Sorry I haven't been around here since school started!  The first two weeks are so exhausting.  I just come home and mindlessly watch TV until I fall asleep LOL.  Last night (Friday night), I lay down to take a "nap" at 7 p.m. and ended up sleeping the whole night.  I woke up a couple of times but didn't actually get up until about 9:30 the next morning.  I figure I got around twelve hours of actual sleep, which was lovely.  Thank god we have a 3-day weekend!

Mare, I did watch your TikTok video, and you did a great job talking about books!  It doesn't have to be anything fancy.  I often think about how cringey most of those TikTok dance videos are going to seem ten years from now.  A lot of them give me secondhand embarrassment now - usually the ones with teachers doing random dance moves in the middle of their empty classroom with captions that are totally unrelated to their weird dance moves.  I don't get it. LOL

I hope you're having an amazing time on your cruise!  I saw that your travels got off to a rough start, but I hope things got better once you boarded the ship.  I didn't realize it was so complicated as far as reserving tables for dinner and all that.  We didn't have to do that on the BSB cruises, but I've never been on a regular cruise, so I would have had no idea.  I'm with you on the white night thing too.  They had a white party in Cancun, and I did buy a beachy white dress to wear off Amazon, but I will probably never wear it again outside of another white themed event.  I am super pale, so I don't look good in white.  It was hard to find a white dress that wouldn't make me look like a bride, a ghost, or a marshmallow.  Steph, I'm with you on not wanting to dress up fancy for black tie night either.  I like casual dresses, but I hate having to buy something really fancy that I'm only going to wear once.

Mare, I'm sure once you're on the ship you'll be able to go to the MDR and ask them to change your meal times.  They are very helpful.  When I tried to book meals before the cruise I could only pick crappy times like 8pm (I also like to eat earlier).  But when we were on the ship we found we could eat whenever we wanted really.  On ours you had to join a virtual queue and when your table was ready you get a notification, we never had to wait long.  I don't know if yours will be the same, but I'm sure you'll be able to eat early as most people want to eat about 7pm before the shows start at about 8.30.

Have an amazing time

I joined a FB group specifically made for this cruise. I didn't know they did things like that but virtually there's usually one person who will make a group for your cruise. It's been really helpful to read info. One of the things I had NO clue about until two days ago was how the main dining room worked. When I booked this cruise with a travel agent, which also happened to be an old friend from high school, she never mentioned anything about tables and how the MDR works so I was under the impression this whole time, that each night you could either choose the buffet or the MDR and that if you chose the dining room they would seat you like they would at a restaurant.

Turns out most people were asked if they wanted early or late dinner and if they wanted to sit in a group or just by their own party. I missed out on all of that. There is a dining room called my time dining, but you have to reserve a table each night. Well, by the time I found this out and tried to reserve tables, the earliest available on most nights was after 8! I managed to book about 5 nights out of the 9 but the earliest we were able to get was 6:45. The majority of them are at 7:15. I usually eat dinner at 5.

I have been kind of annoyed about this. I mean, the buffet is well and good, but I was really trying to avoid having to go there for every single meal. The other thing that sucks with this plan is because of the lateness, we are pretty much missing out on all the shows because they schedule them at around 8 on this ship and we'll be eating when they are performing.

I guess it's my fault for not asking further questions. She had asked me what do you feel about dining, and I had answered we would want to just sit the two of us and be able to go whenever we want. It would have been helpful if she actually explained the whole reservation thing. Sorry I'm ranting here. She's my FB friend so I don't want to complain on there. LOL

Other than that, I'm pretty excited. I'm almost all packed. Tomorrow morning, we drop of the animals at their little pet hotel and then around noon we're making the 6 hour trek to Newark NJ. It's only about 30 minutes to the port from there and then on noon Thursday, we get on the boat! 

You don't have to take part in the theme nights if you don't want to.  On our cruise they had black tie night and celebration night where you had to dress up to get in to most restaurants.  We dressed up for the celebration night as I already had a nice dress and Tim had a suit.  But we weren't dressing up really fancy for the black tie event lol.  So on that night we ate at one of the casual places and wore jeans and a t-shirt.

Not everyone wants to take part, so you'll be fine

It stinks you have to sign up for all of these things. I feel like I'm having to sign up for something new every day.

And now that the cruise is 6 days away, they have been posting the activities on the app and there is a theme night each night and one of them is all white attire. That would have been helpful to know a while ago and not less than a week away. I own absolutely zero white things. I don't wear white because I stain things too easily and it's not a very flattering color and I'm not about to go spend money on something white that I'll never wear again, so I hope I'm not publicly shamed because I'm not dressed like everyone else. We all already know how much I hate theme things to begin with. LOL

Yes when I sometimes click on a FB thing it takes me there and asks me to create an account, which I've not done yet lol.  Maybe I'll have to sign up for it

I refuse to call it X lol I tend to forget all about TikTok until I click on a FB reel from there and go oh yeah, I haven't been there in a while.

Hope your first day back in school goes well   And your writing goes in the direction you want it to go.

Mare, I don't use TikTok but I'll see if I can have a look.  In fact I only use Facebook and Instagram as forgot my Twitter details lol, or X as it's called now.

Just wanted to come in and wish you a great first day of school! Hopefully it’ll be a fun year and a good class!

My TikTok is @egypt18015

I also realized I never answered your question about writing in first person. I enjoy writing in first person too much to give it up. I've only written one in this fandom, but when and if I ever do make the sequel to Tumbledown, which is my first person one, I'd do that one in first as well. I don't know why but I find it easier to first in that point of view. Probably because I'm so dialogue driven and not as into descriptions.