure if they mate down there, or what.) It sure looked like they were just playing for the sheer joy of it, though.

Very cool. I'd never known that baby mantas did that, and it was definitely the highlight of the day.

We also stopped at one of the Marietas Islands to lounge on the beach for a while. That was lovely, and we were surrounded by blue-footed boobies, who nest there.

Unfortunately, the guides on the boat insisted on doing tourist shtick on the way back: playing loud dance music and trying to get everyone into conga lines, that kind of thing. I guess it comes with the territory, but I don't know why these outfits can't just shut up and let people enjoy the scenery.

It was a nice day, despite the conga lines, but we were very glad to get back to the ship, take showers, and change into dry clothing. Dinner was welcome, too: neither of us had found the tour-boat lunch very appetizing, so we'd skipped it, and we were starving. The food's been exceptionally good this trip; Gary thinks it's even better than it was on our cruise to Alaska. (We eat in the dining room, not the buffet, but we have open seating, so we can eat whenever we want.)

Last night at dinner, we were seated at a table for six, since we'd gotten there too late for a two-top. It turned out another couple at the table was from Reno. Then it turned out that they both work at UNR. Then it turned out that they're good family friends of one of my former masters students. Talk about small worlds!

I'm not sure what we'll do tomorrow. Maybe a whale watch, if we can find one without shtick. Maybe some shopping, if we can figure out how to get to something other than Wal-Mart.

Ark

Yesterday we walked around the deck for forty minutes for exercise, ate a calorie-heavy dinner, and listened to the string quartet for three hours. I finished one pair of socks and started another. I also did a tiny bit of writing last night, courtesy of Google Documents (which is really slow via satellite connection!). I hope to repeat that minor miracle today.

This morning we ate a lazy room-service breakfast on our balcony; then I worked out for an hour in the ship's gym (which was jammed) while Gary walked around the deck for seventy-five minutes. We're taking stairs everywhere we go (no small matter, since the passenger part of the ship's ten stories). Anything to burn off some of the extraordinarily yummy food!

We're already blissfully relaxed, although of course all televisions (in our room, in the library where I sit now) broadcast a steady stream of quake news from Japan, broken only by flooding news from New Jersey. It feels a little bit like we're on an ark, a floating island free of disaster.

Yesterday at lunch I sat next to a woman in her eighties who was diagnosed two years ago with stage-four lymphoma. The minute she finished her first brutal round of chemo, she and her husband took off on a cruise. They did five last year and three so far this year, with at least one or two more planned. She told me that they don't have a lot of money: they were both schoolteachers who've been retired for twenty years, but they've gotten very good at finding cruise bargains. (A fellow passenger I told about this commented, "Well, cruises are cheaper than nursing homes, and they sure treat you better.") She and her husband travel six months out of the year. She looks terrific: she swims an hour a day, and attributes her survival so far to the fact that she was in excellent shape before her diagnosis.

"I just wish I could tell people to enjoy every minute they have," she told me. "We all have to do some planning for the future, but really, live each day as if it might be your last, because it could be."

Amen. And I hope I'm as vital as she is when I'm her age, even without cancer!

Sailboats in San Diego Bay

Nix on Mazatlan

We're waiting to board the boat, but were informed upon check-in that Mazatlan's off the itinerary because of recent violence; instead, we'll spend an extra day in Puerto Vallarta.

I thought HAL had been stopping at Mazatlan again, but the letter says it's cancelled for the rest of the season.

I'm told there's good shopping in PV. I'll make do.

View of Ship from Hotel Window

Our San Diego hotel's right across the street from the cruise terminal. How convenient is that?

Our trip yesterday went fine, but seemed to take forever. There are no direct flights from Reno to San Diego, so we had to switch both planes and airlines at LAX. This involved not one but two shuttle-bus rides: very surreal. A small highway, in effect, winds through the airport, and you're driving with other shuttles and cars past huge machinery and arrays of blinking red lights, with the neon glow of terminals in the distance. Very Blade Runner.

When we finally got to the gate for our connecting flight, the overhead TV was full of dire predictions about nuclear meltdown in Japan. When we got to San Diego, a woman on our hotel shuttle (who'll also be on our cruise) told us that her grandson had flown into Tokyo the day before. He landed right before the quake hit, and is stranded at the airport.

I read a news story this morning that cruise ships at sea are safe from tsunamis. Good to know.

Getting Ready

I've now crammed almost every item of clothing I own, along with too many shoes, plus swimming and snorkel gear (swimsuits, snorkel, mask, and wetsuit) into my suitcase. We leave tomorrow afternoon, so I still have time to organize the carry-on stuff tomorrow morning. I'm not bringing my laptop; I'll probably buy one of the internet packages on the ship -- so I can scan messages for emergency e-mail from our cat-sitter or my sister -- and use the computers in the library. I may or may not blog.

Our prescription masks arrived yesterday, but to our great disappointment, Gary's didn't fit. He'll have to take his chances with whatever the shore-excursion people have on the rack. The cruise line assures me that corrective masks will indeed be available, but whether they'll be a good fit for Gary's eyes is another matter. He's done well in the past at Snorkel Bob's in Hawai'i, but I suspect the shore-excursion companies don't offer that large a selection.

My mask seems to fit very well, although I haven't tried it in actual water yet. The correction seems fine too, although these are straight diopters, and not lenses custom-ground to address my astigmatism.

I'm absolutely exhausted -- along with just about everyone else I know -- and I really need this trip. I hope we have good weather and lots of colorful marine life, and that warmth and sunshine revive both my brain and my spirits.

Snowier

It's been snowing off and on all day (with chain controls on all mountain roads). We're expecting another two to four inches overnight. One of the ski areas got four feet in twenty-four hours. This is good news for skiers, of course, and also for the snowpack, which had been running a bit low, and which supplies our water during the summer.

This morning I took Gary to the eye doctor for a routine exam, but other than than, I've stayed in: I canceled my fiddle lesson because of weather and didn't even go to the gym, which I probably should have done for my back. Instead, I finished these socks, which I've been working on forever: they aren't things of beauty, but they were my first attempt at calf-shaping (although it turned out I didn't have quite enough yarn for true kneesocks). I'm wearing them now and they're comfy, which is all I ask of socks.

I started another pair with some lovely cashmere-blend sock yarn I bought in Alaska. I've already made socks for my sister with this yarn, and she loves them, so I look forward to wearing mine.

I read a little, wrote a little, graded a little. Gary ordered a wetsuit online. Gary and I used some of our we're-not-in-San-Francisco savings to splurge on two more shore excursions: a snorkel trip in Cabo and a boat-ride-to-Stone-Island in Mazatlan. These are probably overpriced, but we feel safer booking through the ship, especially in Mazatlan; I'm hoping that Stone Island is well away from drug-related violence, although Holland America and several other cruises simply stopped visiting the port for a few weeks when there were problems. Since HAL's put it back on the itinerary, I hope things are safer now.

In very sad news here, the body recovered yesterday has indeed been identified as that of the missing hiker. No cause of death has been made public, although the police say they don't suspect foul play. The woman who died was only fifty-seven.

I don't plan to go to the hospital tomorrow, especially with all the snow. We're not in SF, but I'm taking this as a stay-cation anyway. Of course, if I wake up and feel some prodigious burst of energy, I might change my mind, but how likely is that? And it's not like I don't have enough to do here.

Whew!

Today I worked a busy shift at the hospital -- I had a census of ninety-nine, including two patients who reminded me poignantly of my mother -- and then went to work to grab some course materials I needed, and then went for a chiropractic adjustment (I think maybe it's starting to work, although I'm still sore), and then came home and worked like mad on my syllabi, both of which are now done.

Yay.

Thank God for Gary, who always proofreads my syllabi for me and catches errors I can't see because I've been staring at the documents for so long.

Tomorrow I'll go to school and photocopy for hours, jostling around all the other people who'll need to photocopy for hours -- at least I don't teach until Wednesday -- and I have a meeting with an honors student whose thesis I'm supervising, and I need to work on revising my Tolkien essay, which should have gotten done last week but didn't, and I need to write two letters of recommendation and . . . I'll need to swim. And tomorrow night I'll need to prep my first classes for Wednesday. As often as I've done this, I still get nervous.

Welcome to the beginning of the semester.

Our trip down to Minden on Saturday was lovely; I adored the music, although Gary was less than thrilled with the sound system. I spent some money at the yarn store, of course. We both liked the restaurant where we had dinner, which was conveniently across the street from the concert hall. We sat behind some other students of Charlene's -- a mom and teenaged daughter who are both taking fiddle lessons, and who'd brought along dad and two brothers -- and chatted. The entire expedition was a nice little end-of-break break.

But now winter break's over. Time to start the countdown to the Mexico cruise!

Decadence

One of my sanity requirements is to get out of town during Spring Break in March, and furthermore, to go somewhere warm and sunny: and even morefurther, to go somewhere warm and sunny with good snorkeling.

Hence our last four trips to Hawai'i. The problem with Hawai'i, though, is that any trip includes two full days of flying, which really feels more like six full days of flying, given how much fun flying is these days. I don't mind that much -- I get a lot of knitting done on those flights -- but they're pure torture for Gary, who's claustrophobic and has very long legs.

We are, of course, now in love with cruising, but that's mondo-expensive, especially during Spring Break week, and especially because Gary insists on a verandah suite. I'd take a broom closet, but I see his point: if you're going to live on a boat for a week, do it right.

Since our Alaska cruise in May, we've been getting sale e-mails from Holland America roughly every two weeks. I've been obsessively checking the March 12 Mexican Riviera cruise. For lo, these many months, the prices haven't budged, no doubt because that week is Spring Break.

Today, they budged. The prices on the least expensive verandah rooms had dropped two hundred dollars per person. When I signed in with our Mariner numbers, that fell another hundred per person. I comparison-shopped Big Island packages (car plus flight plus hotel), and the prices seemed pretty comparable, especially since food's included on cruises and mega-expensive in Hawai'i.

So we've plunked down a deposit on a Mexican Riviera cruise over Spring Break.

I'm simultaneously thrilled and slightly nauseous. This is expensive, and times are tough (and we'll have a hefty bill from our Christmas in San Francisco, too), and I fervently hope that I'm heading into a sabbatical year, which will entail definite belt-tightening. On the other hand, the please-God-let-it-be-upcoming sabbatical also means that this may be our last change to splurge for a while. The alternative's to stay home -- which I know from experience is very bad for my mental health -- or to find somewhere warm, sunny, and snorkel-friendly for less money, which seems fairly impossible.

I don't know if we're being wise or irresponsible, but the usual cliches suffice. We only live once, often for not quite as long as we expected. Looking back, we usually regret the things we didn't do more than the things we did. Carpe diem. Make hay while the sun shines. We could all get flattened by a rogue asteroid tomorrow. Etc. and so forth.

Right?