Week 43 - A Total Turnaround

The week did not start well. I was in a total funk - sick of work and the crazy amount of training I was doing, tired of the pandemic and just plain over it all. Luckily that turned around as the week went on.

I don't know what the deal is with everyone on campus wanting to come to my training but it feels like all I do these days and it's getting old. My classes were so full plus with full waitlists so I had to schedule my 4th round of classes in 6 weeks. Then I was asked to demo the database I'd designed to help departments and it was scheduled for right after my monthly Ripples professional development, which kind of killed the joy of that because I had to leave early. When my friend Layton called me on Wednesday, I was in a total funk. 

Then I got an email from Holland America late Wednesday. Now I've been getting a couple of emails a week since my cancelled Baltic knitting cruise in May 2020 but I just trash them unread. But this one came up in my preview and I noticed the magic words - vaccinated cruise! I read further and saw that they were not only requiring proof of vaccination but also a negative test 48 hours before the cruise. My interest was piqued and I got chatting with Anne. Long story short, Anne and I were on the phone with the travel agent until almost 10:00 that night and on Thursday we booked a cruise over Thanksgiving week. Yay!

We'll be flying to Fort Lauderdale the Friday before Thanksgiving and will cruise from Saturday to Saturday, hitting Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and a private island. All of these are American so have better access to vaccines than other Caribbean islands. Plus we upgraded to a veranda room so will have fresh air and our own private lanai to hang out on should we feel the need to social distance. And between our cruise credits, free tickets getting there using miles and my Southwest credit going against our flight home, it barely cost anything. Talk about happy! This was just what I needed - something to look forward to and travel that's as safe as you can get during the pandemic. I'm smiling just thinking about it. 

The week just kept getting better! The Ikea wall unit that I'd ordered in August was delivered mid-week and it was a desperately needed rainy weekend so I got busy with that happy project. I put it together on Saturday, having to run to the farm store midway when I broke some of the dowels after I screwed up and had to take it apart and redo it. But I got it up and called it good. I had more fun on Sunday, sorting all of my sock yarn. I put all my indy dyed and better quality yarn on my new shelf, sorting by fiber content as I went. The work horse yarn went into under the bed boxes in my spare room. How's that for a happy project!

What a turnaround - from nearly despondent to happy with a trip to look forward to and a gorgeous wall of yarn that totally brightened up my front room. Life is good!