December 5, 2011 – Day 2 At Sea

I started off the morning at 7am, and hit the gym by 7:30am.  Ran 30 minutes on the treadmill while looking out over the Gulf.  It was pretty interesting to try to run on a treadmill with the waves we had.  I definitely hooked up the stop cord on this run. After the gym, we meet up and had breakfast in the main dining hall.

After breakfast, the girls went to a shopping seminar.  Mostly they talked about the good deals we can get on diamonds and other rare gems.  Not too appealing to a bunch of girls who don’t wear much jewelry.  While we were there, all the boys hit the casino.   Then we met the boys at the hot tub.  It was cloudy and very windy, but Ericka and I went ahead and laid out by the pool sipping our Miami Vice drinks.  Any cloudy, windy, chilly day on a ship in the middle of the Gulf is better than Kansas.

We had lunch at the Windjammer Cafe.  Then after a short emotional breakdown (its been pretty rocky being here without Justin), we hit the top deck for some more sun bathing.  The sun was out, but it was still windy, but we are used to that, right?  Tim informed us that it was 30 deg back home.  Life is good.

Tonight was our first formal dinner night.  I wore my favorite dresses of all my new dresses.  It has a low back and side cut outs.  I got lots of compliments.  We all waited in line to get our professional photos taken.  After we were all photoed out, we headed to dinner.  It was filet night.  I started with a Caesar salad and Oxtail soup.  Pretty good even thought it doesn’t sound like it would be.  Then, I got my steak. I didn’t even have to use my steak knife. After I was done with that, I asked for one more order.  So, after two appetizers and two orders of steak, I couldn’t do two desserts.  I ordered the chocolate soufflé.  Then, the waiter brought out another one, but no one was missing one, so I volunteered to take one for the team.  I was stuffed.

After dinner, it was more photos.  Then we hit the after dinner show.  My new favorite waiter was working, Florentine.  He always says “medication for your vacation”.  He even remembered my name.  He’d been my waiter for karaoke the night before and that afternoon while we were at the pool.  When he brought me my Miami Vice tonight, he had made a little heart out of the straw paper. It was cute.  I know he’s only flirting with me for the tips, but as long as he keeps them doubling up on the rum, its all good.

After the show, we hit the Lotus Lounge for some “Finish that Lyric”.  The Wichita group was really representing.  We had 4 people out of 10 in the contest and 2 were in the top 3.  After that game was more karaoke.  It was a great time.  We hung out with our new friends from the bus.  They are a pretty crazy bunch.  After we thoroughly entertained the crowd, we headed to the late night comedy show.  The guy was hilarious.  It was interactive comedy so he didn’t have a set routine, he just fed off the crowd.  After that was over, it was 1am and we were pooped from all the activities of the day.  Tomorrow is another day at sea.  Hope all is well back in Kansas.  We are definitely representing Kansas here.  We are making people think, “hey, remember that big drunk group from Wichita Ks that was on our cruise, they were crazy fun”.  I signed up for internet between activities tonight, so I hope I can get all this uploaded in the AM.