girl_of_prayer , 26

Hey everyone! I just figured I'd write and update everyone. I'm still really busy with backing up my journal on here, so I don't really feel like writing new entries that I'll just have to back up, but anyway. Right now I'm on April 2004. So, I have all my entries from then until now to back up so it's really a lot. I have dual monitors at work so I can get through a few months pretty fast. I figure I'll back up like 3-4 months each day at work and pretty soon I'll have it done. I have 2810 entries in here. 8 years. 1/3 of my life. Craziness.

Everything is going okay lately at work. It's just been work. It was kinda crazy with a few things late last week, but I think everything's getting resolved now. On Friday, we all went out for Chinese and had cake to celebrate Bosses Day, so that was pretty fun to go out with my coworkers. This Friday, I get a free meal because they're taking out everyone who started working at the company during October (of any year) out for an anniversary dinner. They do this each month. We're going to the Florence Country Club. They also give us a restaurant gift certificate I think. So yeah, pretty awesome that they take you out for lunch and give you a gift card for your anniversary. They do it each year too not just your first year or five year or something but every year.

I ran in a 5k on Saturday and my time was 30:40. The wind was blowing in my face and the wind was crazy that day though. My nose started running so bad during the race, and when it was over I went to the refreshment table and instead of asking for water or gatorade I just wanted kleenex! I can usually run faster than what I did, it was just the crazy wind. I'm glad I didn't get sick or anything from it either because I really didn't wear much clothes during the race, lol. The money went to a good cause too (a camp for special needs kids), so it really wasn't about me or anything anyway. I'm doing another one in November and some of my coworkers are doing it with me, I think.

Anyway, that's about it for right now. I hope everyone's doing well. I'm going to write a blog about the race and finish up my cruise blogs later this week so be on the lookout for those :).

Well... I'm now on page 126 of 141 (keep in mind, I'm going backwards). Tonight, I backed up entries from Jan 2002 - Aug 2002. I want to get through 2002 before bed but I probably won't because I'm really tired. I'll do more tomorrow at work.


Here's my blog about the cruise. I just copied/pasted from wordpress. My wordpress blog is at http://proudpatriot07.wordpress.com. I'd suggest subscribing there if you do the whole blogging thing :).

Anyway, this was my first cruise, but I highly recommend it. My boyfriend, Clay, and I sailed on the Carnival Destiny from Oct. 5-10. We left from Miami and made three stops- Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay (the cruise lines island), and Nassau, and we had one day at sea. So, here’s what went down:

Getting to Miami:

Clay and I decided to drive from South Carolina to Miami. The flights that I saw leaving Myrtle Beach mostly had long layovers in places such as NY (which makes no sense, I could understand Charlotte or ATL, but NY?) and were really expensive. Even though we saved a lot of money by driving, we wouldn’t do it again. At least not all the way to Miami. Florida is such a long state!

We left at about 2-3 AM, and I slept most of the way until about 6:30 when we stopped in Brunswick, Ga., for breakfast. Breakfast was Burger King, and we try not to eat at places that we have at home when we go on vacation, but it was just breakfast and we ate it in the car so we just sucked it up and did BK. There was only one worker in the burger king (it was inside a gas station), so the poor girl had to take orders and money, then go wash hands, put on gloves, etc, and make the biscuits/croissants/whatever. I felt kinda bad for her.

We also saw this sign in the Subway that was also in the gas station.

Then, we got back on the road and stopped again in Fla. for a few times, just at random rest stops. We ended up taking a bunch of toll roads because our GPS took us on them- so on the way back, we were sure to turn on the “Avoid Toll Roads” feature on the GPS.

The hotel:

We got to the Doubletree Biscayne Bay hotel, and it was the nicest hotel I’ve stayed at, with a really awesome view. It had restaurants, stores, everything inside. Seriously.

That night at the hotel, we ordered a room service pizza and ate that in the room while watching our usual Sunday night shows: Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, and the Cleveland Show. We also slept a ton, because Clay was wiped out from driving and I was just wiped out because I’d had a bad sinus infection the week before that I was still getting over. The bed was totally awesome though. I would recommend this hotel because we got a rate that allowed us to park our car there for the duration of the cruise. Parking at the Miami port costs $20 per day, so even though we paid a lot for the hotel, we got an awesome hotel and saved $100 for parking.

Getting on the ship- The First Day:

We didn’t have any problems getting on the ship. It went fairly quickly. Our hotel rate also included a free shuttle to the port, so we took that at around 11:00 and we were on the ship for lunch. For lunch, only the buffet was open, so I had a veggie burger and Clay had a meat burger. Neither of us really like buffets that much, but the food was pretty good. We also took a little tour of the ship and walked around a lot. Clay went to the casino and played poker for awhile, and I laid out by the pool a lot and just explored the ship. We also took part in the sushi bar as well because our dinner was not until 8:15 that night.

When we got to dinner, we met our dinner table people. We ate dinner with 6 other people, and it was 3 other young 20something couples. We really liked this because we were scared that taking a cruise in October, there wouldn’t be a lot of young people on the ship, but surprisingly there were TONS of people our age who we met. Everyone we ate dinner with was totally awesome, and we all hung out some on the ship and islands and got along really well.

The dinners were really awesome. Most all of the dining room food was really good too. You didn’t get huge portions, but you could always ask for more… and some of us (the guys) did. Our server, Lilies, was also excellent and really made our dinners enjoyable. She got to know our names and also remembered that I was a vegetarian, so she recommended different foods for me each night.

Besides that, we went to the shows on our first night. They had a special show called the Welcome Aboard show, and it was really good. The boat had a comedian named Hank McAuley, and he was excellent. So hilarious. He joked about cruising and vacationing and other cool stuff, and he also did an Adults Only show that we went to, it was funny too. We wish we’d bought his CD to listen to on the ride back to SC. The show band was also excellent and the entertainment staff as well. Our cruise directors, Brent and Gayve, were from Canada and the other three entertainment people were all from England. It was really cool to meet them and everything, all of the ship’s staff was diverse but they all got along well and I liked that.

Anyway... that was our journey down, hotel stay, first day on the boat, and first dinner… so… you’re probably wondering about the rest, right? Well, you’ll have to come back and visit my next blog, which will be about our day at sea and our trip to Grand Turk

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven't written in a few days. I wrote a blog about my trip and I'll be posting it here tomorrow or Friday. I put a ton of pics on facebook too so I'll post a few of those. I've also been trying to back up my journal in word, so I don't want to make a TON of entries that I have to back up. So far I've gotten through 2001. I have 141 pages of entries to back up, and I'm on page 135. It's going to take forever... I think I'll work on it each morning at work so yeah.

Well, everything has been going well since coming back. Work is going allright, as usual. Ever since I got my promotion, nothing has really changed... even on Tuesday, it was a slow work day so I sat around and wrote blogs and backed up my journal. But hey, at least I wrote a blog, usually I just hang out on facebook, so at least I was *writing*, lol.

I got back into the swing of working out and it feels really nice. I ran around 5 miles yesterday so I was pretty stoked about that. The weather was just beautiful yesterday, but today it was dreary and it rained ALL day. I'm glad I brought lunch to work- it rained all day on Monday too so Christina and I ordered a pizza because we didn't want to go out and get wet, haha.

Tonight at church, they gave everyone money. Yup, it was weird. It was something called a Reverse Tithe. They passed around the offering box and it had envelopes in it, and everyone took one. Mine had $20 in it. We have to take the money and use it somewhere in the community to make the community better. I'm trying to figure out what to do with mine, but I think I'm going to buy some diapers, bottles, etc, and take them to this crisis pregnancy center that's opening up here in town. I think that way, it'll go to someone who definitely needs it, and the center has sent out a few e-mails and facebook messages that they need stuff, so yeah. I'll let you know how it goes.

Anyway- that's it for now. Hope everything's going well with all of you. I'll write a real entry about the cruise sometime later this week. God Bless!