March 19, 2015


This morning I went to hear the first talk by the other speaker on board, John Nixon. He talked about the salvage of the Russian submarine Kirsk.  At the time he worked for the company that did the salvage.  Quite interesting.  He is also doing history talks.  Tomorrow he is doing the War of 1812.  I’ll take notes because I can use it in my Baltimore talk, next time we cruise back that way.

The talks are scheduled at 10 and 2 and we rotate.  Did I tell you that already?

My first talk, “Space: The Final Frontier” was today.  All talks are in the main theater and the main floor was almost completely full.  Well, what else they going to do?   Usually we have a regular seating for supper, but on this cruise we have any time dining and we’ve met a lot more people and invited them to the talks.  I think it helps attendance.  Tomorrow is the Bermuda Triangle talk.  Fortunately, we are through it so the boogers and the haints can’t get us.  Although ... the tech staff did something funky with my computer and couldn’t get it to talk to their projector (I think I know what they did and I will try to solve it tomorrow).  I always carry my talks on a flash drive and they just loaded it into their computer and we were off and running.

Things are a little rocky tonight.  Bonnie’s knee is loosening up, but she sure wobbles going down the hall with the ship rolling a little bit.  She walked two miles, crochetted, and hung out up on the Lido Deck.  We had Nathan’s hot dogs at the Drive Inn on the Lido Deck for lunch.  I refined talks, rehearsed, did a talk, worked on another talk, and took a nap.  Mr. Excitement!

We ate supper tonight with a nice couple who are missionaries in Germany – Kim and Jenny.  They are Americans, but they organize or direct small group mission teams.  They’ve been home visiting their three adult kids, and now they are going back.  They are history buffs and we talked about some of the things that will be in future talks of mine and they gave me a couple of ideas to incorporate.  Quite a fun supper with them tonight.  I had a French dessert that I can’t pronounce: Mille Fillouette (or something like that – it means 1,000 layers and had a great cream sauce with pears on the side).

We are having breakfast in our room tomorrow since my talk is at 10 a.m.  That will give me more time to get ready and rehearse.  This is our first room service on this cruise, so I will try to remember to tell you about it tomorrow.

Tonight’s show was “Divas Three” – three girl singers doing girl singer songs.  They were quite good, and they were practicing right before my first talk so I got to witness a little of the preparation.

Well, that’s it for now.

TTFN