7 lbs of awesome

DS and I are home. As it turns out, we very much enjoy cruising! Especially the food, from which I gained 7 lbs. You know how you watched Titanic in the 90's, and you marveled over how big the dining room was? I thought, "how can that possibly be real? how is that not sinking without the iceberg?" Similar thoughts occupied me through this whole trip. In fact, our waiter informed us that our boat is bigger than the Titanic was. Practically every night, except for the two where we decided we weren't leaving the room, or we got hungry too early, we had four course meals for dinner. And let me tell you, these meals were fan-freakin-tastic. Shrimp ravioli. Mahi Mahi tempura. Lobster. Veal. Sooo sooo good. Our waiters joked that they got paid by the pound...

As for the reason we went, Lindsey's wedding, that went great as well! Lindsey was soo pretty.

We spent a great majority of our time reading and lying by the pool. I completely forgot about work, about depression, about all the things at home that were making me crazy. It was so relaxing and rejuvenating, and I feel ready to face the world again.

DS won $100 in the casino! It was exciting, and almost embarrassing, to have the sirens of the slot machine blaring, and 400 quarters pouring out of the machine.

Every night with our turn down service, our room attendant made us little figures out of towels. My favorite was the monkey that he hung from the ceiling.

Lindsey's family got everyone matching shirts for the cruise, so when we had designated wedding things, 40 or so people in bright orange would gather. It was quite a sight!

So, that's all for now. I highly recommend that you consider a cruise for your next vacation.

Vacation Time!

Bright and early in the morning (by which I mean dark and groggy), DS and I are getting up to drive to the airport to start our vacation! This will be our first real real vacation (I just decided our honeymoon didn't count.) We planned ahead, paid for it without going into debt, and I even get vacation time from work so no losses! Hooray!!

Where are we going you ask? On a cruise! A friend from my last work, whom you may remember as Lindsey, is getting married and we're going along to celebrate. It's going to be awesome! Key West, Cozumel, and Coco Bay, here we come!! This is my first cruise, and I have no idea what to expect. As a result, my suitcase is brimming. Poor DS... it will suck to carry it.

I'm not sure if we'll have internet access while we're away. Supposedly, our phones will work, but at international rates. BOO! But in a way, that's okay. It might be kind of nice to totally disappear for a whole week.

Winston and Felix are going to be cared for by my dear friend Matt. I have left him a giant bag of candy, and free reign of my computer and guitar hero as payment. And for my readers, I am making up my absence to you by posting this picture of Matt double fisting girly alcohol left over from my wedding. It was found when I cleaned out the fridge last week. Yup, he's going to kill me.

Please don't hurt me!

I'm High Class!

Several things worth mentioning.

1. I have a passport. And I've discovered that U.S. agencies like it when you have to wait in a line to wait in a room to wait in a line to wait in a line to wait in a chair, to then wait somewhere else and then start over. Yes, that really happened.

2. http://www.qwantz.com/index.pl?comic=1011

3. Yesterday, DS, the Silverback and I went to Friday's for burger Tuesday. I had fried mac & cheese, and kids' portion of chicken fingers, and a large raspberry cherry martini. High class!

Stupid Scrobbling

So yesterday I added that little last.fm thing to my sidebar. I've been in love with last.fm for a while, but when I got my new mac, I forgot about it. Until yesterday. Really, that is an ingenius program. I just wish I could listen to it at work...

Anyway, it does this thing called scrobbling, where it keeps track of the things you're listening to on your iPod and iTunes, and sends the information back to last.fm to help them make their program better. You can turn it off, but I didn't see any reason to.

Until this morning, when I saw that it also updates my recently played list, and now you can all see what a Disney dork I am... Crap.

Unexpected Adventures

On our way to a Brewers game last Sunday (to get our free Prince Fielder bobbleheads since he's Anne's MLP boyfriend), Anne, Matt, DS and I stopped at a gas station. We thought it was an innocent bathroom break, but we were wrong. They had a zoo. At the gas station.

Anne loved their plastic horse. I very much wanted to ride it, but a sign said it would bite me.

I didn't know it at the time, but Anna has an obsession with "mini" things. Good thing that chalk sign pointed it out to us.

These are apparently Indian running ducks. They ran towards us, and Anne freaked out. It was time to leave the zoo.

Until I caught sight of these... At which point I screamed, "Holy Shit! Bunnies!" and took off running. This provided no end of amusement for everyone else.

We got the game early to make sure we had plenty of time to tailgate. We were thoroughly prepared, complete with Anne's famous burgers. ...Except we forgot a spatula. Luckily, these nice young boys were suckers for my homemade cookies, and agreed to share.

Matt is an expert burger flipper.

Also, he was very proud of Ruby at this point, when she was a beer shrine and cookie holder.

DS was most excited to see Dontrell Willis pitch. This is apparently a crazy wind up move, and the boys were impressed.

No Brewers game is complete without the wiener race. Sometimes, like on this day, they have mini-wieners do relay with the regulars. I rooted for the bratwurst and lost.

While everyone else keeps quoting my "holy shit bunnies" thing, my favorite moment was when Anne kept pointing out wildlife off the freeway on the way there. First, she saw a deer. Then, she thought she saw another one, but as DS was kind enough to point out, it was a turkey. At which point Matt states, "I mean really, what is a turkey but a deer with wings?"

Classic.

Jesse can party like an 8 year old

This past Saturday, Jesse celebrated his birthday at a local park. You can't keep me away from a party that involves a swing set.

Being the birthday boy, he came in this totally sweet brown suit. Check out his little handheld keg. That thing we're on? Some sort of new fangled teeter totter. People hung from the handles in the middle while Jesse and I flung them around.

Everyone called this the puke bucket. It's like a one person merry go round, except you don't have to have someone with a power leg pushing it around in circles. Gentle movements can have you spinning super fast! No one loves to spin more than I do.

What's an 8 year old's party without a sack race?

I didn't do very well. In fact I didn't even finish. But it was hilarious, and the course was designed to go around trees and through sand. Jesse and Ben are merciless.

There was plenty of food and beer, including grilled hot dogs. I don't know why I love grilled hot dogs. Most meat creeps me out.

You really couldn't have asked for better weather.

Later that night, a homemade slip and slide was revealed. There was no hose. Instead, buckets of soapy water were thrown on some plastic. I didn't think it would work, but then, no one told me soap was involved. Here you can see DS and Jesse glistening after a go of it.

This pictures cracks me up. DS looks just like one of those kids in a real slip n slide commercial. I was slightly embarrassed that he stripped down to his underwear, but was able to have a chuckle when he later asked if we could go home and get him dry underwear. It looked like he'd wet his pants all night.

The moral of this story? If Jesse invites you to a party, you should go. Other activities including an egg and spoon race, an egg toss, and a pinata. Totally sweet stuff.

Boo!! This sucks.

So, I've been scarce here lately. Part of that has been because I never seem to have two minutes to myself anymore, much less a few for blogging. But a bigger part of that has been because I've been battling depression. It's a strange thing, depression. It sneaks up on you, and before you know it, you're drowning in your own self pity and not even your closest friends can pull you out of it. Everything people say becomes some kind of code that translates into you not being good enough. There's a small part of my brain that is still functioning enough to know that that's ridiculous, but not enough to convince the rest of it to stop crying over it all the time.

I feel slightly better than I did two weeks ago, though still not great. It's much less of an all consuming sadness, and more of being happy most of the time spiked with bouts of tears. The worst part about it is watching my friends tiptoe around me like I'm diseased or something, because they know as well as I that any little thing could set me off. When I called the doctor, the receptionist asked what the appointment was for, and then started whispering for the rest of the conversation. It's humiliating, and it doesn't matter how much logic tells me it's just another disease, I still feel dumb and worthless that I can't deal with this on my own.

Alright, so there you have it. I don't need reassurance from people that I'll be okay, but I'm probably not your best bet if you need a shoulder to cry on either. And updates may be sketchy. Though I did have a great weekend, and photos will come soon. Just kinda felt like being honest today...

The U.S. Passport Agency can suck it. That's all I have to say.