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This evening, Godric let Riley outside around 11pm. Since Riley has problems getting up the basement stairs, my husband decided to shut the door to the basement and leave Riley upstairs...with no supervision.
For a while we heard a lot of nails clicking around on the hardwood floor. Then it sounded like furniture moving. I figured that Riley had finally decided to make the living room more of 'his space' (since his bed is in there) and was moving things around, kinda Feng Shui like.
Now, you have to know that Riley lays right in front of the basement TV. While I am watching mindless room redecorations on HGTV, he's snoring away...which, I figure is like the womb, you could retain some knowledge while you sleep. I'm no scientist (no, Julie, say it isn't so) but why else would they make those cassette tapes you're supposed to listen to as you fall asleep if you are fat or want to quit the cancer sticks? Anywho, once it sounded like major furniture was being moved, like the couch, I decided to move my fat arse upstairs to see what the hub-bub was about. I mean, afterall, if the dog was going to move the couch, he was going to need some help since it is a La-Z-Boy and all.
And then I found him.
His head was facing the wall and he was pinned between two chairs in the living room. His back legs were giving out and he was pretty well screwed.
I moved the chairs...he just looked at me.
I moved the entire dining room table and he finally made an attempt to get out of the position he had worked himself into. You see, Riley's turning radius, due to his bad back, is that of a tractor trailer hauling a doublewide trailer at 10 miles per hour. And that's a good day.
Since he had been trapped and for that matter, upright for about 5 minutes, his back legs were giving out and I had to basically guide his butt out of the diningroom prison he had found himself in.
So if you have a dog, and it is unsupervised in a room and you hear furniture moving in said room, it's probably safe to assume that they aren't rearranging things.
Learn somethin' new everyday.
We're back from our 1 week on the Mexican Riviera.
Aboard what else? A Princess ship...for those of you that were in a coma in the 70s, that's the line that was know as the Love Boat, made famous by a certain tv show.
The Mexillents, Godric and myself figured that if we wanted to do the Mexican Riviera correctly, we should do it on a Princess ship...I mean come on, who didn't spend their Saturday nights hearing POOR-TO VI-ARTA being announced by Captain Steubing? One of the many life lessons I learned from Charo was that Princess 'owns' the Mexican Riviera.
Our trip was very nice. For me, it wasn't particularly relaxing simply because I'm pretty relaxed most of the time anyways. That's just how I roll.
Our trip began by flying into LAX on Friday night. The Mexillents had flown in earlier in the day to spend some time with Mr. Mexillent's brother, who lives near LA.
I noticed something odd about the LAX Marriott almost immediately. There were lots of people wearing black fishnets with various hair colors, piercings and a large percentage of women wearing black lipstick.
Hmm, odd but this was LA so I busied myself with checking in.
Mr. Mexillent strolled up and informed us that we were in the midst of a 'Hot Topic' Managers Convention.
This explained the fake goth kids. Ah ha! It was all making a lot more sense now.
After checking in, we met Mr. Mexillent and his brother in the bar and witnessed more Hot-Topic-Fashionistas. The colors and clothing choices were simply mind boggling. I didn't have my camera handy so I'm unable to share with you the crap-tacularness of the Hot Topic store managers but rest assured, they all sucked.
The next morning we met our transfer to the ship, the Sapphire Princess.
While it isn't truly the sister ship to the Star Princess, the ship Godric and I sailed on in 2002 to Alaska, there are striking similarities. This made finding things, from my standpoint, quite easy.
We had two days at sea where we just basically lounged around and hung out. The ship has 5 pools so finding a good spot is not a problem. We even managed to get Mrs. Mexillent into one of the pools.
On Sunday, we had our first 'formal night' and we all realized that formal means different things to different people. If a golf shirt with khakis is formal wear, then these people must all be lifeguards wearing their bathing suits to work because the just didn't get the gist of formal wear.
Our first port was Puerto Vallarta. Go ahead, say it in that 'Love Boat Announcer' voice. That's what I was doing all trip.
In Puerto Vallarta, we swam with dolphins. That's right. We went on a ship excursion to the Vallarta Adventure Thunderdome (or something like that, I don't remember the actual name) and hung out with dolphins for a couple of hours.
Things I learned at the Thunderdome:
Dolphins scratch very easily. You can't wear jewelry when you are in the pools with the dolphins because they can be hurt.
Dolphins are incredibly sweet. Whenever you pet them, they would flip on their sides (like a dog) so they could get their tummies rubbed. This turned out to be a double edged sword because the girl dolphin tended to crap in the pool when you rubbed her tummy. Eck!
Some dolphins are gay. When it came time for the dolphins to 'kiss' us, Godric and I swam out to the designated spot, and both dolphins (a boy and a girl) made a b-line to Godric to kiss him. Godric got gay dolphin lovin'.
Life vests are some people's friends, just not mine. When you are a large girl with an ample chest, it makes it difficult to fit a life jacket properly. Basically, what fits fine, if not a bit snug on land turns into a wet hood that slowly slides over your head making you have to talk through the armholes. Nothing is ever easy.
Our next port was Mazatlan where we took a tour of the Sierra Madre. Some of it was beautiful. Some of it was depressing. Most of it was interesting due to our tour guide Maria. She seemed to be a mover and shaker because everyone in every town knew her and she passed a lot of cash to people on our travels.
Here's our tour guide, Maria, explaining the finer points of making things with mud.
Here's Maria's joke: "Look, a Mexican Taxi!"
Brutal.
This is a flower with a yellow butterfly that Mrs. Mexillent wanted me to capture. It was outside the church in Cordoba. The only reason why I remember the town's name is because I think a Cordoba was a car in the 70s, also it reminds me of 'corinthian leather' that Ricardo Montobahn talked about...and if you remember your 1970's ABC TV Schedule, you'll remember that Fantasy Island was on after Love Boat. See how I bring that right back around? Stunning. Simply stunning.
This is a picture of the beautiful countryside of the Sierra Madre. I took this picture after our bus driver practically drove our bus off the side of a mountain to find a spot for some lady to take a picture safely. I, of course, hopped off the bus as well.
It was only after I was trudging through underbrush that I remembered that our tour guide had listed the many poisonous snakes that were native to the area. This picture is now evidence of #17 on the list of "Stupid things Julie has Done".
(For those of you keeping track, number 16 on the list is 'Buying rollerblades in 2001'...fat clumsy girl on rollerblades, better have 9-1-1 on speeddial).
Back on the ship, while we were in the harbor we saw this fake Pirate ship hauling a boat load of people looking forward to being drunk and having sun poisoning. Upon seeing an advertisement for the ship as we were leaving on our Sierra Madre Tour, Godric commented (in an awesome pirate accent):
"The Pirates aren't real, but the B.O. is!" I married a very funny man.
Our last port was Cabo San Lucas where we took a costal cruise to see Los Archos. Off the shore of Cabo are some really cool rock formations. The weather was beautiful and so were some of the homes and resorts we saw dangling off the cliffs in Cabo. I'd like to go back and spend some time in Cabo San Lucas, because it was so beautiful and because it was also the shortest port time we had (arriving at 7am and leaving at 2pm).
Here's a pic of the famed Los Archos...
I'll be eventually photoshopping the boat out of this picture. Boats were everywhere!
This is a shot of someone parasailing near our ship.
And finally, here's a picture of house I'll buy once I win a huge chunk of money. This place was GORGEOUS!!!
I also experimented with the panoramic feature of my camera and took this shot...
It is much cooler a lot larger...
That night was our last formal night and I am pleased to say that more people dressed for the occasion.
Our last day of the cruise, was a day at sea where the captain was hauling arse to make it to LA in time for disembarkation. We all found things to do (I went to a class to learn how to make ribbon roses, Mr. Mexillent read a book, Godric was a winner on the ship's Match Game and Mrs. Mexillent napped. Mrs. Mexillent was not about to go to another crafting class after I made her go to the 'mexican wrap-basket making' class on one of our earlier 'at sea' days.)
Here's Godric on the Match Game where he won a lovely Princess Cruises reversible tote bag.
The ship was rockin' throughout the day and evening since we were going full tilt. With the help of my little friend, Bonine, I was upright and able to eat my final dinner (something I have been unable to do the last couple of cruises).
Speaking of dinner, we had two great servers, Mirko and his assistant, Rogie. They were a funny team. Mirko is about 25 and Slavic, Rogie is 45 and Filipino. We witnessed many funny and interesting interactions between Mirko and Rogie. At one point, Mirko scolded Rogie by saying, "If you can't read their cards, why don't you get glasses?"
Very funny. I guess you had to be there.
A bit about our rooms...
Our rooms were nice, but smaller than we are accustomed to…we're used to a balcony room with a bed and couch area and these rooms were lacking the couch. By most people's standards, the rooms were huge but having that extra couch definitely spoils you. Our balcony was gigantic, it fit 2 large chairs, a table and 3 smaller chairs. It was double the size of a standard cruise ship balcony. It also had a door that made our two cabins have adjoining balconies. This was great because we could move between the rooms without having to go out in the hallway while not having to completely surrender our privacy to each other.
All in all, we had a nice time. Here we are, happy and relaxed.
We’re planning to go on another cruise with the Mexillents, probably in February, and probably leaving out of Galveston (to save on the airfare). Drop me a line if you are interested…
If you didn't get enought pictures in this post, you can view my shutterfly album here.
Last night, I was talking to my next door neighbor. We were outside for quite a while (so long that I missed LOST...can you believe it?)
Anyhow, I always make a point of telling her and her husband when we're going to be away and who is staying at our house. They make a point to look out for suspicious activity.
Here's the transcript of our conversation about our Mexillent trip...
JU: Remember that we'll be gone next week. ___ will be at the house staying with Riley.
Neighbor: That's right. Where are you going again?
JU: Mexico.
Neighbor: Well, just stay away from the Mexican h00kers
JU: Huh? Well, um, yeah, I kinda had planned on it, but just for laughs, why should we stay away from mexican h00kers?
Neighbor: Apparently they're putting eyedrops that are used in eye surgeries in men's drinks and after they pass out, they're robbing them.
JU: Um, ok, well, since we don't eat or drink anything off the ship anyways, nor do we frequent h00kers, I think we'll be safe.
I told Godric about my conversation with our neighbor and we both laughed...and then I found this.
Ok, so it is confirmed, mexican h00kers are not safe. Good to know.
*since I don't want to get googled by every freak and sex-addict in the universe, I used zeros instead of 'o' so h00ker wouldn't come up on a search engine. Anytime you see something like this in my blog, assume that's the reason.
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