123 Gone!

The last several years.... You know, since just after Al Gore told us all that global warming was going to melt the polar ice caps and we would all be floating around in a water world the likes of which only Kevin Costner could imagine soon, the winters have seemed to last forever in North Texas.  I've never been a fan of winter.  I'm a life long Texan just like all of my family generations before me were and if Texans didn't deal well with warm to hot weather most of us would just pack up and move to Minneapolis... or if we just couldn't make ourselves leave the state, perhaps Amarillo, where the major part of the year is much colder than here. As a state, we are more warm weather people.  So this isn't going too well for many of us.  If you disagree, you are entitled to your opinion.  Go ahead and get your own blog and express your opinion as much as you like.

Today, fortunately, our temperatures here in Dallas will be in the 70's to almost 80 degrees.  But then tomorrow we go back down to freezing with chances for sleet Sunday or Monday and a definite hard freeze on Monday weather we get the sleet or not!  Yuck!!!!!  Three or four years ago, it snowed here in Dallas on Good Friday and that year, if I'm not mistaken, Easter was in early April.  That, my friends, is crazy weather even for Texas!  I blame it all on Al Gore who apparently pissed off the warm weather gods when he started preaching his global warming agenda. I'm over this bizarro world "global warming".  If this is global warming, I'm the Elaine of this bizarro world and I can't even find Jerry, George or Kramer.  So, let's just leave bizarro world and go to a happy place.

***Please note*** This is NOT a paid political announcement, but just an embittered rant from someone who is sitting in front of a space heater in her office drinking massive amounts of coffee to try and stay warm until the temperature warms up into the 70's later today.  Now back to the blog....

Celebrity's final day of their 123 Gone sale is today!  In case you are not aware, the 123 Gone sale goes like this.  You pay whatever the going rate is for the cruise you choose, but then you can choose from one of the following bargains to enjoy during your cruise.

1. Free drinks for you and your roomy during the cruise up to $88 a day. That's at least 4 drinks a day each if you drink the fancy ones and even more if you are a cheap drunk!
2. Free gratuities for your cabin.  This is worth about $30 a day for the length of your cruise.
3. Onboard credit - $100 for 3 to 5 night sailings
                               $200 for 6 to 9 night sailings
                               $300 for 10 + nights

Obviously, if you drink, number one is going to be a better bargain for you.  If you don't drink, you could probably go with either two or three and it would work out the same way.  So anyway, yesterday Celebrity was kind enough to send me an email reminding me that today was the final day of the sale which prompted me to look at itineraries that they currently have available for 2015 to see if I saw anything interesting.  And oops!  I found something for January 16, 2015.  I didn't want to find this but here it is....

Date	Port/City	Activity
Day 1	Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Day 2	At Sea
Day 3	At Sea
Day 4	Gustavia, St. Barts	Tendered
Day 5	St. Croix, U.S.V.I.	Docked
Day 6	San Juan, Puerto Rico	Docked
Day 7	Labadee, Haiti	Docked
Day 8	At Sea
Day 9	Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Yes, you did read that right!  It's an 8 night cruise from Ft. Lauderdale that goes to St. Barts, St Croix, Puerto Rico and RCCL's private island Labadee, Haiti!!!! (Royal Caribbean owns Celebrity.) So as luck would have it, several years ago when my travel buddy, Jenny and I were on a Celebrity cruise, we went to the future cruises office during the last day at sea and paid a $150 deposit on a future open ended cruise. You see, while you are on a cruise, if you book your next one, the deposit is MUCH cheaper than normal.  But cruise lines figured out several years ago that not all people can plan one vacation while still on their current vacation so they started doing these open ended reservations where you just pay your deposit on your shipboard spending account and they give you a confirmation number showing that you have already paid a deposit on a future cruise.  Then you have 10 or so years to figure out when and where you want to go and book it.

So.... Jenny and I have to go on a Celebrity cruise and we only have 5 or 6 years left to get it done before we lose our $150 deposit.  It's not that I want to go on this cruise.....  I sort of have to go on this cruise.  So I sent Jenny an email yesterday afternoon to see if she would be willing to make the sacrifice and book it with me and the only concern she expressed was that she didn't know what the water temperature in the Eastern Caribbean would be like in January.  Understandable, I mean the last thing you want to do is leave this Siberian climate we are becoming accustomed to in Texas only to go to a place where it is too cold to get in the water.  So, I looked up the average water temperatures in the Virgin Islands.  Ummmm, it's a very chilly 79 degrees in January as opposed to 84 in the summer months.  Yikes!  We may get frost bite!!!!  So, I haven't gotten final word from her yet, but I am very hopeful that I'll be booking us on an Eastern Caribbean cruise today.  If you are interested in getting a quote on this terrific itinerary, let me know.  If you want to get in on the 123 Gone Sale, you have to book today.  So don't delay!!!!!

Have a terrific weekend and stay warm out there fellow Texans!