Prepared Sunday evening, February 16th.
I'm giving you fair warning...while this day had some memorable moments (the sunset is the best example), overall it wasn't the most exciting day to read about. But in terms of personal accomplishments, it was a pretty darn good day. But boring...really boring. And lots of Princess cruise talk. So I'll apologize for that up front.
We finally made it to Breakfast with Darko in the DaVinci Dining Room, after several days of Horizon Court Buffet breakfasts. Afterwards, we returned to our cabin for that 9am pill taking activity, and I could see from Channel 40 (the front of the ship channel) that it had started to pour outside, so much so that the sky and the sea had blurred together:
Well, heck. At that point, I had no more excuses, and I spent the rest of the morning working on something I should have done months ago: managing our Princess Future Cruise Credits (FCCs). We'll soon be wanting to purchase more to use for booking our 2015/16 winter at sea, and, though we each have 28 of them (so $5600 total), only five each are unapplied to a specific future booking. Now, you would think that I would keep better track of a $5600 investment, but I really do trust Princess's system to keep them straight. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow me to easily manage our FCCs vis a vis our future bookings. I REALLY wish I could simply export our FCC information into a spreadsheet, where everything (8-digit FCC #s, expiration dates, booking numbers, ship names, sailing dates, # of nights and $ On Board Credit (OBC)) could be sorted on any criterion. But the capability doesn't exist, and since we're certainly an outlier when it comes to our number of FCCs, I doubt that anyone at Princess has ever even considered this to be a need.
This all used to be much easier, before Princess changed the OBC values and expiration dates associated with FCCs. That simple act created a part time job for me. And we also have FCCs on other cruise lines, but normal quantities of them, not with a total value large enough to buy a Rolex watch. Or a house in Detroit.
Don't say I didn't warn you that this was an unexciting day!
After two hours of writing down (hopefully correctly) 56 8-digit FCC numbers, and 46 6-digit booking IDs (comprised of numbers AND letters) and 56 expiration dates and 46 $OBCs, copied from the Princess.com website (for free), on page after page of paper from a little "Emerald Princess" notepad, and then typing all those letters and numbers (hopefully correctly) into a spreadsheet on my laptop and then looking up 23 booking ID's from the Princess website to get the ship name, sailing date and duration for each one, and then figuring out how many FCCs we have that might expire before they get applied and which booked cruises we might potentially cancel, thus freeing up FCCs, and then, really gazing into my crystal ball, trying to forecast what Princess's Caribbean itineraries for 2015/2016 might look like, and how many of those we might be booking in a couple of months, and then, based on all that, determining how many more FCCs we need to buy before we leave the Emerald Princess...I REALLY needed a drink.
We returned to the DaVinci Dining Room for lunch with Joji and Ronnel (both from the Philippines) and I requested that they retrieve my bottle of Franciscan Merlot and serve me a glass. And then I ordered spaghetti putanesca to accompany it. ;-)
The sun returned by the time we were finished with lunch, and we spent the remainder of the afternoon 1.) sorting through the stacks of paper we've accumulated in this cabin and tossing not enough of them (my opinion only) and moving things and cleaning under them (which Raymond can't do because he can't move all the things we have stacked on shelves and counters but which we MUST do, because, of course, of my allergies); 2.) preparing extra tip envelopes; 3.) walking on Deck 19; and 4.) vegging out in a hot tub.
Following a VERY light dinner (a seafood appetizer and a fruit appetizer for me, followed by a cheese plate for dessert...and more Franciscan Merlot, of course), we sat on the Promenade Deck for a gorgeous sunset (and I took a photo through the railing, just to show you how beautiful the view was).
The sun didn't set until 7:11pm, and we slipped into the 7:15pm performance by comedian Phil Tag in the Princess Theater. He was doing a second show later tonight, which was good, because when we arrived just a minute or two before his show began, we were lucky to find two seats and even those not together. That's the first time I've ever seen a full theater for the 7:15pm show on the last night of a cruise. Phil Tag was hilarious...he's been really well received these two nights he's performed on the Emerald Princess. The International Crew Show was scheduled, in lieu of a third performance for Phil Tag, at 10:15pm. We haven't seen the International Crew Show yet this winter, and need to add it to our "To Do" list. Just as when we're at home preparing to leave for our life on a ship, our To Do list on the ship, preparing to leave for home, is beginning to grow. Gag.
I'm currently minding two washers in the laundromat on Deck 14, doing two loads of laundry before I turn in for the evening. It's so thrilling that I'm going to have a separate post on the Riviera Deck laundry facilities on the Emerald Princess. Watch for it...
FCC spreadsheets, cleaning, paperwork, laundromats. Do you see how I suffer during my life at sea?!?
Oh, yeah, and there was that sunset and that wine in a Riedel glass, too. And a funny comedian. And Breakfast and Dinner with Darko and lunch with Joji. But before and after all that...suffering, I say.
;-)
A peek into our cabin...we use my magnetic necklaces/ bracelets/ anklets to keep track of our days on the metal cabin wall:
