"I escaped the Bali bombing by a DAY!"

Note: LJ friends on cruise ship / LJ Step-Family / LJ Band blogquizzes. (by Christa, S, and Ezza)


Eric and Jon picked me up at around 7:20-ish, and we were off to Fellowship. We discussed random things like hand sanitizer on the way over, and had much silliness in our two Bible Study groups. My group somehow got on this tangent about Brazilian food / the Bali bombing (Billy was in that restaurant the day before it got bombed!) / Indonesian and Thai food. (HUGE Alaskan king crab legs and cheap seafood) / compassion / poverty / consumerism / coffee beans and expense. After that discussion, I was understandably hungry! I talked to Chung Yan's friend Jesse, Jon, Jeremy, and Eric for a while afterwards. Then the "different woman" Teresa said hi to us, and asked us a bunch of interesting questions... well, she asked the guys the questions through me. Samples: "So is he really your brother?" (referring to Jon), "What's your name again?", "Do you know what their nationality is?" (referring to Jeremy and Eric... Jeremy's mostly German ["not Chinese!"], and Eric's French / English / Irish / German / etc. ["he's a mutt!"]), "You have a friend named Jeremy, right?" (yes, he's standing right by me!) Ah, good times!

Andrea told us that Chuck's coming at the end of July for a month: he's working for three weeks at a hospital, and then has a week off. It'll be good to see him again! I told Helen that we should get together again: maybe next time she can get the car again and everything! Her baby Nicholas has a tooth coming in, which she didn't really notice until her sister said something about it the other day. He's been cranky lately because of the heat: he HATES it! Teresa was also asking Helen odd questions like "What's your husband's name? What does he do? Where is he now? Why isn't he here? Where's the baby?" (Danny / accountant / out / not a Christian / at home with Grandma)

The guys and I learned that some people were going to Milestones, so we decided to join them, and left the church because one of the uncles was going to clean it. Teresa said that her boyfriend (the white dude I saw before) had instructed her to wait an hour before going home since he was sleeping at her place... uh, okay. o_O We were outside discussing things like name popularity (Adolf for starters) and beer, so Teresa decided to ask me how often the guys went to the bar. She took Jeremy's joke of "twice a day!" literally, so we had to clarify. I think we all know she asks oddball questions by now ("Are you all married to each other and have kids?"), so it's fine. After learning that she lived fairly close to the church, we had to go since everyone else had left ten minutes before! ("Tell Jon that things start an hour earlier. But then that won't work after a while! You have to factor in the time it takes to get places! If it's 6:50 and something starts at 7:30, you think you have lots of time... but once it gets to 7:30, you think it's started already! So people who live 10 minutes away are 10 minutes late... 30 minutes away, 30 minutes late... but it doesn't work for 2 hours away!")

At Milestones, we were split up into two tables. I saw a steak / shrimp special on the menu, plus Kobe meatloaf... but as Jeremy said, that was like 5 bowls of Pho. Besides, I wasn't THAT hungry: I eventually went with a grilled chicken salad, Jon had a chicken focaccia sandwich (normally a lunchtime item, but he was in luck), Eric had Thai chicken drumettes, and Jeremy had spinach dip. We talked about beer, music, my mom's misconception that Joan Osborne's ONE OF US was a good church kiddy choir song, Ultimate, mishearings ("fragrance," "permeate"), Spanish / English, documentaries on Guantanamo Bay, how Jeremy used to be really picky about food as a kid, Pho in travel guides, etc. Jon told Vivian that the Caribbean cruise was interesting: they kept saying "You won't see these people ever again, so you can act like idiots!" and that amused him. (there WERE a lot of young people on the ship...) We also looked at the pictures Lesley had of our friends' babies: Hannah, Megan, Nathaniel, etc.

We noticed white chocolate cheesecake and key lime pie on the dessert menu too... so good, yet we were too cheap for it. ;) Jeremy noticed a "Prickly Pear" drink, and a "Blood Orange" margarita / mojito. That led to jokes about pork blood and the chicken and the egg. We also tried guessing what the other table was eating: calamari, artichoke dip, and other things. After dropping Jeremy off on the way home, we discussed cackling / worship practice / taxis / other such stuff. It was fun, for the most part!