Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Holy cow...two posts close together!

So I researched a bunch of excursion ideas last night as I mentioned. So yay for that. I pretty much found the company we will likely use in Belize. They have a lot of great reviews and there are some other pluses. One is they have a few options you can choose from. One of them is an option for people that might be in your group that have no interest in snorkeling but they would like to observe and take pictures and see the beautiful places. It's about 30 bucks cheaper than those that want to snorkel. They go to two places for us to snorkel at for 45 minutes each. One is Coral gardens which is on the Belize barrier reef and the second one is the infamous stingray and nurse shark alley. eek....then they take us back to the caye for some lunch and beach time or shopping if you want to shop. They then take us back by boat to the main port area for us to catch a tender back to our ship. The only downfall is we would possibly miss this port due to high winds/rough seas because of the dangers of tendering. Now for Roatan we are going to likely use this one tour group. They have a shuttle that leaves every 30 minutes. You get full use of the beach chairs, a welcome drink and full use of their facilities. They have some great reefs we can snorkel from the beach area pretty easily. I am just waiting to hear back from some of the people I trust on the cruise boards. I posted a thread in hopes to get feedback. The other thing we could do in Roatan if they don't get rave reviews is right there at the port we dock at. If we dock at the Carnival one they have built it up with shopping, restaurants and a beach that we don't have to pay a fee to use. However it does get pretty crowded compared to the other one we are looking into. Only time will tell. Not much else to say right now. Going to veg on the couch and relax. Can't believe my weekend only has one more day to it. These three day weekends go way too fast sometimes.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Hello from an old friend

I know it's been a long time since I have posted something in here and I am sorry about my long absence. Things have been a little crazy for us at work. I was recently asked to move to our billing and technical services department. When I was first asked it was sort of a shock because it's not the part of the business I was necessarily interested in. However I am really enjoying it and am glad I made the move. Some of the perks are it's setting me up more for a supervisor position or a tier jump which is always a good thing. I have been working hard towards a supervisor position and really want it. I need to work on my resume in case when they do shift bids eventually around July/August if they open up this position I will be ready for it. The pay stayed the same so no big perk there. However with being in this department the latest shift I will ever receive is an end time of 10:45 pm instead of an overnight shift. The only negative is not getting to be on a team with Ian again unless he works up to the tier that lets him move to the billing side. So that has been our work news. Now on to the home life. We get to go pick up our pool keys on Thursday so we might hit the pool later that night depending on how cold the pool feels when we go down there. I'm stoked because we love to do our yard work and then hit the pool. I am going to begin looking into excursion ideas for the cruise in Jan. I pretty much know what we are doing in Cozumel which is just shopping and then using the pool while everyone is off in port. In Belize I know they have a really cool snorkeling trips you can book there. I just need to research companies to find the best one. They have stops at the reefs and one stop in particular gets you close up with some nurse sharks and sting rays. We all know how much I love sting rays. It's the nurse sharks I'm a little nervous about. I know this particular breed is safe to be swimming near and it will be another thing I can check off my bucket list. Then Roatan I know they have some reefs you can swim to from the beach so we might just find a nice beach to go to and chill at and swim to the reefs on our own. Plus who doesn't like having a fruity drink while on a beautiful beach. Hopefully we can get it approved in the time off manager before the call a black out of vacation. I know most of the time they will help you with getting it pushed through in certain circumstances. So hopefully worst case our managers will be able to help us if they do call a black out. Not much else really going on in our lives right now. Can ya'll believe it's almost May. This year is just flying by already. It's crazy to me. Before we know it the time frame will be Sept/October and we will be getting close to the end of the year yet again. I'm hoping when they come out with the shifts I can get one with similar days off because I would love to just be off for Christmas this year and not have to worry about requesting it off. We will just have to wait and see I guess. Well that's all for now. ~Hugs