Royal Caribbean Cruisers -- How Are Things Where You Are? (was "Routine" ​ 😁 ​day in lockdown... how was yours?)

[Luckynana]

6 hours ago, DaniDanielle said:

Charlie is cranky today so I guess that’s a good sign.  Infectious doctor was pleased with his lungs!

waiting on some results.

Good news about Charlie's lungs.  Hope the rest of his tests have the same good results.🥰

[HBE4]

4 hours ago, helen haywood said:

Gosh!  I have a lot of long lost cousins!!

 

Family reunions are going to be epic! 

 

41 minutes ago, Ocean Boy said:

I had no idea that I'd find so many relatives on this thread.

 

Oh no. I come to this thread to escape my relatives. 😄

[A&L_Ont]

And now the wrap up for dinner. After 15 minutes we were again allowed back into the building. We got settled at our table and Owen, our waiter checked in with us.
 

He asked if we wanted a new meal cooked to replace our cold one, and we said that we were OK. We had half eaten our meal and requested some to go boxes.  We chuckled what are the chances of two alarms in just over an hour.   He went in search of some boxes and a few minutes later the manager came to see us. 
 

He too apologized for the situation, to which we said was well beyond their/his actions. He then said that they were going to comp our meal, since they didn’t have to make another for us. We said that wasn’t needed, but he insisted. I guess who are we to argue.  Thankfully we were leaving just before 5, but I could only imagine what it would have been like during the main dinner rush. That said it is one of our favourite restaurants that we go to a couple times a year. We will be back.

 

We were only charged for our beverages and appetizers.  We thanked the manager as we left and left an appropriate “thank-you”😉 for our waiter. 
 

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by A&L_Ont

[HBE4]

7 hours ago, A&L_Ont said:

4/8 weeks ago?  That will be April for us. 

 

 

Sorry, poorly worded post. Both flowers are early. Crocuses already bloomed & they are usually a mid-March flower. The Daffodils are about ready to bloom & they are usually 2 weeks behind the Crocuses, around late March/early April. 

 

[Coralc]

4 hours ago, grapau27 said:

What a lovely photo.

Ellen looks very lovely next to the nasty toilet at Alcatraz.  ☺️

[A&L_Ont]

1 minute ago, HBE4 said:

 

Sorry, poorly worded post. Both flowers are early. Crocuses already bloomed & they are usually a mid-March flower. The Daffodils are about ready to bloom & they are usually 2 weeks behind the Crocuses, around late March/early April. 

 

🤫 It’s OK. We are used to suffering though it. 😂

[Coralc]

30 minutes ago, bobmacliberty said:

Here’s a better picture of the Royal Princess for you Princess Cruises fans, taken from the Coit Tower. She’s apparently doing a 2 day cruise

to Vancouver. 

 

Are you using your phone? It takes better photos than my camera does. It is probably time to upgrade both, I think. 

[Jimbo]

Spring has sprung here in Southwestern Virginia

 

 

[Husky1987]

Tonight’s trip to Total Wine…first time for the Rare Breed and 1920.

 

@Sea Dog have you tried either of those?

 

[bobmacliberty]

1 hour ago, Coralc said:

 

Are you using your phone? It takes better photos than my camera does. It is probably time to upgrade both, I think. 

Pics are from my iPhone 12 Pro Max. It’s a couple of years old. I don’t use the built in Apple camera app though. I use Lightroom Mobile, shoot in RAW format, and do some tweaking before saving as a jpg file. The Pro line of the iPhones does have better cameras. I’m guessing that might be most of the difference between our pics. 
 

That or Princess ships look better than Royal ships????   Nah. 

[bobmacliberty]

3 minutes ago, Husky1987 said:

Tonight’s trip to Total Wine…first time for the Rare Breed and 1920.

 

@Sea Dog have you tried either of those?

 

I haven’t tried the Rare Breed but I enjoy Old Forester. I like the 1910 more than the 1920, but I think that’s a minority point of view. 

[aussielozzie18]

Another beautiful day in Sydney today (34C/93F).  Today we were up early to beat the heat as we were walking another 11km. This time from Collaroy beach to Manly.  This was the third and final leg of the Palm Beach to Manly coastal walk.

 

 

 

 

 

[Husky1987]

4 minutes ago, bobmacliberty said:

I haven’t tried the Rare Breed but I enjoy Old Forester. I like the 1910 more than the 1920, but I think that’s a minority point of view. 

From what I've seen, you're probably right...whiskey can be such an individual taste deal.  They had both, but I don't have much in the higher proof stuff on my shelf so I figured I'd get the 1920.  Appreciate the insight!

[Rusty_lock]

So I woke up to this this morning.  Central CA is not supposed to get snow!!

 

 

 

What is going on!  If global warming gets any worse I'm going to have to buy a heavier coat!

[Rusty_lock]

13 hours ago, h20skibum said:

I am several days, and several pages behind, but I hope to catch up today.  I want to thank everyone who was praying for my daughter’s surgery.  According to the surgeons, her surgery went well, but they did not commit too much beyond that.

 

Thank you for the update.  This is good news so far. 

[Rusty_lock]

7 hours ago, molly361 said:

Here's a pic of me during my stint at Alcatraz a few years ago, okay so maybe a few DECADES ago😇

How long were you incarcerated for?

[Bailey & Sophie]

15 hours ago, Husky1987 said:

Yesterday morning in Seattle area….crazy winter

 

 

I'd take this.

We had over 14" here the other day, it's still spitting and more is on the way. 

[sgmn]

On 2/25/2023 at 5:56 AM, bobmacliberty said:

 

 

 

Great photos. We had a very good day out there,  hired bikes and cycled across the Bridge , down to a village on the other side and then the ferry back 

[brillohead]

16 hours ago, HBE4 said:

 

Good luck and as @Sea Dog said, follow your heart.  I have no real practical or real-world advice other than to ask if there was a trusted person that could act as an intermediary?

 

I'm trying to reach out to various more distant relatives to see if I can test the waters, but so far nobody is replying (using messaging via two different ancestry sites plus FB).  It's only been a few days, so I'll give it some more time.   

I do have a few different friends who are local who would probably be willing to make contact as a third party.  Another friend who has been through the same experience had good luck mailing letters.  

We'll see how it works out... I've been waiting five decades for this, a few more days won't kill me.

 

 

14 hours ago, h20skibum said:

@brillohead, good luck with your family roots search.

 

As someone who is “still” writing my family history book that I started during the pandemic, you never know what you will find, or how people will react.  Susan’s grandfather was in an orphanage, and we have ran into many obstacles trying to trace that line.  It didn’t help that the orphanage burned down, and records were lost.  We did find he had a short marriage and had a son, before he married Susan’s grandmother.  Reaching out to those descendants to see if they had any information, and they did not want to have any contact with Susan’s family, and would not provide any information.

 

Then, you run into the dilemma of how to write the history.  Some family members only want the whitewash version.  Don’t include my first husband, or in some cases, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  But, since it will only be published for my kids, to be eventually passed to our grandkids, I may do the non-whitewash version.  
 

Sometimes, family trees have some ugly branches.

 

I did make contact with someone who is like a third or fourth cousin who filled me in on my paternal grandmother's family situation.  She was one of eleven kids, and her mom died.  Her dad (my great-grandfather) remarried, and then ended up leaving his second wife after they had some more kids.  The new wife sent all eleven of her step-kids to an orphanage, but kept her own children.  It's only through the efforts of a great-uncle that all of the children were finally tracked down.  It's amazing that he was able to do that in the time before computers/internet!

My paternal grandfather had kids with three different wives.  Trying to track down which kids were born to which wife has been all kinds of fun.  Yes, that's sarcasm!  LOL  According to some census reports, different kids were living with different uncles/grandparents from time to time.

 

 

12 hours ago, h20skibum said:

Well, one thing led to another, and I came across a study by the University of Copenhagen that says that everyone on the planet, with blue eyes, has one common ancestor.  Something about a switch at a particular location in DNA that results in the blue eye color.  Supposedly, that is not the case with other eye colors.  

 

So I guess that means I am related to Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman.  I guess that also means, if any of you have blue eyes, we are long lost cousins, however many times removed.

 

I was surprised to find that just in the Ancestry.com database alone, I have over 70,000 relatives.  Pretty crazy to think about!

[sgmn]

7 hours ago, HBE4 said:

 

Sorry, poorly worded post. Both flowers are early. Crocuses already bloomed & they are usually a mid-March flower. The Daffodils are about ready to bloom & they are usually 2 weeks behind the Crocuses, around late March/early April. 

 

My daffs in the garden are out now and the tulip bulbs are coming up, I love Spring. Just need some warm sunny weather now 

[sgmn]

Talking about family trees and finding long lost ancestors. 

My father born in early 1930s was born out of wedlock and never talked about who his father was.  My grandmother was quite an amazing woman, she brought him up with help of her family and somehow as a cook managed to buy a house in the 1950s. Pretty unusual then for a women to get a mortgage and buy a house. 

My brother has done a lot of work on Ancestry.com and thinks he may of traced a man (decreased) who may of been our grandfather 

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by sgmn

[brillohead]

2 hours ago, sgmn said:

Talking about family trees and finding long lost ancestors. 

My father born in early 1930s was born out of wedlock and never talked about who his father was.  My grandmother was quite an amazing woman, she brought him up with help of her family and somehow as a cook managed to buy a house in the 1950s. Pretty unusual then for a women to get a mortgage and buy a house. 

My brother has done a lot of work on Ancestry.com and thinks he may of traced a man (decreased) who may of been our grandfather 

Has your brother rechecked his DNA matches recently?  Ancestry.com just started a beta project for labeling matches by parent. 

 

You can sort your matches by Parent 1 or Parent 2, and since you know the maternal side of things, you should quickly determine which parent is 1 and which is 2, then you can concentrate on just the matches for the unknown parent.  Makes it a LOT easier to figure out which surnames you see repeatedly.  

I got very fortunate that I had one first cousin in my matches, and the names of her grandparents were the names that everyone in my paternal matches had one or the other of in their family tree.  

[h20skibum]

How strange that we were just talking about cousins, and this shows up in my email this morning. 

 

Maybe I should tell them I just connected on Cruise Critic.  Or maybe I should check it out and see how many of you are listed. 😂

 

[sgmn]

31 minutes ago, brillohead said:

Has your brother rechecked his DNA matches recently?  Ancestry.com just started a beta project for labeling matches by parent. 

 

You can sort your matches by Parent 1 or Parent 2, and since you know the maternal side of things, you should quickly determine which parent is 1 and which is 2, then you can concentrate on just the matches for the unknown parent.  Makes it a LOT easier to figure out which surnames you see repeatedly.  

I got very fortunate that I had one first cousin in my matches, and the names of her grandparents were the names that everyone in my paternal matches had one or the other of in their family tree.  

Yes he has, that's why he's pretty convinced it's our grandfather.  Apparently he was part of an Irish regiment who were based in Cornwall at the time. He has managed to contact a cousin who is now living in the far East .

I am interested mainly because he has put so much effort into it, but I don't really have any strong feelings about contacting second or third cousins that I've never known or been aware of.  My other (older) brother isn't interested at all

I hope you have a positive and good outcome to contacting your parental side of your birth family 

Sue

Ps just reread your post. I'm not sure if he's done it recently. I'll let him know of the beta project, thanks

Edited February 26, 2023 by sgmn

[Luckynana]

@brilloheadI wish you much success in your search for your biological father, Deb.