Oh.. and it's raining too!
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Visitor - this guy was in my yard just 10 minutes ago (love the speed of the results with Digital!)... yeah.. it's grainy... yeah it's blurry... but it's also really cool and actually not too bad of a quality considering they were taken thru a window at 40times magnification...
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Kitty - ok.. so I admit it... this photo needed some 'touch ups'... black animals are notoriously hard to photograph they just suck up all the light and refuse to let it go... so this one got a little lightening and little scewing to get the steps straight... but other than the inverted Daffodils... what you see is what I saw.. see... saw... saw... see! Whatever....
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Unfortunately it isn't all Daffodils and Tulips out there...
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It's not all Daffodils in the yard... here is one of my two tulips! Considering at one time I had around 70 of them and now have all of 2 I had to take a pic before this one disappears too!
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Inverted fun with Daff's
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Silver TP redemption...

So our Silver Toilet Paper Award winner has made an attempt at redeeming themselves.. If you scroll down you'll see that US Airways was awarded the latest STPA for our horrendous flight down to San Juan and I quote "Will be hearing from me." Well they did hear from me in the form of a letter to their customer service... We received a very nice letter the other day from US Air apologizing for the bad experience... Our biggest beef was the lack of information (customer service)that was offered by the airlines as we stood in line for 3 hours and not one person took the time to explain what they were doing to help us!! I can understand delays but it shouldn't take 13 hours of traveling and 3 different flights to get from Connecticut to Puerto Rico!

So anyway, in fairness to US Air, I thought I'd let you know what they did to 'make up' for the bad experience... we got the nice letter and inside there were 2 vouchers for future travel with them for $150 each. Now we just have to use them within a year and before this airline goes belly up (they are already in Chapter 11)oh.. and not to mention if we want to take the chance of having another vacation start out badly at their hands... I'm thinking....

VEGAS, BABY! :)

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It's all in your perspective!
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My Salmon colored Daff's... aahhh.. Spring!
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Signs of spring from around the yard... the grape hyacinth are blooming.. oh and the frogs are out!
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Side-trip - their doing a release of some of the overflow of the Quabbin... it's beautiful, exciting and seems a little wasteful all at the same time... all that lovely clear water pouring out of the reservoir!
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Docking in Barbados... that's another Royal Caribbean ship, one of their barefoot cruises where you can help hoist the sails if you want... notice the flying bridge on the side of the ship with our crew on it... very cool...
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When we finally got back to our cabin (that's me collapsed on the bed on the left of the pic.. happy but exhausted!) we had a really cool elephant towel animal awaiting us.. almost everyday we had a different animal awaiting us although one of them caused me and my husband to place bets on whether Alvaro our room steward had made us a swan or a sea serpent... He won... it was a swan... I still say it looked more like a sea serpent but hey... it was cute...
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A wood carving shop in St. Lucia (see story below)... check out the awesome flowers on the left of the pic... absolutely beautiful!
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St. Lucia w/ Mr. Ricky!

This port was one of the coolest and travel intensive that we did... starting with a 'water taxi' ride across the bay from the ship to the center of the town we docked in.. we were supposed to do the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ship sailing to a deserted island but our tour was canceled due to 'lack of participation'.. *sigh... that's what happens when the avg. age of your fellow cruisers is EIGHTY!... So we decided to wing it.. entering the center of town we were met by dozens of "take you on a tour nice lady?" people that offered taxi rides around the island... no thanks... no thanks.. no thanks.. the further we went into the island the cheaper the tours became... eventually we came across Vincent who offered us a 2 hour tour for 30 dollars each.. we managed to get him down to 15 each and off we went to get his taxi... upon arriving at his van we were introduced to "Mr. Ricky" our driver for the day... Mr. Ricky didn't speak any English as Vincent explained "I am the business man, Mr. Ricky is our driver".. seems Mr. Ricky doesn't speak english but he's got a taste for American cigarettes.. so I shared my smokes with him as he and Vincent took us on a LOVELY tour of their home...

We started up this HUGE mountain via many.. many.. switchbacks... very scary... as higher and higher we climbed... eventually the cruise ship in the harbor looked like it was an inch long!! About 3/4's of the way up this mountain Mr. Ricky quickly pulled over to the left and stopped in front of a little shanty type 'house'... as he jumped from the vehicle Vincent explained that this was not part of the tour but was Mr. Ricky's house and he needed to drop off a chicken for dinner.. as he walked to his little house with a mulit-million dollar view I glanced at the bag in his hand - that was no bucket of KFC in there!

Well our tour ended up more like three hours... with trips to a banana plantation.. overlooks at Marigot Bay (very gorgeous!).. a really cool and talented wood carving shop (look for pics of it to be posted above) with some of the most beautiful wood carvings that were only usurped by the beautiful flowers growing around the shop... a fort... and the governor's mansion.. our tour concluded not in the center of town where they had picked us up but right back at the pier in front of our ship... now that was SERVICE (not to mention saving us the cost of the water taxi ride back to the ship!) So needless to say Vincent (who turned out to be a GREAT tour guide - including our discussion of the national weed Ganji! ;) although he swore he only partakes once a day AFTER the work day is done! yeah.. ok... ) and Mr. Ricky got themselves a sizeable tip for the wonderful day they created for us... wonderful memories!!

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St. Lucia - HUGE mountains - if you look in the lower left of this pic you can see the Empress! BTW.. if you click on these pics you'll get a nice BIG version of them!
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The top pool deck of the Empress.
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Day 3 - Here is lovely St. Kitts, imho, the loveliest island of them all, unfortunately we didn't see much of the island, my husband did a scuba dive and I did just the pier. Oh well, we'll just HAVE to go back and check it out more thoroughly!
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No takers?

So.. no takers on the "Baby Carraige, Plum, Sweet Alice" question? hurumph* Their the names of brooks that cross under Bay Road... I think we need a quickie post here.. lots of things have happened since the last posting...

The rogue wave - uummm.. scary... we'll be on the sister ship to the Dawn in October for our trip to Bermuda... and by comparison, the Empress is pretty much the same size as the Dawn... we were on Deck 9 (the wave hit as high as deck 10!)... sleeping with the sliding glass doors open... hanging out on our deck... even when we hit the rough stuff... OH.. but I haven't mentioned our 2 days of Rock and Roll yet... really scary...

Popedom... so there's a new pope... frankly I found the whole process very interesting... a real quick peek into the 'old boys club' mentality that the Catholic Church does so very well.. my favorite part was when it was reported that the cardinals sent for "20 nuns to cook and serve us our meals"... yah... 20 chefs and wiaters? no... 20 priests and nuns? no... Pizza delivery? no.... send us 20 nuns to serve us... bravo... and the church races ahead once again... maybe in another hundred years they'll start to see the light at the end of the tunnel of the Dark Ages...

I'd like to propose a new prison program... sleep over parties... yeah.. that's right.. Sleep overs... basically how it would work is any prisoner could request a sleep over with any one of a 'select' list of other prisoners. The specially selected prisoner would then be sent to the requesters cell for the nite for an evening of uninterrupted 'togetherness'.... I'd really like to see this put into place for that waste of space that took that little 9 year old girl down in Florida.. yup... make him President of the Sleep Over Party!

Anyway... now that I've creeped you all out... that's it for today..

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Me.. on vacation! (note the clear blue in the upper right corner... that's right... that's me.. out on my private balcony on the lovely Empress of the Seas... OH.. how I miss it!)
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