So today was the day that the JoCo Cruise announced (and eventually opened for booking) the shore excursions for the cruise for 2016. And I was over the moon excited — even though that means today was a pretty expensive day (this week will be expensive with lots of bills to pay of various sorts anyhow).
Seeing as I got booked into the two (and only two) excursions I really wanted, I'm pretty pleased. I'm sure that if/when I get off the boat for other shore visits I'll have a perfectly fine time without excursions. Exploring the beach should be fine regardless. In any case, I'm excited and slowly planning this vacation of mine as the days pass.
This month is the month where my final bill is due for the general cruise itself. And I'll have no problems paying it (though I'd really much prefer a better US exchange rate), but money's tighter than I would otherwise prefer: I can afford this vacation primarily because I left my stable job in the spring, but of course doing so provided much uncertainty and that uncertainty stresses me a bit, even while I'm getting excited about a real true vacation sans conference or convention to attend (not that I dislike conferences or conventions, but this'll be a vacation for me!).
I've also narrowed down my options for the Orlando portion of my trip — I think I've decided to spend a day at Universal Studios and a day at Epcot, as well as an evening at Cirque and a couple of days of simple downtime at hotels (though one of those days of downtime will be more busy seeing as I'm staying at the JoCoCruise hotel for a while…).
I'm hoping that my strategy of booking a solo vacation into a cruise filled with fellow geeks/awesome people means that if/when I want social time I'll get it and make some good friends too. And there seems to be enough introverted people going on this cruise that if I want to escape and have some downtime that'll be perfectly A-OK too. It'll be hard to decide just how much of what to do with my time… especially since I rather do love playing board games, literature, music and whatnot. It'll be a cruise FILLED with things to do and hopefully the chance to meet a few folks that I've been a fan of for a while and/or whom I've yet to discover/meet. Currently I've not met any of the other attendees and so that'll be interesting (if perhaps a bit daunting) when it comes to experiences… though Jon has assured me that at least a few of the cruise goers are rather good people to interact with in person so there's that.
Hopefully I'll get all my anxieties/worries re: cruise vacation out of my system long before actually leaving in February… but in the interim, I suppose I'll get alternatively excited/worried. And right now I'm concerned that I'll have such a good time that I'll want to budget to go again in other subsequent years, but not be able to afford it. Of course, as far as worries go, that's not utterly impossible to deal with.