Clarification

I suppose I should briefly clarify for those who might not already know... John and I are no longer together as of about 3 or 4 weeks ago. We parted mutually and amicably.

Back in the states

The cruise was awesome!!! Kate and I had a blast meeting lots of new people and exploring 4 new countries. We met lots of cute single guys and Kate (being by far the more outgoing of the two of us) had quite an entourage. I even found a very cute sweet guy named Ryan with whom I thoroughly enjoyed spending some quality time.

I'll post pictures later when Kate sends them to me (I forgot to take my camera), but here's an outline of some of the things we did.

Day 1: I arrived in Miami early in the morning and finally found my way to my hotel in South Beach by about 9:30 a.m. Fortunately I was able to check in that early and get my room, where I promptly laid down and crashed. I got up again around noon and went out to explore South Beach. I had a few errands (such as finding a place to buy some contacts since I had forgotten to bring any extras) and otherwise I walked Lincoln Road (shopping district) and Ocean Drive (restaurants galore with the ocean right nearby). After lots of people watching and a few cat calls I headed back to the hotel with sore feet.

Day 2: Spent the morning exploring South Beach with Kate then boarded the ship. In the evening there was a sign up for a singles dinner which we went to and met many of the people we spent the rest of the cruise hanging out with, including Ryan, Trevis, Trent & Masha (neither single), Robert, & Lara. Then we all went to dinner in one of the main dining halls with them.

Day 3: A day at sea, which was a fabulous way to start a 7 night cruise. It gave us a chance to orient ourselves and get to know people. Robert, Lara, Kate and myself went to dinner at Il Adagio, a fabulous Italian restaurant on board. It was formal night, so I wore a beautiful long red dress. We met up with some of the other guys later and enjoyed the view from the observation deck.

Day 4: Our first port of call was Roatan, Honduras. It was a beautiful hot cloudy day with just the slightest bit of rain, which I loved. Kate and I did a canopy tour (translation: zip lines!) and met a cute 18 year old named Trevor who quickly became one of Kate's entourage (yes, far too young, but cute nonetheless). Then we got back on the boat early so we could go to the spa. Kate had a hot stone massage and I thoroughly enjoyed a seaweed wrap with a full body massage. We went to the singles dinner that night in the other main dining hall, which ended up being Ryan, Lara, Katherine, Kate and myself. I believe I went to bed kind of early that night (early being a relative term).

Day 5: The second stop was Belize City, Belize. Since it was Christmas day, there wasn't much open in the line of shops and such, except for the extremely touristy ones, but we did a tour of some Mayan ruins which were pretty cool. We met some cute Indian guys and their mom from Canada on the tour and became honorary daughters for the day. Dinner that night was in Le Bistro, a french and mediterranean restaurant, with Robert, Lara and the two of us again. We went to some of the evening events and then met up with everyone at Dazzles, the on board night club, which was actually pretty good once the DJ took over.

Day 6: The next stop was Cozumel, Mexico. Cozumel had the most gorgeous water I've ever seen... so clear and blue you could see everything! Our excursion that day didn't start until around noon, so we slept in a bit, got some breakfast on board, got off and did a little shopping, then met up with our excursion of the day, horseback riding. I really enjoyed the riding part, although the location wasn't really that interesting. My horse, Capitan, and I got along pretty well. Capitan had an attitude, but I had a bigger one, so I won in the end and we had a good time. Unfortunately Kate's horse hated her and the feeling was mutual, so she didn't enjoy it as much. But after the ride they fed us mexican food that was to die for! It was mostly chicken or beef fajitas and the best guacamole ever! Fortunately our dinner reservations weren't until about 9:45 that night, otherwise I would never have been able to eat it. Dinner again was with Robert and Lara at the East Meets West Steakhouse. After dinner we went dancing again and Ryan and I ended up spending some very nice quality time together. *grin*

Day 7: This was another day at sea. Kate and I enjoyed sleeping in a bit, then we spent most of the day by the pool (Kate getting a tan and me hiding in the shade next to Ryan, who was so kind as to hide in the shade with me). Ryan and I also went to a Merengue class. The same four of us as other nights had dinner at the Teppenyaki Restaurant, which was very similar to a Benihanas, and very very good. There was a chocolate bar that night that everyone except myself went to that was apparently really good. I, unfortunately, stepped in there and just about fainted from the smell of chocolate. It was way too much for me to handle, especially when stuffed from dinner as well. So I went up to Dazzles and talked to some random guy for awhile while they were enjoying their chocolate. Then we went dancing again that evening and didn't go to bed until very late.

Day 8: The last full day of the cruise was spent at the beach on a private island in the Bahamas. It was a perfectly sunny day with gorgeous imported sand and hammocks in the shade. It was a very relaxing day. Kate and I went snorkeling, which I actually really enjoyed after I got over the hyperventilating part. Then I sat in the sun for awhile until I could spot a bit of pink on my arms, at which point I wandered around a bit and eventually found an unoccupied hammock to lie in. It was idyllic laying there with a nice cold beverage in one hand. Unfortunately I didn't realize there was a big area farther down the beach where Ryan and his family were until late in the day, but I eventually found them, just in time to head back to the boat, barely in time for dinner. The same four of us plus Ryan went to dinner that night at Pacific Heights, a "healthy living" restaurant. The fish I had was really tasty. Then we went to a couple shows and danced a little (my energy levels had dropped significantly by this point... possibly due to very little sleep the last few days) and Ryan and I wandered around the boat for awhile.

Day 9: This morning we arrived back in Miami. Kate and I didn't have to disembark until about 9:30ish, so we slept in a little, got some breakfast and then got off the ship. We got a taxi straight to our hotel (a Sofitel near the airport) and we spent most of the day here, checking email, finding a random cuban restaurant nearby for lunch, sleeping, and having dinner in the hotel restaurant. Now I'm sitting here at the computer again writing this. Kate's probably in bed already and I need to get there myself. My flight is at 8 a.m. tomorrow, and I don't get into Anchorage until 7 p.m., so it will be a long day.

Other activities: I didn't really mention all the shows we went to throughout the cruise because I can't remember which days we saw what. The shows were really pretty good though, in general, and we went to most of them. Each evening there was generally a main show, a game show, and a comedy show, followed by dancing in Dazzles. Some of the highlights were Cirque Pan (a cirque style show telling the story of Peter Pan) and a latin dance show (the main dancers were really good). The game shows were highly amusing and the comedy was pretty good.

Anyways, that's the rundown. I'll try to get pictures up soon, but it'll be a few days at least, as Kate has to send them to me first after she gets home sometime tomorrow evening.

Vacation!

I'm flying out of town tomorrow all the way to Miami, FL. Kate is meeting me there and we are going on a western Caribbean cruise together! 7 nights with 4 ports of call: Cozumel, Mexico; Belize City, Belize; Roatan, Honduras; and a private cruise island in the Bahamas. Hopefully I'll come back with lots of pictures to share.

My Christmas Tree

I know the photo is a bit too wide, but I'm in too
much of a hurry to fix it right now. You should
be able to click on the photo and see the whole thing.

Summer is over

John left last night and it started pouring rain as a farewell. My wonderful summer with John is now over. Now it's time to work a 70 hour week to catch up and then settle in to lots of work and hopefully long phone calls to John in between.

I got a perm!

I'm home!!!

I'm home again from my romping around Australia and New Zealand. I've got lots of pictures to go through and lots of stories to tell. But that'll all have to come later, as it's 2:15 a.m. here and I'm still trying to convince myself to be tired and go to sleep so I can get used to this time zone again. It's 8:15 p.m. in Brisbane, so I guess I should be getting tired soon at least.

Outta here!!!

First thing in the morning I'm off to the airport to fly my way to around 7,000 miles from here... to a wonderful place called Brisbane, Australia. :D I'll be gone for 3 weeks, so get ready to miss me! I might blog on occasion during the trip, but I will definitely make no promises. I do intend to keep a journal of the trip though (in the old fashioned written manner - the journal I bought is totally cute!), so I may post some highlights from it when I get back, if nothing else. And I should have a million pictures... or at least anywhere up to 4,000 (as that is as many as my camera and all it's memory cards can hold). Not sure I'll take quite that many pictures, but it'll definitely be more than just a few.

Speaking of places with palm trees...

Here's a fun memory from Barrow... they really do have palm trees there (or upright logs with baleen tacked on top)!

Hawaii!

John's parents very kindly offered to fly me to Hawaii for Memorial Day weekend. It was a short trip: I left Anchorage Thursday night and arrived in Honolulu Friday at 11:30 a.m. and I left Honolulu Monday evening and arrived back home Tuesday at about 10 a.m. Definitely a short trip, but well worth it. Not only did I get to see John, but I also got to see Oahu. One more state to mark off as having visited (what am I up to now? probably close to 40). I'd definitely love to go back though.

Below are some pictures from the trip. I didn't take very many. I'll have to do better when I go to Australia/New Zealand. The trip is such a blur in my mind that already it's hard to remember what all I did, but a few highlights include driving all the way around the island, having a campfire on the beach, walking along the beach in the evening, the food, Turtle Bay Club (a very nice resort), going out on the scuba diving boat (even if I couldn't make myself actually dive), seeing Pearl Harbor and the U.S.S Arizona Memorial, and never having to wear a jacket because the weather was so warm (only too hot if you were in direct sunlight).

Condo on the North Shore

The evening view from our condo on the north shore of Oahu. Yes, that is the beach.

The view on the inland side of the condo.

Living room, dining and kitchen areas of the condo, with John and his parents somewhat visible.

Views from the scuba diving boat ride

Dolfins!!!

Scuba Diving

John drying off after his second dive.

Someone getting ready to dive.
(Note: I didn't dive. Not this time.)

The east side of the island of Oahu. This is heading toward a tunnel through the mountains.

U.S.S. Arizona Memorial

Flag flying over the memorial.

All the people who died on this battleship when it went down.

Oil seeping from the sunken ship.

I need Quality Time!

I feel loved when...

The Five Love Languages

My Primary Love Language is Quality Time

My Detailed Results:
Quality Time:	11
Words of Affirmation:	8
Physical Touch:	6
Acts of Service:	3
Receiving Gifts:	2

About this quiz

Unhappiness in relationships is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. It can be helpful to know what language you speak and what language those around you speak.

Take the Quiz!
Check out the Book

Trips, Trips and more Trips

So, I'm heading to Hawaii for Memorial Day weekend. Then a week and a half later I'm off to Australia, New Zealand, and maybe possibly Tasmania too (which is actually an Australian state, but it's an island, so I'm counting it separate). And before I leave for Oz, I have to book airline tickets and a Caribbean cruise for Christmas time.

So many trips!!! I'm excited to see John in Hawaii. I'm even more excited to see Kate in Oz (sorry John). And I've never been on a cruise, so I'm pretty excited about that too (that's w/John, btw).

Lots of very long plane rides though... which means, lots of books and sudoku. And I think I need to invest in one of those eye masks. I'm going to have to get some sort of sleep on those plane rides, especially the 17 hr trips to and from San Francisco and Brisbane.

*If I were a rich girl, nana nana nananana.... oh I'd have first class on every flight*

Ok, enough silliness. Anyways, Memorial Day isn't too far off, so between that and getting my visa situation settled for Oz, that's my priorities right now. And reading, way too much. :D

New blog!

Hey everyone, I started a new blog that's all about books! See, my plan is to actually read this summer... we'll see how that goes, and I thought I might share my thoughts on them with all of you. So, there's a link on the side of this page that says "My Books Blog". And the title above will link you to it as well.

Happy reading!

(Maybe, with time, I'll actually become a better writer as well... maybe... Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of ever writing a book, but being able to get my thoughts out on paper (or screen) with short things like book reviews and memos at work would be good.)

Duct Tape quote

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together....
- Carl Zwanzig

Books!!!

This is my library... I did skip a few boring textbooks, but they've never made it out of the box in the closet anyways.

It's actually been pretty interesting looking at my library and realizing how well it defines me. I'm not quite sure I like the definition, but it's still pretty accurate.

ASUAF is back up!

Yay! My website is back up now, with of course the link to this, my blog, which is truly the only updated part of this whole thing. Someday... ha, who am I kidding. Maybe I'll tweak something sometime, or get totally bored and redo the whole shebang. *shrug*

I'm late for bed.

Family, Life, etc.

My family has come and gone. We had many good lazy evenings of playing Guildwars together in a hotel and going to Benihana's and more. It would have been nice if I hadn't had to work quite so much, but I was able to rearrange my schedule a little bit so I could spend what time I could with them. Next time I'm hoping they'll pick a time of year that isn't defined in my life as busy season. I also think they should pick a time of year when the temperature is greater than 32 degrees. Even southeast Alaska hadn't prepared them very well for 10 to 20 degree weather. At least there was lots of sunshine.

As for life, did I mention it's busy season? Yeah, that's pretty much been my life and will be for the next few weeks. Time is flying quickly though and if I can just get back on a semi-normal schedule, I think I'll be a lot happier. This week was pretty rough, but I survived. Things that I need to put back in my schedule include dancing Friday nights, spending more time with friends and going to the gym more. The one thing I would like to put back in my schedule, but unfortunately have no control over, is seeing John. He should be up here for at least part of the summer though. The longer he's here the better in my opinion. I would love to actually get to the point of getting bored with having him around, not that I expect I would, but that would mean he actually is around.

As for the etc... *shrug*, it just sounded good. I am going dancing tonight at Soraya's for the first time in roughly a month. Yay! I do wish it didn't start so late, but that's just how it goes. Tomorrow I'm working most all day. No idea what I'm doing tomorrow night. I was hoping that hanging out with Pat would be an option, but it sounds like he might be out of town again. *frown* He still has one of my movies from about 2+ months ago. That would pretty much be how long it's been since either Melissa or I have seen him. Sad, very sad. Anyways, it's time to go get ready for dancing and at least make an attempt at my makeup. Melissa will probably redo it anyways, and I won't complain. I miss going over to her place to do makeup before going dancing. Boyfriends do sometimes have a way of changing things a bit. He (Nathan) is a good guy though and I definitely don't begrudge her.

Now I'm rambling.

Too much to do...

So I guess I failed to mention in my last blog that I was only in Ashland for 5 days. It was very nice though, but already too long ago.

As for my life since then... work, work, work, more work, and a tiny bit of dancing and random other things. Oh, and I have a stiff neck currently and feel like I'm going to get sick, again. So life isn't all that bad. I am looking forward to seeing my whole family here in Anchortown week after next. That will be nice, even if I do have to work 50 hrs that week. My schedule is back to just 50's though, so at least I shouldn't have to deal with anymore 55+ weeks.

That's all for now.

I'm in Ashland!

I am in Ashland happily visiting John. We checked out a cool salsa dancing place this evening. It was fun! John showed me a few of the moves he's been working on in his dance class and I also danced with the instructor who was amazing.

P.S.

Apparently the ASUAF web servers are down, so unfortunately I now have no nice background image and no picture, since they were both linked from my ASUAF website. If they don't get their act together sometime soon, I may have to figure out a new way to put my background and pic on here. That of course will happen when I have time... don't know when that will be.

Long time...

So several people have commented that I haven't posted in awhile. Fine, I'm posting. Happy?

*grin* Just kidding, I'm not mad, just lazy.

Not really sure what to post about. Work is busy, but it's my last week in audit, then I'll be back in tax, which will still be busy, but it's more along the lines of what I love to do.

Otherwise... John is back at school in Oregon, which means I'm up here all by my lonesome again. But I'm going to go visit him for an extra long weekend in a few weeks for Valentine's Day, which will be very nice. I just have to get a lot of work done before then since I agreed to work most of the hours I'll miss anyways. It should be worth it though.

Leeann is going to be in Anchorage next week, so we're going to go out one night and have a little fun.

Otherwise, I've been wasting most time that isn't spent at work or sleeping by playing Guildwars. Most of my family, including my grandmother, plays, so it's fun to get on with them and do missions and such. John is on too, so it allows us some sort of together-while-apart time.

Not really a whole lot else going on... that or I'm both lazy and forgetful.