Rest mouse pointers over photos for captions (as usual).

Here’s a nice shot of the Queen Mary through the Queen Mary Lounge on our ship, the Carnival Paradise:

If you’ve ever sailed on a cruiseship, you’ll remember the mandatory pre-sailing orientation/enactment/drill in case of an abandon ship order.

You know how so many people think I look like Sandra Oh, and how I didn’t think I did? Well, check out who *I* think looks like Sandra Oh, at the very next table:


I had been wondering whether I’d meet another Jordan on this cruise. If you’ve been reading my blog for some time (and/or Jordan’s), you’ll know I met our dear Jordana Banana on my first cruise. We hit it off, I gave her my blog addy, she checked it out after returning home to Florida, we started emailing and communicating thru my blog, I convinced her to start a blog “for therapy”, she did, and the rest is history. I didn’t meet another Jordana Banana, but we did hit it off pretty well with this couple. Steve and Sally are therapists the next city over from my work, turned out my courthouse refers people over to their counseling services all the time, both in criminal matters (drug/alcohol outpatient counseling) and in family law (family/marriage counseling). Steve is sort of like Jordan, but Sally is more like the other girl Nadia that Jordan and I met on our cruise. She’ll know what I mean.

Steve, by the way, worked some therapist diagnostic magic on me and dropped my jaw during our last dinner together. See, I thought I was pretty introspective and psychologically keen, but he made a connection that I never saw, in regards to certain childhood experiences involving my mother’s behavior toward me and my worst adult fears today. How cliche, huh? haha.

This is a blowhole called La Bufadora in Ensenada, Mexico. Apparently it’s “the” thing to visit in Ensenada. Our tourguide equated not seeing it to going to Paris and not visiting the Eiffel Tower. The four of us talked over dinner (me, Mr. W, Steve, Sally), and concluded that we were not that impressed. Mr. W said the blowhole in Poipu, Kauai (Hawaii) was far grander of a sight. I didn’t actually see the blowhole at La Bufadora, because I didn’t want to fight the 5-layers thick crowd of people, so I stood back and let Mr. W climb an overhang and take the photos. I just got occasionally misted with seawater when the spray floated up every 5 minutes or so. Oh, and we also concluded it was probably low-tide.

You guys can click on this video if you’re bored, or want to be as (un)excited as I was.



I was nice, by the way, and posted the “exciting” video. There are other videos of minutes entirely without any visible water movement.

This is the obligatory posing-like-the-towel-bunny shot in our cabin.

Just to compare, here’s the one from my prior cruise, the one with Jordana Banana, in February of ’06.