Day 78

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Originally uploaded by Rance Rizzutto Photography

Sea Day. Final day with parents here. This sure has been a great cruise with them. The only real vacation I can remember with my family was in 9th grade when we went to Disneyland. I can kind of remember pieces of our cross country vacation when I was five. Other than that it has usually been trips to the beach to visit grandparents or trips to bend to visit grandparents. So, I didn’t really know what to expect as far as how they are as travelers. In reality I’ve only recently found that out about myself.

Anywho, things went great. Today was mellow for Deanna and I. Long breakfast that concluded with a nice chat between the parents and Massimo. I FINALLY got to the gym. Lunch. Shower. Uno with Deanna, my parents and Jen…it was probably the best time ever. We play “House Rules” when we play Uno. There was some uno contest where you could submit rules you made…they published some and we use all of them. Incase you want to freshen up your Uno game, here they are:

Jump-in: if someone plays a card and you have the same card AND it is the same color, you can “jump in” with that card regardless of who was supposed to have the next turn…this works for wilds as well.

Build-up: (or something like that) if someone plays a Draw 2 on you, and you have a draw two of ANY COLOR you can play that and the amount “builds up” to Draw 4 for the next person to draw INSTEAD of you drawing two. If THEY have a Draw 2 it becomes Draw 6 for the next person instead. It can only build up in order of play (unless you’re using Jump-in and it is a Draw 2 of the same color). This also works for Wild Draw 4 (we overlook the “you can only play a wild draw 4 if you can not play any other card” rule for the additional wild draw fours).

0-7: If you play a 7 you have to trade hands with someone (not optional). If you play a 0 everyone rotates hands over one in the direction of play.

I mention these rules because I got majorly screwed while playing. It went Deanna, her mom, my mom, my dad, me. Deanna’s mom played Wild Draw 4. My mom played a wild draw 4 building it up to 8 for my dad…but Deanna had made me draw a lot earlier so I jumped in with a wild draw 4 to make it draw 12 for Deanna. BUT, my dad jumped in with a wild draw 4 thus making it draw 16 for me. Make sense? Didn’t matter much because someone played a ‘0’ and I rotated my hand to Deanna.

From there we watched Jane L. Powell’s show and had dinner.

At the end of the night Deanna and I were a part of Liar’s Club. Four people each read a definition for a word…only one of the definitions is right. There were four words. It was…interesting. We’ve only seen this done once on the ship. That was with Andy, Larrance, Edge, and Andre and Cirell as the guests. This time it was Deanna and I with the Cruise Director and the Asst. Cruise Director.

From there we stayed to watch at least the beginning of Ship n Males…we watched the whole thing. Christopher had a new intro spiel. To spoil it for everyone, he is in drag as Sapphire de la Mure…but her real name is Whitney Jean Speares. It used to be that she went crazy and shaved her head like her cousin Britney. She saw a bunch of guys with haircuts like hers getting on a ship that said US Marines. They said they had a policy called don’t ask don’t tell…how was she supposed to get any work done if she couldn’t ask any questions? The next port she saw the Jewel and has been on ever since. She would hang out in the bar actin’ a fool every night. Pretty soon people would show up just to see what the hell she was doing. So they gave her her own show.

But Christopher changed it. Instead of the marines thing she now went to Chicago to have world famous photographer Rance Rizzutto jump start her international modeling career. It worked and we had a torrid love affair. Then I got on the Jewel. She followed me regardless of the restraining order. That is when she found out I was engaged to the blonde from Second City…Deanna. What has Deanna got to offer that she doesn’t?

So, I managed to be in the Ship n Males show without even being in it.

Tomorrow starts early and also transitions back into normal…or whatever “normal” was for us on this great adventure.