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jimpage363 at 09:48am on 06/12/2005
jimpage363 at 09:48am on 06/12/2005I have discovered a new therapy -- Caribbean cruising. Talk about a way to get over a cold! Nice young men clean your stateroom every morning and turn down your blankets and leave you chocolates and towel-sculptured animals every evening. Adorable Serbian waiters with weak chins and perfect teeth spread your napkin in your lap and call you "madame". If you slow down, they try to feed you. You forget what day it is, except as to whether one should dress for dinner or merely put on something with sleeves.
The two best moments on-board had to be:
1) the first morning, we were breakfasting looking out over the bow and the music playing was..."My Heart Will Go On".
2) I woke up around midnight one night and looked out the window to see the half-moon, lying like a slice of orange right on the horizon. It was beautiful enough to drag me out of bed and into my clothes and up on deck in my bare feet. The Milky Way was a smoky strip above my head and the wind was warm and sweet and the moon painted a stripe of red across the water.
Onshore, the moments were also pretty nice. Sugar-sand beaches and warm, clear green and blue waters. Mayan pyramids and flying fish. Wild parrots and our guide telling us that the good news was there are no alligators in Quintana Roo. The bad news? They have crocodiles.
Having finally seen a tiny slice of Mexico, I can now understand why people would walk 1,000 miles and risk death to come and live here in the worst neighborhoods. The towns we went through had no running water, no electricity, no sidewalks, no asphalt, no jobs. A day's salary for most workers is $5. An hour's salary here for the meanest job is over that. Closing the borders won't work, folks. Investing in Mexico might.
Aren't I just the Yellow Dog Democrat?
On other fronts, I saw "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" last night. I have to say, I was terribly disappointed. The book was so huge, there is no way any director could have captured the whole thing, but watching it felt like getting the visual Cliff Notes. I missed John Williams' music in this movie - the music was good, but not the haunting, sweeping stuff from other movies in the series.
On the plus side, the movie really did a lovely job of showing us (reminding us!) all the painful, funny moments of being 14. The times you can risk your life fighting a dragon but are terrified to ask a girl out. Dancing in public for the first time. The scary clothes our parents tried to make us wear. The hideously convoluted politics of dealing with the opposite sex. The all-too-familiar and harrowing politics of dealing with one's own sex. Sex, in general.
Still, disappointing, but worth the money I paid to see it.
The two best moments on-board had to be:
1) the first morning, we were breakfasting looking out over the bow and the music playing was..."My Heart Will Go On".
2) I woke up around midnight one night and looked out the window to see the half-moon, lying like a slice of orange right on the horizon. It was beautiful enough to drag me out of bed and into my clothes and up on deck in my bare feet. The Milky Way was a smoky strip above my head and the wind was warm and sweet and the moon painted a stripe of red across the water.
Onshore, the moments were also pretty nice. Sugar-sand beaches and warm, clear green and blue waters. Mayan pyramids and flying fish. Wild parrots and our guide telling us that the good news was there are no alligators in Quintana Roo. The bad news? They have crocodiles.
Having finally seen a tiny slice of Mexico, I can now understand why people would walk 1,000 miles and risk death to come and live here in the worst neighborhoods. The towns we went through had no running water, no electricity, no sidewalks, no asphalt, no jobs. A day's salary for most workers is $5. An hour's salary here for the meanest job is over that. Closing the borders won't work, folks. Investing in Mexico might.
Aren't I just the Yellow Dog Democrat?
On other fronts, I saw "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" last night. I have to say, I was terribly disappointed. The book was so huge, there is no way any director could have captured the whole thing, but watching it felt like getting the visual Cliff Notes. I missed John Williams' music in this movie - the music was good, but not the haunting, sweeping stuff from other movies in the series.
On the plus side, the movie really did a lovely job of showing us (reminding us!) all the painful, funny moments of being 14. The times you can risk your life fighting a dragon but are terrified to ask a girl out. Dancing in public for the first time. The scary clothes our parents tried to make us wear. The hideously convoluted politics of dealing with the opposite sex. The all-too-familiar and harrowing politics of dealing with one's own sex. Sex, in general.
Still, disappointing, but worth the money I paid to see it.
calm
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