Cruisin'

On January 8, Ben and I left for the annual Internet Marketers Cruise. Years ago we discovered the wisdom of arriving the day before a cruise in case of delays. Guess what? We were delayed. There was an issue with our main radio on the plane. The radio was fixed in not too long of time, but because of the delay, our flight crew would be over hours. So we got to deplane to wait for the new flight crew. In exchange we got $100 Delta vouchers, 2500 bonus miles, and we got to the hotel at 4 am instead of 11 pm of the night before. Oh, well.
Day 1: Cape Canaveral - It was cold! Temp was around 30. The line to get through security for the cruise ship is outside. We were all a little miserable. If I had known that it was going to be so cold, I would have brought my winter coat. Ben was sweet and tried to get me to skip ahead to get inside. But since you still can't really tell that I'm pregnant, I felt guilty because I know how much I hate line cutters. But we survived. Once we got on the boat we took a self-guided tour led by Tim. That night there was a social hour before dinner to connect with the other marketers. It was so nice to see friends from last year again. Sherry is super excited that I'm pregnant. After dinner, Tim and I went to the show. After that the put an inflatable laser tag arena on the stage. Somehow Chris talked me into playing. It was so much fun! And man! 5 minutes is a long time. I felt so out of shape. Ben and some others played after us (I surprised Ben by still being awake since I hardly slept the night before).
Day 2: At Sea - Cold and windy! It was funny to walk along the Lido deck and not see very many people. And what people were braving the elements were huddled in blankets. We watched an ice carving demonstration. Then went to part of the art auction. Ben had a meeting with the other marketers, so I sat in on some of the auction and poked around the ship.
Day 3: Cozumel - What's this I see? Could it be? The sun? But it was still super windy. Ben and I went for a run on the outdoor track. When you rounded the end of the ship you really had to push through the wind. But then once you headed the other way, you had to put on the breaks. It was a little strange. Due to this wonderful weather, we decided the beach was not the way to go. So we just went to downtown and window shopped. We did buy a necklace and earring set for me. :)
Day 4: Isla Roatan, Honduras - Slight drizzle. Fun. There was a beach party excursion only for the marketers. We hadn't signed up for it. Turns out a bunch hadn't. So those that didn't found our own transportation to the same beach. It was super cloudy - so cloudy I didn't get sunburned. But the temperature was in the upper 60's so it was comfortable. Our friend Max Action got his hair braided. Elisabeth and I worked on a sand sculpture of some fertility goddess (her idea). Overall it was a fun day.
Day 5: Belize - I was super excited to be in Belize. I have heard of the amazing diving and snorkeling. Unfortunately, no diving for me. So we decided to go snorkeling. We took a public water taxi to an island 45 minutes away from Belize City and walked through the quaint island to the public beach. The beach wasn't much of a beach. We sunscreened up and headed for the water. It was cold! We snorkeled across a channel and around some mangroves. I will admit that I freaked out. The visibility was pretty low. And so I started to imagine what else was in the water with us. I calmed down enough to somewhat enjoy the snorkel back to the beach, but we really didn't see much. We did see some rays and some barracuda, but that's about it. Once we got out of the water, we decided to call it a day. There looked to be a storm on the way. The water taxi is uncovered and neither one of us was interested in a rainy ride.
Day 6: Costa Maya, Mexico - Finally! A perfect day! Temps were in the 70's. The sky was clear and the sun was radiant! We got off the ship and headed to the taxis. We ended up running into our friend Joseph with a few of his buddies. They had the same plan as us - beach to snorkel. We shared a cab to the beach. A guy baited and hooked us with $20 per person for 1 hour of snorkeling and the lady goes free pitch. The snorkeling was fabulous! Not the best ever, but so cool! Saw tons of fish and other sea creatures. It was the perfect day.
Day 7: At Sea - Ben had meetings pretty much all day, so I was on my own. I did the 1 mile walk for breast cancer. It was windy on deck for this too. But it was fun. Had a nice chat about cruising with a lady from Canada.

This was a super short summary of our activities. Not listed are the antics at night with our friends. We had so much fun. A lot of fond memories to tide us over until next year!

A Million Things

Ok, not quite. But since it has been a long time since I have posted, this might turn out to be a long one. :)
1. Today was day 1 of being drug free. Getting out of the car and bending too far forward or backward still causes some pain, but everything else is great! So glad to be back to normal. As I am able to move more I will start to add back stretches and exercises to strengthen those muscles to hopefully prevent any more outages.
2. Holding steady/down slightly on my weight. Overall I am down almost 2 pounds from when I started. My cardio has just been on the exercise bike since I haven't been able to jump in too deep with a sore back yet. Hope to get back to my videos this week.
3. The other day when I was at the kitchen sink I looked out the window and saw a very impressive sized pheasant. Moments later he flew away with his hen. How cool!
4. Zoey went to the vet yesterday. She has gained 12 pounds since last year. Yikes! It's a combo of not running 2-3 miles each morning (at our old house she got free rain of the woods for our morning walk. Now she is on the leash for a brisk 1 mile walk), and she seems to love her food. We used to just fill her bowl whenever and she would just eat what she was hungry for. Now she'll eat whatever we put out for her. So, we are back to measuring her food. When the weather improves we will start taking her to the dog park again so she can run. In a few months we will take her back for a weigh in.
5. I found out yesterday that I am for sure going to India in April for work. I am so excited to have the chance to be going back there. The hard part will be to work while there. I have such wonderful friendships with so many over there that I truly wish I could just hang out with them. But alas, as long as the General is footing the bill, I will have to be productive.
6. I'm supposed to be working on my book and sales page and stuff. But I'm feeling a little lazy, so I'm wasting time by updating my blog. Not that this is a waste of time, it's just that I'm "supposed" to be doing something else.
Ok, so I only made it to 6 things, not a million. Oh, well. I doubt you would have made it past #100. :)

I'm Baa-ack!

Ben and I had an awesome time on our cruise. We didn't really know what to expect from the work portion of the cruise. Turns out that we had a blast! We met some really awesome people from all over the world. In talking with people Ben got a bunch of ideas of things that he can work on. The funny thing is that I did too. I can't wait to get started on some of my ideas. It might be a little slow going as Ben will have to show me how to do a lot of the stuff and he is uber busy for a while....

It just occurred to me that most people are probably scratching their head saying, "What the crap is she talking about?!" so, I guess I'll give a brief explanation. For the past two years or so, Ben has been dabbling in Internet marketing. The basic idea (coming from someone who is not in the biz) is that you market something on the Internet and make money. The marketing is sometimes for a physical item (i.e. book) but sometimes it's for a service (i.e. coaching). It was really cool for me to hear what people are doing and what ideas they have. I had a few conversations with people about their products and am thinking of teaming up with some of them (probably just one to start off with) to create my own stuff. I'm not going to give any more details as I work to think through everything, but just be warned that I may be asking some of you for input. :)

Anyway, when we weren't networking (which to be honest was most of the time) we had a very relaxing time together. We had a lot of fun at the ports. We went to St. Maarten, St. Kitts and Tortola. We hit the beach at each of the ports, but had different adventures at each place.

I was going to type up a bunch of stuff on each beach, but decided that it would take too long.