Christmas and a Joke

I'm gonna take a break from my cruise story for a week. First, I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Next, I have a joke that I heard from my uncle. My brother didn't get it when I told him, and it took like five minutes for him to get it. Well, here it goes...

An old man owes the IRS a couple thousand dollars. He decides to take his lawyer with him to have a meeting with an IRS agent. The three of them meet and start talking. Once the meeting was under way, the old man makes a bet with the agent. He bets $1,000 that he can bite his own eyeball. Not thinking that this was possible, the agent takes the bet. So the old man proceeds and takes out his glass eye, bites it, and pops it back in. The old man, wanting to make a little more money, bets the agent double or nothing he can bite his other eye. The agent, believing that he would be blind if he bit both eyes, accepted the bet. So the old man pops out his dentures and bites his good eye with them. Now the IRS agent is a little upset. The old man makes one more bet. He bets the agent double or nothing that he can stand up on the lawyers desk, pee across the room into a garbage can, and not miss a single drop. The agent, really wanting his money back, accepts the bet. So the old man stands up on the table and starts peeing. He misses, and it goes everywhere. Now, the IRS agent is ecstatic because he's just won all his money back. But then he notices that the old man's lawyer is practically in tears. The agent asks whats wrong, and the old man says, "I bet my lawyer $25,000 that I could walk into your office, pee all over everything, and you would be happy about it."

The first time I heard it I thought that it was hysterical! So I thought it was pretty funny. But I still need 100 more words... So I'm going to just summarize my break I guess. :P

My winter break has been pretty boring. I've mostly stayed home. The first week I guess I went out a bit to be with family. We went over to my grandparents, and then they came and slept over at our house. Christmas was fun, I got an iPod Touch (even though so many of you wrongly refer to it as an iTouch! Geez learn what it's called!) and I'm really excited about that! And that's really the only big thing I got. But after that I hung out with some friends a couple nights, celebrated new years, stayed home, and that brings us to today. So it wasn't really very exciting, but it's always nice to be able to have time off from school. But it's starting back up again in two days, so I have to go back to reality. :/ Oh well... Well that's it for me today. See yall later!

Cruises (Part II)

Alright! I am back for Part II of my cruises story! I believe I left off last time at the amazing dinners you get...

So after dinner there is always a show at night. They have performers like comedians, acrobats, magicians, singers, and dancers. The show after dinner is always one of the best parts of the night. I liked it best when they had comedians. There were these two comedians (and I can't remember their names right now) that were so dang funny! I just couldn't stop laughing! They started out just telling some typical cruise jokes (like about how small the "cabins" are), but once they were on their normal act, it was hilarious! They chose someone out of the audience and kept making comments about what she was doing every once in a while, and by the end of the show they had written a song about it! And it wasn't just like a cheesy song, it actually sounded good, and it was funny! I couldn't believe it!

On each ship, they have a cruise director. What that person does is basically make sure there are good activities for everyone and just make sure everything's running smooth. Our cruise director, Richard Spacey, was the best cruise director I've ever had! He was amazing at his job! He was great at the shows every night, he made sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing for that day on the cruise, and he was funny on top of that! The whole ship knew who he was and they loved him! I don't know if any of you have ever seen the Evolution of Dance video on YouTube (if you haven't, I posted it at the bottom), but on the last night our cruise director did his own version of it, and he nailed it! It was so funny! (I've also posted his version below the original).

So after you've had a show and gotten to know who Richard Spacey is, you head back to your room to get ready for the night. When you get to your room, you find that your beds are made, a towel animal hanging on your ceiling, and a piece of mint chocolate on your pillow. You feel like a king! So after you get changed out of your dinner clothes, you decide to try and get to know the ship a little bit more. What better place to start than the Royal Promenade? The Royal Promenade is like a minimall on the ship. There's a gift shop, coffee shop, ice cream parlor, and even a barbor shop! You are still amazed by everything! Next, you go exploring the floors to see what's there. You find an Egyptian theater, fitness center, spa, the kids' place, the skating rink, and lots more! But that's not even the best part, you go explore outside next...

And that's where I'm going to cut off for this week! I'll continue with Part III next week!

This is the original version by Judson Laipply.



This is Richard Spacey's version.

Cruises (Part I)

I've been looking at some pictures from my cruise this summer, and I've made a decision: cruises are the best! Once you've been on a cruise, it's really hard to think about traveling any other way again. They're just so flippin' fun!

The first day isn't the best day of the cruise. You have to go check in before you get on the ship. This includes things like getting your boarding pass (which is also your room key), loading luggage onto the ship, and going through customs. Once you've gotten all of that out of the way, you get to go find your room. At first you're pretty excited to go see your room. You expect it to be really elaborate like on the movie Titanic. Much to your disappointment, it is MUCH smaller. And I'm not talking like hotel room small. I'm talking like hotel bathroom small. The rooms (or "cabins" as they refer to them) are TINY! But you'll get over it pretty quickly, because the only time you're really in your cabin is to sleep and get ready.

So after you've been to your cabin, the whole ship has to have a mustering drill. This is just a safety test so that you know what to do if the ship starts sinking. That isn't really to fun, but after that you can go tour the ship and try to get to know it. Usually my family heads to the Windjammer Cafe to get a quick bite to eat before the ship starts moving. After that we head out to the front of the ship to see it start to set sail. It sounds more exciting than it really is though. It starts out moving extremely slow and doesn't really pick up speed until the night. After that its almost dinner time.

Dinner is probably my favorite part of the whole cruise. You have an assigned table with an assigned waiter or waitress that you sit at every night. When you walk in and take your seats, the waiter (in our case) is waiting for you to sit down. Once you are in your seat, he places the folded napkin in front of you on your lap and brings a basket of rolls to get you started. Our waiter was one of my favorite people on the ship. He knew everything there was to know about the menu, the ship, and the ports-of-call The first night at dinner he learned everyone's names at our table and didn't have trouble remembering them for the rest of the cruise. He also learned our favorite drinks, and made sure to have them waiting there for us when we came down for dinner. He was amazing! So once you've gotten rolls and drinks, he brings out the menu. It all looks really expensive, but you really couldn't care less. Everything on the menu is absolutely FREE! And I mean totally and completely free! It's not like you can only have one of something, you can have as much as you want of whatever there is on the menu that night! My cousin Wil, who is about 7 years old, ate four lobster tails one night! My brother Blake was having trouble deciding what he wanted one night, so our waiter brought out both of them at no cost! It was wonderful! Not only was the price amazing, but the food was unbelievably delicious! I tried a bunch of different meats including duck, lamb, and snail! That's right, I ate snails! I didn't expect them to be that great (in fact, I was a little reluctant to eat them, because they're snails for cryin' out loud!), but they turned out to be really good! So once you had stuffed yourself full of snails, you get the desert menu. It was all DELICIOUS! Royal Caribbean really knows food, because everything that I ate on the cruise was just delicious. Especially the desert. Well, that's all I'm going to say for this week! I'll continue my cruise story next week...

Guitar Hero and More Band Woes

I have been playing Guitar Hero quite a bit this week, so I decided my opinion about would be a good blog post for this week. First of all, I think it can be a really fun video game (and I am pretty anti-video games) as long as you don't devote your life to playing it. Then, to me, it's in the same category as all the other video games. But I like it because I play guitar, and I just think it's cool that you can play guitar as a video game now. However, it is nowhere near the same as playing real guitar.

I don't think you should play Guitar Hero for hours everyday. This just makes you miss out on tons of other things you could be doing. One reason I don't really care if I'm really great at it or not is because I play the real guitar, which in my opinion is a lot more fun. Something Rivers Cuomo (lead singer for Weezer) said really got to me. He said that with all the time some people play Guitar Hero, they could use that time to learn a real instrument which would be a lot better for them later in life. That is actually very logical. That is why I take more pride in playing the real guitar than Guitar Hero.

And that would be my opinion on Guitar Hero...now for more band woes...

The new band teacher keeps on doing things that are not right. For the past month we have been practicing nothing but pep band music during class when not everyone is going. Actually, I would say that hardly anyone is going anymore. Anyways, that's all that we have been practicing. We just barely got our music for the Christmas concert. It's in two weeks. The teacher thinks that we will pull it off, but most of us know better. One of the pieces of music we got, Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson, was given to us in Symphonic Band last year. We practiced it for a month and we never got it good enough to be able to perform. And remember, that was Symphonic Band from last year...when we still had an amazing band teacher and were the best band in the district (maybe even state). We are now (probably) the worst band in the district, with less time to practice, and we are comitted to play it! Does something not add up to you? Because this is kind of scaring me... I won't go more into it than that. But if you do go to our concert, don't expect much. If you do, you'll be sadly surprised.