Cruisin' With Cocky: A Cock-eyed View of the Carnival Triumph

Hi there, this is Cocky, everyone's favorite traveling chicken. I recently accompanied the Browns and Shealys on the Carnival Triumph to the Bahamas. They were rude and wouldn't let me embark with them actually in the Bahamas since they smuggled me onboard, so all I got was a glimpse of those Caribbean blue seas! Here are some pictures of the fun things I did get to do while confined to the boat.

I made friends with several other animals during our trip. Oddly, they were all albino and they kept disappearing every time Cy or Carissa took a shower. I think it was some sort of conspiracy. I should probably notify PETA.


I enjoyed lounging on the chair on our deck as we said goodbye to the Ravenel Bridge and Charleston Harbor.
'S in da bag. Here I am riding in style in Carissa's new bag from the straw market in Port Lucaya.


Catching some Zzzz's in Rachel's bunk.


This mermaid needed to cover up her breastuses!


The rain made me so sad and forlorn. Perhaps the rain was why they would not let me embark. Maybe they were afraid I would start molting. . . er, melting.


Ah, twenty-four hour ice cream cones. Clearly the best part of the vacation.


Below, you can see me shakin' my tailfeathers on the tail of the boat.

Here I am on the jogging track. There wasn't much to the jogging track, yet people kept lapping me - what's up with that?


Trying my luck at the casino. Cha-ching!


Here I am posing for my formal portrait. I even put my foots out. Pendragon would be proud.


Singing a cock-a-doodle-duet with Dad during karaoke hour. He obviously needed my help on backup.


I put the "fun" in the Carnival funship!!!

Bahamas!

The last week of May, we boarded the Carnival Triumph with the Brown family (Dad, Mom, & Rachel) to cruise to the Bahamas. The ship was really amazing - tons of restaurants, shops, a mini golf course, swimming pools, water slide, tons of stuff to do, and food to eat constantly. It would have been perfect except for the seasickness. We heard that the cruise we were on was pretty calm, but we'll just admit that we are pansies and were incredibly seasick the whole time. (Some of us are still feeling seasick nearly a month later, back on land and will be going back to physical therapy.) In short, we like the idea of a cruise - an all-inclusive package with everything right there, but the seasickness was bad enough for us that we will never go on any boat anywhere ever again.


Having said that, there were a lot of fun moments (as the pictures below will show). We enjoyed the mini golf (especially when I nearly hit the ball off the side of the boat), we enjoyed Francis, our maitre d and his quality Indian accent, especially when he said "Slumdog Millionerrrrrrr!" We enjoyed the strange photographers (Pendragon, who told us to "put your foots" and creepy George from Serbia who said, "You make the picture look good, Angel"). The waiters (Dennis and Phar) were fun.

Our first full day on the boat was spent entirely at sea (barf). We got to spend our second full day in Port Lucaya, where we roamed through the straw market and then hit up the beach.


Our third full day was spent in Nassau, where we went on a kind of bizarre tour of the island, seeing several forts that had never seen battle, and other random landmarks, including a giant flamingo! Then we went to the museum Pirates of Nassau, which was pretty cool, until we came out and a semi-hurricane had appeared out of nowhere. We huddled together on this patio and watched a bunch of chairs and tree branches flying through the air, until we decided to follow this guy (who we thought was one of the pirates, but apparently just looked like one) through this sketchy alley which turned out to be the back entrance to the gift shop. Weird. After the mini-hurricane blew away, we waded through two feet of water on the streets of Nassau and got back on the boat.

Then it was time for another barf day. . .er, I mean fun day at sea. We spent most of that day making billions of towel animals and watching Get Smart on repeat all day long. By the time we woke up the next morning, we could step out on our balcony and see the Yorktown and the Ravenel Bridge (which honestly, we were incredibly happy to see). So yes, we did have fun, but we will never go on a cruise again.

ZOO9

Obviously, our blog has fallen severely behind. That's mainly due to prolonged illness, which I could blog about all day long and still not vent enough; maybe I'll come back to that later. . .

Today's entry is backtracking to the second week of May, when we went on our annual end of the semester trip to Riverbanks Zoo. It was really fun - we got to see a bear fight, which was pretty crazy, and the lemurs were actually out for once and not hiding from us.

There were also a couple of hilarious moments too, like when we overheard this lady tell this little girl: "Hold yo sista hand!" Or when we saw this little girl with a giant lollipop and her mom said, "You better suck that thing down to the stick!!! Dadgum $11 for a lollipop!" and the mom's friend replied, "I ain't never seen the like!!!"

All in all, a good trip. Below are some of the best pictures, with appropriate captions.

Bear Fight! It was kind of disturbing, but not as disturbing as the group of kindergarten girls yelling "Fight, fight, fight!" at the bears. . .

King Julian! "I like to move it, move it!"

Yeah, no joke.

Guy next to us: "I think that's called a musket. Look at the musket." (Oblivious to the giant sign saying 'meerkat.')

The real reason we go to the zoo every year: So I can take a billion pictures of the flamingo exhibit!!!

New Car!!!

So for quite some time we have been considering getting a new car. My Mini has been giving me some problems off and on, and though it is a fun car, it's just kind of inconvenient. We wanted something bigger (thinking ahead to when we have kids - although that does not mean we are having kids anytime soon!) and we really liked the Honda CR-V. We decided we wanted to go ahead and get the car sooner rather than later, while we could still get some value out of the Mini on a trade-in.

Long story short, after much haggling and pain, we brought our new CR-V home this past Saturday. It is a light blue color (called "Glacier Blue") and so far, we love it. We are amazed at how much room it has (since we have been driving a Honda Civic and a Mini Cooper for the past few years). It drives really smoothly too. We love it! (The pictures don't do it justice - it was kind of dark and cloudy when I took them, so it's kind of hard to see the exact color of the car.)

Rachel's Sweet Sixteen

Sunday, January 4 was Rachel's sixteenth birthday (wow, I feel so old - I remember when she was born and now she is sixteen!). We drove up to Ellerbe Friday after lunch and got there in time to go out to our favorite Ellerbe restaurant, Mi Casita. Then we played the "A Christmas Story" edition of Monopoly - that was pretty hilarious.

We celebrated Rachel's birthday on Saturday January 3. We went out for a birthday dinner at Chili's (both Rachel's and Cy's favorite restaurant). Everything was going smoothly until the waitress came to refill our water glasses and Mom said, "Rachel needs more water because today's her sixteenth birthday." (Rachel had asked us not to tell them it was her birthday.) So a few minutes later a bunch of them came out clapping and singing, and Rachel's face turned the same shade of red as her sweater. The free dessert seemed to make up for it though.

When we got back to the house, Rachel had a party with a few of her friends (think Strong Bad's Teen Girl Squad). She opened presents and Mom made her wear a Sweet Sixteen tiara and sash (as you can tell from the picture below, she wasn't terribly thrilled about that part at first). We ended the party with a few rounds of Apples to Apples - me, Cy, Mom, and 5 teenage girls. Good times. It seemed like Rachel had a really good birthday. Happy Sweet Sixteen Rachel!

No Resolutions, Just a Lot of Painting

We decided (rather spontaneously) on New Year's Eve day to paint our dining room. We have been wanting to do this for quite some time, but just keep putting it off because the shape of the room (with its multiple arched entrances) and the high ceiling make it kind of a daunting task. But we decided to go for it. We spent most of New Year's Eve day painting and got up early on New Year's Day to finish up and touch up a few spots before we had company over for dinner in the afternoon.

We were very pleased with how it turned out. We love the colors (Cy picked them out!) and think it really spruces up our dining room and makes it quite elegant! :)

Christmas 2008

This year was a Shealy Christmas year, so we stayed at home for the holidays. Cy and I somehow had tons of vacation days left, even after our mid-year trip to Jamaica, so we were able to take two full weeks off from work. We got very spoiled - staying up late and sleeping in - which made going back to work really hard.

We had a great Christmas together. On Christmas Eve day we took it easy, doing some work around the house, riding bicycles, and just hanging out having fun. We then went out for dinner at Outback Steakhouse with Frank and Andrea and then went to a Christmas Eve service at our church (two other churches were invited as well and the place was packed). It was a very nice service.

On Christmas, we opened presents at home first thing in the morning. As you can see, Cy went with a pirate theme for my presents. :)


After we opened presents, we headed to Wes and Kelly's to open some more presents all together and to eat a big breakfast. After that we went over to Frank & Andrea's for some soup and hung out for a few hours, during which we had a marathon Wii Golf tournament. (I won't divulge the scores, but I will say that surprisingly, I was the winner!) Then Wes, Kelly, & Noah came over and we had some burgers and opened yet more presents! It was a great day (a bit exhausting, because there were so many presents!) with family.