The R.C. was all virtuous last night and actually did her excursion reservations. Leaving me as the only slacker. Typical.

It turns out that the ship excursions are mostly scheduled to begin at 7:00 a.m., which sucks on so many levels. In fact, they're mostly scheduled to begin the instant the ship docks.

Me, I find it bizarre that if the ship is going to be in port from 7:00 a.m. until 5:00 a.m., that they couldn't pick a more reasonable excursion start time than 7:00 a.m. We're supposed to be on vacation.

Since we all know, from our reading, that they warn you to allow up to an hour to disembark and two hours to re-embark in a port, this either means we have to queue up at or before 6:00 a.m. and then add two hours to the length of the "day" for getting back on the ship, or it's all a lie and the excursions aren't really intended to leave at those times and they're just saying that to try and get everyone up to scratch by, let's say, 8:00 a.m. or something.

And since, by and large, most of the excursions are already penciled in to be 4 or 5 hours long, that makes an 8-hour day out of an "excursion" that, I'm beginning to suspect, consists of two hours' of doing something and endless hours of getting to and from.

The next time we buy Alaska, we should get it pre-shrunk, that's all I'm saying.

Also, the R.C. printed out the 10-day weather forecast for the ports we're visiting. Granted, it doesn't cover our actual trip time, but one presumes that it provides an insight into the weather we should expect, right?

Showers. Rain. Light showers. Light rain. Rain. Showers. Showers. Showers. Changes of precipitation ranging from 30% to 90%. Sheesh.

Maybe I should have bought two raincoats?

One thing I'm sure of. I don't have enough socks. I'm going to want plenty of dry socks. And plenty of pairs of shoes to change into with that much moisture pouring down all over.