Day 8- Dec 31- At Sea

Ah, the last day of the year.  We slept in again, except Becki faked me out.  I woke up to see her walking out the door, saying she was going to breakfast.  I tried to tell her to wait for me, but she wouldn't listen.  Turned out, she went and got me a plate from the buffet, so I wouldn't have to leave the room.  How nice of her!  She complained that I ruined the surprise, though.

After breakfast and lounging around the room for a while, we went to the casino.  We each put down $24 at the blackjack table again, and walked away with more than $100 apiece!  We had paid for the previous day's shopping spree!  YAY!  We were so happy.  We put some credit to our lucky dealer, who also helped us win on the first night.

That night's dinner was another formal one, since it was a holiday.  I actually remember what we had.  I got the lasagna and Beck got the Surf and Turf.  She won big time because I sent the lasagna back for what she ordered.  This made the score 3-4, with me winning.

Since we had let the first formal night pass us by with no pictures, we went to each of the free photo shoots they had set up this time.  We took a bunch, figuring we could narrow them down after they were developed so we could decide which to buy.  It was good because Becki and I had not had nice pictures taken together since high school dances.

Then we went to check out the shops on the ship.  We had already gone through them, of course, but in the middle of them all there were selections of jewelry that was always changing.  That night it included a selection of amber.  As you know, amber is just hardened tree sap, so we were admiring the pieces.  I was especially in the seeds and leaf pieces trapped in the stones.  Becki found a necklace with the traditional Irish claddagh on it and she was debating whether to purchase it.  While I have been interested in claddagh rings for a while and have been looking for one I liked, Becki was a new admirer.  She wanted one because on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which we've been watching together, Angel gave one to Buffy.  We kept looking at the amber, and suddenly we spotted two claddagh rings with amber hearts in the middle. I picked up one and Becki picked up the other and we tried them on... and they both fit perfectly!  We decided it was fate and both bought them.  These rings were the big purchases of the trip and we were thrilled.

We squeezed in one episode of Buffy with Aubrey and Emmy (both of whom we converted to Buffy fans over the course of this cruise) before midnight.  In the Centrum, the large foyer that stretched from deck 4 to deck 11, they were going to drop hundreds of balloons at the start of the new year.  We had told Adam that we would meet him there, but once we got downstairs we realized that would be impossible.  It was WAY too crowded to find anyone in that mob.  The trip downstairs wasn't a total waste, though, because I picked up a glass of champagne for midnight, my second and final drink of the cruise (I think being legal has been wasted on me.).  We went back up to our deck, deck 10, to watch the festivities from the balcony there.  It was almost more fun because we got to help throw balloons at the people below.  It was a fun way to ring in the new year, though I wouldn't have minded if a certain someone was there to kiss me at midnight.