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One more cruise story…the bonus is that it’s like 2-3 stories in one.

During the cruise, wifey and I made dinner reservations for 2 at the on-board Mexican restaurant. The waiter comes out - we order an appetizer each. Wifey orders the chicken fajitas and I order the enchiladas.

The waiter writes nothing down. Hello…are you gettin’ all this? Why do waiters think it’s impressive to be able to take your order w/o writing it down? I guess they teach you this in waiter school. “Someday, you’ll be able to take orders w/o writing it down. Everyone will think you’re the best waiter and you will be tipped well!!” In reality, all it means is that no one will trust you and they’ll be more than surprised if you get the order right.

Sure enough, out comes the waiter on cue w/two orders of fajitas. I don’t have the heart to tell this guy that he messed up the order, so I just smile and accept the fajitas. Half way into the meal, the waiter for the table next to us comes out and tells them that there was an unfortunate mistake and we have their food. This was like the third time the waiter had some kind of bad news for this couple, who is now giving US the hairy eyeball. How was I supposed to know? I was just trying to help this guy out who didn’t write down the order. Now it’s my fault that everyone is unhappy. Shortly thereafter, our waiter comes out and says, “Why didn’t you tell me I gave you the wrong food.” To which I’m thinking…”if you had written it down, you’d already know!!”

OK - moving past that…I’m eating the fajitas and there’s some kind of weird spice on them. I couldn’t put my finger on it right away, but about halfway into the meal, it comes to me. There’s CURRY on my fajitas! Hellooo!!! I don’t think the Mexicans use curry on their food. At least I never had any curry fajitas growing up in Texas. Maybe these cooks were from the mid-Indian portion of Mexico…I don’t know.

The meal ended on a decent note though - pecan apple pie with ice cream. Mmmmmmm…it was good.

J

Well, Sunday’s earthquakes were certainly interesting. I’ve been through several before, but none that lasted that long. The whole island lost power for much of the day. Here at the house, we had no power for about 14 hours.

It was pretty cool to see how losing a few conveniences can be a blessing in disguise. As I was driving through our neighborhood, I was surprised to see how many families were outside playing together. I, myself, had planned a fun-filled day alone on the couch watching football. Instead, I got to spend all afternoon playing Battleship, Crazy-8s and Go Fish with the family. Having no airconditing all day was a small price to pay.

J

One of the things I noticed on our cruise was that some people just understand basic spatial relationships. I’m talking about the people who used to repeatedly try to put the square peg in the round hole as children.

We made numerous trips in the elevators on the ship. Our room was on deck 8, the pool and buffet were on deck 12, departing the boat was via deck 4, etc. Anyway, just about every time the elevator opened, instead of waiting for someone to leave the usually crowded elevator, the people outside would push there way in and then there was the awkward situation of trying to get the people who wanted off around the influx of newbies. Let’s see…we could let the 2-3 people off and then easily fit into the elevator, or we could bully our way in and if you want off, you figure it out. We’ll go with option 2.

J

OK - so, I guess I’m officially old. We just got back from a 7-day inter-island cruise. We had a really good time. The dessert buffet was not kind to me…I hate to check the scale in the morning. Although it was a lot of fun, I got a little stressed out trying to figure how to see all the things we wanted to see, return the rental car and get back to the ship on time every day.

I have a lot of observations that I would like to share - stay tuned for those. For now, I start you off w/a story. We had a friend of ours drive us to the harbor in our van and drop us off. When you show up at the ship, you have all these tags on your bags that have your room number on them. At some point during the first day, your bags magically appear outside your stateroom.

Our first port visit was Hilo. We get off the ship and are walking to the shuttle bus for the rental car place. At this moment, I realize, “Oh no…we forgot to bring the car seat when we left the ship.” Then I realize, “Oh no, they lost our car seat because it was never delivered to our room.” Followed by, “Oh no…I forgot to take the car seat out of the van when we got out at the harbor.” The rental car place was willing to rent us one for the unbelievably low price of $9 per day. Let’s see…$9×7days=63 bucks!! So, the first stop on our 7-day, fun-filled inter-island extravaganza????? Walmart! $35 later, we are the owners of one fine Cosco booster seat.

J