(Note: this is not specifically about my cruise. But I want to get into the habit of writing more often, so here you go.)

My kitchen smells better than usual today. I should explain:

I received flowers from Amazon the other day – but not really. It was sent to my home address, but to a different person. Even after owning my house for 12 years I still get junk mail addressed to previous owners, but I did not recognize this name. I asked all my neighbors, who also did not know the name.

Since these were live flowers, I felt a little guilty. So, I contacted Amazon – which was more involved that I thought it would be. It took a fair bit of time to find any kind of “Contact Us” information for packages that I did not order personally. But I eventually found a “Talk to us via Text Chat” button, and provided the order number and information. And then did it again once a human came into the chat room.

It took a few minutes for the Amazon folks to confirm I was who I claimed to be (which I didn’t mind), and then they asked “You don’t know <John Doe>?” – to which I explained I did not. I don’t know how I felt about them telling me the name of the sender.

In the end they had me keep the flowers, since they were live and thus it did not make any sense to return them to Amazon. So, for the last week before my cruise I had a vase of happiness in my kitchen. The box included the glass vase and two packets of “flower food” to be mixed with water. They bloomed very well.

A sidenote on the technology. Within the box the stems were essentially within a wet diaper while in the vase. I have not seen that delivery method before.