Ahem, and now back to our regularly scheduled story...though probably again cut short by the dreaded green crabs.

The cruise.

The whining began waiting in line to be allowed onto the cruise.

When you board your photo is taken twice, once as a souvenier photo that you may purchase onboard and again as your ID while onboard.

She didn't want the souvenier photo taken, but they make everyone stand there, so she made a pissy face (you know I bought the photo) and we moved on.

You have a half hour to find your cabin and make sure your bags are there and not stolen...oh, can we discuss this while we're at it?

I hated the cruise completely independent of the COSGU situation and I could do pages and pages of what's wrong with Carnival, but let me just tell you this, for those of you who have not had the misfortune of traveling on one of the funships...

When you arrive at the dock there are roughly a bazillion people there, about 4 are trying to get on the ship, the rest want to take your bags. They are in no way affiliated with Carnival. They have street clothes on and some have baggage carriers, some do not, few speak english. They all run up to you and start yelling at you..."I take your bag...I take your bag!!!"

This is Tampa. Not some 3rd World Nation. Tampa.

We do not choose someone to take our bag, we merely pop the trunk and the bags are gone. I run after bag man and give him our cabin number and $20.00, figuring if he is legit maybe tipping him $20.00 for the two gigantic bags will make him want to get them to the right place that much more and if he isn't legit, well then what the hell it makes a better story if I paid someone a ton of money to steal my stuff.

Sigh.

We arrive at our room and notice that the entire way down the hall people are lamenting that their bags are not yet there.

Oh, not in the rooms. They don't put your bags IN your rooms. NO.

They put your bags in the hallway.

Just chuck them in front of your door. Good luck, hope no one steals it. Wink wink.

We must have had ugly luggage because no one bothered to run off with it. Good thing too because my Audrey Hepburn Breakfast At Tiffany's Halloween costume was in that suitcase.

Now they begin announcements that you must drag yourself to the point indicated on the map on the back of your door to do a lifeboat drill.

Life boat drill is endless. Every single person in the boat must be in correct position, because this ship REFUSES to sink until everyone stands in front of the life boat to which they are assigned.

Wearing your life jacket.

So we're packed like cattle on the deck, wearing disgusting, never been lysol'd life jackets. It's a thousand degrees, there is no shade, you're pressed up against everyone else around you, side, front and back and the life jackets, yes, they have whistles on them.

Children cannot resist a whistle.

Rednecks who have been sitting swilling Budweiser while waiting to board for 3 hours cannot resist a whistle.

I have difficulty resisting explaining to everyone how many germs are on that whistle.

Fortunately the people to the front and left of us are super friendly and fun so I begin to chat with them but when I introduce COSGU she looks off in the distance to the right as if she's just a second away from figuring out cold fusion.

She's on the tall side, our COSGU so she tends to look over everyone and tilt her nose up just enough to let people know that she has no interest in associating with the peasants.

The greatest thing about standing there is that you do end up standing there for roughly an hour while everyone gets into place and when it starts to get toward the end they will actually call out the names on the shipwide system announcing the names and, in the case of passangers, room numbers of the people who are not in place.

WHOOOOT (sound of boat thingy) "Would passengers Hermine and Soupy Jacklebury from Cabin 361C please report to your lifeboat. The rest of the ship is waiting for you to take your place and no one will be allowed to move until passengers Hermine and Soupy Jacklebury from Cabin 361C report to lifeboat C on the LIdo deck behind the arcade."

And they will do this over and over until the crowd is in a blood lust and will not be happy until Hermine and Soupy are chucked from the ship to the harbor without their life jackets or even their whistles.

That part was fun.

Any rate all of this put COSGU in a foul mood and she headed directly for the bar as soon as we were released.

oh my, the tangents are making this quite a long story

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