I'm baaaack!

Wow, my last blog was back in October!

Work got super busy, I didn't even have time to read my favorite blogs nor update my own. Personal life got super busy, video games, hanging out with friends, working on my DSM, and trying to spend time with B. Oh, B & I have become official, though she thought we were official way before we had talked about it.

B has also found an excuse to user her vacation time with me now. So we've been on a few trips already. We've gone to vegas for a few days, she's gone to vegas again by herself, and to vietnam again without me. Which is fine since I don't have as much vacation days as she does, nor quite the $$$ to do everything I want to do. But that hasn't stopped her, as we've booked more trips together burning even more of my vacation days and pocket money.

Though we did just come back from a absolutely great cruise to the caribbeans on board the Princess Caribbean cruise. After reading about Cindy's many cruises, I was quite disappointed to see that I did not get a towel bunny in my room. :( But the rest of the cruise was absolutely great. The food was so good in the dining room. Actually let me back this up a little bit to before the cruise.

About a week and a half before the cruise,I got a bad cold. My sinuses were completely clogged, I felt like crap, etc. This went on for a week. Two days before christmas, My condition worsened as my lung started to hurt when I coughed or breathed hard, and I would get winded getting up off the couch to the fridge and back. Now when we booked our cruise to the caribbeans, leaving from Ft. Lauderdale, we didn't book our flights to / from there yet. B had an idea to stay in chicago for an extra two days since our layover was at chicago, and stay in ft. lauderdale and extra day as well, and then booked the flights without consulting me. I'm all for extending my vacation especially since I'll be using my 2 for 1 PTO time at work, but staying in chicago in the middle of winter did not appeal to me at all. Needless to say when I got even more sick 4 days before I leave for chicago in the middle of winter, I was even less thrilled. For 3 days, I was really sick, and only started to get better the day we leave for chicago. To top it off, Chicago was getting a massive snow storm, and it was about 10 degrees below freezing the day we arrive. In fact we were lucky to make it to chicago at all, as I heard they canceled 300 flights in chicago o'hare airport the day we arrived. Luckily we were going through midway, a much smaller airport, and they had alot less cancellations and delays.

The day we arrived in chicago, it was snowing pretty good, temperatures were below freezing. I had brought some winter clothes, my fleece pullover, a big wool jacket, boots, but that still was not enough for the bitter cold that embraced us. On top of that I was still pretty sick, cold kept finding multiple paths to freeze me to the bone, and we had alot of walking to do outside. We took a cab a few times when the destination was far, away from the train station, but even getting to and from the train station a few blocks away left me cold and very irritable. We stayed at a fairly small boutique type hotel in downtown chicago called the Burnham. It reminded me alot of the boutique hotels in San Francisco. Luckily the heater was working very well, and the beds were amazingly comfy. So comfy in fact that we fell asleep in bed by accident our first night in chicago instead of going out to see the city and night life. Ok, so maybe it wasn't quite by accident, I wanted to take a nap in bed, and dragged B with me under the covers. We both fell asleep for hours until about 3am when I noticed that all the lights are still on, B is asleep next to me, my contacts are still in my eyes, I'm still wearing street clothes, and we didn't even eat dinner yet. I said screw it, I'm still sleepy, took out my contacts, turned the lights out, took off my street clothes, and slid back under the sheets to sleep till morning.

The day we leave for Ft. Lauderdale, the sky clears up and it stops snowing. We have a early morning flight, and we were hoping it wouldn't get cancelled or delayed too much, as we have a 4 hour leeway planned before the boat leaves without us. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we have a very early flight out of chicago at around 6am. That was actually beneficial to us as it would minimize delays getting out of chicago, but that meant we had to wake up really really early to catch the flight. The flight was only delayed about 40 minutes due to deicing of the plane, and general sluggishness that the cold created with the ground crew. We made it to warm and sunny ft. lauderdale, grabbed a taxi and headed to the cruise ship. Luckily my sister was a veteran of the cruise ship, and gave me tons of pointers and hints, and told me once on board, they will start serving at the buffets. By the time we boarded the cruise ship, it was 2pm, and we were starving, so we headed straight to the buffet.

More about the cruise later.