Moe just came down from bed and asked me, "Are these kids this noisy every morning?"
I just laughed at her.
"Come on, guys! Let's go up to my room and play the 'quiet game'!" she said.
Bless her innocent heart! Good luck with that one, kiddo. I admire your spunk. Let me know how it turns out.
Alright, back to warm memories. I'll need them today, as we woke up to half a foot of white stuff on the lawn.
I swear I was standing on a pier this week in 90 degree weather.
Now I will say this for the hotel we stayed at. The office chair was like a perpetual motion machine. I sat down and gave it my customary spin and honestly, I haven't spun that much since me and Uncle B tried to make ourselves barf on the teacups at disneyworld ten years ago. That was one well packed set of bearings. If nothing else, they get high marks for free spinning office chairs.
We slept pretty well, and had no problem getting dressed and ready to go to breakfast before the eight thirty alarm even went off. We went down to the cafe and used our "cup'ns" for breakfast. I had an apple danish, orange juice, and because I was in the South; biscuits and gravy. Not bad, but the gravy was in serious need of Tabasco and salt.
The Boss had french toast, hash browns and OJ. We had a nice little chat with the manager who was a Rockets fan, and so I had to tease her a bit because I was wearing my Jazz hat.
We went for a little walk around the hotel but it was dang windy and the Boss forgot her jacket, so we beat a hasty retreat back to the room to make sure we were ready to go. We sat in the lobby for a bit and then the buses showed up to take us to Galveston. There were perhaps a hundred people in our group; a third from Utah and Colorado, and the rest from Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. We loaded up the buses, and I fired up the camera.
Since we live in the huge bowl that is the Salt Lake Valley, our kids have no idea how flat the rest of the country is. I pulled out the camera and started snapping away to give them an idea of Houston geography. Flat, flat, flat. Real, live, horizons. And of course the obligatory shots of the stilt houses along the Galveston coast.
****Editors Note
Hey Blogger people: Do you folks realize what a pain in the rump your picture upload system is? Its taken me six months to figure out how to put a picture in the middle of a post, and I still can't get them to line up the way I want. Not to mention the five minute wait for EVERY download. What the crap is wrong with "Click and Point"?
****
We got to Galveston and saw the boat. I saw it first on the camera because it was still way too far for my bad eyes to make out. But the Boss worked out a nice system of taking pictures with the zoom lens and then I could see what she was talking about on the camera display. It was a neat little trick that we used most of the vacation.
By the way, see if you can guess which of the following pictures I took!
We got to the terminal and got our luggage to the porters while we began the long process of check-in, clearing security, and boarding. Most of that process is done in a no camera zone, so I didn't get many pictures, but I do have one funny story.
We had been very worried about our paperwork, particularly mine. I haven't been able to drive for several years and my license expired long ago. I hadn't ever needed ID for anything so I did not have one of the state issued ID cards.
We knew we were already on thin ice because we were sailing on birth certificates instead of passports. It turns out that you can ONLY do this if you are leaving and re-entering the US from the same port. But since we didn't have a passport, we had to make sure that all the other ducks were in a row. The old Fatdaddy luck kicked in and my ID card did not make it through the mail in time so all I had was the temporary paper ID and my birth certificate.
The travel agent told us we would be fine, but I know how my luck is so I had visions of waving to my wife as she sailed to Mexico, while I slept on a bench in the customs office of Galveston.
When we got to the check-in desk (after nearly an hour of wandering past various checkpoints and security stations) they looked at my papers and handed me my boarding pass. They looked at the Boss's papers and said something to the effect that since some of her ID had her maiden name and some of it her married name, she might have to provide extra ID to get back in to the country. Lucky for us the Boss had such ID, and it was not a problem. But I found it utterly hilarious that after all the worry over my ID, it was the Boss's that raised eyebrows.
We finally got on the boat around noon, but the rooms were not ready until one thirty. We went to the Lido deck where a reggae band was playing, and lunch was being served. I saved us a table while the Boss went to get us something to eat. I snapped a pic with my camera phone and sent it to Uncle T, who texted back that I was a jerk, but he wanted me to have fun anyway.
The Boss came back with Mongolian BBQ (which wasn't bad), goat cheese and mushroom pizza (which was probably the tastiest thing we ate all week), and big tall glasses of the previously saluted lemonade.
After lunch, we wandered around the boat taking pictures of the harbor, our boat, other boats, and a dry dock (Peff liked that one). I think that I'll post those on a seperate post below this one since they are sight seeing pics and don't require much explanaton.
Soon it was time to muster for the safety drills though thankfully we didn't have to actually put on life jackets or do life boat drills. Beak said that when she and Uncle C went to Alaska on their cruise they had to do all that stuff, and it took forever. We didn't have to do all that, but going to the muster station meant that I didn't get to watch us pull away from the dock. But as my sea-faring grandfather would say, it was "Anchors Aweigh!"
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