Cruise wrap-up
If you want to see more pictures from the cruise, Maggie posted her description with pictures here. Kyra had 4 cruise related posts, of which this is one (you can click through her others on her site). Irene posted some here and made a really neat slide show that clicks through lots of different pictures.
Perhaps the most interesting pictures are on the John Stone Fitness Forum (warning 8 forum pages of picture and movies; at least 1 nipple shot, pixelated, not mine) – mostly of their group. I mentioned in my previous post that PhillyDude from the John Stone Fitness group often joined us for dinner. Here's a comment from him (page 2 of the above link) that shows the major differences between the two groups (Pink Dumbbells & John Stone Fitness).
I sat with the Pink Dumbbells (PD) group at dinner every night. There were two other couples besides Maggie (causticmuse) and her husband Chris (waynegretzkyjr), and a solo female (who I ended up sitting with, being the only solo male in either group around her age). They were fascinated, yet horrified, at some of the tales from the day.
Example from "formal" night dinner:
Philly: So what did you guys do today?
Random PD response (sipping wine): "Oh, we took the snorkeling excursion, and then walked around Nassau and did some shopping. How about you guys?"
Philly: "We drank 437 pina coladas, pissed on some fish in the ocean, and then held Tanisha's hair back while she puked in a bag on the taxi ride back to the ship. She's the one over there at the other table in the dress with the neckline down to her navel, next to the big guy with the sleeveless t-shirt and the racing stripe sunburn lines and the aluminum bottle of Bud in his hand."
The cruise was bad for my nutrition plan. Food everywhere, all of the time, with too many treats. I left for Orlando on August 14th at 132 lbs. I returned the evening of the 18th at 142 lbs – an impressive gain of 10 lbs in 4 days. Granted it was mostly bloating from eating the wrong foods. After about 4 more days I was holding steady at about 134. As of today, with nutrition and exercise bad on plan, I'm down to 131. Whew.
And finally, as fellow bloggers, we spent some time talking about those strange people who will leave spam message or attacks in the comments on certain blogs but not others. Most of us have been very fortunate in this regard. I tempted fate by saying that I'd gotten none since I started blogging in 2004. Shortly after I posted the group cruise picture, I didn't get a comment here, but I received an email that read "For years, every picture that I have seen of you has been lovely, except the latest one on your blog. It looks as if you had plastered your hair down with bear grease. I hope that you will choose a new hairstyle as soon as possible. At least you are smiling." The email came from a relative that people are generally surprised that I don't visit often. Thanks for wiping away that last shred of guilt. And for the record, no bears were harmed in the creation of that picture.