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.

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.

givin' you highlights like Sun-In

It's summer, and things have been ghost-town quiet at work for the past few weeks, but do I take the time and use it wisely to do creative and mind-expanding things like writing blog posts? Nopity nope nope nope. I park my butt in front of internet TV and allow my brain to quietly bubble out of  my ears. June's almost over and I have almost nothing to show for it, post-wise, so here, in a blatant overcompensation, are the highlights from the past month.

--Things are going forward on the moving-to-Boston front. I've started getting lots of emails telling me that registration's coming up, and I need to schedule meetings with professors and advisers, and I've been trying to write everything down in my new you're-a-grownup-stop-writing-your-life-on-Post-Its daily planner. A carload of stuff has been packed up and trucked off home, thanks to Mom, so that's a bit less that'll have to fit in the moving van in August. We have an apartment, and therefore I'll have some place to move to, so that's good.

--My poor kitty has been coughing up a storm lately so we took her to the vet (a REALLY AWESOME new vet--of course we find one right before we move away) and it turns out that the poor sweet thing has asthma, and possibly pneumonia or some other unpleasant chest problem. So we're getting her medicine, and hopefully she will start feeling better soon.  

--Mom's visit to Philly was too short, but still fun. I took her to the big Central Library on the Parkway (which she'd never been to. For shame, mother! You grew up in Philly!), we bopped around Center City, we ate Vietnamese food, and generally had a neat-o time. And then she helped me lug boxes down the stairs and load them into her car. Thanks, Ma!

--A tornado hit West Philly the other day and tore Clark Park to pieces. No joke. It wasn't a twister, but tornado-force winds and golf-ball-sized hail hit my neighborhood for about twenty minutes and did a ton of damage. Enormous trees got completely uprooted, and some just snapped in half. There's still a big ol'tree lying across the path at the head of the park. Ridiculous. I'm just really glad that no trees fell on the apartment or anything!

--I got paid forty bucks (thanks, Craigslist!) to paint the inside of a little wooden box and inscribe it with some pithy sentiment for a guy who was then going to give it to a friend. I got the impression that it was a lady friend, and the gift was an attempt to get lucky; I did a good job (even if the color scheme was purple and yellow--his choice, not mine), so I hope he got laid. Or not, if it was a platonic deal. Whatever. It's always neat to earn money for doing something fun.

--That forty bucks went part of the way towards purchasing tickets to the Celtic Fling in Lancaster PA. It was at the same place that hosts the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire every year, and the same groups of people were in attendance:
GROUP 1: Nerds. Pseudo-goth and Dungeons-and-Dragons type people who get REALLY into throwing on about eight hundred pounds of costume (read: any combination of lace, corsets, leather, buckles, and those shirts with the laces and floppy sleeves) and role-playing in weird accents for a day. These are the people for whom there are stalls selling Hobbit ears, and furry tails, and who knows what-all else. I know I shouldn't scoff, but I do. I lost count of the amount of unfortunate cleavage I saw, and I am frankly surprised that we only saw one accidental nipple exposure.
GROUP 2: Large rednecky Republican types. Maybe not so much up on their history, but definitely up for the type of event that involves beer, swords, and smoked turkey legs. Again with the scoffing. I can't help it.
GROUP 3: Tourists like A and me, there for the spectacle but not really sure what was happening most of the time.

It was stiflingly, blisteringly hot on the day that we went, so that was miserable, but we got to pet the "royal hounds" (the sweetest, loveliest greyhounds. I want one. Or twelve) and a "baby dragon" (a tiny, sleepy lizard. I want one of those too), and we got to see the band Solas perform for a bit, which was wonderful--I really like them. So we had some fun, but by three-thirtyish we had each sweated away about a quarter of our body weight, so we decided it was time to go.

--I only have a two-day work week this week, and then on Thursday I am leaving for a week-long Vacation-With-A-Capital-Vee and I am SO excited.

That about does it for June--hopefully I will have exciting vacation stories and many more things to talk about in July!

you're my little potato

Several weeks ago, I bought a large sweet potato at the grocery store with the vague idea of turning it into a tasty potato curry at some point during the week. As is the case far too often, however, instead of sticking to my menu plan for the week, I stuck the potato on top of the fridge for safekeeping and promptly forgot about it for a couple of weeks. The only reason I remembered that I had it is because in the relative warmth and light of the kitchen, the darn thing put up shoots. I saw the green stalks poking up like little SOS flags, and I didn't have the heart to throw the thing away. So I put it on the radiator by the window, where it has stayed. And now it looks like this:

When my mom comes to visit I'm going to give it to her so she can bring it back to Boston and put it under the dirt where it belongs. Hopefully it will make more potatoes!

the eight-dollar joke

This is a true story.

This past Sunday, Amanda and I were sitting on a bench in our neighborhood park. I was reading the New York Times, and Amanda was slogging through cover letter rewrites. I was shuffling through the Arts section, and I made some comment about how I liked Caravaggio (there was an article about one of his paintings or something). A guy walking by the bench, stopped, and looked at us, and said "Y'all must be REALLY EDUCATED." We both sort of smiled awkwardly and made "aw shucks" noises, but the guy wasn't done yet. "You guys, seriously. Seriously. Somebody told me to give you THIS"-- and he handed Amanda a little yellow crockery teapot that he was carrying in one hand. We made dubious noises of thanks. "Now hang on, hang on, I'm not finished yet. SOMEbody told me to give you THIS"--and he handed me what he was carrying in the other hand. It was a tarnished and fingerprinty metal cup, engraved with "KY DERBY, 2001." This, he said, was the real deal, and was worth an awful lot of money. Again, we murmured our thanks.

 "Now I want to tell you something, you guys, now listen. Last night I saw two stars in the sky, and tonight imma look up in the sky and I won't see those two stars, because they sittin' right here in front of me."

More "aw shucks" noises.

"Now you guys, listen. Do you think you can help me out? (here we go) I'm for real, I don't do no crack, I got HIV, and I'm just tryn'a get a hoagie and a Gatorade, so do you think you can help me out? Now listen (as we reached for our wallets) I'm for real, I'm for real. You ready? Imma tell you two jokes." He did a little backwards jig-step and prepared himself for his performance. His joke was as follows:

Ok so last night I was up on twenty-third and locust, because I paint, you know, too, I'm a painter, and you know, I seen this guy drive up into the gas station in a cham-PAGNE-colored BENTLEY, you know? And I went up to him and I said, excuse me sir, can I please wash your rims? And he said...but it's raining! And I said, well, can I wash your rims? And he said man, I got a ring on my little finger that's worth more than some people's houses, you know? And I said...but can I wash your rims for you? And he said where's your bucket at? And so I said sir, when you come back out the gas station, your rims will be clean, I promise you, I'm for real.


So he went up into the gas station...and I pissed on all his rims.


That got an involuntary laugh from both of us, and he did another little hop-step, and repeated his piece about wanting to buy a hoagie and a Gatorade, except now it was a hoagie for him and one for his wife, and a Gatorade. So we gave him the cash we happened to have on us--a five and three ones. When he had these in his hands, he looked down at them and started to whine. He literally made a whining moaning noise that usually comes from the mouths of tired four-year olds.

"awwwwnuuuuuhhhhh. muuuuuuhhh....that's it?" He screwed up his face and performed some laborious mental calcuations. "But it's $12.50" We told him that he'd taken all the cash we had (I almost offered to take it back from him, if he didn't like what he'd been given, and he could try to find his $12.50 somewhere else), so he grabbed the Kentucky Derby cup with a muttered "imma sell this off then, this the real thing, worth a lotta money..." and loped off through the park. We kept the yellow teapot.

 But we paid eight dollars for TWO JOKES, dammit, and we only got one. I'm still bitter.

the new me

Things have been hectic around here, what with the finding of apartments and the search for new jobs and the preparations for moving, so it's been hard to think of things to write about. But I learned something yesterday that I thought I would share. In Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, he writes about the human body's ability to constantly renew bits and pieces of itself. Skin dies, gets sloughed off, and is regrown. Hair falls out, and is--with the unlucky exception of those afflicted with male pattern baldness (hi, Dad), replaced. Organs repair damages, some more slowly than others, and what it all adds up to is that if you look at all of your bits and pieces and cells and tissues individually, they have all been renewing themselves at different rates to the extent that technically speaking, you are not made of altogether the same material that you were nine years ago. So during the past nine years, my body has quietly worked away at itself, and now there is nothing left of what there was of me when I was fifteen. Come to think of it, that's probably all right--fifteen was sort of a wretched age anyway--but when I was fifteen, there was nothing left of what there had been when I was six! And nine years before that, my cells didn't even exist yet! The several billion gazillion atoms that now just happen to exist in a me-shaped package had yet to coalesce. That's a really fun thing to think about. Mortality is scary, the prospect of a decline into old age is scary, and none of that is something that I want to think about, because it makes my stomach go into panic knots. But it is nice to know that you can sort of shed your material self like that, over a long period of time, and nine years later still have the same little ball of consciousness wrapped up in a (relatively) new package.

Anyway, that's enough heavy thinking. I'll end on another philosophical note from A Short History of Nearly Everything:


"Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe."

make it up to me

I really really hate that song by Alanis Morissette that's about things being ironic. It gets stuck in my head, I don't like the tune or the way her voice goes all yodely throughout, and I know this has been said a kabillion times before but nothing in the lyrics is ironic. All of those things are just interestingly juxtaposed and mostly unfortunate circumstances. BUT THEN I was thinking what if it was all on purpose and the irony lies in the fact that a song about irony only talks about events that are not at all ironic?? If only I smoked weed. I feel like that thought would occupy me for hoouuurrrs. 


Alanis Morissette did redeem herself slightly (ever so slightly) in my eyes, though, by doing a cover of "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas. If you have not looked it up on YouTube, you need to.


I like to read the Philly Citypaper that we get delivered to my building every Thursday, but I never learn to not read it at the desk. And I should learn that, because every single time I read it at the desk, I always forget that there are explicit escort ads in the back. Every. Single. Time. So I'll be flipping through, mindlessly skimming editorial rants and movie reviews, and then BAM. Naked ladies and Skanky McHoebags aplenty. Practially leaping off the page, legs spread and nipples juuuust barely covered with clipart stars. And, inevitably, every single time I get to this page, it's right when someone comes up to the desk to be scanned into the building. So it makes me feel super sketched out, and then I hastily flip the paper over, so then it looks even MORE like I was ogling the fine offerings available at Adam's Apple (BEAUTIFUL YOUNG ASIAN STAFF! BEST SAUNA IN THE CITY!) Sigh.


Citypaper made nice this week by issuing their quarterly "Dish" feature, which is all about food in Philly. Now I have some new places to try out, so I'm excited.