MY FIRST EX-BOYFRIEND

April 23, 2018

Today was my first talk, “Bermuda: Almost Heaven.”  In preparation for my 11 o’clock appearance at The Main Stage, I arose from sleep at 6:30 and headed for the shower and my morning ablutions.  My beloved was not in the room, having dismissed herself for her morning constitution.  She the people returned as I was toweling dry and when she had showered we went to the Lido for breakfast. 

Side note: I think the word “lido” means “food” because every cruise ship we’ve sailed on has a feeding trough named “Lido.”

We were served by a young lady from the Philippines named “Nita.”  I couldn’t read her name tag because of the angle at which she was standing, mixed with the fact that Holland American Line name tags are shiny, and we were near the floor to ceiling windows.  So I asked for her name and she inquired after ours.  She had never heard the name Bonnie, but worked out a nemonic device to remember it.  She said to me, “I will have no trouble with your name (and somewhere in her comment was an implied threat, “I will have no trouble with you”) because my FIRST EX-BOYFRIEND’S name was David.”  Her first. Ex. Boyfriend.  I’m guessing there are a string of them, and all her exs aren’t in Texas (that’s a song KW, you can’t write one about it).

The guess of the occupants of 4077 is that the theater holds about 700 folk.  The further guess of said occupants is that about 80% of the seats were filled this morning for my talk.  That fact does not make my head swell too much, because when you are on a ship at sea, you can’t get in your car and drive to Walmart.  “What are we going to do today, Marge?”  “Let’s go to the theater and take a nap.”

I mentioned breakfast above.  Unlike the Crown Princess whose deck we most recently roamed, the Zuiderdam has a place which fries eggs to order.  I got two almost perfect dippy eggs (Luke, you would have needed 3 pieces of toast!) to which I added toast and 2 sausage links.  To make up for the extravagance of bread and pork, I had a great tossed salad for lunch and Asian noodles for supper.  Supper’s appetizer, French Onion Soup, was not especially good since it was only luke warm.  But the blueberry crisp with French vanilla ice cream (destroying the points earned by the salad) was warm and tasty.  Creme brulee tomorrow night (it’s formal night).

I won the first game of Rummy for the cruise in a stunning, blasting, leveling, destroying come from behind victory.  It was a see-saw battle for the first four hands, when the cards started falling my way.  My bed buddy has demanded a rematch, so we’ll lay out the paste boards again tomorrow.  Oh, by the way, the competition on the last cruise ended in a 5-5 tie (but I was ahead 375 to 335 when the game was called on account of something I don’t remember).  She would not let me claim victory, but I told her when the game has gone 5 innings, it is a complete game.  Oh well.  This is a new cruise and a new competition.

Well, Bonnie is awake tonight and eager to pound the keys, so I will retire to the couch and my book on rocketry and rocket scientists.  Until tomorrow, then.

TTFN

Well, I slept till 5 and got up at 5:45 to dress and head out for my walk. I dressed quietly and left the room to walk. I headed down to deck 3 to go out on the promenade and walk. I don’t understand why but on this ship and the last ship at 6 in the morning there were crew members out on the promenade with hoses spraying off the life boats and the decks. So I walked around the deck inside for awhile till they were finished with their cleaning and then got around the deck outside for 1 and ½ times before it was time to go back to the room. Oh, I should tell you as I was walking down the steps to deck three, my shoe caught on the next to last step and sent me sprawling onto the carpeted floor at the bottom of the steps. Cute. I managed to get up from laying flat on my face and continued to my walk. So far only a bruise on my left thumb has appeared but my right big toe feels like it is sprained and hurts. It does feel some better tonight. Of well. At least the floor was carpeted.

After showering and it is a honest to goodness shower in a bathtub, we dressed and went upstairs for breakfast. They had Borden’s chocolate milk and I enjoyed that for breakfast with my wheat toast and over easy egg. I did splurge with a powdered donut. So lunch was a salad.

After breakfast I went up to the crows nest, where there is a coffee bar and great lounge at the front of the ship at the very top on Deck 10. It was overcast, windy, cold and raining. But a great place to sit and crochet. I noticed several people had small newspapers and I vowed to find them when I went downstairs. I stayed till about 9:15 then headed to the theater for the port/excursion talk and then David’s talk. After I put my bag in my seat I went to look for the newspapers and found not only the Times, but the Canadian, British and Australian papers. I read them all!

David had completely rewritten the Bermuda talk so it was brand new. It was good. And he was done on time and the people sitting around me said they really enjoyed it.

Well, after the talk and lunch it was back to the crow’s nest for cards and then to the room for a nap. We slept till about 4:30 and got ready for supper. Supper is at 5:30, we have reservations each night and have sat at 2 different tables. The couples to night were from Vancouver and Ontario. Very nice and we had an enjoyable table and supper. I had chicken with green beans and carrots. The sugar free dessert tonight was a torte with hazelnuts and was dry and tasteless.

The show was a comedienne and he was okay. He did sing some songs he had written to Frank Sinatra tunes that were amusing. And one he had written using a Johnny Cash tune. They were different and interesting parodies. Not the funniest guy but okay. Our clocks are going forward 1 hour so though my watch says 9:56 it is 10:56. Well, not really, the change is not supposed to happen till 2am.

We have had 2 towel animals so far, tonight’s is an octopus. Our cabin steward must like my turtle because he places him on the bed every night some how and uses him on the bed when he makes it up in the morning. Cute.

Well, he doesn’t have to work tomorrow so we will be up and about doing whatever we want. We are going to go to the next port talk and the lecture by the other speaker also named David and maybe visit the shops. The weather tomorrow is much the same but a little colder.

Love to you all, Mom, Granny and Bonnie