People are Strange Part 3

Now, just in case you think I'm a mean person, I'm perfectly willing to admit to the fact that our amongst our little group were some of the strangest people on the boat.


Every night we lined up at the cheesy, fake-background, optional props, photo booths. The main goal of this was to see how silly/stupid/funny we could look in the picture.


One of my favorites was a picture of Casey and Lisa where Lisa was sitting on a big plastic seashell and Casey was holding two seashells over his boobs (well I guess we should say pecs as Casey is male). These were not little mermaid type shells that would fit nicely in that general area... they were conch shells, you know the kind that you can blow into and they sound like a horn? Right. The photographer could barely even take a picture he was laughing so hard.


Then there was the picture with some of us girls lying on the ground in a circle looking up at the camera. If I didn't know better I'd swear we were an 80's pop band.


Or the picture of Erin Randi and I standing at the foot of the Titanic staircase backdrop standing stick strait not touching each other.


Or the picture of Randi and I facing each other in our formal-wear with our mouths open as if we were yelling AHHHHHHHH.


Now I don't have any of these actual pictures. Mostly because of the fact that you have to pay twenty whole dollars for just one picture. But also because other people have the few pictures that we actually bought and I am at their mercy to scan and send them to me.


But, the whole process of taking pictures and then looking at them the next night (If you're not familiar with the process, the photos are put out on display for the whole boat to look at so if you look incredibly ridiculous you have to find your photo soon and throw it away yourself) gave us literal hours of enjoyment. And after all of that, this is the only picture that I have for you at the moment.


Enjoy....

People are strange- the Karen edition

And, in the tradition of saving the best for last..... we now present Karen, the best Carnival entertainment employee that is not actually paid and was never really hired for her services.

We were first introduced to Karen at Karaoke when she sang every other song very loudly and rather poorly. Now I know that I really have no room at all to judge, my singing abilities are limited to groups of 8 or more and I require a strong soprano that I can follow. But, I'm smart enough to keep my butt in the seat when the Karaoke mike is just sitting there waiting for someone to pick it up.

Our next encounter with Karen is my favorite. We were sitting in the piano bar and the guy at the piano was there entertaining us with his considerable skills when she walks in and sits right in front of him. Just as he finishes the song she says "If I bring in my own sheet music, do you think you could sight read it?"

He is a little taken aback but says gingerly "I guess I could give it a shot" "Ok, I've got it up in my room" and with a flash she's gone. (Karen always walked very fast on a mission to entertain someone). After she had exited the piano bar, piano guy says "too bad I don't read music.... oh well, I'll just tell her it's in the wrong language."

Karen was back shortly with her sheet music- she sat next to me and I saw the title- I think it was some sort of a jazz song and it may or may not have had "Tea" in the title. She let piano guy know that if he couldn't play it, not to worry, she could.

I guess he didn't take to kindly to random cruise passengers trying to take over his gig because although he let her sing, she neither sang nor played her own song that she brought down. Really who packs their own sheet music for a cruise? Swimsuit, fancy dress, easy read for the beach... all ok to throw in your bag, but sheet music, that's just silly.

We saw Karen around a lot in the following days and there were a few times when we all got up and left as she started singing that I felt kind of bad for her. But I've got to admit that I enjoyed the fact that, although both she and my cousin Natalie were in the final concert for the whole ship, Natalie got back up dancers and didn't have to wear a dress that was falling apart at the bottom.

People are strange part 2

Randi and I had to run pretty fast to catch up with this one. A very long skinny pony tail wrapped up in a flaming leather band. I was missing the chaps and the Harley, but I'm sure they wouldn't let them bring it on the ship.

This lady was adorable, she was about 107 and would sit by the piano guy every night and sing with him.

This was one of the best random moments. This guy came up as we were playing games and spread out his deck to show us how the cards were all in order. Then he told all of us to cut the deck, but make sure it was a strait cut. Lisa screwed it up at the last cut and broke his old little heart so he had to go away and fix the deck again.
But when he came back we were all very careful to do a strait cut and then he had Lisa lay all the cards out and they all stayed magically in order- it was pretty cool. His wife was just standing behind him thinking "oh great, I thought he'd get sick of this trick after the first ten years, but now we've been married for 148 and he's still doing it."

This mullet had corn rows just down the back, nuff said.

This guy got dragged up on stage with his family to dance Austin Powers style. He was a good sport even if he was a terrible dancer. The best part was that his tongue went in and out like a lizzard the whole time as he was trying to figure out the whole thing, especially during the pony.

people are strange when you're a stranger

So, one of our favorite past times during the cruise was searching out odd/crazy people. There were quite a few moments that involved running after someone and then saying loudly "Rallie (either Randy or Allie) take my picture in front of this boat/pretty sculpture/nice wall."

This was "Valencia". We don't know her real name, so we named her ourselves. She took Karaoke very seriously, she even brought her own CD. Yup, accross international waters, she thought it was important enough to pack her own karaoke music. And when a group of girls got up and accidently chose the super-long oooohhh aaaaaahh version of "aint no mountain high enough" she turned around and said "They can be my back-up singers" Sorry Valencia, I don't think they have enough time in their vacation to practice with you.

This guy won the award for best mustache of the cruise it even has the curly q's at the end. He's the one on the far right.

This guy was fun- he and his buddy were wearing matching plaid pants and ties.

The Sexy Seniors were super fun- especially the guy that ended up talking to my uncle Mike for half an hour. The conversation started because Mike was admiring his hat that read "Institute for the Sexually Gifted". Awesome!

Announcement

I finally got my car back yesterday!!!!

That's right, after 44 days in Ti's Auto Body and Repair Shop my car is safely back in my possession.

I see two problems that led to the long confinement of my car.

Problem #1- a discontinued part.
You would think that in this day and age it wouldn't be that hard to find anything. Seriously, if you look hard enough you can find anything on the internet. But, as we learned from the experience of having to help him create a form on his computer, Ti probably isn't all that internet savvy.

Problem #2- shady cab insurance company.
I think this was the main problem. If any of you get in an accident in the future, I would suggest you avoid being hit by a cab driver.

Oh the woes of auto repair

Some may recall that I was in a minor accident the Monday before Halloween- that's right, way back in October. I was rear ended by a cab driver.... and I have yet to get my car back.

It took a month for the insurance company (Aequicap, booooo) to send me a the money to fix the car, but they finally did and so at the beginning of December I dropped of my car at Ti's Auto Body and Repair Shop.

I finally got through to Vonda (my claims adjuster) yesterday and was complaining about how ridiculously long this is taking and she told me that they've had the check for a while but didn't have a form to release funds to the shop (and why didn't she tell me this earlier?), and she was blaming Ti saying that he was being very difficult to deal with.

I'm inclined not to believe her because I don't think she's ever answered the phone when I've called her. She's never returned any of my messages, I've finally taken to talking to the next available representative and being mean to them so they will transfer me directly to Vonda. Plus Ti is going to give me a new battery for free because he feels bad about all this taking so long.

So this morning I dropped by Ti's auto body shop to sign a form that he could fax in to the insurance company and to pick up the stupid ticket that I had in my car that I was planning on getting back within a week when I first dropped it off on Dec 2nd.

So I show up and he tells me that he doesn't actually have a form like that, and asks if I'll help him make one because he's not very good with computers.

I think this is a little strange, but I say sure, I figure I can give him some pointers. Then I am even more surprised when he gets up an motions for me to sit down at the desk. So I opened up Word and typed him up a nice little form that he can use in the future.

Very strange.


On the plus side- I did see my car and it looks as good as new.

Project Day

A little while ago I saw the cover for the new Death Cab for Cutie album Narrow Stairs, and I really liked it and decided that I would make something similar. So today went to the art store (twice) and spent the day cutting up magazines and sorting by color and pasting and shallacking, and I came up with this.

And then, because there was some time in between cutting and pasting and the first coat of varnish and the second coat w

hich hasn't been applied yet, I decided to crochet another hat. I guess this is what happens when I don't have to spend 8 hours a day at work.