A Wonderful World....

For those who were waiting to hear the blow by blow about our vacattion, I must appologize. The Celebrity Zenith is a nice ship for being so old, but she doesn't have the high techness needed to update a blog in a few minutes or less. I could hardly respond to an email much less post a blog. The web response time was horrible (netscape only) and the cost was .50 per/minute. At that price, you all can wait till now to hear about the events and such.

The cruise was great....mostly being with great people made it great. Arnie and Bobbie are wonderful to be with.....easy going, fun no matter what, just want to relax and enjoy. Even when things didn't go quite right, time with them was still great!

I got to do a little working out, a little reading, a little sun, and more than anything, a lot of just kicking back. I thought a 5 day cruise would go by too fast but it was fine....just enough of everything....enough gambling, enough sun, enough food, and enough of doing nothing before realizing you cannot live your life (or a vacation) doing just nothing. Everything was smooth....the trip down, the days at Diane's, the Polo, the ship boarding, the cruise, and the return. I liked the idea of coming back on Thursday..... for work on Friday.... to prepare for Monday. It seemed to mesh well.

Our shore excursions did not work out to well....one snorkel trip was cancelled due to high seas and another should have been cancelled due to high seas. Have you ever tried snorkeling in 3 foot waves? Forget about it..... We had the most fun just sitting around, talking by the pool and listening to the greatest cruise band I have ever heard ("Changes" from St. Lucia).

We returned home to normalcy...a little taner, very relaxed, and happy to know the Munsons just a little better. We met Doug and Jean (a retired art collector and his wife from St. Augustine, FL) and Bill and Robette from the south shore of New Jersey (two people dedicated to helping unfortunate [disabled] / Autistic people) on the cruise at our dinner table. It was nice talking to them and learning about them.

While the Celebrity Zenith is a little old and a little worn, she was still in great shape and a pleasure to experience. As for shore excursions, we have learned to be even more inquisitiive....as in .....how many people will be on our tour? We love people....but sometimes there are just too many! For the tour operators, it is often about money......and sometimes they forget that what makes a tour special is the right number of people (not too many and not too few).

Anyway, vacation is over.....Reality is back. I can look forward to the next vacation like this (I think next October) but I will not dwell on it. Instead I will look forward to simple weeks and weekends, time spent with family and friends, celebrations of sorts (Carie will be getting her masters degree, Tony will finally return home for a visit, Jamie will soon be a year older, Jim and Jamie will celebrate a wedding anniversay in May.....and no matter what else I have to say about life, I know it will simply go on).

I did get two more tee shirts this vacation and I wore one to work today. More memories, more pictures, more video, and ......more to remember. The quilt just got bigger. I know I will never see or hear from them again, but I wish the best of luck to Bill and Robette because people like them are few and far between. I wish Jean a happy remainder to her life, and Doug all the art in the world....and I hope that we cruise again with Bobbie and Arnie, because we had a wonderful time with them, and vacations are meant to be filled.......with wonderful times.

This Shirt......

Today is the day. We are all in the process of getting up, packing up our things, and heading off to do what I enjoy more than just about anything....going on a cruise. It is a gorgeous day today although cool (70 will be the high in west palm beach). we will board the ship in a couple of hours. Peg got an email this morning from a client who just returned from their cruise (14 days to the panama canal and back). It is always so nice to hear people express their happiness with their vacations. The client described many details of the things she loved, but ended her note to Peg with this:

"Thanks again for all your help in securing our verandah suite. It was a special treat to come to our room everynight and spend time sitting outside enjoying the night and the stars. I will defintely refer any one who asks about cruising to you. I know they will be in good hands."

These words are actually what make Peg's job so fun. Getting constant feedback and appreciation is not something we find in the every day workplace of most jobs.

I used to count the days until vacation and then drink too much for fun. What I really enjoy more these days is time away, relaxation, a chance to work out and try and get back into healthy shape, and going on little adventures doing things I have never done before (scuba diving, deep sea fishing, para-sailing, etc. I have done all 3 of these things in the past 15 months).

This will be a short cruise but a relaxing one. I got my favorite VB.Net book with me and hope to understand all there is to know about ADO.Net on sea days. The 5 days will go fast and before you know it, we will be home. Until then I intend to enjoy each day to the fullest, and appreciate all the moments of the trip. I thought that if I break the 5 days down into moments, it will be a much longer vacation.

I told Peg that when my days are done I would like to have a quilt made of all the cruise ship tee-shirts I now own. I am saving every one of them, even if they get stained with paint, oil, grease (or red wine) they still remain in my dresser. I would like to tell you I remember every one of the islands and all the events but the truth is, I don't. I do remember lots of good times, lots of laughs, and amazing sites in general.....did you ever see a cruise ship clear an overhead bridge on the Chesapeake Bay by 6 feet? We did, we were on it.....another amazing view. It is the people though, that seem to make a difference. It is the people you are with and the people that you meet. Last summer, Peg and I met and had dinner with Una.... from Ireland, who is the HR director for 750 crew members of Grandeur of the Sea....very interesting person. What was really impressive is that she knew every crew member by name and never hesitated to stop and chat with them while walking around the ship.

Well, time to go now....I will end this rant by saying the only problem with making a quilt at this point, is that I do not yet have enough tee shirts. I will add the Celebrity Zenith to my collection this week.....and I want to add many more in the future........but my real hope is that all of you can be with me for some of those future adventures because while the sites and views are amazing, the tee shirts leave marked memories of time spent together with what's really important to me, the people I love so much....

Drifting Away....

Well, we left the house at 5:30AM sharp and headed for Mitchell Field in Milwaukee. As usual, the Milwaukee check-in was very smooth....no worries. There is always lots of people on the early morning flights out of there but it flows smoothly. We ended up having a long conversation with the TSA dude about fishing......as he was checking out Billy's fishing poles. I almost had to say to him....."get back to work, there are people coming!".

It was very warm when we arrived, and after an hour or so we were headed for West Palm Beach to Diane's home. It reminded me of the many times I did this routine to visit Peg, but this time it was Peg and I together and the first time she had been back to West Palm Beach since our wedding.

We had a relaxing night and morning before going to a POLO match in Wellington Thursday. If you are not familiar with it, POLO is a very interesting game that lots of people get excited about....but really just has a lot to do with money....lots of money and lots of wealthy people. You for sure have the feeling that we are not in Kansas anymore.

The weather was great most of the day and we all just sort of enjoyed being there and starting to forget about work. Forgetting about work is not easy, we have banks and corporations with software issues all over the map.....and somehow I am trying to just forget about these issues for a while so I can enjoy being away. There are always issues....it's really how one deals with them in the end. Sometime we have a real crisis and sometimes we have just a Joe Smith crisis. It is important to know the difference.

The cruise business has taken a few hits today. Our honeymoon ship (the STAR Princess) caught fire on its way to Montego Bay and the Celebrity ship Milenium had a shore excursion go bad with 11 people dieing. Through it all, we are looking forward to a great trip out of Miami on Saturday afternoon. Arnie will be here tomorrow night and we will get a good night sleep before boarding on Saturday.

Billy is with his dad (they went to a Panthers game yesterday) and he called today to say he was having fun. We probably should call Katie tomorrow and tell her we have all left on a vacation while she has headed back to school!

Anyway.....vacations do teach you a valuable thing about life. There is life and there is work, between them a balance is needed..... I love my work and I would not say that if I didn't mean it, but I choose life.

Already There........

Well.....time away is upon us. I can feel it. I don't know why and I cannot say for sure, but for some reason, I have been working harder, longer, and more intensely than I have in years. For some reason, there is a sense of urgency about work, people at work, things that need to get done at work, and important issues to deal with at work. There also seems to be a cloud of stress over it all as well. It hasn't always been like this. Seems it has been very much a country club atmosphere for a long time. I used to be so focused on fun things to do outside of work but now it seems work is all there is... and fun things to do outside of the job have seemed scarce.

This is perhaps why I am looking forward to some time off. It has been at least 9 hours a day, 6 days a week since Christmas day. Even now, it seems like time will be stolen from the job to try and have some fun. In any case.....fun is going to be had!

We are leaving Wednesday to head down to West Palm Beach to spend a few days with one of Peg's dear old friends Diane. She is very excited about having us which makes it even more exciting to be going! Saturday Peg and I will board a Celebrity Ship (Zenith) with 2 of the very best people we know (Bobbi and Arnold). Saturday night we head out for the Western Caribbean but it really doesn't matter because I will have stopped caring about anything... 3 days earlier.

When you think about it, that is what a vacation is.....a place far away from where you normally are (like work), where you don't seem to have a care in the world (like worrying about responsibilities). Just getting away seems so good for the soul. In that light, we could just as well be going to a hotel in a town far away or to Land O Lakes, or to visit Colorado Springs, or wherever. I guess you could say that a vacation is a state of mind (or an escape from a prevailing state of mind).

When I think of Tony out in Portland and what being there has done for him, I guess you could say that getting away from it all......might apply to more than just vacations. In any case, I am out of here in 3 days......but I will post daily if possible to share my experiences! Somehow, that is part of the fun too! If you are reading this, there is a damn good chance that I wish you were going away with us.....

Guilt Recovery

OK....I have finally done it it. I have created a blog for those close to me to see. I have finally adopted the idea as a great way to share feelings with those I care about. I am not sure why I am doing this.

One thought that came to me was my Uncle Ray. He told me a long time ago that he wanted to document his life. He had this urge to share his life with me and others. He especially wanted us to hear what he had to say, after he was gone. This is sort of a weird thing but I have come to the conclusion that he really was an emotional person. I am convinced that I also have this character trait and probably got it from my mothers side of the family......like him.

Uncle Ray did have an interesting life and I will hope to write more (what I know) about it in the future. For now, suffice to say that maybe he had a great idea. Maybe I should be sharing more of my life with those I love through words and thoughts that I have. I would hope that these words would stick around for years to come whether I was here or not. That is perhaps one of the coolest things about blogging. The words and thoughts will stay with those that really care....forever.

Perhaps the second thing that really caused me to start this thing was my special experience attending Carie's 3rd grade classroom yesterday. It really is hard to put the whole experience into words. After walking through the doors to the school I was a bit overcome by this guilty feeling of "why have I not yet done this?".....and "Why has it taken me so long to bring myself to this place I have heard so much about?". I don't really have the answer to these questions. I suppose I have been a bit intimidated by the things I have heard from Carie and Jason. In a weird way, the details are a bit scary. The funny thing is that I felt completely at ease the moment I arrived at the door. I had the chance to attend a real meeting with teachers and administrators.... where discussion surrounding real people and real problems took place.

I am so used to meetings where the focus is money...all money, how much in? how much out? how much time? how much cost? The meetings I attend never discuss opportunities for people to experience simple things in life. The discussion never turns to "what can we do to make a difference in a persons life?"....and yet, that was the ONLY focus of this meeting! What an enlightening experience!

There was the initial shock of meeting the students...they were different than I imagined....really a loving bunch and you could see in their eyes that they just wanted to be loved, and paid attention to. As if I wasn't already feeling guilty enough, one student asked me if I brought cupcakes for them?

All afternoon I was meeting people and eventually they would comment on what an awesome teacher my daughter was. The interesting thing was.... they were not saying it to make me feel good or to be socialable (they didn't care about that). They really wanted to just tell me how awesome of a teacher Carie really is....because that is what they thought. Words cannot describe the level of pride I felt inside to watch Carie interact with the students and teach them a lesson about geography......where Wisconsin is, where Land O Lakes is, where her brother Tony lives, and why it is important to know that there is a world outside the ghetto of Milwaukee.

One thing my visit made me feel beside guilt, is one of anxiety. Now I want to go back. I want to help the boy who is stuck on his 4X's multiplications while others are on their 8X's. I want to help the little girl who thought Washington DC is the capital of Canada and another thought that the state of Wisconsin is a picture of George Bush. I want to talk with the young girl who had to be physically dragged from the room by an aid because she would no longer cooperate with the teacher. And more than anything, I want Carie to know that when she is cremated, her ashes should be spread around the rooms at the Academey of Learning and Leadership in Milwaukee, WI..... because what she is doing there, means more than anything the rest of us will ever know.