Travel journal

Used to do this but gave it up. Just may start again.

I actually started to keep a journal of each cruise a few cruises ago. I have a small 10" netbook (sort of like a large tablet sized laptop) that I take with me on cruises. I use it as extra storage to empty my camera onto and connect if I decide to but also to keep a journal. I will open up a document every evening before retiring and usually when waiting for the wife before dinner to update it on the days events. I include pretty well everything that we did during the day as well as what we enjoyed for meals. I have referred to it a number of times after a cruise to confirm something or when my memory reminds me that I am not so young anymore. I really enjoy doing it.

I've tried but get so busy I forget to write things and can't catch up. I am not disciplined enough...just to scatter brained for keeping one. I applaud anyone who does.

I have a sort of journal. My journal is mostly made of pictures which I seem to take a lot of (many can be viewed here if you like) This just helps me looking back at the cruise at things I felt we particularly interesting. I try to caption some of them if what is happening is not obvious from looking at them.

I started doing something similar years ago. However, I should go into more detail as others do. For instance, what we ate and where we ate. I store the info in a number of different places, which I constantly go back to for reference. It gets so bad sometimes I have to check these notes to find out if we have been in such and such port before. I first just did periodic emails to the kids back home (to let them know we were okay) and a few friends, in which I described shore excursions and shipboard events of interest.

Once in a while I might attach one or two pictures but back then it took a lot of Internet time and money to download them. I compose when I'm not on line, so when I get ready to post it only takes a few minutes. Some years ago I began using F.B. as they compact pictures, I find the F.B. picture quality to be superior to using emails and I can send a dozen pictures plus my harangue in just minutes.

I read somewhere, one time, that doing this is like inviting guests over for dinner then putting on a slide show of your travels. I disagree, using an Internet format isn't making anybody watch anything. Nevertheless, I have had good friends give me a bad time as their wives would read my stuff then give them h__l for being such skinflints and never treating them to a cruise. LOL. Anyway, about ten years or so ago I decided to quit doing that and just send our kids the stories.

However, before I got around to terminating these, the wife of very close friends of ours talked to my wife. Years before they had retired in northern California from commercial fishing in Alaska. Her husband and I went all the way through the 12th grade together in a school on the coast of Alaska. Not only that, we used to hunt, fish and trap together when we were kids and their children and ours pretty much grew up together. My friend had been dying of cancer. Neither one of them wrote much so I didn't realize they were even following my spiels. She said that he couldn't wait to receive my next "editions".

I have thought about it, but then I would lose plausible deniability with my wife

Basically, I am just too lazy to write it all down.