#3 - The Sneaky Sisters Surprise

Some people sure can keep a secret.  Like Rebecca and Fran and their co-conspirator Jen.  I had never met Rebecca and her sister Fran.  Yet after many hours of talking on the phone with Rebecca, I felt as if I knew her well.  They are clients of ours and have booked many cruises with us, mostly on Seabourn.  Every time they’d book another cruise, they’d ask me if Jeff and I could come along.  They said they are known aboard as the “Fun Sisters” and I had no doubt that was the case.  The desire was always there to travel with them, but the timing just never worked out.

Many months ago I told them we were going to go on this cruise and I tried to talk them into going at least as far as Tahiti with us if they couldn’t go the entire way to New Zealand.  But Rebecca had just sold her house and the timing wasn’t good for her.  So we lamented over this missed opportunity and hoped there would be another some day soon.

On the second day on board, we got a note in our stateroom inviting us to dinner at the Thomas Keller Grill.  I had made a couple of reservations at the Grill before we left, so I just assumed this was one of our reserved evenings.  But when we walked into the dining room this red head sauntered over to us and asked if we were Jeff and Diane.  Hmmm I thought, who would know our names?  Only 24 hours on the ship and we already had a reputation?  Must have been something Jeff did.  

Yup, you guessed it.  The redhead was Rebecca and there next to her was Fran.  They knew all along they were going on this trip and with the help of our travel agent colleague Jen, they kept it a secret from us.  Sneaky, Shifty, and Slick are the names we have given to the three of them.

Well, Rebecca and Fran are certainly living up to their reputation as the Fun Sisters.  We’ve been playing Mexican Train dominoes together and taking art classes where we made bracelets from volcanic beads.   I determined that we can rule out jewelry making as one of my talents.  For that matter we can also rule out painting with water color.  The sun in my painting was a lovely shade of puke yellow, the trees clearly were suffering from some dreaded blight, and what should have been a lovely lake looked more like a polluted bog full of scum.  I am sure I have other talents.  Am still searching. 

Sneaky and Shifty also introduced us to a wonderful health food today.  It is called Affogatto.   You take one large scoop of vanilla ice cream and drown it with a double shot of espresso.  Then you top it off with Baileys Irish cream.  It is a health food because the ice cream contains a generous amount of calcium.  And we all know how important that is for our bones as we age.   And the generous amount of Baileys is good because it helps us forget that our bones are aging.