Day 43: Time Off for Bad Behaviour

I've been a bad, bad girl. But it's all good.

I seem to have taken the week off. From the blog, from exercise, but I've kept my eating on track for the most part. I didn't weigh myself when I got home from the cruise. I just didn't want to see the damage wrought. I know I didn't eat a lot at dinner, but the problem was that the buffet lines were so freakin' long on the ship that it was often easier to go grab a pastrami sandwich, or a burger and fries or pizza. So not so much with the salads.

I drank a lot of my calories, stuck mostly with gin because that gives me a clean and happy drunk. I've read that if you're going to drink alcohol, gin is one of the lower (not low,but lower) carb alcohols. I strayed from gin a little on the last night in the piano bar. Some of us in there made it our mission to get the piano man drunk. Because a drunk piano man is a funny piano man. So after watching Peter slowly nurse the beer I bought him, we decided to step it up to shots. And we let Peter call his shot. SoCo and lime.

Oy! I haven't drank Southern Comfort since my freshman year of college. With good reason. The last time I drank Southern Comfort, I don't remember much about the party the night before but I remember the morning after. I had been working on a journalism project that was due by noon the following day and then studying for a Russian test I had the next day at 9:55 am. I had finished the project and was starting the studying when a friend called and said "everyone" wanted me to come over. I hemmed and hawed a bit then gave in (pretty easily). Well everyone was half in the bag when I got there so I thought I should catch up...oh boy. Like I said, I don't remember much about the party, except that there was an excessive number of Southern Comfort and cokes. I woke up the next morning, half undressed, splayed on my bed at 10:10 am! The exam had started at 9:55. I changed clothes in a panic, ran down to the class, grabbed the test from my teacher as he gave me a strange look. Started the test about 10:20 finished it by 10:45 before anyone else, handed it in, ran to the bathroom, threw up. Then I walked over to the Journalism building, handed in my project and walked slowly back to my dorm, breathing the cold Indiana air in, hoping to clear my head. Got back to my dorm, threw up again and went back to bed. By the way, I got a B+ on the Russian exam. LOL! Talk about rewarding bad behaviour! For a long time, I kept an empty SoCo bottle around to remind myself of that awful morning.

And that was the last time I ever touched Southern Comfort. Until the last night of the Victory cruise. It's only polite to join the person you are buying shots for, so there was a group of us doing them along with Peter. We had a lot of fun in the piano bar that night, getting extremely silly along the way. Around 2:30 am we all headed up to the Lido Deck for pizza and had a good time chatting and munching. Peter and I left together and I rode the elevator with him down one floor. I remember saying good bye to Peter and getting off the elevator. And that's when the shots really kicked in. I don't remember much of anything after that. I don't remember the long walk from the very back of the ship to our room all the way at the very front. I apparently made it. Scott says that when I came to bed, I was going on and on about completely nonsensical things. I woke up the later that morning at 7:30. We had breakfast, well I had toast and some melon, and then we waited to get off the ship. I was surprised at the lack of hangover until I realized, I was still a little drunk. And I had to go straight to work from the ship. Oy!

We ran into several people from the piano bar who all asked if I was going to make it to the office. We waited for them to call our number, because even though we had our luggage, self assist was a madhouse. We finally got off the ship around 10:30. At this point we were some of the last people off the ship so we breezed through customs and hopped in a cab. I made it to the office a little before 11. I did fine until my body decided it was tired and had enough around 4 pm. The last hour was torture.

I really expected to fall back into my routine, but the past week has been busy, catching up with work and recovering from my vacation and I was less than motivated on the exercise portion of the show. Friday night was spent in a cleaning frenzy as I prepared for the arrival of one of my best friends, My Brian. He's come to visit for the better part of a week. I'm just hoping my liver can survive it. We usually have one night where we go out and just get ripped and happy and have fun. That was last night. We went to Sweet Caroline's a dueling piano bar in Times Square and had a lot of fun. And a lot to drink. Brian is the man who introduced me to tequila shots way back when and tequila always seems to make an appearance when we get together and last night was no exception. We left the bar quite happy around 2:15 am and hopped a cab back to Hoboken.

It's funny, but reading this makes it sound like I'm a total lush. I'm really not, I don't drink much in my day to day life. Occasionally some wine or a couple of drinks with dinner over the course of a normal month. But when I get on vacation or once every couple of months when I cut loose with friends, I party it up. I don't expect to be partying this hard again until my Legend cruise in September. Although there are rumors of a Sweet Caroline's happy hour in August. Hmmmm... the two words that spring to mind after that happy hour back in May... pole dance. Perhaps I better skip this happy hour...

I'm hoping to get back to more regular blogging this week. But there are no guarantees, because Brian doesn't leave until Thursday. We are going to see Billy Joel on Wednesday night at Shea Stadium.

Thanks for your patience!

And a quick PS - Thank you Joanne for the Churchill's recommendation in St. John! It was nice and not crowded with other cruisers and the food was terrific! The best meal we had all weekend.

Ooooo a blog about alcohol. Not the blog I hand in mind, but I'll save that for later.

Day 4: Not Exactly The Girl in the Red Velvet Dress

Today's exercise: yoga class

Breakfast: 1 cup of Post Raisin Bran with 2% milk (Does anyone else remember when the raisins in Raisin Bran used to be coated with sugar?)

Mid Morning Snack: 1 Red Delicious Apple (You know what they say about an apple a day... and I hate doctors, they always find something wrong with you)

Lunch: Another serving of last night's Chicken Tagine and steamed broccoli with a tbsp of fat free feta cheese to make it interesting

Mid Afternoon Snack: 1 Kozy Shack 60 calorie No Sugar Added Bananas Foster pudding cup

Dinner: 1 serving of the French Potato and Chicken Salad and steamed broccoli with a tbsp of fat free feta (gotta be quick and easy so I can get to class on time)

Any woman who has seen the movie "The Fabulous Baker Boys" with Jeff and Beau Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer will know exactly which scene I am talking about. Any piano man probably will too since they've likely had to deal with the fantasies that resulted. It's that New Year's Eve scene where Michelle Pfeiffer is crawling on top of the piano singing "Makin' Whoopee" in that red velvet dress, ohmygod SO sexy. Topped only by the scene a few moments later where Jeff Bridges is sitting on the edge of the stage with her afterwards and he starts massaging her neck and eventually moves down her back and unzips her dress and moves his hands forward underneath... I'm getting all flushed thinking about it. Give me a moment...

Okay. Anyway, that movie didn't start my fascination with piano players and piano bars (for that we can blame My Brian, my best friend from college, my great unrequited love and a talented piano player), but it certainly helped it along. I mean after seeing that scene how can you not fantasize about writhing on top of a piano in a slinky red velvet dress while Jeff Bridges plays? I'm only human.

Now I've never actually writhed on top of a piano in a slinky red velvet dress, but I have ridden a piano or two in my time. And for that you can blame Ron Pass (Rides on the piano are free, but rides on the organ will cost ya!). He let me ride my first piano in the Lindy Hop piano bar on the Carnival Valor in July of 2006. On the newer Carnival ships the piano is on a platform that rotates (and on the newest ships, it goes both ways!), so I could say that it's a great vantage point from which to see the entire room. But the truth of the matter is I'm just a big ol' ham and when I go out drinking I occasionally cut a little too loose. (Plus, I will admit, I enjoy the vibrations... LOL). Riding the piano has been sort of a habit with me ever since.

On the next cruise I took on the Carnival Valor again the following summer, the piano man (Carl Evans) not only let me ride me the piano, but he gave me the damn microphone and had me sing "Makin' Whoopee". Oy vey! So I sang it, in the key of C apparently. I was just happy that there was a key involved. I know I embarrassed my niece, who happened to walk by the piano bar just at that point. And I would say I embarrassed myself, but I think I had a little too much gin in my system for that to happen, so I do have some fuzzy fond memories of the performance.

I've tried to limit my piano riding to the Carnival ships (they don't call them the Fun Ships for nothing!) however, I managed to end up on top of the piano at Howl At The Moon in Orlando a couple of weeks ago. So it seems to be spreading... hmmm.



Not exactly Michelle Pfeiffer, right?






So now, I'm thinking if I make my goal by the time the Bloggers Cruise v.2.0, perhaps to celebrate I will buy a slinky red dress (I think velvet would be a little too heavy for the Caribbean, lol) and really do the piano ride right. It's always good to reward yourself for accomplishing goals, isnt it?

My yoga teacher tried to kill me tonight. Now, I know you're thinking that's not very "yogi" of her. And you're possibly thinking that I might be over exaggerating a tad. Well, you might be right about the exaggeration. But on the first count, well, Jody is not your typical "yogi" and I think that's why I like her so much. I know for years my perception of yoga and the people who practiced it had a lot to do with crunchy granola, ultra mellow, vegans. In the past few years as yoga has come into vogue as an exercise, that obviously has changed a bit. Then I met Jody. Jody is, as my friend Ray is fond of calling me, a sassy, brassy Joisey girl. And bit of a smartass to boot. She can curse a blue streak, freely admits that she can be impatient and obnoxious but she's working on that through yoga. And if you make smartass remarks to her before class, she will try to kill you with the poses. It certainly seemed tougher this week than weeks previous, plus it was hot as hades in the room and I was sweating like two dollar hooker at a Shriner's convention. I didn't sign on for Bikram yoga! When I got home my muscles were still quivering, which, ultimately, I suppose is a good thing. But still, I think I'll keep my smart comments to myself next time until after class.

We're over the hump and halfway through week one! Hooray! But it's a long road ahead... Happy and healthy travels to all those on that road with me!