*OFFICIAL* CC Group Cruise 02/15/2014 Cupid's IV Southern Caribbean - Carnival Breeze

[AKB10]

I'm off to see the wizard...well actually my doctor who will give me a steroid shot in my back so I can function for another 4 months. Don't worry, it isn't from that Boston outfit with all the bad steroid medicine........I checked!!

Rick, I have had the epidural steroid injections in my back. Sometimes they help, sometimes they don't. It has been a few years since I had to have one though. Luckily the last few years my back pain has been bearable.

 

Eric and his girlfriend are on their way here as I type this. I don't know how long they will stay. Originally they were going to stay just till tomorrow morning but i'm wondering if maybe they can stay till Friday or so since they were delayed. guess we'll find out after they get here.

 

Rick - hope your back starts to feel better. have you checked to see if any of your past injections came from that place in Boston?

 

The trick or treaters are coming. the 1st group to come was a few boys about 10-12 years old. A short time later another group of kids came and then after that the same group of boys that came 1st were back. Geez, you'd think they could be a little more subtle, like coming again later when I've had a lot of kids and would no longer remember them. LOL.

 

Happy Halloween!:D

 

Heidi, I hope you have a good visit with Eric and his girlfriend. Hopefully you will get to know her a little better.

 

I am waiting for the doorbell to ring for the first time tonight. The candy is ready by the front door. I hope I can stay away from the candy this year. :p Trying to diet, and that candy is such a challenge. I did buy the candy last night, instead of having it around for days and bought a kind that is not my favorite.

[Flick]

Since we live in a retirement community (as if ALL of Florida wasn't one, LOL) we have not seen or heard of trick and treaters for 15 years! That doesn't mean we don't go all out in outdoor decorations to impress and scare each other...just no kids around.

The back is good!!! The shot is a combination of cortizone and homeopathic herbs.(?) Sounds strange but then again I don't care as long as it works! The doctor who gives it to me is the former White House physician to Pres. Bush and V.P. Cheney. He does not buy from the outfit in Boston that made the bad shots.In fact he told the nurse the "formula" for the shot since it has three different components.

[momofzeke]

No trick-or-treaters out here in the boondocks. When the kids were little, we used to go in to town and have dinner at my Grandma's house, the kids would hand out candy to early trick-or-treaters, and then we would go trick-or-treating. I miss that. It was rainy and cold here last night, right on cue for the little ones out and about. Never fails!

 

Heidi, have a good visit with Eric and his girlfriend. So glad they are able to make it after all!

 

Thank goodness for Folex carpet stain remover!!! That stuff is like a miracle stain remover. Zeke is still oozing some blood out his nose from his procedure, so I find these spots of blood on my carpet. The Folex takes them up lickety-split! That stuff is gold.

 

I probably won't find out the results of Zeke's cultures until tomorrow, because they have to grow them for 72 hours, which would be this evening. He seems to feel great, but I can really hear the crud in his nose. He snores like an old man ~ like the one I'm married to!! :D LOL! LOL!

[HeidiHo]

Good evening! :)

 

We had a strange woman in the OG today. She complained to a manager (I didn't see her then) that the bathroom looked like it hadn't been cleaned in about 3 days. I had been in there about 30 minutes before and it was fine then. I went in there to check and see if it had gotten messed up since I was last in there and it was just fine. I did a little maintenance anyway (emptied garbage cans that were only half full and replaced toilet paper that had not run out yet) and then went back out front to work. About 45 minutes later a woman came up to me and asked if we had comment cards. I said no but would she like to talk to a manger. She said no, that she had already told a manager that the bathroom was filthy and that she was just in there again and it still hadn't been cleaned. :confused::confused: She also added that she would not use it since it was so dirty. I went back in there to check and it was spotless. I really don't know what she expected. I even dragged the manager in there to see for himself and he even said it was clean. He made sure and told the general manager when she came in later just in case the woman decides to complain to corporate. I'm glad I decided to bring the manager in to see for himself because I would probably get written up if the woman complained and I had no one to back me up. Either she was a real germaphobe or she was trying to get something for free like an OG gift card. She still might get the gift card if she complains to corporate but at least I'm off the hook.

 

Eric and his girlfriend had to leave early this morning. :( Cheslynn had class at 10:00 and it's a 2 1/2 hour drive. We had a nice visit. It was nice to get to know her a little. She seems quiet but I suppose it's just that she doesn't know us well. We took them out to Bahama Breeze for dinner. I have enough left over for a couple of meals.

 

Have a good night.

[walkswife]

Ok so I didn't want the puppy but now I'm in love:o He is just to damn cute.... lol... not old enough to be away from mommy yet but they were getting rid of them one way or another.... so we bottle feed him some... he will do some softened puppy chow.... the cat thinks he is a mouse he is so little:rolleyes:

[Cruisin Dave]

Howdy Cupids,

 

I'm headed to Lubbock in the morning to spend the weekend with Bettie. She is still working on thank you cards and notification cards.

 

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

 

Dave

[Flick]

backpack day! Let us hope and pray my pants stay up today!!

[Flick]

Well they stayed up although I thought I was going to lose them as I was carrying cartons of bread to a church food pantry. Maybe I should reconsider this losing weight......ya think?

[AKB10]

Well they stayed up although I thought I was going to lose them as I was carrying cartons of bread to a church food pantry. Maybe I should reconsider this losing weight......ya think?

 

Or it is time to go on a shopping spree for new clothes. :D

[Flick]

I am absolutely forbidden from buying ANYTHING from now until after Christmas so my wife can buy me whatever. We have a tendency to buy whatever we need whenever we need it and that presents a big problem at Christmas for both of us. Last year was the first year in a very long time that I able to completely surprise Kay by buying her a Kindle Fire which she dearly loves......

However, due to my "dropping pants problem" I did go on line two days ago and buy a couple of pairs of jeans in a smaller waist size. Shhhh!

[HeidiHo]

Good Evening!

 

Not much going on here. I've been really busy with both jobs.

 

I can't wait till this election is over so our phone will stop ringing. Thank God for caller ID. I don't bother answering but it's still annoying.

 

I am absolutely forbidden from buying ANYTHING from now until after Christmas so my wife can buy me whatever. We have a tendency to buy whatever we need whenever we need it and that presents a big problem at Christmas for both of us. Last year was the first year in a very long time that I able to completely surprise Kay by buying her a Kindle Fire which she dearly loves......

However, due to my "dropping pants problem" I did go on line two days ago and buy a couple of pairs of jeans in a smaller waist size. Shhhh!

 

Rick -I remember my mom used to get so annoyed with my dad because he would always just go out and buy whatever he wanted right before Christmas and then she would have trouble finding something to buy for him.

 

We usually go out to dinner on Saturday nights but I think I'd rather just stay in tonight.

 

Don't forget to set your clocks back tonight. We get and extra hour of sleep. :D

[ed_k_tx]

Hi guys,

Spent the day with Dale at the Intl. Quilt Festival in Houston. Lots of walking.

Then the Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner. Seems like we always end up there whenever we go downtown. Just happened to be their 40th anniversary so everyone got free cake. After the big meal and all the walking I'll need the extra hour sleep tonight.:)

[Flick]

Just got in from the International Chalk Festival in downtown Sarasota. No, this is not your ordinary blackboard chalk but rather they close off two blocks of a street then issue a call for artists from all over the world to come in and draw "paintings" on the street surface itself. Some of these "masterpieces" are just that...copies of masterpieces! This year's theme is Circus City USA and all the artwork duplicates old circus posters or various stars and animals of the circus. For years Sarasota was the Winter home of Ringling Bros. Barnum and Baily Circus and while that is no longer true there are over 50 circuses based here. Some of the larger pictures take more than a week to do...they are that extensive.

[Cruisin Dave]

Good morning Cupids,

Drove to Lubbock Friday to spend the weekend with Bettie and her dad. They are doing okay. Bettie is working on the thankyou and notification cards a few at a time. Hopefully she will be home by the end of the week.

Ed, Bettie and I went to the Quilt show in Houston many years ago. Her daughter used to live there and we would go often.

Bettie gets upset with me because I will pick up what I need right before Christmas then she has no idea what to get me.

Hope everyone has a great week.

Dave

[HeidiHo]

Good Morning! Happy Monday! :)

 

Rick - that Chalk Festival sounds really cool. I'll be the drawings are really cool. What happens if it rains? :eek:

 

My work schedule is changing this week. We have a new manager doing schedules. My schedule is OK except that the new guy gave me 5 nights. I usually work 4 nights and 1 lunch. No big deal but next time I see him I'm going to ask him to give me a lunch back. With me working 5 nights and Dave working days, we only see each other 2 nights a week. That kind of sucks. I hardly ever cook anymore. There's no point to it. The nice thing about my schedule this week is I'm only closing the restaurant 1 night instead of 2 which means I'll be home earlier. It might take the new guy a few weeks to get good at scheduling. He's brand new, fresh out of manager training. The manager that used to do our schedules got transferred to another restaurant.

 

Has anyone else noticed that our group cruise is still the last one to be formed on Cruise Critic. There have been no new groups since ours, not even on other cruise lines. I wonder if that's because of the incentives like the cabin credits being taken away by Carnival and most groups were Carnival. You would think though that there would then be more interest in group cruises on other lines but that hasn't happened either.

 

Have a great week. :D

[Flick]

Good Morning! Happy Monday! :)

 

Rick - that Chalk Festival sounds really cool. I'll be the drawings are really cool. What happens if it rains? :eek:

 

My work schedule is changing this week. We have a new manager doing schedules. My schedule is OK except that the new guy gave me 5 nights. I usually work 4 nights and 1 lunch. No big deal but next time I see him I'm going to ask him to give me a lunch back. With me working 5 nights and Dave working days, we only see each other 2 nights a week. That kind of sucks. I hardly ever cook anymore. There's no point to it. The nice thing about my schedule this week is I'm only closing the restaurant 1 night instead of 2 which means I'll be home earlier. It might take the new guy a few weeks to get good at scheduling. He's brand new, fresh out of manager training. The manager that used to do our schedules got transferred to another restaurant.

 

Heidi I wondered about that myself. Maybe we will find out tomorrow as we have a 40% chance of rain. I assumed they were covered with some kind of poly whatever but they were still tweaking them yesterday when we were there. Maybe they use tarps to cover them.

Kay starts a part-time job tomorrow because she was "bored". No big deal....she'll be a cashier at Publix grocery store. However, since this just came up we are running around cancelling and re-arranging appointments like crazy. She told them she can't work Thursdays or Fridays because she will be busy with backpacks otherwise she will work 20 hours a week at least thru the holidays if not beyond. "We shall see" said the eye.

Edited November 5, 2012 by Flick

[momofzeke]

Hi gang.

 

I've been in a funk for a week, I found out that Zeke does have cancer. :( :(

I am so sad, I've spent a week pretty much crying all the time. I don't know how long he has left, but I'm hoping that maybe it will be at least many months, or maybe even a year or more. Right now he still feels great, is eating and drinking, running, and playing. I'm trying not to dwell on it, but to just enjoy the time I do have left with him. That dog goes everywhere I go, and is my buddy and companion. I am having a real hard time with this news.

 

Heidi ~ I didn't realize that no other groups had been formed since ours. That is interesting. I guess maybe if the incentives are gone, people aren't interested in group cruising anymore. My main reason for group cruising is the people that I'm cruising with, so the incentives are kind of secondary to me.

 

I can't believe how nice it's been here. It was 65 degrees yesterday and the day before. It's been beautiful. We haven't had to start feeding hay yet because the weather has been so warm. Dave will have to start feeding soon, though. Maybe later this week. A storm is supposed to come on Thursday.

 

I can't tell you how glad I am that today is Election Day so we can stop hearing and seeing all the political B.S. all over the news, internet, etc. I am so sick of it! And I'm sick of getting political recorded phone calls! Won't miss those either. I know there will still be a lot of political chatter for weeks after today is over, but at least the ads will not be on TV every 5 minutes, and the chatter will die down over the next few weeks, hopefully. I really hate politics and it seems like both parties are just so negative and hateful it makes me not want to listen to anything any of them are saying.

 

Oregon has vote by mail, so Dave and I turned our ballots in a couple of weeks ago. Before vote by mail was enacted here in Oregon, I was on the Election Board for our District out here in Valley Falls. That was really fun and I miss it. It was myself and 2 neighbor ladies, with another neighbor joining us for the counting after the polls closed.

[HeidiHo]

Good Morning! Happy Election Day!

 

Like Sue I am happy it's election day so that all the ads and phone calls will stop. I am so sick of it. One day I counted the phone calls and there were 12. Only a couple of them were not political. Thank god for caller ID and answering machines because I don't pick up unless I recognize the number and then I screen the messages if they leave one and pick up only if I see it's someone I want to talk to.

 

Sue -I know I said this the other day when we talked but I'll say it again, I'm so sorry about Zeke.

 

The weather here has been cool (40's). That's typical for this time of year. We haven't had anything below freezing yet though and it's supposed to warm up to about 60 for the weekend. We can't complain.

 

I went to work last night but when I got there another host had shown up thinking that she was supposed to work but she wasn't scheduled. She has been working Monday nights regularly for months so she didn't check the schedule for this week and didn't realize that the new manager had changed things around and she was not scheduled. She normally only works 2 shifts a week as it is and he had only scheduled her for 1 shift later in the week. She was pretty upset about it. I was scheduled for 5 shifts (my normal amount) but I felt really bad for her. She has 2 little kids and Christmas is coming so I offered her my shift. At first she said no because she felt bad that I had gone to the trouble to get dressed and drive there but I live so close it's really no big deal. I told her that so she gave in and took my shift so I went home.

 

Have a good day. :)

[Flick]

I have steadfastly refused to discuss politics online anywhere but I ran across a quote the other day from, believe it or not, Abraham Lincoln! "Elections belong to the people....If they decide to turn their back to the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters."

[HeidiHo]

Good Morning!

 

Today is my day off but I agreed to go in to the OG and do a delivery. Boy am I sorry I agreed to that. I didn't realize until late last night how big the order is. It's huge ($1000.00) and is going to take up probably my entire car and it's going to be a lot of heavy trays of food. I'm going to ask the manager when I go in if he can possibly spare another person to go with me. If not, when I deliver it (it's going to a hospital) I am praying that they will have people to help me unload it. Maybe they will even have a cart. A couple of years ago when I did a delivery that was kind of big I was lucky and they were able to give me a cart to take out to my car.

 

Today is Staci's birthday. She's 22. I don't know where the time has gone. She will graduate from college in May. We usually see her the weekend before her birthday because that was when family weekend at ISU always was so we celebrated then but this year Family Weekend was in September because they are building a new football stadium. She'll be coming home next Thursday or Friday for Thanksgiving though so we'll celebrate then.

 

Yesterday was soooo nice. My phone was quiet and there were no political fliers in the mail. I'm so glad the election is over.

 

Have a good day. :)

[walkswife]

So its gonna be a long month.....

 

First off I am having a problem with my jaw and teeth so on Monday they need to take them all.... I am terrified....

 

Second I am moving to a new bigger apartment.... I hate packing!!

 

Third my aunt who had a stroke a few months ago is losing her apartment because she now has no income and is moving up here the first of the month to live with my parents..... scary part is she is only 5 yrs older than I am and she had a stroke!!!

[Flick]

First thing this morning I have to be in a school assembly where I will be introduced to the students as the "backpack guy". After that I rush out to the portable to pack and distribute bags to those students in need (120). When all that is done around 11:00 we come home, clean up and leave for Ft. Myers (100 miles from here) for the weekend Mid-year ELK convention. Tonight we dine and dance to celebrate Ft. Myer Lodge's 100th. birthday. Tomorrow morning is an 8:00 meeting then we come home and go out to dinner at night. Church on Sunday morning then rush home because Kay has to be at work at 1:00. (Her first day alone...scared to death!). So there you have our nice, quiet weekend. Not even any time for Happy Hour (Senior nap time).

[HeidiHo]

Good Morning!

 

Renee- so sorry about your teeth. I don't blame you for being scared. I would be too. Hopefully your problems with them will be gone afterward.

 

I'm really glad I did that OG delivery yesterday after all. I made good money and it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. The woman at the hospital who was in charge of it brought out a small cart and between the 2 of us and the cart we were able to unload my car in only 2 trips. I was afraid I'd have to do it all myself without a cart. Then she left a really nice tip ($70.00) but that goes to the To Go girl who did all the work putting the order together (I get the $20.00 delivery charge). Since the tip was so big though, the To Go girl gave me $15.00. So between the delivery charge, the tip and my time on the clock I made almost $45.00 for one hour of my time. Not too shabby.

 

A couple of young men that I am FB friends with have posted in the past week about another young man from our area who is missing. He's 25 years old and slightly autistic. He went missing about a week and a half ago. This morning I saw it in our newspaper and I noticed his last name. I think he is probably the son of the doctor who delivered Staci. It's a very unusual last name so it's not likely there are other people in the area with the same name. I know the doctor passed away several years ago. I hope they find him. I suppose that because he is 25 years old he wasn't considered a missing person right away.

 

I have a very busy day today. Have a good weekend.

[momofzeke]

Snowing. :( I know it's November, and we do need snow, but I sure was enjoying the beautiful Fall days of mid-60 temps!

 

Renee ~ I'm so sorry, I would be terrified also! But if it makes you feel better, that will be a good thing. Just hope the next few days go by quickly so you can get it over with!!

 

Heidi ~ I could be pretty happy making $45 for an hour's work. Way to go!

 

Rick ~ sounds like a busy weekend, take some time to relax, wouldja?

 

Dave ~ hope Bettie made it home and is doing ok. Give her a hug for me.

[Cruisin Dave]

I have steadfastly refused to discuss politics online anywhere but I ran across a quote the other day from, believe it or not, Abraham Lincoln! "Elections belong to the people....If they decide to turn their back to the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters."

Love this quote. I'll have to borrow it.