A while back, I bought the above dress at Target. As much as my shoulders appear too broad when my entire figure is considered, I thing that this will be one of the dresses I'll be taking with me when I go to Hawaii. However, I'm not so sure of the dress below.
Although both dresses are of similar styles, there is a great difference between the two. The top dress has just enough "going on" with the fabric to make it look tolerably nice on me. Unfortunately, the bottom dress is too plain, and I will need to find the right piece of costume jewelry to wear with it because it shows too much of my neck.
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Being transgender with male hormones flowing through my veins for over 50 years, I have the build of a heavy set male. This forces me to use any and all tricks at my disposal to minimize the broadness of my shoulders and maximize an illusion of having larger hips.
RQS accepts me in both presentations, and may eventually cruise with me in a female gender presentation. This won't happen for a while. Until then, I plan to make the most of my trip to Hawaii, as this may be the last chance to take a vacation as Marian for a long while.
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The other day, we found out that NCL would not downgrade our "free drinks" package to a "soda" package. Although the soda package would cost them less, this was not an option given for the "Free at Sea" package. There is no way I want to spend $200/pp to get a drink package for the price of its gratuities (20% of $1000 = $200) when the two of us are cruising on a budget. A soda package would cost us (and NCL) much less (20% of $120 = $24/pp), but we couldn't convince NCL to offer that upgrade. So, we are sending snail mail complaint letters to the CEO of NCL, with a hope that this could be changed before we go on our cruise. (I don't think this will happen, but...)
Contrast this with my future Hawaii trip. I am not bothering to scrimp on anything, save the transit to and from my home airport. The Hawaii cruise excursions will cost me roughly $1,000, where the New England / Eastern Canada excursions we have already booked will cost us $75/pp. Even if we booked an excursion in every port, we'd still spend less as a couple on excursions than I am spending as a single traveler.
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Last night, while trying to reach a state of exhaustion, I started to try to reduce the cost in getting to a Panama Canal cruise and home from that cruise. Instead of booking airfare on one of the legacy airlines or traveling on Amtrak, I'm now looking at flying Southwest. Do you have any ideas of what I should watch out for if we choose this option?
