I have been meaning to post something for a few days, but have been too wiped out. Hooray for the weekend!! Warning...this is a VERY LONG post with lots of pictures (and totally has nothing to do with stitching)!!
Last Wednesday (November 11th), Bryon picked me up from work and we flew to Ft. Lauderdale, FL. On Thursday morning, we took a shuttle to Miami and boarded the Carnival Destiny. We were going on the Rick Springfield & Friends cruise, and we were going "all in" this time! The "Friends" this time were Richard Marx, Mark Goodman, Doug Davidson, and Brandon Barash.
One of the first things that we did was decorate our cabin doors. In my last post, I showed a little glimpse of a top secret crafty project that I was working on. It was my "door bling", and I'm very happy with how it turned out. This was the top part of the door. We also had a piece of pink scrapbook paper below that, with a Sharpie attached so that people could sign it. I also scanned a bunch of 45s and sleeves to cut out and put around the door. I couldn't get far enough back to get the whole thing in the picture.
As were decorating our door shortly after we boarded, Rick and his entourage came buzzing down the hall. A very intelligent conversation took place...it went something like this. Me: "Heyyyyyy". Rick: "Heyyyyy". There you go!
After that, we went to the first of many concerts, and then had dinner in the dining room. That was followed by a welcome cocktail party on the Lido Deck. Rick made an appearance, but was followed by a swarm the entire time and didn't stay very long. Richard Marx spent a lot of time there, and we had our pictures taken with him.
We went back to our room for a bit and found our cruise souvenirs in our room. We received an incredible beach towel, beach bag, wallet, water bottle, beach ball, chapstick, and the "Son of a Beach" album.
We were exhausted by this time, but didn't want to miss out on anything. We went to the "movie night" at midnight and were so glad that we did. They showed clips of movies and shows that all of the celebrities had been in, and they made fun of themselves and each other. It was totally hilarious, and I'm glad that we stayed up for that!
Luckily, the mornings were mostly free :) On Friday at noon, we went to see Rick & Richard do an unplugged session as well as songwriter's Q&A. That was a lot of fun! It was followed by a Richard Marx concert, with Rick on keyboards and the rest of Rick's band. We were absolutely blown away by Richard! After that, we got ready for the Captain's Dinner. Bryon and I had formal pictures taken on the way to dinner, and they turned out great. At dinner, Rick was wearing a tux and looked incredible.
After dinner, we changed into the shirts that we had made for the cruise. This is a picture of the back. The front had the same saying as our door.
We headed off to the Lido Deck for another Rick concert. I was glad that he was still wearing the tux :)
Bright and early on Saturday, we arrived in Cozumel, Mexico. We spent the morning wandering around the shopping area near the pier, but didn't buy anything. I know that the price of silver has gone up, but certainly is not worth $8 / gram when we were paying $1 / gram a couple of years ago! We stopped off at Three Amigos to have a drink, and were entertained by our waiter. He has a margarita and two beers on his head, and a can of Diet Coke suctioned to his palm. He had great balance!
They had a couple of bathtubs overlooking the water, and we couldn't resist sitting in them for a little while.
During the afternoon, we went to Playa Mia Beach Resort for a beach party. We had a buffet, free drinks, and an acoustic Rick show. Richard joined him for a few songs. It was a lot of fun!
We stopped by Fat Tuesday's on our way back to the ship, and got the DJ to play several Rick songs. After that, we had to hustle back to the room to shower and get ready for our assigned photo shoot. It was after midnight by the time it was our turn. I was a bit worried about how everyone would hold up after a long day of partying in Cozumel, but all was good. We were able to use our own cameras for photos with all of the guys except for Rick. They had a professional photographer for that one. I haven't seen that picture yet, and hope it turned out good. We also got an autographed picture from each of them.
On Sunday, we went to the Richard Marx CD signing. I'm glad that we had purchased our CDs earlier in the cruise, since they ran out. Later that afternoon, we were treated to a "Fan Appreciation" concert. Rick played the entire Working Class Dog album start to finish, which has never been done before. He also played several songs that the fans had selected, and finished the show off by changing into a kilt that he had been dared to wear by some Scottish guys on the cruise.
On the way to the concert, we were loading Bryon into the wheelchair in the hallway, when the entourage came by. Roger and Matt (guys in Rick's band) asked Bryon if he needed any help :) We didn't need help, but it was very sweet of them to ask. Bryon was a real trooper throughout this whole thing, and everyone was very helpful and great. Here's a picture of the injury...
After the concert, it was off to the farewell cocktail party and dinner. We went back to the room after dinner to take down our door stuff, since we didn't want it to disappear. I was a bit disappointed that Rick hadn't signed my door, but that was okay. I left the 45s up on the wall, so we could find the room. I never did remember the room number, since all I had to do was look for the pink fur :) We spent a bit of time in the casino, and then went back to pack and go to sleep.
On Monday morning, we pulled back into Miami. While we were waiting to disembark, I decided to pull down the remaining decorations and throw them away. I was surprised to see this...
Rick had made the rounds late on Sunday night :)
We flew back home on Monday afternoon. We had just gotten up to cruising altitude, when our pilot got on the PA and told us to look out the right side of the plane. We were flying near Cape Canaveral, and the space shuttle Atlantis had just launched. We could see the huge contrail and the sun glistening off of the shuttle. That was quite a cool sight to see!
On Tuesday, it was back to work...and then I have been trying to get everything unpacked, catch up on laundry, cleaning, etc. It has been a vicious cycle. This weekend, I'm hoping to finally take down the Halloween decorations (shhhh....LOL!), catch up on my sleep, and maybe get a bit of stitching time.
That's all for now. Kudos to you if you're still reading this. Thank you for stopping by! I enjoy reading all of your comments and e-mails! Until next time, happy stitching :)
