Realms of the Raven

No big shore excursions today. It was an at sea day on our way from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska. The seas were a little choppy after we got out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca but not unbearably so. Because we had no real plans or shore excursions planned, we didn’t try to get up at any particular time but just slept in until we naturally woke up.

Probably the oddest thing about having on interior cabin is that it can be absolutely pitch black with no point of reference when waking. It was a little disorienting at first but I realized (much later in the day, of course) that my watch has an Indiglo face. Wow – I could have just pressed its button all along. Doh!

Buffet breakfast was the first item on the agenda. The food wasn’t terrific but it was certainly plentiful. Lots of bacon, too!

I had some time so I took the laptop and went off to the ship’s library to work on my two books in progress. I had originally intended to check my email on the laptop but discovered that both the ship’s internet café and the wireless was $.35 per minute and the place to get wireless reception was in the big central lounge area. Since I’d pretty much warned folks that I would have very limited, if any, access to email, I decided to wait on any of that. The added bonus to this was that I had no email, etc to distract me from the writing I was supposed to be doing.

Early in the afternoon was the Fire Opal and gemstone talk that I wanted to attend, albeit mostly in hopes of winning the earrings they were having a Now the lady who won the earrings (nice round studs by the way) was busy looking at a necklace to go with them and her husband and mine were bonding as only men who are watching their wives shop for expensive jewelry can – with a mix of dread, fear and the slightest bit of hope that the wife will not like anything on offer. And 99.9% of the time, it’s a vain hope indeed.

And this time was no exception.

The earrings were a lovely drop trillion shape and perfectly matched the necklace I had on. So I bought them. Good thing I had already gotten word of a nice hefty bonus before we left on this trip.

Chuck was a very gracious and sweet husband and merely shook hands with the other lady’s husband and wished him luck as well. Then he complimented me on how nice they looked.

We went back to the cabin to drop off some of the stuff we were carrying and Chuck decided to go back out for a while but I decided to take a nap instead. After an hour or so nap, I decided to go check email and such before meeting Chuck for dinner.

I did manage to log into my Gmail account and skimmed the messages, basically looking for only those to me personally and not to a list. There were only a few and none of those was any emergency at home, thank the Lady.

But there was an email I had been both anticipating and dreading for months, literally. It was an email from an editor at – where my short story “Tort & Retort” was under consideration. And it was, indeed, a rejection. Well, sort of. The editor liked the story but asked if I would consider expanding it and resubmitting it directly to her — because the story was just too short to show good character development. So she liked my voice and my characters and wanted more story. After a moment or two of feeling dejected, I sent a nice thank you and told the editor that I was considering expanding it to 25k (from 12k) and would let her know when that was done.

This was one of the two formal nights on the ship but Chuck and I had both decided we really didn’t want to dress up so we again hit the buffet and then off to bed.

Day 1:
We had to be at the ship between noon and three to embark (do security, check bags and all that) and I had verified with another friend of ours that does computer work for another cruise line that he would take us to the dock so we could leave one car at his house and not have to pay $12 a day for parking.

Chuck finished packing and we got everything together in plenty of time to get on our way. And true to our geek selves, we took two laptops. I have a basic loaner to write on and Chuck brought the big one in case he could check his World of Warcraft game.

We drove off to our friend’s house in plenty of time to stop and pick up my antibiotics at the pharmacy and get to the house…. To find said friend’s car not there. Chuck called his cell phone to ask where he was to get the response of “Oh SHIT!”

Apparently the friend was at Fry’s getting a part for his computer and had forgotten all about us in the fog of being on the phone with tech support most of the night and only getting about four hours of sleep. Thankfully his wife, my best friend, drove us instead and we did get there just fine.

When you get all checked in, you are issued a card already imprinted with your name and information and this cruise card is used for all transactions on the ship and to swipe getting on and off the ship as ID. With this in hand, we boarded the ship and went to hunt for our cabin.

Except along the way we first get mugged to stand and smile for pictures. Color me dumb because I wasn’t aware they were taking pictures to try to sell you for $20 a print as a “momento”. Chuck and I left our sunglasses on anyway and looked supremely silly but that’s okay because I had no intention of buying that as a souvenir anyway.

Then as we’re heading up the gangway to the ship, we see a binoculars vendor and realized we BOTH forgot to pack any of our multiple pairs of binoculars. We probably paid too much but bought a pair of ones good for longer distances than the ones at home.

Now we were cheap and got a great price on an interior cabin (no windows, etc) so that we could both afford the cruise and a good number of non-cheap shore excursions. This did cause me some worry as I do have some claustrophobia issues and I had no idea whether or not I was prone to sea sickness. But while it was compact, it wasn’t miniscule.

Our steward told us the emergency muster was at 3:15 pm so we decided to stand in line for a while at the Shore Excursions desk to try to book the tours we wanted but missed the deadline for filing way in advance. By the time Chuck decided to defer to me, the bookings were closed. It was getting closer and closer to the muster time so I sent Chuck off to take advantage of a deal they had on unlimited Diet Coke. A 12 oz can runs $1.50 but you can pay $30 for unlimited Diet Cokes for the whole cruise. That’s 20 cans to break even – a little over 3 per day - hah! They’ll lose money on us!

In the meantime I finally manage to wade my way through to the front of the line and turn in our tour bookings after the attendant verified my choices were still available.

Back to the cabin at about 3pm to get our life-jackets for the muster and off to listen to the drill and try on the lovely safety orange foam garments. Back to the cabin (notice a pattern here?) we go to take the life vests back and then stow them before we decided to investigate the buffet.

Not great but not awful food and a great view as we left Puget Sound. We then wandered through the shops to see just what the cruise line was selling. My eye was captured by the surprise of Mexican Fire Opals! One of my all time favorite gemstones and, amazingly, in trillion cut earrings. And in white gold even. Nirvana in a jewelry case.

After lusting a bit, I give in to temptation and had the salesperson pull out the tray of trillion dangle earrings and check them against the necklace I just happened to have on. A perfect match! After a bit of whining and waffling, the salesman mentions that they are having a talk the next day about the gemstones and having a drawing for a pair of earrings. I pried my hands from the earrings and let them go back in the case. Maybe I would win the next day.

Now I still was pretty nervous about whether or not I would manage to stay away from the dreaded seasickness and the little bit of motion made me more nervous. When we went to the cabin to go to bed, I went ahead and took one Dramamine just in case. I don’t know whether I staved off any nausea but I certainly slept well.

We each took the day off work today to be able to tie up any loose ends and perform any last tasks like drop Gandalf (our parrot) off for boarding and drop Morgan off at Grandma & Grandpa V’s.

But my first errand of the day was to visit the doctor. About 10 days ago Morgan had brought some virus home from daycare and the whole family caught it. Because Chuck and I both have asthma, we react very badly to any sort of respiratory infections. Despite us both being on antibiotics, neither of us was much better and it was my turn to get looked at before we left.

While I was getting an additional 10 days of antibiotics, Chuck and Morgan were running other errands including taking the parrot for boarding. At this point I should mention that it was a good thing that a) the parrot store is owned by Gandalf’s original breeder and b) they weren’t already full of boarders. Not only did Chuck neglect to make reservations ahead of time (one of his few designated tasks) but he didn’t even call before he drove over there. What his plan was if they didn’t have any room, I don’t know. Wait – he probably didn’t have a plan!

But, thankfully they did have room and took the parrot after a slight bit of chastising of Chuck.

Then we were off to Leavenworth (WA) to drop Morgan off with Chuck’s parents. We had deliberately not told Morgan that he was going to visit Grandma and Grandpa until the day before he was to go. This was mostly in self-defense as he would undoubtedly hound us to death every day between. He’d gotten a brand new little kid’s suitcase and helped pack his own clothes the night before.

Almost as soon as we arrived he was asking to go on a walk in the woods with Grandpa and going into town with Grandma to get groceries. In the meantime Chuck and I went into town for a few more long-sleeved shirts and a Gore-Tex hat for me. We had a nice dinner with the in-laws and helped Chuck’s dad with his laptop issues before heading back home to finish packing before we were to leave the next day.

I tried to get a big hug and kiss from Morganator before I left but when we told him we were leaving, all he did was race into the room and yell “Bye Bye”, wave and then run off. Sigh. Too bad he’s got such problems with separation!

The cats greeted us with great suspicion – they (especially Meeps) are all too aware that when I drag out the big blue box and start putting clothes in it, there is always a disruption to the squishy food delivery. In this case a large one as a friend was coming to feed and water them every few days.

I finished the vast majority of my packing that evening but Chuck decided he was too tired and would do it tomorrow.