Thursday and Friday

Esther starts us off..... I'll start this on Thursday, September 20, because that is the day I left for the trip, driving down to Audrey's (about three hours south) to spend the night at her house. The two of us would load my car and drive the rest of the way to Los Angeles the next morning. I left my house after dinner on Thursday, thinking I should have dinner with my family one last time since this was going to be the longest I have left my six-year old daughter, Katharina (four nights!) since she was two years old. But I did leave her a series of gifts, one for each night I was gone, so the truth of the matter was that she couldn't wait for me to leave so she could open her first gift.

I got to Audrey's around 10 pm and we immediately set about bagging up all the Caryvention goodies – programs, crossword puzzle books, t-shirts, photo albums – and labeling them with attendee names. We finished it all rather quickly because Audrey was so organized...Jan and I had sent most everything to her so it would all be in one place, and Audrey had everything for the Caryvention organized into bins and ready to go. We went to bed about 1 am...not too bad!

The next morning Audrey woke me at 6...maybe it was 6:30. At any rate I groaned and went back to sleep for half an hour ...lol. She is too kind as she really should have tossed me out of bed at that point. We loaded up the car and got on the road after 8...later than we should have. According to Royal Caribbean we were supposedly able to check in an early as noon, and we wanted to get there before other attendees boarded.

I drove about 90 MPH (when I could) but we were still just going over the Grapevine (north of LA) around noon, and very afraid of the traffic ahead because we had a long way to go to get down to Long Beach. We were constantly on the cell phone with Jan, who was already in a Long Beach hotel with Nancy and others – obviously they beat us to the ship! But we did get there a little after 1 pm (amazingly the traffic through LA was not bad) and we were so excited when we pulled up to the pier and saw the huge ship called Monarch of the Seas! It was beautiful!

Check-in was easy and we saw Sandy first! That was very exciting because I hadn't seen my "Mom" in months, and the fact that she was coming to CV just doubled the fun.

Things get fuzzy here because I don't remember what we did first...I think we went up to our room, laughed at the size of it (Jan, Audrey and I were sharing a triple, which is really just a double room with a third bed that pulls down from the wall, NxNW style).

At this point of course we met up with Jan (who was getting TWO SETS of birthday flowers! And her birthday wasn't even until the next day!) and we started seeing other warbrides in the hallway which was SO great! The first day of CV is always so fun – seeing everyone and getting all the hugs!

We went to check out the conference room which ended up being perfect – it was a split level room with plenty of tables, and a nice big screen for watching Cary J We had a little scare at first because we thought they had double booked us with another group (a scrapbooking group...they were not nice). But it turned out that we had just been moved to a bigger, better room!

We had a nice table in front of the conference center where we could sit and welcome the warbrides and pass out the attendee bags. This was also a fun place to sit because people (regular passengers) kept coming up and asking general questions about the ship. We started answering questions when we could – "where's the spa?" "Deck Nine." The funniest thing was when someone walked up and said, "Business Services?" in a way that was more of a statement than a question, and we said we hadn't a clue where it was. After the guy left, I looked at the wall behind us and in big gold letters it said BUSINESS SERVICES. I think I laughed for an hour. Of course at this point warbrides were still coming up the table too (some I was meeting for the first time) so I'm sure they thought I was a nut. (Or drunk before we even set sail!)

At 4:30 we all (everyone on the whole ship) had to gather on the decks for the muster inspection – we had to put on the life jackets and hear about what to do in case of emergency. The speakers were fuzzy though so I couldn't hear much – plus I was too busy talking to Kim and Laurie about them hosting the next CV (hint hint J). If nothing else, the muster drill was a great photo op with all the warbrides in life jackets.

Dinner was great and the waiters were sooo nice. We had the same waiter the whole cruise and he was really wonderful and attentive. That night the wait staff all paraded through the dining room and sang a couple of songs.

At 8 pm Audrey, Jan and I went up to the Voyager Room to get everything ready. People started trickling in between 8 and 8:30 and pretty much everyone was there by 8:30. We played our first game, an ice breaker which was fun and revealing. Speaking of ice, at this point we also revealed a special "guest" – the Cary Grant ice sculpture! He was so cool! (ha!ha! sorry...) Well, it was not an exact likeness but I must say he did look better as the evening wore on – something about the way he melted softened his features and by the time they took him away I was sad to see him go. (Be sure to watch the water spill...the carpet was still wet 24 hours later!)

The great thing was that he was huge – when we ordered him we couldn't get a straight answer as to how big he would be so we were thinking he could be human head sized, but he was a good three or four feet tall. Even if it wasn't a good likeness it was amazing to see the artistry that goes into something like that. And he did have the cleft chin! hehe. Again, if nothing else, the Cary ice sculpture was a GREAT photo op!

Next we did our main game of the evening...decorating table runners. This was so much fun, and everyone got really involved. Each table was to be decorated to represent a decade of Cary's career (30s, 40s, 50s, 60s). We laid down butcher paper on each of four rectangular tables, and gave each table a pile of printed images (about 3 x 5 size) with iconic images from the decades – other entertainers, news items, world leaders. People worked together in groups at each table, first sorting the images (because we mixed up all the decades on purpose!)
 

The 60s table was also a masterpiece. Amanda is a real life artist and it showed! And Brian (Tina's boyfriend) was a good sport about being put to work on the construction-paper-crop-duster. lol

The 50s table was chaos...Picasso ended up with a poodle skirt and a shirt of glitter...Elvis asks, "Am I as hot as Cary Grant?" (That was for Cheryl) The captions were hilarious!                                                     

The 40s...lol...probably the most intense table. Renee, a real life museum curator, made a nice section on the war...and Sandy was a gluing, glittering machine... she was just SURE that someone was taking it from their table – and suddenly glitter began reappearing from other tables! Not to mention the fact that somebody "stole the Andrews Sisters!"

Finally it was time to watch the first movie of the Caryvention – The Woman Accused. Such a cool little movie...and very much in keeping with our cruise/water theme...and Cary in the pool is to die for.