Pam and Steve started the year with a 5-day Caribbean cruise with about 14 friends and neighbors. The ship was Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas. Steve and Pam remembered this ship from their first cruise back in 2005. Explorer had been renovated fairly recently but was a pretty small cruise ship by today’s standards.
Pam had been dealing with a fracture in her foot for most of the fall/winter. This had put a serious crimp in their dancing lifestyle. Luckily, her doctor had just given her a green light for dancing again and she was eager to try that out. They managed to find a number of dancing opportunities and used them.
Only one of their friends on the ship had actually seen them dancing before (Annette, at her daughter’s wedding). One night, one of the venues offered an hour of ballroom dancing music and Steve and Pam checked it out. The event was at 4:00pm and they had the venue to themselves. About 8 of their gang came to watch and said very nice things about their dancing skills.
Steve’s dad turned 90 this year, so in May, Steve and Pam made their way up to the Frozen North to help celebrate. They flew up to Buffalo and drove a rental over to Toronto-ish. They had a fun visit.
Another milestone in 2024 was Corwin’s 40th birthday. Pam and Steve were all set fly up on the evening of July 3rd, when Steve collapsed in Jason’s Deli during lunch. To add icing on the cake (so to speak), he threw up on his way down. Complicating matters, he hit his noggin on his way down. The ambulance folks were called and they said that Steve looked OK now, but since he’d hit his noggin, he should have his head examined in a hospital.
The hospital folks said that the only thing really wrong with Steve was that he had COVID. Pam was looking/feeling pretty wobbly herself at this point so they were pretty sure that she had it too. Even if they’d felt up to flying by now (they didn’t), they wouldn’t have been allowed to, so that was kabbashed.
After 5 days of isolation, they were both back to work, but it took another 2-3 weeks for them to be back to “OK”.
One thing that Steve and Pam couldn’t do when they went to Toronto in May was visit Ken because he was busy recovering from surgery. They visited Toronto again on Labor Day weekend to see him and Marcy. There was a lot of reminiscing about their youthful (mostly stupid) exploits of long ago.
In mid-September, Pam and Steve took a 3-day weekend cruise on the Celebrity Reflection. They had a great time and got to do a lot of dancing. When the band was performing in the ship’s central lobby, they got to perform a lot of different ballroom steps. Folks in the audience said a lot of very nice things (“They’re so good – they must be professionals” and “They even did a waltz.”)
They didn’t, in fact, do a waltz, but Steve and Pam each decided to shut up and take the compliment.
Pam and the girls went to Vegas for a Keith Urban concert. They also saw a magic show. The boys stayed home. The girls report that they had a good time.
It wouldn’t be Florida if there weren’t a couple of hurricanes. Hurricane Debby went past Pam and Steve in the Gulf of Mexico without bothering them even though it caused flooding for other folks. Milton was another story. It went over them without damage, but its storm surges blew out their power stations for a day or so. They got to test out their power generator and it mitigated the aggravation. They also lost internet access, but Annette was able to keep Steve connected to his work.
Stephen Squire 