WTF

I'm channeling Kirby for this one, plus I stole her graphic.

We have somewhat of a cold feud going on with our crazy neighbor lady. It stems back years ago between her and SV, before I entered the picture. Basically, she lets her rat dog run all over our yard and while she is good about cleaning up the caca, the dog now thinks of our yard as his. The result is that the little rat dog comes up and barks at us in our own yard and has even nipped a couple folks, one of them being a friend of ours' five year old daughter. Not big enough bites to need stitches but that's beyond the point. So SV asked her to stop throwing the ball into our yard and she promised that she wouldn't anymore and swore to him that she had stopped when he questioned her months later since the dog still seemed possessive of our territory. That's when I entered the picture. I work from home. I could plainly see every day that she had  NOT stopped throwing the ball into our yard so I snitched on her and SV had to have another talk with her.

That's how it started really, and I call it a cold feud because we try to remain as pleasant as possible to each other because it's clear neither one of us are moving any time soon, but I can tell by her "don't deliver packages to 3620" sign on her door that she clearly doesn't want to deal with us anymore than we want to deal with her.

Why then, does she copy us on everything? That's the WTF part. First, she snuck into our house while we were remodeling and weren't living there - the contractors caught her - and she explained that she was looking for us (yeah, right) and wanted to know the name of the contractor who redid our stairs. Then lo and behold, a few months later, she has the same guys at her house making a similar modern cable-system railing and stairway. Then we notice she installed the very same new door with side panels that we picked out, but with a different accent design. From what I can see through the windows (no, I don't go snooping into her house) she has also painted her kitchen and living room similar colors, minus the accent wall. If that's not enough, then my maids tell me one day upon having to reschedule due to a vacation that they will be at the neighbor's house soon and could clean then. I asked them if crazy neighbor lady was a new client, and they told me no, that one day recently while leaving my house, she ran out of her house and flagged them down.

What's next? A patio like us?!

They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. I just say, Dude, WTF?!

Halloween Cruise

The results are in: A good time was had by all.

There are three types of Cruisers as I see it. The first type is probably what everyone who reads this blog imagines - the Great White American Tourist (GWAT) that forgets to put enough sun-screen on the first day and walks around with pink skin showing from underneath their ill-fitting Hawaiian shirt and from beneath their sandal straps. Why do they always forget to put sunscreen on their feet? The GWAT hardly steps outside their comfort zone and either stays within the fake, commercialized town set up at the port of call drinking sugared-up spirits in over-sized drinking vessels at Senor Frogs, or they just simply stay on board to reap all the benefits of that all-inclusive food and prefers the smell of chlorine over the surf. Most of the big groups on board fit into this category too. On our cruise, there was a huge Singles group that all wore necklaces with their names on them. Ick. Avoid this type of Cruiser at all costs.

The second type of Cruiser are the people who are drug along on the cruise for whatever reason - maybe it's a birthday celebration or family function, but it wasn't their first choice to go on a cruise. They want to explore outside the fake town, but don't really know what to sign up for, or how to get around and see the port city, but they give it their best shot. Help this Cruiser like we did when you meet them to become non assimilated.

The third type of Cruiser is us, the adventurer. Our group members are all SCUBA divers and have been to these ports before, or know enough how to get around and see the real city. We mostly high-tailed it to a dive operator, or had a dive boat pick us up to go off to explore the real attraction of the Carribbean - the underwater. When not diving, we took taxis into the real town to find tacos de pescado for a few pesos and some fine tequila tasting.


But to tell you the truth, if it weren't for the diving, I don't know if I'd ever cruise again. It's a great way to see many countries and dive the waters in as many days. But I didn't like it when we found a place that we liked and wished we could have hung out for a few days and couldn't, like the little private island of Belize we were on, or the little town of Roatan, Honduras as seen here. This was the dock out to the dive boat.

As for Halloween on a boat. That part was a blast. Especially when we were at sea all day, so what else is there to do? You may have remembered when I said I like Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie and that I'd probably do the Depp Mad Hatter. Well, not only that, but I enlisted all the Colorado cruisers to help me out.

We got second place in the contest on the boat, losing to a "Titanic Couple". Their outfits were pretty good, I wish I would have gotten a picture of them, but we were better I think.

Can you believe the boat we had in Belize was called, Captain Ho-Ho?! Of course you do.