We enjoyed the cruise - here's Miguel on the bed with our towel elephant. (And Frederick, he came for the cruise).


One of the most interesting (to me) results of travelling is the perspective it gives me on my life in general. Especially when making journeys with kids, things get very basic - do we have food, are we all warm/cool/sunscreened and where will we be sleeping tonight. The conversations we had on the upper decks of the cruise ship in the dark, me and the kids, were wide ranging and free of the distractions of television, computers, and phones. We talked about the future, theirs and mine, and what we remembered from the past, when they were children.





In the course of one of these conversations, Ian told me that he always thought, when he was small, that the tattoo on my ankle was a telephone pole... (It's a cross.) I laughed and asked him if he had a theory as to Why I would have a telephone pole on my leg, and he said, "I thought it had something to do with a Tragically Hip song". Which is not a bad theory, really. Wish I'd thought of that...





Rachel and I snuck off to get ice cream one afternoon, and Kirsten and I had coffee on the deck of the boat late at night, talking about love and relationships. Miguel did Miguel things, mostly, but one afternoon we forgot to tell the kids we were going to sit in the bar down on the casino deck, and managed to be there for about two hours, talking and drinking margaritas, until the kids found us.





There was a slot machine called Lucky Lemmings, that we kept walking past on the casino deck. On the third day of the cruise I said to Miguel, "I think it's a sign, we're from the Arctic, lemmings, you know, we should put some money in it." So we poked in a five dollar bill, and as it was a nickel slot we played it for quite a while. It kept spitting out money, periodically, and I was putting it in a bucket. After half an hour or so, Miguel went off to watch an art auction, and I was still playing all the quarters. Pushing the buttons, listening to the lemming song, playing a nickel at a time and the money was still coming out faster than I could put it in. When the bucket was full, I figured I'd go cash it in and see how much I had. The cashier took the bucket without comment, and poured it into a counting machine. As I watched, the display went from 10.00 to 20.00 to 30.00, counting all the quarters, and I thought, oh, hey, 40 bucks or so, that's cool. But it didn't stop. It kept going and going and didn't slow down until it got to 190.00 Grand total 192.00. I said to the cashier, "Pretty good for five bucks, hey?" and she looked a bit startled.





I went back to the room and put the money in the safe. Miguel put a bit more money in the slots later in the day, but I kept the lemming money and we went to a steakhouse in Cocoa Beach for dinner when David (Kirsten's boyfriend) and his mom and sister were with us. Nice dinner, even if the servers were a bit surly. Wait staff in Florida, I guess you have to feel sorry for them - they're probably a lot friendlier when it's not Spring Break. Even at the IHOP the waitress told me she didn't know where her head was that week.