Because MBCB said I should

Well, a certain MBCB has requested several times that I post about my recentish cruise, so here goes. I went with FarmerBoy to the Western Caribbean. I'll try to get a slideshow up with a few of the very few pictures that we took.

Day 1
Our flight left at about midnight from the Las Vegas airport. After our extended five hour drive (we needed books and goodies to survive), we got to the airport four hours early and I actually slept on the flight for a couple of hours.

Day 2
We got into Ft. Lauderdale, waited in the airport for a couple of hours before taking a shuttle to Miami on Superbowl Sunday. Traffic actually wasn't too bad. We got on the ship about 12:30 and promptly went to the buffet because eating is very important on a cruise. We took our tour of the ship and wasted some time before dinner and then went to bed early because I was exhausted from being up most of the night.

Day 3
At Sea. We spent the day going to trivia competitions, reading, sleeping, exploring, and various other things around the ship. This might be the day that FarmerBoy went ice skating on the ship and I went to the shopping seminar to learn about all of the great shopping deals that mostly applied to diamonds and really expensive watches.

Day 4
Costa Maya, Mexico. We were supposed to go parasailing here, but this was canceled because the weather had been bad the day before and all of the parasailing ships went to cozumel. We did, however go snorkeling. The snorkeling was diffiicult here because there were some waves, so we would swim and swim and not move much of anywhere. Next, I proceeded to get most of my silver jewelry and quite the sunburn on my back. I'd been to Cozumel before and knew that they didn't deal much. We also purchased a hammock chair, pagan mask for my parents' bathroom collection, and a cute little dress for Nookoo. I felt pretty good about my bargaining skills. I'm only willing to pay so much for earrings that I'll lose half of

Day 5
Lamanai Ruins, Belize. We took a bus for an hour and a half to a boat. We then took a boat ride up the river for about an hour to get to the ruins. Farmerboy saw a crocodile in the river and I saw sticks. He is a lot more observant than I was. On to the ruins. I thought they were fabulous and very cool. And we saw and heard howler monkeys, which was lots of fun. FarmerBoy climbed to the top of the building and took a picture of me sitting at the bottom as seen in the slideshow.

We got back about 20 minutes before the last tender to the ship and that was our day.

Day 6
Cozumel, Mexico. Again, we went snorkeling. The snorkeling here was amazing. Beautifully clear water and calm as can be. We stopped at three different locations and saw starfish and a turtle and tons of fish and coral and all sorts of cool stuff. The tour operators gave us the most delicious melon to snack on. We spent several hours snorkeling here and the tour guide was great, pointing lots of things out to us. We continued on with my shopping, getting the pearls for $1.50 an inch (I knew that shopping seminar on day 1 had to be worth something), as well as numerous lucidore (sp?) masks, and some T-shirts.

Day 7
Grand Cayman, Virgin Islands. We actually got to sleep in this morning, since our excursion wasn't until 1:30 or so. We went to Stingray city and held and kissed stingrays. No, we did not get stung and die. We then did a little bit of snorkeling there, which was pretty lame after Cozumel. I finished out my shopping with seashell necklaces and then we headed back to the ship. Grand Cayman is not my favorite place. Mostly it has high-end jewelry stores, which I'm not going to buy things from.

Day 8
At Sea. More random activites, art auctions, eating, and packing to go.

Day 9
Disembark at about 10:00 and spend many more hours waiting in the airport until our flight at 8:30 p.m. I did not sleep on the crowded plane this time. No leg room, and annoying people who thought that they should stand and talk all the way through the flight! Get into Las Vegas, spend the night and lose my .mp3 player somewhere along the way. Boo! I just bought it from S.Q. last summer. It may yet show up somewhere.

Day 10
Drive back from Vegas. Car quits at St. George exit. Mechanics can't figure out why. Car stops at New Harmony. We add more gas (the tank was not empty) and made it home safely.

Randomness
FarmerBoy and I found an old couple from Florida to team up with for our many trivia games. We did pretty well together, winning all kinds of useless stuff as pictured in the slide show.

As mentioned above, I burned my back pretty badly the first day that we were out, even though I used sunscreen. I just failed to reapply it. I spent the next days snorkeling coming out of restrooms and asking little old ladies if they would please line my swimming suit straps up with the white lines on my back. They were very accommodating.

I did spend some time in the Diamonds International stores collecting my free bracelet and charms, which I refer to as my DI bracelet.

You could eat 24 hours a day on the ship because they had a sandwich shop and pizzeria open 24 hours a day. The teenage boys loved the pizza place. We always went to the buffet for breakfast, and varied lunch between the pizzeria and buffet. Dinner was the dining room or buffet. A couple of the nights we went to dinner it took us 2 hours to eat, when we could be done in 30 minutes at the buffet.

FarmerBoy and I did not try the wave rider, but we did watch other people wipe out on it. Whenever it was going, you could watch on the T.V. in your room. We also did not do the rock climbing wall, because I am a wuss.

The Las Vegas and Ft. Lauderdale airports have very few entertainment options for those spending many hours there. Well, Vegas has slot machines, but I don't gamble. I find Chicago and Denver to be much better for those reasons.

Well, there is a long and boring post for you. Let me know if you have any questions I can answer about the cruise world.

P.S. The photos of FarmerBoy in the slideshow are for NooKoo's enjoyment because she loves her Uncle FarmerBoy. The rest of you close your eyes!

P.P.S. We bought the pictures of us with the stingrays. We didn't take them.

New Post because Roo said I should.

So, Roo said that I should write a new blog post. January, as always, has been a very big month at work. I have accomplished the following there:
1. 65 W-2s prepared and sent
2. 30 1099s prepared and sent
3. 6 943s prepared and sent
4. 1 940 prepared and sent
5. 6 State withholding forms sent.
6. 3 Annual meetings attended and minutes taken (1 to go on Tuesday)
7. 7 Board meetings attended and minutes taken (1 to go on Tuesday)
8. Hundreds Voting cards made for said meetings, and we actually used some this year!
9. 6 Nasty accounting reviews
10. 24 Hours of Comp Time, and 1 sick day.

Needless to say, my month pretty much consisted of work, work, work! Farmer Boy and I are going on a Western Caribbean Cruise. We leave Saturday at midnight. Hurrah! We will be doing much snorkeling. I have been purchasing much sun gear--spf clothing and hat, sunblock; water-proof sunblock; biodegradable, water-proof sun-block. I also had to purchase a new swimming suit, and the most unflattering board shorts that you have ever seen in your life. Good thing no one but FarmerBoy will see me.

There you go--an update from me. I'll leave you with a picture of me in my fabulous new spf sun hat. It makes me look like an old lady. Let me know which side you like best, flowered or beige.

Hurry, Hurry! Mama Sita's Contest

My Mom is giving away a Book--her book on her Blog! Yippee!

The photo is above because I couldn't get it to insert here.


Many of you know that my Mom has put together a wonderful organizing book for families. It helps you keep track of medical issues, soccer coaches, outside interests, and emergency locations all in one handy-dandy little book. It is called the Family Record Keeper. It looks like a cookbook, so that you can keep it with your cookbooks for easy retrieval. It is a binder, so that you can take out the pages you don't need, and add extras if you want (not that you need to--Mom thought of everything). Click the link above to order your own book.

To try and win your own Family Record Keeper, do the following:

1. Peruse the Family Record Keeper website here.

2. Go to my Mom's blog here or at www.marysgreathouse.blogspot.com or click the "Mama Sita link at the left) and...

3. Leave a comment about why you think the book is so wonderful and/or why it would help you. Mama Sita is drawing for the winner on December 16th at midnight, so you better hurry.

P.S. I am not being paid to do this review, and any order will result in more work for me, but I want you to order anyway!

Orneriness

Dear World,

Today, I am ornery. I just thought that I should let you know, as most people can't figure out that I'm ornery because I'm still smiling.

Why am I ornery, you ask?

1. Because I spent 45 minutes on the phone with Credit Card services with them trying to explain how my card could be declined when I overpaid my bill. They took the block off of my card, and still could not give me a satisfactory answer.

2. I have to pay bills at work today.
--some company just sent us bills from last year. Like we can remember what they did for us that long ago! Makes it hard to verify the bill.

3. An employee told me he has a couple of questions ( I know, sounds stressful.), which I should be happy about because this is an improvement over the chewing out I got from him on why the company was ripping him off by requiring him to pay back his advance like he was told he was going to have to do.

4. Loo left.

5. People come into my office when I don't want them to and want me to be nice and I don't always want to be nice.

6. I don't know what to get Da for Christmas.

7. Because I want to be ornery. That's a good enough reason, isn't it.

Ornery regards to you.

Moo

P.S. maybe in my next post I'll write about happy things--maybe not.

Visit of the Coos

So, Coo's family came down to visit this last weekend and we had a lot of fun. I e-mailed some photos to some of you. FarmerBoy had special powers getting NooCoo to eat. We didn't do anything exciting while they were here, but we had fun visiting with them. Above, are some photos that NooCoo and I took using the webcam. We would take one pic and I would show it to her and she would say "AGAIN!" So, we took several shots in the style of photo booth pictures. Hope you enjoy them. I'd post others, but they are on my memory card in my camera next door, so these will have to do. Baby JooCoo is very fond of his food and would eat 24 hours a day if given the chance, but still maintains his long, lean figure through exercise routines of wiggling, and crawling. JooCoo also said his first word while down visiting us. The word was "daddy" which I think pleased his mom YooCoo as NooCoo also said her first word while at our house last year. Her first word "doggie".

The whole Coo family came trick-or-treating at our houses and I have posted a photo of this below.

Yes, I'm scared of my cat.

Every night, as I walk through the door from work, I am met by 2 dogs and 2 cats. It's not because I give them lots and lots of attention. They meet me for other reasons. The cats meow and the dogs talk for the next 15-20 minutes, letting me know that it is time to be fed. I let the dogs and one of the cats into the garage where I feed them in the following order: The cat (Callie)is fed dry food on top of the cupboard, so the dogs don't eat her food. Oscar is fed one scoop of dog food next because food is, arguably, the most important thing in his life. That and he will take the bowl from Zephyr if you feed Zephyr first. So, whether or not he is given food first, he eats the first bowl of food. Zephyr then gets a scoop on the side of the garage with no cars. This is because he picks up his bowl and moves it so that Oscar won't eat it, and he frequently leaves the bowl behind my car tires if he is fed on the side of the garage with the cars. Next, Oscar gets another half scoop--partially because he is bigger, but mostly because he tends to have bad food manners and has been known to steal the roast off the of the table or the beef jerky off of the radio. He knows he shouldn't do this, but he just loves his food too much. Thus, usually we remember to keep meat, cheese, and applesauce products in the middle of the table and not close to the edges.

Finally, I go back in the house and feed Tabitha (the other cat) on top of the terrarium. Again, so the dogs don't get her food. She gets a can of cat food of the poultry or beef variety. Why the canned? Because she bites me if she only gets dry food. Why the poultry or beef variety? Because she bites me if it is fish. If I don't feed her when she wants on weekends, you guessed it, she bites me. Don't worry, she always licks me before she bites because she is very particular about cleanliness and having a clean surface to bite.

I realize that this isn't logical to let her bite me since she is seven pounds and I am............a whole lot more than seven pounds, but apparently I'm scared of my cat because I keep letting her use her mind control powers to get me to feed her what she wants. I guess she does own me.

New Arrivals and Coloring Fun

So, FarmerBoy and I went to SLC and got a call from S.Q. letting us know that he saw Compost Chicken (the chicken that doesn't like the other chickens and lives at the compost pile) crossing the lawn with at least at little chicks. We have since found out that there are at least 11 chicks. We haven't named them yet, as we expect several of them to disappear to predators. The other day I went to take a picture of Compostie with her little family and the picture below is what she thought of the idea.


This next picture shows a few of the chicks (most of them are black). Tonight I had to wait for a bit while she got her family out of the driveway and herded out of my path:

Today, at work, I finally cleaned out my fridge that has been sitting unplugged for two months because I stole the extension cord for something else. It was truly gross and growing lots of mold. Loo would be proud of the science experience. I opened the front door and used some Clorox Cleanup, that I got on my pants, which ended up looking like this:

So, I used some of these:



And my pants and leg ended up looking like this:

I then washed and dried my pants to see if that would blend the colors and make them better. Here is the result:

Not what I was hoping for. I guess my lesson is learned. At least until the next time I get Clorox on my clothes.