"So, we went on a cruise this past weekend. Left Chicago in a snow storm on Thursday. Of course the plane left late (corruption and airport delays are what Chicago does best you know) and therefore arrived to Atlanta late. Well, as you're likely aware, airports don't like to hold airplanes for only a couple passengers. Our connecting flight to Ft. Lauderdale was scheduled to leave at the same time as our flight arrived in from Chicago. It was running time! We exited the plane and took off. Now, if you've never been to the Atlanta airport, you must be one of the luckiest people alive because this airport must have been designed by someone that has full access to one of those little golf carts all the time. Then factor in the seemingly never ending sets of escalators and, in the time it took you to travel from one terminal to the next, you have successfully completed a half marathon and a mountain climbing expedition.
After we go through our full-blown exercise routine for the day, we finally arrive to our gate. The plane isn't even frickin there! We are sweating like you wouldn't believe and we now have to wait for the plane. That particular flight, once it arrived of course, then proceeded to sit on the runway for what seemed like a decade and we arrived to Ft. Lauderdale after midnight. We hopped a cab to Miami for the night in anticipation of the cruise the next day. Let me tell you a little something about Miami hotels... they don't have heat! That night, I'm pretty sure that my little toes froze off. Who in the hell expects to go to Miami only to discover that it's 45 degrees?
Friday turned out to be a great day. The sun was shining and the weather blessed us with a day of about 65 degrees. We killed some time in Miami before boarding the boat by eating at a little restaurant where the staff understood only "yes" and "no" in English. We went to Macy's to buy some long sleeve clothing and then we were sailing. Once we were on the boat, we found our "stateroom." It was more like a closet with a toilet, but it did the trick. Looking out our window, we had an excellent view of the tow rope/anchor area off the front of the ship. Breathtaking view. We spent some time getting to know the ship, ate, had some drinks, ate, had some more drinks, went to a couple presentations and followed it up with some more food and drinks. Eventually, we went back to our mansion on the sea to check on our luggage. We decided to lay down to take a breather and that's when the magic happened. I had spent half the evening with the ring in my pocket just biding my time. So Crystal and I were talking about a secret I had been keeping from her (which is a much longer story relating to the circumstances of how I bought the ring) and I brought the ring out of my pocket. Her response of "are you kidding me?!" will likely go down as the most eloquent proposal response ever. However, as you all now know, she recovered quickly and did say yes.
Later that night, we did go back out for a night on the ship. We finally made it to bed around 1:30. Around 7 that morning we awoke to a freight train in our room. The ship's captain, in his infinite wisdom, must have told his crew to drop anchor as loudly as humanly possible, because that damn thing shook the entire room and was deafening. That was the beginning of a long couple of rough days at sea. Choppy was the theme of the weekend. Had it only been choppy, I'm fairly confident that we'd have made it through unscathed, but the weather also decided to change to rain and freeze-your-ass-off cold. It might be the only tropical vacation in history where all the white people returned with less of a tan than before they left for the trip.
Aside from the crappy cruise weather and the arctic temperature of 32 when we arrived back to Miami and the insanely long day yesterday waiting in airports, it was a great trip."
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