Rant #3,799: Back In Pocket

I am not "out of pocket" anymore.

I am home after a 12-day pause in my normal, everyday life.

It was fun while it lasted, but now, it's back to the grind.

As I already knew before getting into this, 12 days is way too long to be on a cruise.

We had four stops, which was fine, but eight sea days ... way too much.

Cruises are great, but the problem is that there is a lot of dead time, and try as they might, there just isn't very much the cruise lines can do to fill that time up for you.

You are left on your own, and there just isn't that much to do.

There are some days where it seems that you go from breakfast to lunch to dinner, and that is it.

We saw all of the comedy shows and all of the stage shows, played all of the trivia games, and we even went to a cooking demonstration and swam onboard the ship, but there is only so much you can do to fill up the time.

The ports we went to were great--in particular Grand Turk, St. Maartens and St. Kipps--and we did plenty of sightseeing and swimming amd shopping at these stops.

But the sea days can be lethal.

I worked during this cruise, and I pretty much had an hour or two of things to do each day.

Honestly, it kept me going on certain days, and kept me focused.

So we had Internet, which was quite pricey, but it not only allowed me to work, but it also allowed us, at the end of the day, to slow down a bit by watching some of our favorite shows.

My son watched his WWE, AEW and TNA wrestling shows, and we were also able to watch a pay-per-view event.

My wife watched her "Walking Dead" shows.

Me, if I didn't need the Internet for work, the last thing I would want to do is be on my phone while on vacation--

But you gotta do what you gotta do.

One thing happened on the ship that I thought was quite interesting.

While waiting for one of the comedy shows, i got to talking to two women who were also waiting.

i found out that both of them were in their 90s--they sure didn't look that old--and incredibly, one of the ladies lived in Rochdale Village during the neighborhood's early years, just like I did!

We were swapping stories about our old neighborhood, and she mentioned a name of soneone I hadn't heard about since I left there in the early 1970s, a woman who was very involved in the schools I attended there.

We spoke so much about the old neighborhood, and honestly, she reminded me of my mom--

So perhaps it was serendipity that we met each other, but if nothing else, it sure is a small world, isn't it?

Now we are home, laundry has to be done, snail mail has to be answered, and we have to get back to normal life.

But for our first vacation in a couple of years, it was mostly fun 

But for 12 days ...

Too long ...

Way too long.