Odds and ends - all the news that wasn't fit to print.

 

Odds and Ends of Recent Events 

• About a week ago, we got off our Bermuda Triangle cruise, and I noticed an erroneous charge of $25 on my account   I sent an email to Virgin's Sailor Services area, and got an automated response that I'd be hearing from them within 72 hours.  I take this to mean 3 business days.  So, if the clock starts running on Monday morning, I should have an answer from Virgin by Thursday morning.  As of Thursday morning, crickets!
  
  I followed up with another email, this time being sent to both to Sailor Services and to the head of Customer Relations, mentioning the lack of communication on disembarkation day, and tacking on a mention of the $25 dispute at the end of the email.  I figure that I should expect a response by sometime on Tuesday if I'm lucky.
  
  
•  The other day, I went to fill my car up with gas and noted that the price of a gallon of "regular" has gone up by 50% since the Orange Monster started the war with Iran.  It's so sad to see GOP politicians trying to assert that the economy is doing better with the snowflake, and not asserting Congress's sole power to declare war against another country.
  
  
• Recently, King Charles of the UK came to the US and gave a speech to both houses of our legislative branch.  He reminded congress of American values in a way that showed the GOP how much they have capitulated to evil without openly saying as much.  It's a shame that after the speech, that they keep supporting the Orange Monster in the way they do.
  
  
• Yesterday, I went downstairs to do laundry.  I found out that I forgot where I placed the VTM card I use to pay for washing and drying my clothes.  So, I ended getting ready to use backup card I had.  But, by the time I went downstairs to do the last runs of the evening, someone else had claimed the machines for their laundry.  There was no way that I was going to bring my dresses, etc. upstairs, just to bring them downstairs again.  So, I waited until today to do this.
  
  Realizing that I had to find the missing VTM card, I positioned myself that I could inspect shirt/trouser pockets for the VTM card, and toss everything into 2 washing machines while sitting down.  By the time I was halfway through, I found the card, and was able to speed up my work to load up two washers.  When the loads are done, I plan to take the dresses and shirts upstairs and hang them up to dry wrinkle-free.
  
  And guess what happened after I found the card.  I added $20 to it, then lost it again.  This time, I retraced my steps and hope it's at the bottom of a wet laundry basket.  Otherwise, it's $38 gone down the tubes.  AARGH!
  
  
• Once all my summer clothes are out of storage, I'll have to start another donation bag for charity. I need space in my closet to store everything.  That will be a task for the next few weeks. 
  
  Given how many dresses and other things that I own, I figure that I only have enough stuff for a single donation bag.  But, I should also loot at getting rid of stuff that looks drab on me.  A T-Gal should always look her best in public when presenting as female.

A mess to clean, a lunch to enjoy, and some laundry to wash

 

My apartment has always been in one degree of mess or another.  One can say that I've drowned in clutter over the years, and have come out of it with varying degrees of clutter removed from the mess.  Today, I have to clean up some of the mess, meet CCS for lunch, and do some laundry.

- - - - - -

This morning, I was supposed to have a zoom with my niece in London.  I really wasn't in the mood to rush a conversation, nor was I in the mood to be talking too much, when I had a lunch engagement 30 minutes later with CCS.  So, I asked my niece to postpone for a week, and that worked for both of us.

Next, it was getting ready to pick CCS up.  She had some work done on her arm, and she is not able to drive while the arm heals.  So I had to put her address into my phone's GPS so that I could find her place. Once I picked her up, it was off to the restaurant for lunch.  We caught up on a lot of things, the disposition of family autos, her upcoming cruise, the sale of my family homestead and more.  it was a good conversation that had to end too soon.  So, I dropped her off at her place, and rushed back home for an urgently nee bio-break.

When I had the chance, I opened up a package from Kohl's - a new dress had arrived.  I wasn't sure if a 3x would fit me, but it did - the waist wasn't as tight as it could have been on me.  And it will be a very comfortable addition to my wardrobe for this summer.

I ended up taking a nap and woke up as the sun was setting.  Knowing that I was in for the night, I stripped off my makeup and finally prepared to do some laundry.  It was nice to get out as Marian again, and I hope to be able to finally get my nails done soon....

 

 

The day started off with a phone call from my brother

As I may have mentioned, my brother and I are selling the family homestead.  It made us some good money over the years, but it became a non-performing asset last year.  It served us well, and we have good memories of living here.  However, it is time to let go, and we will soon have a signed contract for the sale.

- - - - - -

My brother almost woke me up this morning, and we discussed the financial situation of the house.  We'll be putting in some repairs, so that the sale can go through.  We talked about being sad to let go of the place, and then shifted to money concerns.  Both of us could use the money from the sale, but for very different reasons.  And then we got to talking about my brother's situation with his wife and what will happen if he has to move to get a new position.  That call took me to the point where I had to let go, and get showered for lunch with MSJ.

Around 12:45 pm, I dropped off a lot of paper to be shredded at Westchester County's mobile shredder truck.  And then, I was off to the bagel shop for lunch with MSJ.  This was a rare time that I'd be early for lunch.  But it was just as well.  MSJ came in, ordered something light, and we got down to talking.  This was a rare 2+ hour lunch for us, and we covered a few topics: My recent cruise, Her sons' progress in school, and Her exhaustion from juggling too many things at one time (typical for most women).  

All too soon, lunch had to end, but not before we set up our next meeting.  And then it was off to Lane Bryant in Poughkeepsie to look at their dresses.  None of them looked appealing to me.  The cheap $30 dress I bought from Amazon looked better than the dresses on the rack at Lane Bryant.  I'm glad that I wasn't really in the mood to buy anything anyway.

Then, it was on my way home, so that I could cook dinner - Ravioli in a cheesy cream sauce.  Yum!  Just don't tell my doctor about it..... 

City Island Dinner with Vicki

     

City Island is nautical hamlet off the coast of New York City's mainland borough, The Bronx. It still has a small town feel, even though it is in America's biggest city.  The reason why most visitors come to this out of the way part of NYC is its collection of Seafood Restaurants.  And this is where Vicki and I planned to head today.

It was nice to get dressed as Marian again.  Unfortunately, it was a little bit too cool to go out in one of my summer frocks.  Instead, I took out a dress and a pair of leggings that I wear during the winter, threw on a light denim jacket, and drove to Vicki's place to pick her up.

Normally, Vicki does much of the driving.  But her car was in the shop for warranty repair.  Given how much the repair would cost if not under warranty, I'm glad that she is still  covered by her manufacturer's warranty.  Otherwise, she'd be spending 40% of the car's original cost to fix it.

I picked Vicki up a few minutes after 6, and we started catching up on things.  It was nice to be able to tell Vicki about our cruise, and the disembarkation day problems.  And she mentioned things I won't cover here.  Arriving at the restaurant around 7, we sat down to order our food - a lobster plate for each of us, with a calamari dish we could share.  Yum!

We had to rush back to Vicki's after dinner, as she has a couple of dogs to care for.  But we'll be having dinner again soon, as RQS, Vicki and I will be feasting somewhere nearby. 

Now that I'm back home (a short post)

 

I feel like I ate like a pig while on my recent cruise.  Yet, the scale told me otherwise today.  I think it lies. RQS and I discussed this earlier, and she was thinking that this is a good thing.  As for me, I need an explanation for this, as my late wife had unexplained weight loss before she was diagnosed with cancer.

But first....

This was the first night I slept alone for almost 2 weeks.  As much as it's nice to sleep with RQS by my side, it also feels good to have my bed to myself.  I woke up to the mess in my apartment and made things worse.  It was time for me to start putting my winter clothes away, put clothes I don't use in a donation bag, and hang my summer dresses up in my closet.  Right now, I have one donation bag to be delivered to charity, two loads of laundry to go in the wash, and then dresses (so far) to hang up in my closet.

My plans were to go outdoors today.  But I had relatively little energy to do so.  I didn't want to bother getting dressed.  Yet, I did set up some social engagements with a couple of friends, and tried to set something up with another.  I expect to be very busy over the next few weeks, but I'm not sure of how my schedule will fill up.

Tomorrow, it'll be dinner with Vicki, and I'll be the one doing the driving for a change.  It'll be a seafood dinner, not a "see-food" dinner. (If I see it, I eat it. 😊)  More on that tomorrow.

Bermuda Triangle Cruise 2026 - Afterthoughts (04/26/26)

 

Now that I'm back on dry land, I now have a chance to look back on this cruise.  Strangely enough, an old phrase from a Russian novel comes to mind:

 "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"

From having friends who are polyamorous, I learned that good communication, honesty and openness are the keys to successful relationships.  In the case of cruising, good communication is essential to having a good cruise experience.  On disembarkation day, Virgin Voyages turned a good cruise experience into a disaster by poor communication.

Will I take a cruise on Virgin again?  Maybe.  But I'll have to see how they respond to a complaint letter I plan to send them.

- - - - - -

A question posed by an old, cynical joke was:

Besides the assassination Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

This same question reflects my feelings about the cruise.  If I could ignore the last hour or so onboard the ship, it would have been an excellent cruise.  Even then, communication issues were black spots on a very white sheet of paper.   Virgin depends too much on its app to notify people of things going onboard the ship.  Instead of simple announcements that the ship has made port, and that passengers can leave the ship for shore excursions, they only send quiet messages to cruisers via the app.  If one doesn't constantly look at their phone, one can't know what's going on.

- - - - - -

RQS and I have some time before we can schedule another cruise with Virgin.  Before then, we will be taking another cruise with Princess, and maybe a cruise with NCL Virgin won't be back in NYC until autumn.  And then, it has no cruises sailing out of New York scheduled for 2027.  Will they be in New York in 2028?  I doubt it.  And even if they were, I'm not sure if I'd sail with them again.  I don't want to deal with another experience as ugly as our disembarkation experience, even though (for us) it lasted only 15 minutes.  I'd have no problem with Virgin if it had good communications with its cruisers.  But it doesn't.  It is not a cruise line that holds up its customer experience by both belts and suspenders - they don't use both Plans A and B for communicating with its cruisers. 

PS: I got a response on my email to Virgin.  They actually looked into the details of my issue.  Hopefully, they will correct things for the next time something similar occurs.

 

 

 

Bermuda Triangle Cruise 2026 - Disembarkation Day (04/25/26)

 

The problem with cruising from Brooklyn is that when one arrives back in port, one has a better view of Jersey City than one does of New York City.  Yes, Governor's Island is also in this picture, but Jersey City predominates the view.  But it could be worse.  It could be Akron, Ohio from the rails.

- - - - - - 

We got home earlier than expected, but not because anything went according to plan.  Our ordeal started at 6 am, both of us getting up early, so we could vacate our cabin by 7:30 am.  We were out the door by 7:15 am and in one of the ship's restaurants by 7:30 am.  That was our first defining issue for the day, as the restaurant, Razzle Dazzle, was vegetarian.   

Razzle Dazzle may serve good food, but none of its breakfast offerings appealed to me.  So I ordered something close to what I'd get in an omnivore breakfast - scrambled eggs, mushrooms, tiny potatoes, and "Impossible" sausage patties.  Luckily, they had a "Naughty" item on the menu - Maple Bacon, which I ordered. As expected, this meal didn't satisfy.  The Impossible sausage patty had absolutely no flavor and not satisfaction quotient.  So the eggs, bacon and the mushrooms were the only things that kept my stomach from growling for the next few hours.  Heck, I couldn't even get a glass of orange juice without paying a premium for fresh squeezed juice.  And to make things worse, the restaurant was way too warm, considering it was a chilly day outside.

Leaving this forgettable joint (and I hope to do so soon), we proceed to the 6th floor to exit the ship. And this is when the real problem began.  We had booked a 9 am disembarkation, knowing that many of the early birds would be off the ship before then.  Well, we went upstairs at 8:45 am and found ourselves at the end of a line that stretched from mid-ship to the rear of the ship and back because they weren't letting anyone off the ship.  Since I can walk forever, but not stand in one place for long, I had RQS stand on line while I waited in the casino for the line to move. The line started moving 15 minutes later, and we were out of the cruise terminal at 9:15 am.  From what one crew member told me as I was finally exiting the ship, the delay was caused by issues related to a CBP contraband sniffing dog and the luggage transfer process.  In order to prevent passengers from arriving at the pier before their luggage made it to the pier, they held up disembarkation to accommodate a complete restart of the luggage transfer process.  AARGH!

Next, we decided to take the ferry.  Walking past taxi drivers that were hungry for a fare, we barely made it to ferry dock for a 9:22 ferry.  And then, we had trouble with the ferry app (mostly caused by being in a rush and still having our phones in airplane mode).  We held up the ferry while personnel tried to help us.  And then the ferry screwed up, heading towards Pier 13 in Manhattan instead of Pier 6 / Atlantic Avenue. So we arrived at the stop where we'd summon an Uber as it started to rain a bit.  Luckily, it was a short walk to shelter with our bags.

Here is where we had our miracle.  Our Uber was there in 2 minutes, and then there was NO traffic on the BQE (in our direction).  We were back at RQS's place by 10:30 am - a new record from the terminal!  Finally, we could rest and catch up on sleep....