Weird, But in a Good Way

Ben and I have been discussing going on a Disney Cruise during spring break for a couple of months. I finally bought the 2011 book on Friday (I was waiting for the new edition to come out), and started reading it yesterday. Today I started looking at available rooms for the cruise and week that we needed - we are very limited as far as our dates go. We knew we wanted the 4-day Bahama cruise, but what we didn't know was that Disney is putting a new boat in the water for the Bahamian cruises starting in January. That means lots of people want to cruise on it soon. And spring break is really popular. So when I got online to look at availability, the cruise we wanted was very full. We needed to book very soon. So I called Disney right away, and most of my evening has been taken up with planning. We ended up in a more expensive stateroom than we wanted, but it was either that or splitting up with one adult and one kid per room, with no guarantee the rooms would even close to each other.

When I got it booked, I posted it on Facebook. About an hour later, I got a Facebook message from Kathy Holthouse - she's married to Ross, who shared an apartment with Ben at college. All four of us were in the band together. And they booked the same cruise last week.

So Kathy immediately called me, and we compared info. We don't know our Deck number yet, but we are in the same type of stateroom and I think we'll be one deck above them. Even better, their daughter is Maria's age, their son is Sam's age. They've met a few times - the girls hit it off, but Sam doesn't remember Ryan. Anyway, the kids only stuff is broken up by age - 5-10 yrs old, 11-13 years old, and 14-17 years old. So I was a little worried about Maria and Sam being separated when the did Kids Only stuff - but now they each have someone they know who will be with them. Kathy and I are each arranging to get in touch with Disney tomorrow so we can be at the same dinner table each night.

We just can't get over how weird this is - Ross and Kathy and us seem to be leading somewhat parallel lives. We didn't keep in close touch for many years after college, but they have been coming to Ben's birthday parties the last two years. This would be one of those cases where Facebook helped us reconnect. Anyway, the parallel lives part - we have kids the same age, we both have the same kinds of cars, we both like to vacation at Kiawah Island and Disney, and they even have the same furniture as we do. They both work at the same place too - they both work at P&G, Ben and I both teach at the same school.

But we're looking forward to this vacation even more now. But we have to wait a while - we leave six months from tomorrow.