Today, I ended up having two meals out with friends. How I did that, I don't know. But I did enjoy both meals along with the company I had.
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If it weren't for the fact that today would be the only time this month that I could see my friend from the census without problems, I would have preferred to stay in and relax for the day. I hadn't gotten enough sleep last night, and the alarms only got me going around 11:00 am for a 12:30 pm lunch. This ended up being perfect for me, as I arrived at the Italian joint in town and found my friend just sitting down to wait for me to arrive.
This was a day where I dominated the conversation, describing what happened on my most recent cruise. Hopefully, I did it in a way that kept her interest, as I'm pretty sure that she will never sail with MSC. While Carnival is described as the Walmart of cruise lines, catering to the "value oriented" customer, I described MSC as the bastard offspring between Target and K-Mart. From Target, MSC gets the glitz that attracts people to cruise with them. And from K-Mart, MSC gets the low quality that causes people to say "Never Again!" People attracted to MSC do not want the Carnival cruise experience, but want a subset of the experiences one can get on other, higher priced, cruise lines. Eventually, lunch had to end, and I proceeded home. Originally, I was going to go to Jersey and do some shopping. But I felt that I should put my leftovers in the refrigerator before going out. As a result, I never bothered to go out until I met Vicki for dinner at Lefteris Gyro.
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I met Vicki just after she was done with her exercise class, and she was famished. This time, Vicki would be the one carrying leftovers home. Vicki listened to me describing the cruise, knowing that neither of us would likely cruise MSC in the future based on my most recent experience. Yet, I felt this was a shame, as with a little more attention to the quality of the experience and less on nickel-dimeing the cruiser, they'd have product good enough to seriously make a run at grabbing market share from the big-3 American based cruise line corporations (Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian). Vicki told me about her retirement plans (which I won't go into here) and chatted about things going on with her and her husband. All I will say about that is that he will go more than the extra mile for her.
All too soon, dinner had to end and we had to go our own ways. Not to worry. I'll see her again when I have my colonoscopy next week....
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