I often find myself in the uncomfortable social position of being involved in a conversation that I would desperately like to end, but have no convenient or tactful way to do so. Either I'm talking to someone who won't let me get a word in edgewise, or it's someone who I didn't want to even interact with in the first place but who saw me across the street and I didn't avert my eyes quickly enough and they saw me and were all like "heeeeeyyyyy" and glommed on for a chat, and now I'm fishing desperately for things to say to make them go away, but instead just sort of awkwardly point in some random direction and mutter something about that thing that I had to go do while I edge away.
SO. I've decided that from now on, whenever I get stuck in those kinds of conversations, I am just going to take my social cues from this goat:
"Yeah so then I was like 'hey so I was on my Twitter account and I --"
"BRAAAUUUUUUUUUUGGGGH"
"Um. Ok. So I--"
"MMMMUUUUUURRRRGGGGHH "
"Yeah, you know what? I actually have to run, I gotta get to this thing."
28 July, 2010
26 July, 2010
scatterbrains
Apologies for the lapse in posting--it's been a rough couple of weeks. That said, there's really nothing that's happened that makes for good reading, so I'll just do what I usually do when I don't have a story: post a collection of unrelated thoughts and hope that they're interesting.
I'm seeing more and more runners in my neighborhood wearing these strange little footie-glove-shoes. They're legit running shoes--they're actually supposed to be better for your feet than sneakers. The design is, I believe, based on the running technique of people who normally run barefoot. I know there's a particular native group in Mexico where runners can go barefoot a hundred miles at a time or something staggering like that, and there are plenty of other places in the world, like Africa, where it's normal to be barefoot all the time. The thing is, when you run barefooted (or rather, when you learn to run barefooted, and never run in shoes), you hit the ground with the balls of your feet, which results in almost no impact to your joints. When you run in sneakers, you hit the ground with your heels, and actually incur two to three times more damage. I'm wondering if I can un-learn the way I run now and try to put more of the impact of my stride on the balls of my feet. I'm guessing that I will trip a lot, but it might be worth a few scraped knees now to avoid joint or cartilage problems in twenty years.
I'm searching for jobs, and so find myself on Craigslist a lot of the time in the hopes that something will have popped up in the "part time" or "creative gig" category. In the course of my Craigslist trolling, and thanks to a category of transaction that Amanda called to my attention, I have come to the following conclusion: if I never find a job, it might actually be just as lucrative for me to sell my underwear to strangers on Craigslist. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
My project for the week is to clean out the pantry and all of my kitchen stuff in preparation for packing it all up, and I'm a little scared of what I might find at the back of the shelves and under the sink. On the plus side, discovering new life forms might benefit my academic career. Or endanger my health. Which reminds me, I'm out of Lysol.
I'm seeing more and more runners in my neighborhood wearing these strange little footie-glove-shoes. They're legit running shoes--they're actually supposed to be better for your feet than sneakers. The design is, I believe, based on the running technique of people who normally run barefoot. I know there's a particular native group in Mexico where runners can go barefoot a hundred miles at a time or something staggering like that, and there are plenty of other places in the world, like Africa, where it's normal to be barefoot all the time. The thing is, when you run barefooted (or rather, when you learn to run barefooted, and never run in shoes), you hit the ground with the balls of your feet, which results in almost no impact to your joints. When you run in sneakers, you hit the ground with your heels, and actually incur two to three times more damage. I'm wondering if I can un-learn the way I run now and try to put more of the impact of my stride on the balls of my feet. I'm guessing that I will trip a lot, but it might be worth a few scraped knees now to avoid joint or cartilage problems in twenty years.
I'm searching for jobs, and so find myself on Craigslist a lot of the time in the hopes that something will have popped up in the "part time" or "creative gig" category. In the course of my Craigslist trolling, and thanks to a category of transaction that Amanda called to my attention, I have come to the following conclusion: if I never find a job, it might actually be just as lucrative for me to sell my underwear to strangers on Craigslist. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
My project for the week is to clean out the pantry and all of my kitchen stuff in preparation for packing it all up, and I'm a little scared of what I might find at the back of the shelves and under the sink. On the plus side, discovering new life forms might benefit my academic career. Or endanger my health. Which reminds me, I'm out of Lysol.
15 July, 2010
sea food
It is, unsurprisingly, very difficult to eat well on a cruise ship. I don't mean "well" in the sense of heartily or satisfactorily. I mean "well" in the sense of enabling good decisions. You're not SUPPOSED to make good decisions. You're supposed to be on a seafaring vacation, enjoying the luxuries and excesses provided to you, and that includes what you put in your mouth. And I am here to tell you that you could easily spend an entire Carnival cruise doing nothing but putting food in your mouth for twenty-four hours a day. For one thing, the pizza and ice cream stations are open twenty-four hours a day, so that's not even an exaggeration on my part. I think the easiest way to explain the food layout is to go through a day based on meals.
BREAKFAST
For breakfast, you can do any (and if you are extremely ambitious/a family of seven, all) of the following:
Room Service--The housekeeping staff leaves you a menu of room service selections in your room every night. You check off what you want, and hang the little menu outside your door. In the morning, a nice man in a snappy vest knocks on your door and hands you a tray piled high with everything you requested, which is approximately enough to stock a hotel's continental breakfast bar. You immediately regret your enthusiasm the night before. We never ordered room service for any meal but breakfast, so I'm going to just leave it out from now on. I assume it'd be like any hotel room service. Meh.
The Mermaid Grill(e)-- (I hate hate hate when extra vowels get slapped on to names. That should be a taxable commodity--extraneous e's, and multiple c's-turned-into-k's for places like Kristine's Kotton Kandy Korral. GOD. Ok, what? Breakfast. Yes.) Deck nine of the ship was mostly taken up by an upscale cafeteria with multiple hotlines where lines of people could form every morning and pile their plates with pancakes and waffles and hash browns and scrambled eggs and sausages and bacon and toast, all drizzled liberally with syrup and ketchup.
The Dining Room--This is where you could go if you wanted a sit-down breakfast. Generally, I was much less impressed with the dining room, mostly because since they had to churn out individual breakfasts for about 2,000 people each morning, the food often arrived cold, and portions were on the weeny side. Also, while I usually enjoy interacting with strangers, I like to view my breakfast as part of my sacred quiet morning time, and you just can't do that in the dining room.
LUNCH
Grille--The same place that had hot breakfast provided tons of food at various different stations from noon through the rest of the day. There was a pizza station, a deli station, a burger station, a salad station, an "ethnic" station...and several more. The food was tasty, there was plenty of it, and you could play a game with the labels called "count the typos."
The Dining Room--Honestly, I don't recall ever eating in the dining room for lunch. So I'm going to take a pass on this one. I'm sure it was great.
DINNER
Grille--The same food as lunch. If you liked it the first time, sweet! Have some more. If you didn't, then eat it anyway. It's free! You're on vacation! This is all make-believe fat!
The Dining Room--We had a sit-down dinner every night. Our waiter was a youngish guy from Serbia named Dejan (rhymes with "lay on"). He was tall and kind of goofy-looking, but not in an unattractive way, if you can visualize that. Amanda and her mom loved Dejan. LOVED HIM. LOOOOOOVED HIM. That's all I'll say, but I'm pretty sure that some Dejan Fan Club shirts are in order. TEAM DEJAN!!!!!1!!11!!
Anyway, the menu changed every night, but it was all sort of heavy food in weird combinations. Grilled shrimp paired with mustard potatoes and a bowl of corn niblets topped with an olive--that kind of thing. It was all very tasty, but very heavy, so after a week of that I feel the need to eat leafy greens for a while and get some cleansing goin' on.
So that was pretty much the food situation aboard the Carnival Pride. I really wanted to get up one night at 1am and go to get pizza and ice cream just because I could, but I always slept right through the night. Oh well. It is now time for me to go and find some roughage. Pictures from the Bahamas tomorrow!
BREAKFAST
For breakfast, you can do any (and if you are extremely ambitious/a family of seven, all) of the following:
Room Service--The housekeeping staff leaves you a menu of room service selections in your room every night. You check off what you want, and hang the little menu outside your door. In the morning, a nice man in a snappy vest knocks on your door and hands you a tray piled high with everything you requested, which is approximately enough to stock a hotel's continental breakfast bar. You immediately regret your enthusiasm the night before. We never ordered room service for any meal but breakfast, so I'm going to just leave it out from now on. I assume it'd be like any hotel room service. Meh.
The Mermaid Grill(e)-- (I hate hate hate when extra vowels get slapped on to names. That should be a taxable commodity--extraneous e's, and multiple c's-turned-into-k's for places like Kristine's Kotton Kandy Korral. GOD. Ok, what? Breakfast. Yes.) Deck nine of the ship was mostly taken up by an upscale cafeteria with multiple hotlines where lines of people could form every morning and pile their plates with pancakes and waffles and hash browns and scrambled eggs and sausages and bacon and toast, all drizzled liberally with syrup and ketchup.
The Dining Room--This is where you could go if you wanted a sit-down breakfast. Generally, I was much less impressed with the dining room, mostly because since they had to churn out individual breakfasts for about 2,000 people each morning, the food often arrived cold, and portions were on the weeny side. Also, while I usually enjoy interacting with strangers, I like to view my breakfast as part of my sacred quiet morning time, and you just can't do that in the dining room.
LUNCH
Grille--The same place that had hot breakfast provided tons of food at various different stations from noon through the rest of the day. There was a pizza station, a deli station, a burger station, a salad station, an "ethnic" station...and several more. The food was tasty, there was plenty of it, and you could play a game with the labels called "count the typos."
The Dining Room--Honestly, I don't recall ever eating in the dining room for lunch. So I'm going to take a pass on this one. I'm sure it was great.
DINNER
Grille--The same food as lunch. If you liked it the first time, sweet! Have some more. If you didn't, then eat it anyway. It's free! You're on vacation! This is all make-believe fat!
The Dining Room--We had a sit-down dinner every night. Our waiter was a youngish guy from Serbia named Dejan (rhymes with "lay on"). He was tall and kind of goofy-looking, but not in an unattractive way, if you can visualize that. Amanda and her mom loved Dejan. LOVED HIM. LOOOOOOVED HIM. That's all I'll say, but I'm pretty sure that some Dejan Fan Club shirts are in order. TEAM DEJAN!!!!!1!!11!!
Anyway, the menu changed every night, but it was all sort of heavy food in weird combinations. Grilled shrimp paired with mustard potatoes and a bowl of corn niblets topped with an olive--that kind of thing. It was all very tasty, but very heavy, so after a week of that I feel the need to eat leafy greens for a while and get some cleansing goin' on.
So that was pretty much the food situation aboard the Carnival Pride. I really wanted to get up one night at 1am and go to get pizza and ice cream just because I could, but I always slept right through the night. Oh well. It is now time for me to go and find some roughage. Pictures from the Bahamas tomorrow!
14 July, 2010
13 July, 2010
i can hardly stand the fun
Carnival Cruise Line's slogan is "FUN FOR ALL. ALL FOR FUN." And man, they are not kidding. Fun is something of a relentless priority on board the cruise ships. If you aren't having fun at one of the twelve different and exciting activities happening every half an hour, you can be having fun splashing in the on-deck pools and hot tubs, or you can have fun out in the sun in any one of six thousand deck chairs (except that every single guest on that ship seemed to think it was okay to reserve ten chairs with towels or hats or diapers or whatever on the off chance that their friends or relatives might show up and want to absorb some UV rays). You can also have fun while you eat, and fun in your stateroom with your towels that are cunningly folded into animal shapes, and hey, are you taking a dump in your tiny but compact and well-appointed bathroom? Isn't that fun???
It sounds like I'm complaining about all this fun, but I don't mean to. Really, I enjoyed having lots of events to choose from throughout the day. And it's not like any of this fun was mandatory. Basically, every night when you came back from dinner, the housekeeping crew had already gone through and tidied your room and made the beds (which was kind of weird, but nice), and had left the schedule for the following day. The schedule would look something like this:
9:30am:
Abs Class: Tighten That Tummy, and Then Let's Go Get Some Curly Fries
Power Yoga With Someone Annoyingly Chipper
SPA SPECIAL: BUY STUFF FROM THE SPA. IT ALL SMELLS LIKE CANDY.
10 am:
Early Drinkin' at the Atrium Bar
Let's Talk Relationships With Someone Annoyingly Chipper
FUN SHOPS SPECIAL: BUY A LOT OF ALCOHOL AND/OR JEWELRY
...and so on throughout the morning. Then in the afternoon, things would start to liven up a little more.
1:30pm
Men's Hairy Chest Competition
Sports Trivia
Name That Tune From the Seventies that You've Never Heard Until Just Now
Unnecessarily Complicated Swimming Challenge
2pm
BINGO: BUY BINGO CARDS AND, FOR A MOMENT, FEEL AS IF YOU MIGHT WIN
Afternoon Drinkin' at the Lido Bar
TV Trivia
Boggle Your Mind Trivia
Trivia Trivia
2:30 pm
Aren't You Tired Yet?
So basically, throughout the afternoon, the staff (and by the way, every member of the staff was friendly and clearly worked very hard. I'll say that now) worked tirelessly to completely overstimulate everyone and keep them supplied with exorbitantly priced cocktails so that by dinnertime everyone was drifting in a pleasant haze of booze and contentment. I'll talk more about the food on board in another post--believe me, I'm going to milk this vacation for every posting opportunity possible.
After dinner, there were more activities of a similar nature--more trivia, "game shows," karaoke, but as the evening progressed, the events became more adult-friendly, so that by the end of the night, it was mostly bingo and raunchy stand-up comedy. There was also a big theatrical show every night--again, a post for another day. I'm going to have to spread this out, otherwise I'll be sick of talking about it, and you'll be sick of hearing it.
Anyway, usually by about ten o'clock, we were all so tired and sunburned that we conked out right away. One of my very favorite things was feeling the engines rumbling through the floor and the ocean rocking the ship as I fell asleep. I slept well every single night. I think this is a clear sign that I require a vibrating bed. Do they make those any more? Or was that something exclusive to sketchy roadside motels in the mid-70s?
Something to ponder, anyway.
It sounds like I'm complaining about all this fun, but I don't mean to. Really, I enjoyed having lots of events to choose from throughout the day. And it's not like any of this fun was mandatory. Basically, every night when you came back from dinner, the housekeeping crew had already gone through and tidied your room and made the beds (which was kind of weird, but nice), and had left the schedule for the following day. The schedule would look something like this:
9:30am:
Abs Class: Tighten That Tummy, and Then Let's Go Get Some Curly Fries
Power Yoga With Someone Annoyingly Chipper
SPA SPECIAL: BUY STUFF FROM THE SPA. IT ALL SMELLS LIKE CANDY.
10 am:
Early Drinkin' at the Atrium Bar
Let's Talk Relationships With Someone Annoyingly Chipper
FUN SHOPS SPECIAL: BUY A LOT OF ALCOHOL AND/OR JEWELRY
...and so on throughout the morning. Then in the afternoon, things would start to liven up a little more.
1:30pm
Men's Hairy Chest Competition
Sports Trivia
Name That Tune From the Seventies that You've Never Heard Until Just Now
Unnecessarily Complicated Swimming Challenge
2pm
BINGO: BUY BINGO CARDS AND, FOR A MOMENT, FEEL AS IF YOU MIGHT WIN
Afternoon Drinkin' at the Lido Bar
TV Trivia
Boggle Your Mind Trivia
Trivia Trivia
2:30 pm
Aren't You Tired Yet?
So basically, throughout the afternoon, the staff (and by the way, every member of the staff was friendly and clearly worked very hard. I'll say that now) worked tirelessly to completely overstimulate everyone and keep them supplied with exorbitantly priced cocktails so that by dinnertime everyone was drifting in a pleasant haze of booze and contentment. I'll talk more about the food on board in another post--believe me, I'm going to milk this vacation for every posting opportunity possible.
After dinner, there were more activities of a similar nature--more trivia, "game shows," karaoke, but as the evening progressed, the events became more adult-friendly, so that by the end of the night, it was mostly bingo and raunchy stand-up comedy. There was also a big theatrical show every night--again, a post for another day. I'm going to have to spread this out, otherwise I'll be sick of talking about it, and you'll be sick of hearing it.
Anyway, usually by about ten o'clock, we were all so tired and sunburned that we conked out right away. One of my very favorite things was feeling the engines rumbling through the floor and the ocean rocking the ship as I fell asleep. I slept well every single night. I think this is a clear sign that I require a vibrating bed. Do they make those any more? Or was that something exclusive to sketchy roadside motels in the mid-70s?
Something to ponder, anyway.
12 July, 2010
captain's log
It's Monday, and I am crashing back into reality after a week at sea aboard the floating head trip that was the Carnival Pride. Goodness gracious. Too many things happened for me to cover it all in one post, so this week I'll be posting a series of descriptions and stories, hopefully with lots of pictures once I get it together and remember to bring my camera to work.
First of all, I am going to try to describe the interior of the ship. There was a LOT going on up in there. I think the overall theme was meant to be sort of an ultra-lavish tribute to Renaissance art--there were blown-up copies of Titians and Botticellis splashed all over the walls, gilt chandeliers, sculpted moldings...it was basically as if every European Renaissance-era tourist attraction had vomited splashily and extravagantly onto the interior surfaces of most of the rooms. The real theme was excess. No inch of wall, ceiling or floor was left unadorned. And into this mix, the decor designers had detoured briefly to Vegas, so there were weird areas of flashy neon and lots of velour.
The various rooms and galleries had names that sort of coincided with the Old Masters-y theme...the Raphael Lounge, the Lido Deck, the David Steakhouse (as in Michaelangelo's David) and things like that. There was also, however, the Taj Mahal theater, the Normandie Restaurant, the Ivory Bar, Starry Nights Lounge, Butterflies Lounge...so I'm really not sure what was holding all of that together other than a collective ecstasy binge on the part of the designers.
I'll have to put up pictures soon (mostly stolen from Amanda), so that I can really give you an idea of what was going on--tomorrow I'll write more about what we did/what there was to do on board. For now, let it simply be said that I had a fantastic time, had a lot of great experiences, most of them hilarious and involving personal injury on my part, and I am equal parts dejected and relieved to be back in the swing of the work week.
Speaking of work. I'm supposed to be in a meeting. Here I go.
First of all, I am going to try to describe the interior of the ship. There was a LOT going on up in there. I think the overall theme was meant to be sort of an ultra-lavish tribute to Renaissance art--there were blown-up copies of Titians and Botticellis splashed all over the walls, gilt chandeliers, sculpted moldings...it was basically as if every European Renaissance-era tourist attraction had vomited splashily and extravagantly onto the interior surfaces of most of the rooms. The real theme was excess. No inch of wall, ceiling or floor was left unadorned. And into this mix, the decor designers had detoured briefly to Vegas, so there were weird areas of flashy neon and lots of velour.
The various rooms and galleries had names that sort of coincided with the Old Masters-y theme...the Raphael Lounge, the Lido Deck, the David Steakhouse (as in Michaelangelo's David) and things like that. There was also, however, the Taj Mahal theater, the Normandie Restaurant, the Ivory Bar, Starry Nights Lounge, Butterflies Lounge...so I'm really not sure what was holding all of that together other than a collective ecstasy binge on the part of the designers.
I'll have to put up pictures soon (mostly stolen from Amanda), so that I can really give you an idea of what was going on--tomorrow I'll write more about what we did/what there was to do on board. For now, let it simply be said that I had a fantastic time, had a lot of great experiences, most of them hilarious and involving personal injury on my part, and I am equal parts dejected and relieved to be back in the swing of the work week.
Speaking of work. I'm supposed to be in a meeting. Here I go.
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