Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Bill Clinton's Life
I've been reading Bill Clinton's autobiography, "My Life". I started to read it on my vacation and spent a good amount of time last week lazing about and reading. A couple of observations.
1) The book is too long and the binding is too weak. I don't say it's too long from a reader's standpoint. I say it's too long because the pages are falling out of my book when I open the binding too wide. I don't mind doing the reading, but I can't turn the pages without gettin chunks of them in my hand. Hopefully as I get closer to the middle of the book it will hold itself together better.
2) It's gonna take me forever to read this book. I've read it for a few hours already and I'm only on page 200. There are 1,000 pages in this book. It's gonna take me at least until Thanksgiving to finish it I'm guessing. Once I start working next week, it's gonna get hectic and i won't have as much time to put into it.
I must say, it is very interesting so far. I'm only up to his law school years. He just met Hillary like 15 pages ago. There's a long way to go, but the book has tons of interesting information. It's a pleasurable read, I just hope I get to put some time into it.
1) The book is too long and the binding is too weak. I don't say it's too long from a reader's standpoint. I say it's too long because the pages are falling out of my book when I open the binding too wide. I don't mind doing the reading, but I can't turn the pages without gettin chunks of them in my hand. Hopefully as I get closer to the middle of the book it will hold itself together better.
2) It's gonna take me forever to read this book. I've read it for a few hours already and I'm only on page 200. There are 1,000 pages in this book. It's gonna take me at least until Thanksgiving to finish it I'm guessing. Once I start working next week, it's gonna get hectic and i won't have as much time to put into it.
I must say, it is very interesting so far. I'm only up to his law school years. He just met Hillary like 15 pages ago. There's a long way to go, but the book has tons of interesting information. It's a pleasurable read, I just hope I get to put some time into it.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Getting My Cruise On
Ok, so I was gone all last week on a cruise through some of the Caribbean islands. I'm going to try and use a few posts to tell you about the trip and post a bunch of pictures. These are gonna be long ass posts, but mainly just pictures. Let's start with a couple of the boat, Royal Caribbean's Adventure Of The Seas.
The ship was really big. If I'm not mistaken it is the second largest cruise ship in the world next to the Queen Mary. There are all sorts of things in that boat including a theater, an ice skating rink, a Main Street type block of stores and bars, three dining rooms, a basketball court, inline skating track, rock climbing wall, mini golf course, four swimming pools, six hot tubs, a gym, a spa, and room for 3,000 guests and 1,500 staff. Here are some shots of stuff on or in the boat.
The view from the Sky Bar, looking over the pools and deck chairs.
Here's another shot from the Sky Bar
The view from the opposite side on the highest deck of chairs. The top level of glass windows is where the Sky Bar is.
This is the strip of stores and such called the Promenade. They would have parades down this thing at night sometimes. Otherwise there was an English pub and a Sports bar in addition to the several stores in this area. All over this promenade area were statues of people that I mistaked for real at least once a day. Especially this guy here with the camera who stood right by the entrance to the casino.
Here's a look from the Promenade to some balcony type things on each floor and also some sort of sculpture they had hanging from the ceiling.
This is me next to the basketball court and the rock climbing wall in the background.
This is the stage of the theater.
So that's what the boat looked like. I didn't get pictures of a lot of the other places on the ship, but you get the idea.
The ship was really big. If I'm not mistaken it is the second largest cruise ship in the world next to the Queen Mary. There are all sorts of things in that boat including a theater, an ice skating rink, a Main Street type block of stores and bars, three dining rooms, a basketball court, inline skating track, rock climbing wall, mini golf course, four swimming pools, six hot tubs, a gym, a spa, and room for 3,000 guests and 1,500 staff. Here are some shots of stuff on or in the boat.
The view from the Sky Bar, looking over the pools and deck chairs.
Here's another shot from the Sky Bar
The view from the opposite side on the highest deck of chairs. The top level of glass windows is where the Sky Bar is.
This is the strip of stores and such called the Promenade. They would have parades down this thing at night sometimes. Otherwise there was an English pub and a Sports bar in addition to the several stores in this area. All over this promenade area were statues of people that I mistaked for real at least once a day. Especially this guy here with the camera who stood right by the entrance to the casino.
Here's a look from the Promenade to some balcony type things on each floor and also some sort of sculpture they had hanging from the ceiling.
This is me next to the basketball court and the rock climbing wall in the background.
This is the stage of the theater.
So that's what the boat looked like. I didn't get pictures of a lot of the other places on the ship, but you get the idea.
Puerto Rico - HO!
Even before the cruise started we were getting our vacation on. They didn't let us start boarding the boat until about 2pm and our flight got in at 11am. The boat left from San Juan, Puerto Rico so we decided to drop our bags off at the ship and look around the city for a while. They weren't going to leave until 10pm anyhow, so we weren't in any danger of missing the boat.
We took a cab to Old San Juan, most of which was built in the early 1500's after Christopher Columbus "discovered" the island during his second voyage in 1493. The city has a big ass fort to protect it from pirates or other invaders and it also has a wall that goes all around it. The wall is like 50 feet high and 20 feet thick. It's a pretty impressive wall (but not a very happy wall, i'm afraid...Anyone? Luke, Brian?). Anyhow, we don't have pictures of that stuff, but here are some of the streets in Old San Juan
All of the street signs in Puerto Rico look like the signs in America, except they're all in Spanish.
Anyhow, we walked around there for a while and had lunch at a place called Flamers, which we thought was like Applebee's, but ended up being more of a fast food place. They need to open a Flamers in New York because it was pretty good. They must have those somewhere else on Earth, but I don't recall ever seeing one. Anyway, it was crazy hot, so after a while we just went back to the boat.
We took a cab to Old San Juan, most of which was built in the early 1500's after Christopher Columbus "discovered" the island during his second voyage in 1493. The city has a big ass fort to protect it from pirates or other invaders and it also has a wall that goes all around it. The wall is like 50 feet high and 20 feet thick. It's a pretty impressive wall (but not a very happy wall, i'm afraid...Anyone? Luke, Brian?). Anyhow, we don't have pictures of that stuff, but here are some of the streets in Old San Juan
All of the street signs in Puerto Rico look like the signs in America, except they're all in Spanish.
Anyhow, we walked around there for a while and had lunch at a place called Flamers, which we thought was like Applebee's, but ended up being more of a fast food place. They need to open a Flamers in New York because it was pretty good. They must have those somewhere else on Earth, but I don't recall ever seeing one. Anyway, it was crazy hot, so after a while we just went back to the boat.
What Did We Do On The Boat?
Two of the days of the vacation were spent sailing on the boat on our way to somewhere. Also we were back on the boat at 5pm every day in order to get to the next place. Since we spent a lot of time on the boat, there were a lot of things for us to do on it.
When we first got there, we went directly to our stateroom. It was not nearly as small as I thought it would be. It was maybe half the size of a normal hotel room, but there was plenty of space for just the two of us. There are rooms of similar size that hold entire families and such, and in those cases they would certainly be cramped. Anyway, this is what we saw when we first walked into our room.
Kathy thought that was a bad omen for the vacation, and I guess it is a little weird, but we didn't end up needing them.
Our room also had a little private balcony where you could go and sit or watch what they were doing outside.
We would wake up in the morning and go eat breakfast at this buffet place where they had all sorts of breakfast crap. Here's our breakfast one day
If we weren't going to leave the boat that day then we would have to find something to do at this point. Usually we would go and sit around or in the pool and just chill out.
You could either sit on the quiet side, which was for adults only, or go to the other side where lots of action was taking place. Sometimes they would have a band out there.
On that side of the deck they would have all sorts of activities throughout the day. If the band wasn't playing then they would have things like the Men's Sexy Leg contest or the belly flop contest. They also had these weird horse race games where they would roll dice and these hobby horse things would go up the track. I don't have pictures of any of that stuff, though.
Instead of just sitting at the pool, sometimes we walked around and looked at stuff.
If you looked off the railing during a sea day, this is what you would see in every direction
They would also have different activities inside the boat as well. On the two days we were at sea, we took a salsa lesson and a swing dance lesson. For the most part, though we just sat around the pool. I did get up early one day and go to the gym to run a bit, so at least I could say I wasn't too lazy. At some point we would get lunch from that same buffet place and go back to sit by the pool.
They had a Johnny Rockets on the boat and one day we went to lunch there. They give you fries and onion rings as soon as you get there.
Here's Kathy at Johnny Rockets
We both got milkshakes and I had a cheeseburger and Kathy had a chili dog.
When you're at Johnny Rockets the waiters get up and sing sometimes like if it were a '50s diner. It was a little amusing seeing these waiters from all over the world singing '50s rock songs, but it was cool. Also a few of the customers got up and danced with them.
For dessert at Johnny Rockets I had apple pie with ice cream, and Kathy had apple pie with cheese, which we both thought was weird, but she wanted to try. She said it wasn't bad.
Sometimes we would walk around the shop area like this
If we were feeling saucy we would stop at the sports bar.
The sports bar was weird because all they showed was an odd ESPN channel that had the commentaries in English, but all the printed words in Spanish. Also they didn't run the ticker on the bottom of the screen when all I wanted to see was the score of the Yankee game.
Also if you wanted to you could go to the casino where they had slots, blackjack, roulette, and some table poker games. We didn't gamble, but we did walk through it a lot.
Eventually the evening would come and we would go to dinner. The food was all great and I made a point to try some things I had never tried before. I had escargot, rack of lamb, a souffle, and some other random things. We had a waiter and an assistant waiter and the service was great. Our waiter was this Indian dude named Constancio who was on his last week of working for 6 months straight before going home for 2 months off. He has a wife and a daughter who live in India so it must be hard for him to do this job, but I'm assuming he makes more money doing this than whatever he might be doing in India, or else he would stop. The assistant waiter was this girl named Lui. Her name was a lot longer than that, but she said to just call her Lui, so we did. She worked every day from 4:30pm to 4:30am. After she finished with the dinner service she would go to the cafe in the Promenade, which was open 24 hours, and work there. Here's me and Kathy with Constancio, and then Constancio and Lui together
We shared a table with a couple from Texas, Chad and Teresa, on the left, and a couple from New York, Laura and Nate, on the right.
All of them were cool and usually after dinner we'd spend a lot of the night together with them going to the shows or clubs or other activities. Every night they would put on a stage production that was hosted by this guy called Richard Spacey (the picture is blurry, sorry).
This dude was British and he was really over the top and would tell pretty corny jokes, but he was actually pretty funny. He would dress like Austin Powers sometimes, too, but all the pictures we had of that were really blurry.
In the few minutes before the stage show they would have these two comedians come out and do a weird act. Usually they would just mime or make weird noises and do weird things. Usually they would bring an audience member or two on stage and it would be funny to watch while they did a choreographed dance while the audience member tried to keep up. One night they both put on bike helmets and the girl got in a suitcase and the guy got in a rolling mop bucket and they had audience members push them up the aisles in a race. It was really funny. Anyway, one night they brought me up on stage. I'm on the left with the navy blue polo shirt.
They had us do the dancing thing for a minute or so and then they had us sit down on buckets. After we were sitting they had us lean back on each others laps and then took the buckets away so we were making a sortof human table. Then they waved and walked off the stage while the audience laughed. We held the thing about 30 seconds and then they came back and we were done.
The stage shows varied. A couple nights they had comedians, only one of which I saw. They put on two different song and dance shows. They singers and dancers were pretty second rate. They were either pretty talented, but not remotely attractive, or they were good looking, but not especially talented. The singers were all good singers, but kinda weird looking. The dancers were a mixture of talented/ugly and good looking/bad dancer. Another night they had a guy called Kenny James who was a grand champion on star search come and sing. He was enormously, ridiculously cheesy, but he sang good songs.
Another night we played Bingo. They had bingo every day, but we only played the one game where they were giving away a free cruise to the winner. I was two squares away from winning, but it didn't happen.
On another night they had this thing called Karaoke Idol. It sounds like exactly what it is. People would sign up to sing karaoke and then the would vote and the best people would move on to the finals the next day. We were at the thing with our dinner friends and this one dude, Chad, said that he liked to sing. I told him that I'd sign up if he did, or maybe it was vice versa. Anyway, the end result was that Chad, Kathy, and I all sang karaoke that night. I sang "Sweet Caroline", a karaoke favorite, Kathy sang "Let's Give Them Something To Talk About", and Chad sang "Stand By Me".
We had a picture of Chad singing, but it was really blurry. Anyway, Kathy and I were basically forgettable, but this dude Chad was actually a really good singer. He almost got a perfect score and then moved on to the finals the next day. Then in the finals he won the Best Male Vocalist award, even though he got robbed of the all around winner trophy. I actually finished in a close 3rd place among the men where the top 2 advanced into the finals. I'm sortof glad I didn't make the finals since I was just doing it for fun, and not really for the contest. Also I would have gotten killed by Chad in the finals anyway.
The karaoke thing was hosted by this guy called Tyson, who basically told corny jokes just like the other guy only he wasn't as funny.
They also had a night club on the ship and after all the other activities were done, the night club would be open all night. I don't know when it closed, but we were there until 2:30am or so on a couple nights.
When you would get back to your room every night they would have your bed turned down and a different animal made of towels. They had a swan and a rabbit one night, but I don't know where the pictures are. We did manage to get pictures of the elephant and the monkey, which looks like a chicken hanging in a butcher shop if you ask me.
When we first got there, we went directly to our stateroom. It was not nearly as small as I thought it would be. It was maybe half the size of a normal hotel room, but there was plenty of space for just the two of us. There are rooms of similar size that hold entire families and such, and in those cases they would certainly be cramped. Anyway, this is what we saw when we first walked into our room.
Kathy thought that was a bad omen for the vacation, and I guess it is a little weird, but we didn't end up needing them.
Our room also had a little private balcony where you could go and sit or watch what they were doing outside.
We would wake up in the morning and go eat breakfast at this buffet place where they had all sorts of breakfast crap. Here's our breakfast one day
If we weren't going to leave the boat that day then we would have to find something to do at this point. Usually we would go and sit around or in the pool and just chill out.
You could either sit on the quiet side, which was for adults only, or go to the other side where lots of action was taking place. Sometimes they would have a band out there.
On that side of the deck they would have all sorts of activities throughout the day. If the band wasn't playing then they would have things like the Men's Sexy Leg contest or the belly flop contest. They also had these weird horse race games where they would roll dice and these hobby horse things would go up the track. I don't have pictures of any of that stuff, though.
Instead of just sitting at the pool, sometimes we walked around and looked at stuff.
If you looked off the railing during a sea day, this is what you would see in every direction
They would also have different activities inside the boat as well. On the two days we were at sea, we took a salsa lesson and a swing dance lesson. For the most part, though we just sat around the pool. I did get up early one day and go to the gym to run a bit, so at least I could say I wasn't too lazy. At some point we would get lunch from that same buffet place and go back to sit by the pool.
They had a Johnny Rockets on the boat and one day we went to lunch there. They give you fries and onion rings as soon as you get there.
Here's Kathy at Johnny Rockets
We both got milkshakes and I had a cheeseburger and Kathy had a chili dog.
When you're at Johnny Rockets the waiters get up and sing sometimes like if it were a '50s diner. It was a little amusing seeing these waiters from all over the world singing '50s rock songs, but it was cool. Also a few of the customers got up and danced with them.
For dessert at Johnny Rockets I had apple pie with ice cream, and Kathy had apple pie with cheese, which we both thought was weird, but she wanted to try. She said it wasn't bad.
Sometimes we would walk around the shop area like this
If we were feeling saucy we would stop at the sports bar.
The sports bar was weird because all they showed was an odd ESPN channel that had the commentaries in English, but all the printed words in Spanish. Also they didn't run the ticker on the bottom of the screen when all I wanted to see was the score of the Yankee game.
Also if you wanted to you could go to the casino where they had slots, blackjack, roulette, and some table poker games. We didn't gamble, but we did walk through it a lot.
Eventually the evening would come and we would go to dinner. The food was all great and I made a point to try some things I had never tried before. I had escargot, rack of lamb, a souffle, and some other random things. We had a waiter and an assistant waiter and the service was great. Our waiter was this Indian dude named Constancio who was on his last week of working for 6 months straight before going home for 2 months off. He has a wife and a daughter who live in India so it must be hard for him to do this job, but I'm assuming he makes more money doing this than whatever he might be doing in India, or else he would stop. The assistant waiter was this girl named Lui. Her name was a lot longer than that, but she said to just call her Lui, so we did. She worked every day from 4:30pm to 4:30am. After she finished with the dinner service she would go to the cafe in the Promenade, which was open 24 hours, and work there. Here's me and Kathy with Constancio, and then Constancio and Lui together
We shared a table with a couple from Texas, Chad and Teresa, on the left, and a couple from New York, Laura and Nate, on the right.
All of them were cool and usually after dinner we'd spend a lot of the night together with them going to the shows or clubs or other activities. Every night they would put on a stage production that was hosted by this guy called Richard Spacey (the picture is blurry, sorry).
This dude was British and he was really over the top and would tell pretty corny jokes, but he was actually pretty funny. He would dress like Austin Powers sometimes, too, but all the pictures we had of that were really blurry.
In the few minutes before the stage show they would have these two comedians come out and do a weird act. Usually they would just mime or make weird noises and do weird things. Usually they would bring an audience member or two on stage and it would be funny to watch while they did a choreographed dance while the audience member tried to keep up. One night they both put on bike helmets and the girl got in a suitcase and the guy got in a rolling mop bucket and they had audience members push them up the aisles in a race. It was really funny. Anyway, one night they brought me up on stage. I'm on the left with the navy blue polo shirt.
They had us do the dancing thing for a minute or so and then they had us sit down on buckets. After we were sitting they had us lean back on each others laps and then took the buckets away so we were making a sortof human table. Then they waved and walked off the stage while the audience laughed. We held the thing about 30 seconds and then they came back and we were done.
The stage shows varied. A couple nights they had comedians, only one of which I saw. They put on two different song and dance shows. They singers and dancers were pretty second rate. They were either pretty talented, but not remotely attractive, or they were good looking, but not especially talented. The singers were all good singers, but kinda weird looking. The dancers were a mixture of talented/ugly and good looking/bad dancer. Another night they had a guy called Kenny James who was a grand champion on star search come and sing. He was enormously, ridiculously cheesy, but he sang good songs.
Another night we played Bingo. They had bingo every day, but we only played the one game where they were giving away a free cruise to the winner. I was two squares away from winning, but it didn't happen.
On another night they had this thing called Karaoke Idol. It sounds like exactly what it is. People would sign up to sing karaoke and then the would vote and the best people would move on to the finals the next day. We were at the thing with our dinner friends and this one dude, Chad, said that he liked to sing. I told him that I'd sign up if he did, or maybe it was vice versa. Anyway, the end result was that Chad, Kathy, and I all sang karaoke that night. I sang "Sweet Caroline", a karaoke favorite, Kathy sang "Let's Give Them Something To Talk About", and Chad sang "Stand By Me".
We had a picture of Chad singing, but it was really blurry. Anyway, Kathy and I were basically forgettable, but this dude Chad was actually a really good singer. He almost got a perfect score and then moved on to the finals the next day. Then in the finals he won the Best Male Vocalist award, even though he got robbed of the all around winner trophy. I actually finished in a close 3rd place among the men where the top 2 advanced into the finals. I'm sortof glad I didn't make the finals since I was just doing it for fun, and not really for the contest. Also I would have gotten killed by Chad in the finals anyway.
The karaoke thing was hosted by this guy called Tyson, who basically told corny jokes just like the other guy only he wasn't as funny.
They also had a night club on the ship and after all the other activities were done, the night club would be open all night. I don't know when it closed, but we were there until 2:30am or so on a couple nights.
When you would get back to your room every night they would have your bed turned down and a different animal made of towels. They had a swan and a rabbit one night, but I don't know where the pictures are. We did manage to get pictures of the elephant and the monkey, which looks like a chicken hanging in a butcher shop if you ask me.
