I'm getting ready to go on a cruise ship, my first. I've always wanted to go on a cruise -- I don't know why. The desire could have come from watching Love Boat as a kid (anything to get outta homework, eh?). A group of six of us (me and Tess, brother Shawn and his wife Lauren, my uncle John and brother in-law Zac; Trey and his wife were set to go but might not) are heading out tomorrow.

It's sort of an event, this cruise. We're going to go to Catalina island and see The Ventures play at the Casino, then we sail to Ensenada to see Los Straitjackets in concert at some unamed venue there. I've never seen either band, but I own every CD Los Straitjackets has put out, and I've wanted to see The Ventures since I was a kid. Uncle John has a farily impressive record collection which includes many albums from the 60's (and earlier/later). He has a lot of Ventures albums (has some on reel-to-reel tape even), and I remember listening to one in particular. I don't remember the name of it, but it had a big "The Ventures play only Mosrite guitars" advertisement looking thing on the back cover. We listened to it over and over whenever we were at uncle John's house.

So it's safe to say that we're all fans of the surf guitar, and it doesn't get any better than either The Ventures or Los Straitjackets. The cruise should be a hoot. I mean, seeing The Ventures live has been something I've wanted to do since I was probably 15. Seeing them at the Casino on Catalina is just some super-friggin-cool icing on the cake (a couple years ago, Tess and I saw Dick Dale at the Casino and had an amazing time).

I'm getting everything ready, packing, and right now I'm putting stuff on that old laptop I lugged to England last fall. I put a bigger (4GB -- whew!) hard drive in it, and my plan is that everyone can take a lot of digital pictures and then upload them to the laptop. I'm also hoping that people won't mind writing a note or two about the day's pics while they copy the files (it can't take a couple minutes to read the SmartMedia cards, so they'll be sitting there anyway). That'll give us some nice annotation for the images. I'm also putting a spare Orinoco card in it and installing NetStumbler. I don't know if the cruise ship has 802.11b on it. but I figure it won't hurt to find out, eh?

Anyway, I made a new category for these entries, and I'll likely move the London entries to it as well. I'll probably wind up taking this beater laptop on all my trips and takes notes/pics like I've done. I was thinking the other night that I would have loved to read about our last London trip as it happened, so it's good to have a running account.

Hmmm, just had a thought: What I really need is a real travel laptop, like a Panasonic Toughbook. I can get an old used one on ebay for cheap. Magnesium alloy case, gell-encased hard drive, almost water proof keyboard, moisture/dust port covers, carrying handle... everything you could need. The newer ones even have built-in wireless networking. Yes, very nice. Maybe someday...