I’m sitting here on the Lido Deck of the Carnival Cruise ship Pride, over looking the dome that once housed Hugh’s Spruce Goose and the Queen Mary in Long Beach. In about another hour, the ship is set to sail towards Puerta Vallarta. I’ll still have internet access, a total of 250 minutes for the next 7 days. I’ll see about updating this with pictures and such as the trip progresses. So far it’s nothing but old people, kids, and couples…. alcohol isn’t covered… so in addition to being single on this fun little Mexican Riviera cruise, I get to stay fairly sober.
I spent most of the day hanging out with the parental units; wandering the ship and just getting to know the ship’s layout. The ship left port around 4:00PM on our way to Puerta Vallarta. Most of the early evening was spent playing Big 2 with the family prior to dinner. Dinner was fairly uneventful, there are idiotic pirates wandering around with plastic swords and a stuffed parrot puppet, walking to the random tables and placing said plastic swords around the guests necks while the pirates lean in for a photo from one of the ships many photographers. As lame as the scene was, the little flip pirate girl was kinda cute.
After dinner, we separated. I hung out at the casino and watched people play for a little. They have a Texas hold em table but it is an electronic dealer, so just picture a table with one big screen lying flat in the middle of the table and ten mini screens for each player. Absolutely lame – I am not the least bit surprised that every time I walked near that table, it was empty. I walked over to the theater and watched some of the opening show and also part of the family friendly comedic stylings of Paul Lyons (at least I think that was the name… some Philly comic) I’ll see about checking out the later comedy shows, family friendly stuff just doesn’t entertain me.
Leaving the area, I changed into some workout clothes and went running for about an hour. Holy hell I’m out of fucking shape. But it felt good to get back into running. The last time I wanted to get skinny, I just ran. Vacation food, gotta go at least 80% vegetarian again; which also helps with the workout regiment I have planned for the trip.
After a few cool down walks around the ship, I wander over to the back of the ship and sit down next to the big chess board. A couple of teenagers wander in and express interest in playing, only issue is that the 16 year old chick doesn’t know how to play. So she become the piece mover while I play the 17 year old kid. Things are going along and group of four show up, one sorta drunk chick, and one completely toasted chick. They decide to kick over the pieces, either because they were stumbling around trying to play or just being dumb drunk chicks. At least the drunk chick was kinda cute and had nice legs; dumb broad kept bending over in front of me to pick up tipped over pieces, so I got a nice little show. The 17 year old kid enjoyed watching me watching her. They stumbled away and another four some came by. Yes, being single in a gaggle of couple is really fun. I meet the Jew and her fiancee, they are nice people, and there is another couple that for lack of any other distinguishing features, are just your run of the mill whitey. We hang out. The 16 year old gets called back by her parents so the 17 year old takes off in short order. No tail to chase, why hang out?
The Jew goes off with a ton of old Jewish jokes, Michael Jackson jokes, Black jokes, etc etc… Pretty standard. But I will give her this, she’s f-ing quick. Either I’m really tired or just completely off my game as I could barely keep up. Hooray, take Clem out of his element and he becomes a wall flower. We go down to one of the clubs to watch fat white chicks bump and grind against the black entertainers. Douchbag, drunk foreign guy is there, and oh yes, dancing like he thinks he can dance… go douchebag, go. He wanders over to our table and decides to sit down, while doing so, he nearly decapitates poor Ann Frank and her lover Josh. Josh is very afraid of getting utterly doused in Mr Douchbag’s stomach contents, because we just know he’s due to pop at any moment. I think he did pop when he attempted to walk up the spiral stair cast to the exit. What a bloody tool. At least he was entertaining, would have been a much more interesting story if he did do an internal reversal all over Josh. There are still 6 more days left, plenty of time for that opportunity to return. More tomorrow….
Sadly, those electronic poker tables are starting to pop up in Vegas too. Excalibur’s poker area had almost all tables electronic… only the cashier was needed… no dealers at all. At Caesar’s, they had a stupid Blackjack game… everyone sits around a tv screen with the guy acting out the role of a dealer… like those old cheesy live action PC games. He would go through the dealer motions and the cards would appear on each players screen.
I did catch a few people playing. There were a couple of full tables. It makes sense as it saves on the cards (most people bend them up at the corners and such, so I guess it can become quite easy to start marking them… But introducing two decks should help… I don’t know, I do like the toughly feely-ness of real cards. But I can see the reasons for the electronic… I just don’t trust it. Exceptions to everything though.