Cut Throat Island

So Thursday came and it was to be our Big Day of Fun. We had scheduled parasailing in the morning, a half day sail and snorkel tour in the afternoon, and a couples massage in the early evening.

One of the contradictions of being on vacation is the tug of war between structure and unstructured. You're supposed to be on your honeymoon without a care in the world. At the same time, you want to make the most of it and to do that, you kinda have to give some thought to planning your days so that you can fit in the activities you want.

It's hard enough to balance that on your own, but when the people you rely on to help you are actually working against you, it takes on an added dimension in crazy. Each morning, Sugar Bay provided a sheet of daily activities that are going on at the resort. Looking at the sheet I saw that they had free introductory scuba lessons in the pool at 10 am that morning (Wednesday).

Had I looked at the sheet from Tuesday when we arrived and compared it with the sheet from Wednesday I would have seen that many of the activities repeat. This wouldn't necessarily prove the scuba was every morning, but it would have been more reliable than the method I did employ.

When trying to plan our activities, I asked the Tour Chick (Missy) if the scuba class occurred every day. She said she didn't know. It struck me as odd that she worked at that hotel every day and she didn't know about the scuba class. I mean she sells scuba tours. Wouldn't that be a great feed into her business? One of the reasons people opt to skip scuba is because you spend half the tour getting day certified.

"Hey take the free lesson at the pool and then come see me, I'll set you up with a tour where you get to see so much since you'll already have a head start."

Anyway, Nightingale didn't want to risk missing our parasailing tour. We decided to just sit by the pool, have some rum drinks as soon as the bar opened, and wait for our tour. Of course that didn't stop me from talking to the scuba dude, lets' call him Jeff. Jeff looked about 50 but was probably really in his 60s.

No one had shown up for today's class and he said that if he doesn't get any takers by 10:15 he gets to split. I asked Jeff if we would have time to take the lesson and then make it to the beach by 11 for our parasailing lesson. The beach, which was 100 yards away. "I don't know," he said. "maybe, maybe not."

Okay then. You give lessons every day and you don't know if it will take longer than an hour to show two people the basics of scuba. Really?

Finally around 10:50 we go over to the beach and even though its a small beach, it occurs to us that it would be very possible to be in the wrong spot since all we know is to look for a green boat that says parasailing tour on it.

Fortunately there is a guy from the hotel working the area and he tells us that we should look for a green boat that says parasailing on it. Excellent! With such great customer service like that I wish we could stay another week.

Half an hour goes by and we do not see the boat. We ask Captain Helpful if he could use some of this fancy 20th century technology like the walkie-talkie in his hand or the cell phone clipped to his belt to find out about the boat. Turns out, it was delayed by the Coast Guard.

We were starting to get worried that our para sailing would not finish in time to get us back to catch the boat for the half day snorkel & sail. Turns out we had nothing to worry about.  The para sailing doesn't take long, especially if there are only two people going. 

Sidenote: one of the crew members looked like Sawyer from Lost.  I kid you not.

What we learned is that a lot of people on this Island are very cut throat. Not everyone, certainly not the para sailing crew, or the snorkel crew (see future posts) or even the Snuba lady, but a lot of the people who broker these excursions seemed to have a look out for themselves attitude that contridicted the concept of "On Island Time."

Instead of helping each other out, they are trying to prevent one another from taking any of their customers away.  Because we signed up for two events with Missy, you'd think she could let poor Jeff teach us to scuba in the resort pool for an hour. Or you'd think Jeff would let us go parsail since that shouldn't take anything away from him. Instead of working together, they all seem to be islands of their own.

Hotel Amenities and wrist band blues

Even though it was a long day of flying, my lovely bride -who shall heretofore be known as Nightingale -- arranged our flight times so that we would arrive at the resort in time to actually make some use of it. We arrived late afternoon which gave us enough time to get a late lunch, take a swim in the pool and enjoy many a tropical drink.  Our only other option would be to arrive so late that we really would just have enough time to grab whatever grub we could scrounge up and then pass out for the night.

The downside to this was having to fly Spirit, an airline that charges for bags whether you check them or carry them on. In hindsight we should have checked them since the difference was $4 per bag, but Nightingale was afraid the airline would lose our bags and we'd have to go a few days without a change of underwear.  While the reflex might be to think: This is a problem on your honeymoon how? The truth is, it is a major pain to be without luggage when you are thousands of miles away from home.

When we got to the hotel, among the orientation info they gave us was something about sand mites. Nightingale panicked and wanted to buy all the bug spray in site. Of course bug spray and sun block are jacked up at the hotel store.

We opted to buy the bug spray but hold off on the sunscreen since Nightingale had some small tubes that didn't get confiscated at security -- remember the not checking our bags because we feared losing them? We thought we'd make it to the Kmart on the first or second night.

Wednesday we tried to book some activities but the ones we were interested in did not have enough other people interested so it wasn't worth the vendor's time to do them. We decided to go into town instead. We did find a shop that sold pearl bracelets at a ridiculously low price, at least according to Nightingale so I think we got some xmas shopping done. We failed to go to the Kmart or the duty free shop at this juncture.

We did go to the fancy restaurant at the resort, which was included in our all-inclusive package. It did not live up to its hype. We believe the service lacked because we were wearing those blue bracelets that said "we are part of the all-inclusive package."  Our waiter took our order and brought our food but never really checked up on us. We wanted more wine but got the impression that would require an order from the governor. 

After talking to other guests and putting two and two together, we figured out that there were several factors working against us.  First, it was off season, which means that there isn't a full staff to bring all the drunks their drinks in a timely manner and as such, you do risk becoming sober while waiting for the next round to arrive.

Second, the all inclusive package requires everyone to wear these wrist bands which apparently labeled us as non-tippers.  The thing about this is it is a self-fulfilling prophecy: you give bad service, you won't get a tip, and vice versa.  A real chicken and egg whocamefirst. 

To give you an example of how bad it was, Nightingale asked for some coffee with dessert.  Most places I've been to, be it a fancy bestro or a greasy spoon diner, the server will ask the other people at the table if they want coffee as well.  Because it takes just that much effort to bring two cups of coffee as one.  I thought about asking for one once he brought Nightingale hers but opted to behave myself this time.

Learning Curve and Long Day of Travel

Well it's official: The months, weeks and days have dwindled down and now Icarus is married! My blogging was rather infrequent to begin with and now because of some events over the last year, or so, I've become even more inconsistent.

Because Mrs. Icarus had schedule issues with work and school, our original plan was to take a minimoon after our wedding followed by a longer honeymoon next spring.  the minimoon would have been a 3-4 day/night trip someplace warm, tropical and hopefully all inclusive.  Then in the spring, before starting her new job, we would go to Europe for a much longer vacation.  Ironically, because I changed jobs this summer, we didn't have the luxury of a lot of vacation time for me, so our plan got changed.
We went to the US Virgin Islands for our honeymoon because someone forgot to renew her passport in time to go anywhere else that didn't require a valid passport and a handwritten letter from those who signed the Patriot Act.  What was going to be a few days turned into a 5 day trip in the event we don't get to go anywhere else for awhile because of babies,or the economy, or babies, or future douchbag bosses. 

One part of the plan we did stick to was not leaving for our honeymoon right after our wedding.  From talking to others, we learned that having an extra day to just sleep in, relax and decompress was a good thing.  Unfortunately, we chilled out too much and didn't get to packing until late Monday night.  This made for some bad packing decisions.
Our airline charged for bags, both carryone ($46) or checked in ($50). Out of fear that a bag would get lost, Mrs Icarus decided that we should carry our bags on.  So we didn't pack things like sunscreen and bug spray which we can get rather cheaply and in bulk here in the midwest.

Tuesday we caught a very early flight with a layover in Ft. Lauderdale. We decided to kill some time in the only bar in our terminal -- probably in the entire airport -- and have some expensive cheeseburgers and beers. As luck would have it, a dude sat next to us and started chatting us up. Turns out Jason lives and works in the Virgin Islands. He is a bar tender at a bar called the Greenhouse.

When he found out we were married, he bought me a beer. MR I was still working on hers.I'm a cautious bystander, friendly but not too friendly. I figure if someone is trying to get to know me, it cannot be for any good reason.

Jason did give us some good advice. He told us about the Safari Bus, which is much cheaper than taxis. He also clued us in on the Good Morning/Afternoon/Night greeting that some locals seem to adhere to. It is probably more prevalent outside the resort we were at. He mentioned a K-mart but was distracted by something we didn't get the exact location. He actually was sitting a couple rows ahead of us on the airplane, chatting up his nearby seat mates before he passed out from sheer exhaustion.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Screens do more than just keep out the sun

Even though I'm getting married today, I thought I'd take a quick break to post an update since I have some time to kill. One of the projects I had to work on this summer at my mom's crapshack was to build some custom screens for her basement windows.



Cedar 1x2

 So with some of these (left) and one of these (below):

Miter Saw

These screens don't really serve any purpose except to make it a little harder to look inside the basement and make the outside look uniform.  Okay, I guess that is purpose enough.

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Looking Busy

A long time ago in a law firm far, far away, I was a Litigation Paralegal.  Many of my fellow paralegals would talk about how busy they were.  They would eat lunch at their desk and always have some papers with them.  They may have been creating a deposition abstract or proof-reading an index of a document production.  They would work on these on their Metra train rides home.

This was in the early 90s, back before the days of connecting remotely to the office and working from home meant bringing a bunch of hard copy documents home with you. 

I've never been good at looking busy.  Either I have something to do or I'm looking for the next task.  Often when I finish something, I submit to my Adult ADD and surf the web or find some other activity to stimulate my brain. 

It's one thing to work through lunch in order to leave work early.  It's another thing to consistently work through lunch in order to just leave on time.  That is a sign that its time to look for another gig.  Working some extra hours during a busy season is one thing.  Having a busy season that lasts all fiscal year is another.

We're All a Little Screwed Up

What I learned this summer:  A couple months ago I got one of those calls you hear about and hope you never personally get.  A friend was dead and the circumstances were not known.  A few hours later it was learned, or shared, that Craig took a bunch of sleeping pills and washed them down with vodka, one of the hard liquors he wasn't very fond of.

Sometime this year, I also learned that a friend has an eating disorder.  She told me that she was borderline anorexic, though I've since learned that she's more bulimic.  Intuitively, she knows better but somethng inside is set to believe that every calorie she eats will somehow transform that too skinny to give blood body into a an overweight person.

I've always thought both of these friends had their sh** together better than I did.  The reality is that their Alpha Gene is set to On while mine is set to off.  While it gives me no comfort to know that their personal demons are of the same magnetude as mine, it does make me feel like I can give myself a little break and not be so hard on myself.

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Confessions of a First Generation Pole:  Spearking of not being so hard on myself, this article sums it up neatly.

Knowing the language seems the defining line between identifying as Polish or American. ...For my part, because I’ve forgotten what little Polish I knew, the language barrier prevents me from getting Poles to see me as one of their own—I’m just another American.  [Source]

When I was growing up, I didn't like being called a Pole-lock by my Puerto Rican schoolmates.  So while I never denied being Polish, I certainly downplayed it and didn't embrass my ethnicity until my late 20s and early 30s.

I've tried to re-learn the language. My mom claims I did speak some Polish as a child.  However neither classrooms at Discovery Center or Rosetta Stone has proven successful, mostly because I don't have the discipline to do the Rosetta Stone on a beautiful summer day.

I know this much about weddings

The Wedding is one day, the Marriage is, hopefully, forever.  This is the mantra that gets many a bride and groom through the planning stages of a wedding.  The Wedding Report, an industry publication, reports that the average wedding costs $29,000 in the U.S:

http://www.theweddingreport.com/bz/index.php/weddings-and-average-wedding-cost-1945-to-2010/

Here's what I've learned about planning a wedding and would tell myself if I could get in a Delorean and go back in time.

1)  Someone is paying for that wedding. Whether its you, the Bride's parents, Elmo or a combination thereof, if you think that you might possibly have some type of celebration to commemorate your marriage, start saving immediately -- even before you find your future spouse. 

Some people have parents who have put aside money for them. This is great.  However, your parents might get laid off before retirement or have some medical emergency and that money you were counting on is gone. Or your parents can only give so much money yet you want extras like chair covers, floor length table clothes
and a deejay who will show up.  These things cost extra.  Start saving.  Now.

The worst that can happen is you use that money elsewhere -- home downpayment, kickass honeymoon, Bourbon and strippers, whatever.

2)  Wedding Vendor Cartel and price fixing.  Wedding vendors want large non-refundable deposits upfront and they often incentivize you to pay cash.  After all, if you are going to pay $1000 for flowers but will receive a 20% discount ($200) if you pay cash, how can you refuse. With some of the vendors, you end up paying 80-100% of the cost before the wedding date.  The good part is you don't have to deal with it on your wedding day.  The bad part is, you are sweating bullets that everything will go off without a hitch.

3)  The Point of No Return.  When you add up the cost of a wedding versus flying to Vegas and having Elvis marry you, the difference is staggering.  Still there comes a point when you realize that even if you forfeited all the deposits and grabbed the next flight out to Vegas, you would still come out ahead cost-wise.

3a) The Real Point of No Return. Then you reach a point where you've hemeraged so much money and have little to show for it, unless you actually go through with the wedding.  This is the riskiest moment.

Say for instance, your wedding photographer skips out on your wedding because she went to a Rave the night before and woke up in some other city.  Sure you have a contract and can go through the long, lengthy legal process of getting your money back.  What you cannot do is get in that Delorean and go back and pick a more dependable photographer.  Your marriage is still legit though starting off on a stressful note, but your wedding is ruined.