Various Ramblings and Mumbles

So today is going to be a post about various things that are going on in our lives right now. First and foremost, our new shifts start today. Ian managed to get a shift that has him working from 3pm - midnight with Thurs/Fridays off and I am working 1:45 - 10:45PM with Sun/Mon off. Ian is going to put in for a shift swap to shifts that would give him Sun/Mon or Mon/Tues off so we can at least have a single day off together. Hopefully he lucks out and gets swapped quickly. The plus side is our hours our close enough now that we can carpool in together instead of having to take two seperate cars. Thank the heavens. Our next bit of rambeling has to do with work. I'm at a point where I'm putting my resume out there and have decided to see if anything bites. What I would love to do is go to school for either my teacher's certificate or get certified to be a travel agent once and for all. I have a lot of joy being around children and planning vacations so if I can do either of them for a living I think I could truly be happy once and for all in my career. While I love to work at the company I'm at, I know the only growth I can do there is to move up the management ladder. There haven't been any openings for the next move up yet, and I'm not getting any younger so feel like I might actually need to take charge once and for all. We will see what happens. I am going to start looking into excursions for the cruise in the coming weeks. I'm hoping to make up my mind on the company we are going to use in Belize for the snorkel trip. I'm also going to look into what beach to use in Roatan. Cozumel we have it pretty easy since we are going to just shop and enjoy the ship. I also need to figure out what nights we are going to do the specialty resturants on board. So freaking excited about this cruise. I think we have decided to take two weeks again for this vacation so we have off the week of the cruise and afterwards to rejuvinate before going back to work again. I guess that is about all for now. Hope everyone that still reads this is doing well. I will post an update probably in a few days after I get to meet my new team mates and once we have our stuff booked for the excursions on this trip. ~Hugs

An update of sorts

So it has been over a month since I was last able to update this blog. So lets see where should I begin. Ok, lets go with the less fun thing of work first. Our company is currently doing shift bids. So it's a lot sooner than I anticipated as you could clearly see from my last post of thinking it would by July/Augustish. It's all good though. Several of the shifts were really good. Now I'm keeping the fingers crossed that we get one of our top choices. I would love any of the top five really. One of the bad things was when I was moved to the different department they converted all my metric data to the new depts standards. The issues per hour is the same but in the previous dept it's lower than the phone team. I heard rumor they are changing that over for us so it might help me move up the ranking system they use to place us on our teams. It won't be a huge jump but anything is better than 15th from the bottom for my tier group. LOL. Once we find out our shifts which should be on Monday I will post them here as well as send an email. They have several teams put together that will combine both sides of the business so of course Ian and I are trying to get on that team first and foremost. Keep your fingers crossed for us. Ok, not really because that is still days away and I'm sure your fingers will get cramped before then. LOL. Now an update to other stuff. We changed the cruise yet again as you can tell by the ticker I have. We pretty much were mainly booking the Princess cruise because of the 4 ports. We wanted a port intensive itinerary but alas they cancelled one of the ports. So when we got an email with Royal Caribbean's dates, the ports are the same but it's over $100 cheaper pp. Plus since Ian and I are members of their loyalty program we will get $25 on board credit. This will also put us just one credit shy of hitting platinum so yay for getting a big discount on balcony rooms. I have started to look into different excursion ideas but haven't booked anything yet. I know for Roatan we will take a taxi to the West Bay area because they have the best beaches for snorkeling from. I'm talking reefs galore that you can reach from shore. I was a little bummed in regards to looking at our calendar today. It has the stuff from when we were going to by flying out to Disney tomorrow for Star Wars weekends. I am mostly glad it didn't work out because with how hot it has been we would have been so hot and miserable. I know we will have a relaxing time on the cruise and it's been over a year since we have been on. I just hope the weather is wonderful for us. Now just have to get through the next 6 months. LOL. So freaking long. I guess that is pretty much it for now. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head right now. Hope everyone is doing well. ~Hugs

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.

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

Our take on Tonga Toast

So we went grocery shopping yesterday and decided we wanted to get the fixings to make our favorite breakfast on the Disney trip. It's served up for breakfast at the Poly in either Kona Cafe or their quick service called Capt Crooks. We went to Kona and tried it and it was one of our favorite breakfasts. I had done some research and knew the ingredients that went into this yummy, sinful breakfast.

So I started out making the strawberry compote they serve with the Tonga Toast. It's pretty simple ingredients. It's 10 strawberries, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/4 cup sugar. You cut up 6 of the strawberries and put it in a pot with the vanilla and sugar. Cook on med-high heat until it boils. It only takes a few mins. Then you cut up the 4 remaining strawberries, put it into a food processor and add in the cooked mixture. Blend until smooth and voila, a very yummy strawberry compote.

Then we started whipping up the batter for the tonga toast.

You will need 4 large eggs, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 cup milk.

We bought a loaf of sourdough bread at HEB as it's the most recommended for the recipe. You cut it into 3 inch slices and with a pairing knife cut a pocket on one side. Then you take a banana and cut it in half and then again cut in half but this time lengthwise so you end up with two half pieces. You stuff the banana's into the pocket you just cut in the bread.

Then you dip it into the egg mixture coating all four sides. We put it into the deep fryer that we had canola oil in set at 350 degrees. They say you can do it in a few inches of oil in a pan if you don't have a deep fryer however make sure you have a candy thermometer because if the oil gets too high above 350 it will burn.

You cook it on each side for about two mins, flip, cook another two mins and then take out and put it into a sugar and cinnamon mixture. We did 3/4 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoon's cinnamon. Coat all four sides of the bread and enjoy. We top ours with the strawberry compote because it helps offset the sweetness. Plus who doesn't like strawberry and banana's. yummmy... I might try another person's recipe for it next time because our mixture was a little wetter than I think it should be and this other recipe doesn't call for any milk.

Here are the rest of the pictures from our breakfast.

One last change

So we received our money in our bank accounts and we were sadly disappointed. We received a lot less than what we figured because we forgot about the percentage they take out for the 401k before they tax it at the high rate for income taxes. So we had to cancel the Magic as it was higher than we wanted to pay. The 8 nighter was going to be about 2100 after the taxes and that was prior to tips for the staff. We were both sad but we figured it was the grown up thing to do.

We are still going on a cruise for our anniversary but we reverted to going on the Princess one I had mentioned a few posts ago that I deleted. It's going to Belize, Cozumel, Costal Maya and Roatan. So on the big upside is we have been wanting to try out Princess and we get two new ports. So yay for that! I'm going to watch the prices and if the balcony's go down we will upgrade to that. Right now we are booked in a gurantee inside so it's possible to get upgraded to a balcony anyway without paying the upgrade fee's.

It sets sail on our anniversary too so I'm going to book the steakhouse for that night. Hopefully we get our luggage quick as we will have to dress up for the steak house. Then I think we are going to hit up one of the lounges for some dancing. It is our anniversary after all. LOL.

We got it for a great price too so if anyone is interested let me know. We managed to snag the inside for only $1500 and change. That price is for the both of us by the way. Anyways thats all for now. Take care!

~Hugs

Final Changes

So we received an interesting bit of news that had us change our plans but once tomorrow comes there should be no further changes.

I was speaking with a travel agent and found out that the Disney Magic will still be sailing from Galveston in Jan. So when Ian got home last night we discussed the itinerary and have decided to go with it. It's an 8 night cruise for only 200 more than we paid for the 4 night one on Carnival. We get to hit up Key West, Grand Cayman, Costa Maya and Cozumel. So we get 4 great ports as well. One we have never done anything in before or been to. Grand Cayman we will probably go to 7 mile beach and shop. Then Cozumel we will just shop at the pier area and in Costa Maya we will probably just stay on the ship or get off in ship in the pier area as well.

If anyone wants details on the trip just let us know. We always love company on trips like this. We are going to book an inside room to save a bit of money. Especially since on this ship we will be participating in the various activities. Plus lets not forget you don't have to pay extra for sodas as it's included in the price where on other lines you pay typically 7 bucks per day per person for the soda pass. We don't typically drink enough to warrant it but we still like to have an occasional soft drink at shows, or by the pool. I'm really excited about how everything turned out and hope we enjoy the ship. We booked a room in Galveston for the night before the ship departs. It will leave on Friday Jan 4th and get back on Sat Jan 12th.

Not much else to post about right now.

~Hugs