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Eh? Whazzat you say???

The head cold has moved entirely into my ears.  Even with hearing aids I can't hear a thing.  My ears crackle and pop every time I swallow.  Heck, I can't even hear my cat meow.  This has been going on for almost two weeks now and I'm tired of it.  The Doctor prescribed some antibiotics, and I take them every morning and night, but they don't appear to be helping.

It's like living inside a barrel -- everything echoes and "ripples" like I'm underwater. I tried to watch a movie on TV the other night but had to give up because I kept missing dialog. This was even after I put on my wireless headphones.  I had to turn up the phones so high that it was making my ears hurt - but still not getting through to the inner ear.

I even tried to go multiplayer flying (M$ FS9) with my usual great bunch of guys the other day but could barely hear them in my earphones. Until I get better I guess I'll have to use the text box to communicate.

 

Current mood: Huh?


Back from my cruise!

Both of us made it back from our cruise. All things considered, it was a pretty nice vacation. Holland America hasn't ventured into this area of Mexico too deeply so we had quite a bit of tendering in/out of port in both Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta. In both places we dropped anchor and were transported to shore using lifeboats/tenders. Not that this diminished the fun of the visit, but that it was unusual as HAL tries to set themselves pierside in most ports.

Cabo was nice, but the pierside facilities were fairly primitive and only after a long taxi ride (at around $15) did you get to anything useful or picturesque. We could see that they were dredging an area where we anchored and found out later that this was to be the new HAL terminal. Good for them.

Mazatlan was a real treat. We put in pierside (but at an industrial pier complete with rusty ConEX boxes) and watched them load/unload cars from the freighter moored behind us. When we went ashore for a looksee we ended up taking another taxi ride ($20) to get to the "shopping" area. I put "shopping" in quotes because it amounted to them telling us what they wanted and then refusing to talk until you met their price. I was amazing how much English they forgot when they found out you weren't interested in buying anything. My kitchen Spanish was largely ignored.

I did sign up for a nice catamaran cruise over to Santa Maria beach for a spot of snorkeling. This was a fun trip as I am always a sucker for catamaran sailing. Our trip out was under power as we were into the wind. We had about an hour for snorkeling at the beach. Water was nice a clear and I had a ball with a cheap underwater camera I bought at Target for $10. I haen't developed the pictures yet so I hope they all turned out. The trip back was under sail and we whooshed along at around 12 to 14 knots taking green water over the bow. I was out on the trampoline taking it all in. The bar was open and a good time was had by all. Some of us old navy types were singing sea chanties which cracked up the landlubbers.

Puerto Vallarta was nice, but, once again, we had to anchor out and tender in. This port also afforded us the luxury of taking a taxi to shopping, but this time we just stayed near where they dropped us dockside. There was the usual touristy shops and such and all we bought were t-shirts and stuff.

During the trip back, our Navy group got a tour of the bridge of the Oosterdam. What a fantastic setup they have there. No "wheel" to be found, but a control panel with handles and joysticks for controlling the thruster pods. These pods can be swivelled a full 360 degrees so that the ship can move sideways if it needs to. They can also hook the GPS up and put the ship on auto and hold position to within 10 feet under all kinds of water conditions. We got to see the entire fire/damage control panels and other safety features.

It was after we arrived back in San Diego that our troubles started. We went out on the web to confirm our Sunday flight back to Dayton and found that American Airlines had cancelled it due to the ice storm in Dallas/Fort Worth. Well, ok, we said, lets just reschedule for Monday - so we did. Meanwhile, both of us were developing a head cold that we probably caught from one of the passengers at dinner the night before. Monday arrived and we headed to the airport. After a 90 minutes delay, we got on board the plane which then took off and headed over the mountains.

"Folks, this is the Captain and we are going to have to turn back to San Diego because we can't pressurize the cabin"

Wellllll crap!

So, back we went to Lindburgh Field. This time AA sprung for hotel accomodations and food and we ended up back at the same hotel we just left. The driver was getting rich off us just from our bag-tipping. We managed to snare seats on the same flight again on Tuesday.

Tuesday arrived and back to the airport we went. Now both of us were under a full head of steam with these head colds - which had moved into being both a head and chest cold. I dreaded the flight(s) home. An hour after our scheduled departure we left San Diego and managed to get to DFW about an hour late - hoping we could get from terminal C to A in 15 minutes (according to the flight attendant's word that our flight to Dayton was at A32). We took off at a high rate of speed towards the A terminal, but as I went by the first bank of monitors I had the presence of mind to check them -- our flight was leaving from gate C37 - just three down from where we came in - and it was leaving with a 45 minute delay. No rush.

As we were boarding the power failed at the gate. Not all of them, just ours. We hung around for 25 minutes until they decided to board us through the airstairs from the apron under the Gate. All our flights were on MD-S80's which have a airstair in the tail. They got us all up and ready to go out the downstairs door when the power came back on. OK Everybody, back up to the Gate. I feld like giving out with a good, hearty "Mooooooo".

After our flight odyssey we finally made it to Dayton at 0100 Thursday. Since we got off the ship on Saturday at about 1000 we could have rented a car and driven the entire way home in the time it took us to fly home.

We are now recovering from the head colds. My ears filled with fluids and the pressure changes drove them deep into my inner ear and now I can't even swallow without an annoying "squeech" in both ears. Just wearing my hearing aids is painful.

In case anyone is asking, Yes, I would recommend Holland America for a cruise. We have taken four of them now on this line and have had nothing but fun on them. It's the travel to/from them that really gets to you. Airplanes are now just flying cattle cars that are attended by cowpokes who just don't really care about anything but annoying the cattle by moving them to and fro while weilding Federal Regulations like cattle prods.

I gotta get to work on my Transporter again.

DeYank

 

Current mood: super head cold and very, very tired


A Nice Bon Voyage from my wife's employer

She got the word today that she needn't bother to come back to work after our cruise. How very nice of them to wait this long. They could have fired her just before Christmas and had more fun.  Not only that, but we had trip cancellation insurance that would have let us cancel our tickets and only lose 20% of our outlay -- this way we can't cancel because we'd lose every dime of it.  There were no warning signs of this at all.  No counselling sessions, no letters of reprimand, nothing.  This came right out of the blue.  She suspects that the original holder of the job wanted it back.  I'm just ticked off mightily.

So, to hell with them.  We're going to have a good time in spite of the rotten treatment she got - from a Church no less.  I this is good christian behavior, then I'll take my chances with the lions.

 

Current mood: really, really ticked off