Rhonda Bracey: At Random

For those who’ve been following along, I went on my first-ever cruise last month — 7 nights in the Caribbean aboard the Oceania Riviera. TripAdvisor doesn’t seem to take reviews for cruise ships, and I don’t want to join cruisecritic.com, so I’ll post my review here.

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This was my first-time cruise. My friend and I shared a Penthouse stateroom, which was a great size (420 sq ft) for two people. They split the Queen bed into two singles.

Positives:

• Fantastic food in all restaurants, every time. My favourite specialty restaurants were Jacques and Toscana
• Impeccable service in the stateroom and restaurants; not as good around the pool
• Gorgeous spacious Penthouse stateroom (Deck 10, midship location)
• Luxurious bed linen and beds — slept the best I’ve slept in a long time
• No activities for children or teens, so there weren’t many of either on board. Those that were on board were well-behaved.
• Small number of people on board (1250 max), so easy to get to and from things and no long lines for anything
• Embarkation and disembarkation processes were smooth and practiced, as was tendering people to shore in Cozumel, Trujillo, and Belize City
• HEAPS of storage in the Penthouse stateroom — we were still finding storage hidey-holes 2 days into the cruise
• Veranda is great for just observing, relaxing, etc. Plenty of room.
• Afternoon canapes were a delight, even if we didn’t always get exactly what we’d requested. In fact, we usually got more.
• Our butler, Jemeesh, was a delight and nothing was too hard for him.
• Culinary Center was great.

Negatives:

• Internet access was spotty, but usually worked enough for checking emails. Forget about uploading photos!
• Internet access was expensive at US$30 per day
• Internet access was for ONE device in a room at ONE time. There were two of us, and we had to coordinate who was on and when — we could use multiple devices (phones, tablets, laptops), but only ONE could be logged in at any time. For $30/day, I thought that was an unnecessary restriction.
• A small percentage of passengers on board were quite rude, pushing into line/elevators etc. in front of others. However, most people seemed lovely.
• Artists Loft — nothing advertised prior to the cruise about who the artist was or what he would teach/demonstrate. It was all very confusing, even after I spoke to his wife in the artists loft one day. I was interested in this, but never attended as I got the impression he was only demonstrating oil and palette knife techniques, neither of which interested me.
• Pool is VERY small. You can’t swim in it, only immerse your body. The pool on the Spa Terrace is only a HOT jacuzzi-style therapeutic pool, also not for swimming, and too hot to stay in on a Caribbean cruise. Not enough space/lounges on the Spa Terrace for all those wanting access.

A few hours after I landed in Dallas,  I went to the Alan Jackson concert at the Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie,  about 15 miles south of the airport. The support acts were Ashley Monroe and Jon Pardi. Pardi rocked it!

But the main event was always going to be Alan Jackson on this 25th anniversary tour.

And he was as good as he sounds on all those CDs he’s made.

He played a lot of his back catalogue of hits.  I didn’t write them down,  but there were heaps. Some that spring to mind were “5 o’clock somewhere”, “Drive”,  “Chattahoochee”,  “Itty Bitty”, “Where were you (when the world stopped turning)”, “Summertime blues”. (There’s always Google… This site lists the songs played at concerts by various artists, including the set list for the concert I attended: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/alan-jackson/2015/verizon-theater-grand-prairie-tx-6bcb8a12.html)

I had an excellent seat and have made some observations (after the photos) about attending  a concert in the US,  which is certainly a different experience than I’ve ever had at an indoor concert at home!

(notice the hats!)

Observations:

• people wear hats to concerts and don’t take them off… baseball caps, cowboy hats mostly
• denim and boots and country shirts are everywhere – and that was just the women 😉
• everyone brings in food (nachos, hot dogs, fries) and copious amounts of drink (24-ounce cans and cups of alcohol) from the vendors in the lobby
• people wander in and out at will when the performer is playing, not just in the breaks
• sound system was excellent
• no phone reception for me, but then I’m with T-mobile, not Verizon, so I guess that wasn’t a surprise
• it was freezing inside the venue – it was chilly  outside, but they had that air con right down to about 35F, I reckon. I’m very glad I’d taken a jacket.
• some people need to learn what’s appropriate behaviour for the situation. Two ladies near where I was needed to get a room, and the chap directly behind me spoilt my night by using ‘Dallas’ very loudly and often and in a way that reminded me of Elaine in Seinfeld yelling ‘Stella!’. Others near me told him to shut up,  and he did for a while but then would start up again,  even in the middle of a quiet ballad. Again, appropriate behaviour for the time and place…

So, I’m driving into town late yesterday afternoon to get my hair cut. As I’m turning at a bend in the road to get to a T-junction, I see something splashing furiously in the estuary close to shore. It’s not a windsurfer, a kite surfer, a rambunctious dog, or a human that I can tell. It looks like a HUGE fish — perhaps a shark or dolphin? A couple of walkers see it too and stop to watch. I turn onto the main road, park, grab my phone (my camera was at home), watch for traffic, then run across the road and down an embankment to get closer.

It’s a dolphin! Actually two dolphins, but only one was herding/hunting in among the black swans. The other stayed out a bit, though I saw it’s dorsal fin few times. It was high tide, but the estuary is fairly shallow so the water where it was hunting was probably not much more than a metre (yard) deep. It swam through the flight of swans, causing them to scatter and get out of the way.

I took as many photos as I could (almost into the sun, and with the pressure of a looming appointment time), and downloaded them this morning to see what I was able to capture. I only got one clear photo of the dolphin splashing, but it’s proof I really did see them 😉

What’s so remarkable about this for me is that I didn’t know that dolphins came that far up the estuary. In the map below, (1) represents where I *know* they hang out, (2) is where I saw them (some 4 km into the estuary from where they hang out in the Indian Ocean), and (3) is where I saw them again on the drive home from the shopping centre about two hours later — they were still there, again with one hanging around and the other making a BIG splash (I didn’t get any photos of this second sighting). A couple of years ago I saw a couple of dolphins in the estuary near where the ‘C’ is for ‘Old Coast Road’ on the map, near the ‘Bunbury Golf Club’ label, but I’ve never seen them this far up.

When I visited a friend in Seattle a few years ago, he was housesitting a fabulous house. He showed me the upside roller blinds in the kitchen/dining area, which I thought were just brilliant for letting in light while maintaining privacy. With normal top-down blinds, you have to pull them all the way down to get privacy, and that can block out light, especially if they are block-out blinds. But with these bottom-up blinds, you pull the blind up to the height you want to give you privacy, but there’s enough space above to let in light and air.

As I needed to change the impractical slimline metal venetian blinds we had in some rooms, I looked at window treatment options that would maintain privacy, let in light, and allow the window to be open to let in fresh air, without the window treatment impeding any of those things. For the spare bedrooms, I choose vertical blinds as they fitted all the criteria.

But for the second bathroom and toilet, I had to think outside the box. Verticals, curtains, and side-opening honeycomb blinds weren’t practical for either situation, and top-down roller or Roman blinds would have impeded air flow and only given privacy if pulled all the way down.

I remembered those bottom-up blinds in Seattle! So I went searching on the internet and in local blinds stores and found that all the local retailers were unfamiliar with bottom-up roller blinds, but most had a honeycomb (aka duette, cellular) blind option that could be opened from the top or bottom — or both. In all cases, they didn’t sell many — possibly because they are fairly new to Australia, but also because they are MUCH more expensive than the usual top-down honeycomb blinds.

But that’s what I wanted.

They were installed yesterday and I’m very pleased with them. They are VERY practical. In the second toilet, they allow ventilation through the top opening of the window (the old venetians either blocked this, or rattled a lot whenever there was any wind), and can be pulled open from the top to allow privacy, while also allowing light. In the second bathroom, there’s a large fixed window with a small left-opening window at the top. This type of window is ideal for this sort of blind as the blind can cover the main window (thus offering full privacy), without covering the top section — thus allowing light and air into the room.

Thanks Craig for showing these to me in Seattle!

On my morning walk I see lots of livestock (horses and cattle mainly) and birds. The cattle usually hang out in a couple of paddocks and are often quite some distance from the path. But this morning several of them were close to the fence, and while wary, didn’t run away when I approached with my phone to take some pictures of them. Unfortunately, photographing black cow faces is as hard as photographing black cats 😉

Sometime around Christmas, a neighbourhood property (5 acres) got a few new residents. First were two miniature horses, followed a few days later by about six Dorper sheep (one ram, some ewes, and some juveniles). The horses are very friendly and will come running to the fence when I walk by on my morning walk.

I got to meet the owner this morning, and he said they just love carrots and he would be fine with me bringing some to feed them when I walk past. He also told me the names of the horses — Sandy (the female with the blond hair and tail) is about four years old, and Angus (brown mane) is about a year old. They are just the cutest things!!!

I had to go in for a minor medical procedure today — just some tests that required a local anaesthetic to the region, a small nick and then the taking of a couple of tissue samples. The room had a nurse, the doctor who performed the procedure, and a sonographer who manipulated the ultrasound thingummy so the doctor could tell where to take the samples from. The procedure itself was painless, but it was a bit scary lying there by myself while all these things were happening around me. Sure, they told me every step of the way what would happen and when, but still… it’s not the most pleasant situation to be in.

What was a comfort, however, was the close presence of the sonographer who had to stand on one side of me while leaning over to manipulate the ultrasound for the doctor. The warmth of that human body was incredibly comforting and helped me relax.

I have no idea who she was, but just that touch and her warmth soothed me. At the end of the procedure, I mentioned to all three women in the room how comforting that was.

I hope medical professionals don’t shy away from such contact in the future for fear of litigation or accusations of inappropriate touching. It was amazing how calm an inadvertent touch such as this made me feel. I can now see why it’s so important to touch the hands or body of someone who is dying.

(Update: Results are all clear!!)

Getting the new window treatments installed was the impetus for me to rearrange the layout of my sewing room. I now seem to have much more open floor space — shifting the cutting table next to the sewing table removed a ‘pinch point’ as you walked in the door and another when you tried to get to the stored goodies in the wardrobe, and putting the ironing board in front of the window lets much more light into the room (even if I didn’t have the new verticals). I still have plenty of light on my sewing table and the view is just a small turn of the head away.

That white record/CD cabinet holds lots of fabric — the CD drawers are the perfect size for fat quarters. The portable design wall (not shown) is on the opposite side of the room to the window, and the wardrobe is to the left of the white cabinet.

My Sweet Sixteen lives in the living room 😉

When we bought our current house, the three spare rooms had very wide and very heavy slimline venetian blinds. While I don’t mind the look of them, their sheer weight made them a pain to raise and lower, and they were pretty useless for ventilation as the windows open from right to left, not bottom to top like the venetians. So if you wanted some privacy AND some fresh air, you had to endure the rattle of the wind in the venetians and had to either raise them fully to access the window handle, or push your hand between the slats (thus bending them) to grab the window handle and open the window.

This photo shows one angle in my sewing room from 2011 — you can see part of the floor to ceiling venetians.

I bit the bullet and had all the venetians in these rooms replaced last week! I loved the look of some of the blinds on offer, but like the venetians, they just weren’t practical. Those that opened sideways that I particularly liked (e.g. panel blinds) couldn’t be adjusted for light, ventilation, or privacy — they had to be partly or fully open OR shut, and there wasn’t really a middle ground to satisfy my requirements for letting in some light as well as fresh air, while maintaining privacy. Even though I’m not a big fan of vertical blinds, they met all my needs (and were the cheapest option, though that wasn’t a primary consideration). I got the blockout ones as two of these windows get direct early morning sun. And to minimise the ‘look’ of verticals, I chose a colour to match the paint on the walls.

Since installing them, what I like is that I can pull them back to let in much more light, AND have the window open to get fresh air, or close them up fully or partially according to the light and breeze.

You can see from these photos that I had to clean stuff off the sewing table! It’s the cleanest its been since we moved in 😉 In fact, it was the impetus for shifting my sewing room around…

If the temperature changes didn’t tell me that summer was coming, my garden would! From late November into December (at least), the agapanthus put on a fine display, and some of the varieties of yucca flower heads are starting to die off.