Sleeptalk With Me

"Conversation" between Amy and I, circa 2:00 a.m.:

Amy: This room was for my ear, too.
Brian: That was nothing like the bowl I felt. Wait... (making hand gestures in the shape of a bowl)... like that. It feels like someone's touching my ear. Like a little person. Oh my gosh, I'm losing my mind, Amy.

Special thanks to Amy for having the presence of mind to write down that exchange before drifting back to sleep.

SST: I Love This Boat! (Revisited)

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

With thousands upon thousands of Sesame Street clips to chose from, it feels inexcusably lazy to repeat myself. However, it has been three years since I used this clip and it did come to mind several times over the past week:



This was the boat that I loved:

The Carnival Sensation, seen from the dock in Nassau, Bahamas.

For any of you out there contemplating a honeymoon, allow me to recommend a cruise. While Amy and I were brainstorming destinations for our trip (believe it or not, Columbia, South Carolina was shortly a contender) we saw a blog post from our friend Stephanie that made us consider a cruise. We were sure that a cruise would be way outside of our budget, but we browsed online anyway. We couldn't believe how affordable they were, especially considering that the price of a cruise covers all your food, lodging, and entertainment expenses rolled into a single cost. We ended up getting a good deal on a 4-day cruise to the Bahamas. (The low cost might also have been related to last year's highly-publicized Italian cruise disaster and it being the end of the off-season.)

It was absolutely perfect because every day we could do as much or as little as we wanted to. Every night we got a schedule of the next day's activities and we'd pick three or four to attend, and in between we had plenty of time for reading by the side of the pool, relaxing on the beach while we were in port, or just chillin' in our little cabin. And despite the fact that the boat was full of people, it felt like everything was about just the two of us. Plus the weather was absolutely perfect.

Speaking of being lazy, I'm just going to turn this into a picture-dump post of cruise highlights. Here goes:

• Amy did karaoke for the first time - a "Twist and Shout" duet with me. It was fun to see people (some of them with a few drinks in them) get up and start dancing as we sang. After that I did a solo number - Prince's "Kiss," my patented bring-down-the-house karaoke song of choice. The crowd went nuts and people kept shouting stuff at Amy like, "You got him, girl!" For the rest of the cruise people came up to us and complimented us on our karaoke prowess.

• We went on a snorkeling excursion on a coral reef outside Nassau. I had never been snorkeling before and it was amazing to me that from the boat there didn't appear to be much going on in the water, but once you dipped your face under the surface there were suddenly hundreds of brightly colored fish inches away from your outstretched arms.

 • Breakfast in bed.

 • Every night we would return to our cabin and cute little animals made of towels had magically appeared on our beds. So when they offered a class on how to make said animals we were all over it.

 • In between the officially scheduled activities there were plenty of other open activities, such as miniature golf, waterslides, a gym, and a running track. It was fun to get up early and go running with Amy every morning with the infinite blue sea or distant Bahamian islands as a backdrop.

 • I suffered a crushing defeat in the first round of the hairy chest contest. Seriously - look at this picture and tell me I'm not the hairiest guy up there. I think it may have been a Southern bias, since I was the only guy up there not from Georgia. I felt vindicated by all the booing from the crowd when the judges voted me off the stage with my consolation medal, and several ladies told me they thought I would win in a landslide, including the wife of the guy who won (in the middle) who said that she thought that I easily win and that her husband only won because "there's more of him to have hair on." Too bad it wasn't a "Most Sunburned Shoulders" contest - I would have had that in the bag.

• Said sunburn occurred at the beach in Freeport. We got all lathered up with SPF 50 sunscreen before we left, but we forgot to bring it with us to reapply. Oops. Funny tangent - on the beach we approached a random couple and asked them to take our picture. Later on we wanted to get in the water, but didn't want to leave our wallet, towels, etc. alone on the beach, so we went back to the same couple and asked us if they would watch our stuff. The lady asked, "Did you ask us because we are also Mormon?" She had noticed my CTR ring earlier. Turns out they were down from Mesa, AZ with a group of graduating seniors from the local institute. It seemed incredible that of all the people we could have talked to on the beach we honed in on them.

• Amy and I are not the dancing kind, but we saw "Thriller Dance Class" on the activity schedule and couldn't resist.

• Lots of people have asked me about the food and about the overheard legends of everyone stuffing their face all day long on cruises, so I'll illuminate a few myths. Yes, I suppose you could eat all day long if you wanted to, but the restaurant stations only opened up during mealtimes, so in the interim your choices were limited to pizza, sandwiches, or self-serve ice cream machines. Also, at dinner time they did not make us sit awkwardly at a big table full of strangers - we had a table for two every night. Overall the dinner meals were very good and beautifully plated. A lot of the food choices were surprisingly adventurous, such as alligator fritters and shrimp ceviche. I loved being able to try the types of foods I normally only see on Top Chef without having to worry about exorbitant prices. And if you didn't like what you ordered, they were more than happy to bring you something else instead.

So yeah, definitely loved the cruise. We felt so pampered and relaxed, and everything was taken care of for us so we could just enjoy ourselves on our honeymoon. In the words of Ernie, we loved that boat.