Allrighty -- it's time that I finally started posting about the cruise I went on a few weeks ago. ccohoon summed it up well when he said:

My mother is awesome. At the end of last year she decided that she wanted to go n a cruise. Not only that, but she decided it would be a lot of fun if the entire family went on the same cruise. Being a smart woman, she knew that in order to make it happen she would have to make it easy. So she came to us with a deal. If we could get the vacation time, she would flip the bill for the cruise. Like I said, she’s awesome.

So we ended up going on a great cruise: my parents, ccohoon, olga_ukraine, yarbiedoll, and me.

I wrote LJ entries while we were cruising -- I just couldn't upload them. I'm finally getting around to doing that now. It'll still probably take me a few days to put them all up, as I'm doing minor editing as I go. Pictures will be coming even later.

On to the tales....

So here I am, firing up my laptop for the first time since getting on the ship yesterday. Since I won't be posting these until I get back to land, I figure that I'll try to keep running entries of what we're doing on the trip each day. Maybe I'll have better luck remembering everything.

Yesterday, we boarded the ship in Charleston, SC. We started sailing south. It was great to meet up with the family and have supper together. We spent most of our free time exploring the ship.

Today, we did lots of stuff. We're at sea until Tuesday (it's Sunday today), so it was all hanging out around the ship.

Well, that's a summary. Here are the details.

Friday, yarbiedoll and I spent most of the day packing. I had hoped to do more of that earlier in the week so we'd be able to get off Thursday night and have Friday to go to Fort Sumter in Charleston before the cruise. A couple of things kept that from happening: the weather and my work schedule. I've just been busy at work, trying to get a handful of things accomplished before leaving. It's kept me from having much energy in the evenings to get things together. Coupled with preparing for and leading Disciple class on Wednesday, I just didn't have much time. Then, as the week wore on, it became evident that we were going to have some sort of wintery weather Thursday evening. That was enough to convince me that I didn't want to travel on Thursday, so I didn't rush to pack for the cruise -- I just went to bed early. Friday, we packed. We left for Charleston Friday afternoon and arrived for a yummy supper.

Yesterday, yarbiedoll's mother drove us to the dock. It was nice to not be so rushed to get on like we were last time we cruised (when the ship set sail about 15 minutes after we got on it). Once onboard, we met up with my parents, ccohoon, and olga_ukraine. We caught up with each other for a bit, then spent some time unpacking. This is when I realized my first real mistake of the cruise. One of the last things I did before leaving yarbiedoll's parents house was decide to leave a few things I knew I didn't need on the ship. There wasn't much -- just the clothes I wore the day before, a pop filter I brought for ccohoon (if it ended up being easy to hand it off to him), and my keys (since I wouldn't need to drive my cars or enter my house while on the ship). So, here I am in my stateroom, looking at my luggage. Specifically, looking at the little luggage locks that are on my luggage. And I'm reaching into my pants pocket for the keychain that I know is sitting in a bag at yarbiedoll's parents house.

*sigh*

We hadn't left port yet, so I briefly toyed with the idea of calling yarbiedoll's mother, but quickly decided that was too much trouble than it would be worth. I was able to easily pick the cheap lock that was on one of my bags. But the nicer locks that were on my other two bags would not be opened. I went to Reception, hoping that they might have the ability to summon a sort of master key for common luggage locks. They gave me a pair of cutters instead. So I cut the zipper pulls. I'll unlock the locks when we get back to shore. Oh, well. At least I have all of my stuff. Now, a little more than 24 hours later, I'd practically forgotten about it.

What else did we do last night? I'll have to think about it more later, 'cause ccohoon and olga_ukraine are coming over right now to play some board games.