Pond Meadow!

Today I decided I'd go to the park. So many people told me to go to the apple orchard, but I threw a fuss until Sparkle and Billy Bob agreed to let us go. So we wound up at Pond Meadow Park. We stopped to cross at a bridge in the first stretch. It was in front of a small body of water. Pretty clear. 

"What if I fell off of this bridge? I'd need such a huge bath!" -Billy Bob

Deciding that we'd prance along the trail until we saw something noticeable, Sparkle suggested that we stay on the right side of the road. Didn't want to get run over by some bicyclist. We stopped at another bridge, but this one was with murkier water. 

"Billy Bob, whatcha doin' looking at the ground? The sky's so pretty today!" -Sparkle

We saw this tree that had some sort of dog-like look to it, and Billy Bob decided to mention that it had some sort of semblance to me. So we took this picture, just in case I could ever use it against Billy Bob at his wedding. 

"Look, I'm telling you, it's got a long nose, and you've got a snout! But you don't have a tail. And you both kind of have the same body," -Billy Bob

So we came upon this tree that had a branch that was so much darker than the trunk. Almost like it'd been struck by lightning. But there hadn't been lightning since two weeks ago. Hmmm...note to self: ask DonDon and his freaky weather machine to figure out all occurrences of thunder and lightning. 

"Does anyone know why the branch is so darn dark? No one? Anybody? Sir, how about..oh. Sorry Billy Bob,"

We grabbed a couple of seats on this set of five tree trunks; after of course staring at the fact that there were FIVE tree trunks in one go. Billy Bob, of course, was happy to hang in between two tree trunks, while Sparkle and I pretended to have tea. 

"Sparkle, do you think you can pass me the sugar?" -me

    

We saw a dam up in the distance clogging a small pond, and we just HAD to be on top of it. Just absolutely had to. But first, we'd end up having to climb these wooden log steps--and they're a lot steeper than they look! Haha, you should've seen how much water Sparkle was chugging at the end of the climb. 

"Guys...you realize we're pretty much on the SECOND step?" -me

Once we'd climbed the log stairs, and had descended some suspicious metal ones, we were finally on the dam. For some reason, Billy Bob and Sparkle decided that they'd play "I Spy," and kept finding a bunch of bright orange dots...

"YES BILLY BOB, I KNOW THAT YOU SEE A BRIGHT YELLOW DOT!" -me

Well, you know how Billy Bob is about heights--he HATES THEM. Completely. I only got him to take this shot if I promised him a batch of rainbow cupcakes. That hippo loves rainbow cupcakes. 

"Ummm...Perky? I don't wanna be looking down! So can I look up instead and still get my rainbow cupcakes?" -Billy Bob

For some reason, Billy Bob wasn't scared of the rock that was still about ten feet in the air. Maybe it's because Sparkle was doing the can-can at the bottom of the rock. You can't see it though. 

"Hey Sparkle! Hey! Hey Sparkle! Can you do the Macarena?" -me

I saw this giant remain of a campfire up ahead, and wasn't going to resist sitting next to it--after all, it's not like anyone else was going to use it! Right? Billy Bob and Sparkle agreed to come too-although I just think that they wanted to see some accidental bacon if I slipped. 

"Perky, you're not gonna fall, are you? Because I think I'm running out of bacon, and..." -Sparkle

I got my revenge on Sparkle at the end of the hike, when we were all due for some long-needed hydration. I danced around with a full water bottle while Sparkle ended up having to chase me around jumping. That's sweet revenge for you! :D

"Look, Perky! Just give me the water bottle and I promise nothing will happen!" -Sparkle

We also managed to exclude him out of our little stone campfire-but I think that it was due to the fact that Sparkle was chugging water like a mad pig. 

"Billy Bob, I don't understand why you insist on smelling the campfire. Even though it doesn't burn, it's still gonna smell funny!" -me

   

So that was my little walk in the park :) love, Perky

Cruising: Day 2

For some reason, my motion sickness didn't kick in yesterday, and now that we were actually on our way to Bermuda, motion sickness decided to pay me a little visit. So I pretty much spent the morning in bed, trying to get rid of my headache. DonDon's kicked in too. He was worse, though, and spent the morning out on the balcony looking for fresh air. 

"Don't be fooled! My head still hurts! A lot! But I think that the balcony air is doing some good!" -Perky

We were still not feeling so good, so we ordered room service for lunch. Did you know that there's FREE room service on this ship? Not after midnight, though. But who would want to eat at midnight. Okay, maybe me. But I wouldn't do that. The only thing I want to eat at midnight is chocolate. And I think we have to pay for that. I decided to venture out after to the Pearly Kings' pub. I know what you're thinking. There wasn't anybody drinking at two o' clock int he afternoon anyways. There was, however, some Wii going on. But I decided to try some karaoke anyways. Turns out my best song is not one by One Direction...but they said it was the best song ever!

"AND WE DANCE ALL NIGHT TO THE BEST SONG...sorry! I didn't mean to squeak on that last note!"

Hearing my squeaky singing all the way from deck 11, ( I was on deck 7 again) DonDon and Sparkle came to investigate what might have been a case of Spongebob singing. (They later told me that they took bets: either a cat had acquired a voice box, or I was singing. Apparently, DonDon won that bet.) We decided to get some drinks to rest my vocal chords. Took us about ten minutes to realize, though, that we were looking in the wrong place: the alcohol. 

"What's a tequila? I've never heard of that! The closest I've heard is tempura! And I ate that!" -DonDon

The drinks were pretty much abandoned: No one wants to serve a confused pig, I learned. As a matter of fact, I don't think that there was anyone to serve us, anyways. Maybe they all had motion sickness, too. So we went out onto the outer deck to play some shuffleboard. Not that any of actually knew how to play. We sort of just made it up as we went along...

"That's sixteen points for me!" -Perky
"That's only eight! The fact that you're on the line doesn't count!" -DonDon

In the end, it was Sparkle that took eight out of ten games that we ended up playing, one of which DonDon almost ended up overboard if it hadn't been for the rail guards. It started raining after that, so we all went inside. Sparkle hates getting his sweater wet. It's got built-in air conditioning. There was a cupcake-making session in the cafe, so we decided to go there. 

"Hmm. I think that the frosting needs to be higher. And that I need more sprinkles. You can never have enough sprinkles!" 

It was fancy dinner night, which only meant one thing: we had to dress up for this! For me, it meant taking a bath. Poor DonDon ended up having to put on a tie, though. And Billy Bob actually had to wear a suit and tie. He was groaning about it through the entire meal. We went to a French restaurant, Le Bistro. We got the menu, and it was pretty much in French. When you have one pig that took French, having two pigs and a hippo depend on you to order isn't fun. To get my revenge on Sparkle for insulting my voice and telling me I had a voice like a dying cat, I ordered for him the escargots. And I didn't tell him that 'escargot' was short for 'snails'. 

"Perky? What exactly are escargots? Perky? Are you gonna tell me what they are? Are you? Perky....? PERKY???"             -Sparkle

DonDon pretty much massacred his way through his French pronunciations, but I think it was alright. More likely that the waiters didn't know French either. He still got his Atlantic salmon. He's was really on a seafood roll there. First lobster, and now salmon..

"Does somebody want to tell me what those green things on top of my fish are? I'm pretty sure it's not asparagus... or large stalks of broccoli," -DonDon

In a restaurant of foods they didn't know, I think that Billy Bob and Sparkle wanted to play it safe. Meat was meat, they reasoned, but too much meat was a lot for one of them. So they ordered some duck and potatoes. But in a French restaurant, there are endless surprises. Just like the potatoes on their plate. 

"Are these scallops or potatoes? I'm not really sure what they are..."

This being a French restaurant, of course dessert was in order. Isn't that what the French are famous for? Their dessert? But all of that went out the window when we saw the fondue. The CHOCOLATE fondue. We all ordered a pot, and since it was "Fondue For Two", I think we all got weird looks from the waiter. Especially DonDon. Ordering a fondue for two people and being such a small pig..

"Now remember DonDon, try to not to go too crazy with the chocolate. You remember what happened last time," -Billy Bob
"Actually, I don't actually remember what happened last time..." -DonDon

Unfortunately, DonDon didn't listen to any of us, and ended up overdosing on chocolate, leaving us to drag him up about 4 decks to our room. He was jumping up and down the entire time, so there were people dodging us all the way up. And then Billy Bob lost his room card, so we had to stop and look for that...Finally, we managed to get him back into the room, and had to douse him with cold water from the shower. I guess it should be known that whenever DonDon recovers, he gets sleepy. Really sleepy. So sleepy, in fact, that he decided he'd sleep in the shower. Fine for us...that meant that Sparkle got his own bed. You should have seen how excited he was about that. 

See you tomorrow! :D

Cruising: Day 1

While I do admit that I do have an extreme fear of being dropped in the water since I was almost dropped in Cape Cod, I took the week to go on a cruise!! They always said that things would happen when pigs flew, but what about when pigs cruise?? Or three pigs and a hippo? Well...when three pigs (ME PERKY :D Sparkle and DonDon) and a hippo (BILLY BOB :D) go cruising...here's what happens!

We took the Norwegian Dawn ship. It was lunchtime when we got on, so we ate in a main dining room called Venetian. I'm not sure that Billy Bob was expecting to see onion rings when he ordered the calamari, but that's what the waiter gave us...

"Guys? If they're onion rings, then where's my sauce? I'm not sure butter tastes yummy with onion rings!" -Billy Bob

And don't even ask me what Sparkle was thinking with this salad. Everyone knows that pigs and shrimp do not mix. You don't see it here, but Sparkle was definitely feeling the effects of the shrimp later.

"I thought that the menu said fish! Not shrimp! I don't even like shrimp! Not like that!" -Sparkle

As for me, I had the spring rolls. I have a habit of eating new foods. Probably was not the best idea to eat the chili sauce straight from the bowl. I pretty much had my snout in my water glass after...

"Okay, Billy Bob! You win! I have a very low spice tolerance and I lied when I said I ate that really spicy curry last night!" -Perky 

DonDon pretty much took the cake when he ate his choice. He couldn't even finish the chips, although I know that Billy Bob was looking at them with a really hungry look on his face. He probably would have eaten them, too, if the waiter hadn't taken the plate away. 

"Billy Bob! Stop looking at my chips! I know that you want them really badly, but you're drooling on the table!"
-DonDon

After lunch, DonDon decided that he'd disappear on all three of us. It took us about an hour, but we finally tracked him down pool deck, about to start a game of checkers. We rescued him before it could turn into a checker massacre. DonDon hates losing.

"No seriously guys, I WAS WINNING. There was absolutely no need to rescue me!"

At around that time, the boat decided that it was going to leave the harbor. We went out to the deck to see if there was any difference in movement. At first, there wasn't, but soon Sparkle and Billy Bob were stumbling around the boat like pros. 

"Hey look! I can see the Statue of Liberty!" -DonDon
"DONDON! We're. In. Boston. Even I know that your eyesight isn't that good! You're a pig!" -Sparkle

Billy Bob actually got so thrown off by the motion of the boat that he thought a nap was in order. I was feeling pretty sleepy too, at that moment, and we all decided to take a siesta. By the time we woke up, it was time for dinner, and after an odd game of rock-paper-scissors-hoof, it looked like Venetian for dinner again. Sparkle ordered first--he got the classic onion soup. I don't think he was expecting the giant piece of cheese, though. 

"Something tells me that my snout is stuck in the soup...I think it's the fact that I can't breathe...." -Sparkle

Billy Bob did slightly better with his choice. He got the smoked salmon tartare. Nobody really wanted to tell him that he was eating raw fish. Not the best thing you want to tell a hippo when he's in a fancy restaurant. Better to tell him later. 

"WOOHOO! TOAST! Wait. What's that white stuff? Am I going to want to eat it?" -Billy Bob

I ordered the braised lamb shank, and I gotta say that the butternut squash was amazing! I probably would have ordered three more bowls, but then DonDon, our resident food connoisseur, told me that there was a separate dessert menu, I shut up about the butternut squash. 

"Perky, you are not eating all of those beans! I forbid you to eat all of those beans! You'll be farting endlessly in your sleep! And I'm bunking with you!" -Billy Bob

DonDon was already missing the seafood back home--apparently he eats it about every other day--and decided to have the surf and turf, which included his very only lobster tail. And they were only offering the lobster for that night, so it was an obvious choice.

"Is there any way that I could order about ten more plates of lobster tails?" -DonDon

True to his word, the dessert menu that DonDon had mentioned came soon after we polished off our entrees. I had to say, it was pretty impressive...and it didn't stop any of us from ordering dessert, despite our full stomachs. I was on vacation! Who was going to stop me? Besides the stomachaches, of course...Ah well. Chocolate panna cotta, here I come!

"Yes, I know, DonDon, panna cotta is supposed to be really good, but I think you're drooling on the plate! Nope. You're drooling on the table," -Perky

Sparkle went against the grain and ordered his very own key lime pie. It was pretty much the hit of the night. Every one of us had a forkful, but I'm pretty sure that Sparkle kept diving his nose into it. I wanted to order a slice of my own, but I didn't want to look like--well, a pig. But it's a bit silly, since I'm already a pig...

"The cream! The top! The pie! MMPH! Billy Bob, I told you NOT to shove the lime in my mouth! It's sour! Ugh. Now I have to chug water endlessly!" -Sparkle

I guess you should know that DonDon and Billy Bob are both huge fans of chocolate. But they hate admitting it. Probably due to an incident a couple of months ago that involved a chocolate fountain and Billy Bob's snout. And a large amount of marshmallows. Yeah. That wasn't too pretty. But it was still some chocolate ice cream for the both of them.

"Okay, DonDon, you eat half of this ice cream, and I'll eat the other half," -Billy Bob
"But there's only one spoon," -DonDon
"Are you afraid to share a spoon, DonDon? Because I certainly remember when we were at that ice cream competition..." -Billy Bob
"Okay! You win! Just don't bring that up!" -DonDon

There was a gorgeous sunset going on by the time we'd chomped down dinner, and since it was pretty much free, we dashed up to our room, room 11066, to see it from our balcony. A little word about this ship: Venetian was on deck 7. Our room is on deck 11. It's a flight of stairs between each deck. Moral of this story, always take the elevator when making a deck jump like that. The stairs are not fun. 

"Why is the sun touching the water? I thought that the sun always ended up touching the land!" -Perky

Billy Bob even braved his seasickness to pose with the sunset. It's about a once in a lifetime opportunity. 

"I think there's too much wind rushing past my ears...WHAT WAS THAT YOU SAID PERKY? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!" -Billy Bob

So that was pretty much our first day on the ship. We didn't do much; there was a lot of unpacking to do..and then Billy Bob thought he'd start a pillow fight. DonDon thought it would be entertaining to flush the toilet repeated times...and every time the toilet flushed, it would roar. Loudly. See you tomorrow!