EXCELLENT DINNER

December 12, 2018

Tonight the 8 of us from Table 57 went to the Sirloin Steak House for supper.  Dead cow was served all around.  No one selected anything but steak: filet mignon, New York strip, Porterhouse, and rib eyes for your favorite cruisers (medium-rare – the steak, not the cruisers, which are well-done).  A great variety of appetizers and soups made it hard to choose.  There was a selection of potatoes – we all got baked – plus grilled asparagus, mushrooms, and creamed spinach (no one ate any creamed spinach).  The desserts were all different from the regular dinner menus.  We started at 6:30 and left the table after 9.  Bonnie and I thought the timing was great.  One of the group grumbled that we didn’t get the meat until 8, but then she grumbled that her steak wasn’t between rose colored and pink.  And the couples from Las Vegas picked up the tab for the Canadians and the Augustans.  That was special!

Oh, the afore mentioned bellyacher, who speaks only one language, corrected our waitress, who speaks at least two.  She said it’s not ee-dible, it’s eh-dible.  Good grief!  If my phonetics led you astray the word is edible.  I repeat.  Good grief!

We set the clocks back an hour tonight, so we will only be 5 hours ahead of you on Thursday.  The next set-back will come in 2 days.

Tomorrow is the Canary Islands, specifically Tenerife, and the port is Santa Cruz.  Yours truly wrote a destination lecture especially for this sailing (at my agent’s urging) and I’m not doing it because back on day one I dropped all of the destination talks and substituted three from the Golden Age of Sail.  In preparing for the talk I spied out several churches, museums, and forts for us to wander around to.  We get in at 9 and all aboard is 4:30.  This is a new stop for us and we are looking forward to exploring it.

I must tell you about the close up magic show this afternoon.  I will have to do it because my companion doesn’t like magic, plus she had a headache (not me – some other cause) and went back to the room to rest and recover.  I sat about 6 feet from the magician and watched his hands as he manipulated playing cards and balls and I never saw how he did a thing.  It was a great performance, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Richard, one of our table mates, was asked to hold a card in his hand, he saw the denomination of the card (it was the 3 of Clubs and had actually been autographed by Pam, another of the group), and when he opened his hands it was the 8 of Diamonds.  Unbelievable.  An hour of tricks like that.  Great stuff!

Today the destination lecture, Ken, did his final talk.  He has been on board two months (I think that’s right) as the contract destination lecturer.  Tomorrow he and his wife, Leslie, will get off and fly home to England to their home in Little Applington (I was thinking Little Dribbling, but that’s in the title of a book by Bill Bryson, one of my all time favorites).  I asked him about the version of PowerPoint he uses because he does animations with photographs that my 2003 version won’t do.  He uses 2010 and I have it at home.  I am going to install it and switch to that version (2003 will import to 2010, but they won’t go the other way).  There will be some considerable time of practice figuring that out.  Ken made it all look so simple, but that’s never the case for me when learning a new program.

Well, my body thinks it’s 10 p.m. although I’ve already set the clocks back, so I’m going to move out of this seat and let it be filled by my cruise buddy for her version of today’s events.

TTFN

Well, we get one hours extra sleep, ha!, just means I will be up an hour earlier. Last night when we got ready to go to sleep the banging on the pipe was back. So he called the desk to complain that this was the third night in a row when there was banging and they said they would send someone to check it out. Well, they must have done something because soon after it stopped and I could take out my ear plugs. You could still hear it through the ear plugs that is how I knew it had stopped. They called this afternoon to check on us and assured us that someone would be downstairs at 10:30 tonight to watch and to see what was happening to make the noise.

Well, it was after 8 before we got to breakfast so I couldn’t do Zumba and walk. So I opted to walk 2 miles. Then, went down to hear Ken’s talk about our stop tomorrow. After the talk your Dad wanted to talk to Ken so I sat in the Cabaret lounge and listened to the Bingo till he got finished. There were about 10 people playing. The jackpots were $30, $40 and $50. The coverall prize if done within 49 balls was $750, if no one covered all until after 49 the prize was $70. Small ship, small prizes.

When he got back we went to lunch. I had been crocheting all this time and for whatever reason had a terrible headache. I had taken some Tylenol but wasn’t getting much relief. I tried to eat but only managed some carrot sticks and broccoli and some cheese and crackers. I knew he wanted to see the magician and I didn’t so I went back to the cabin and napped. I did feel better after the nap. After he got back from the show he napped and I crocheted some more. I was making a hot pad and I wanted to finish it in time for supper because it was going to be a belated birthday present for Gita. Her birthday was Sunday. I finished it and I had bought a small Christmas gift bag in Cadiz and I gave it to her tonight.   Tomorrow if I have time to crochet I will start my 3rd project. The first one I will try and finish as we drive home from Ft Lauderdale. I bought some yarn in Cadiz to finish it with.

 Dinner was good. I had black and blue French onion soup, a salad of some kind, baked potato, ribeye steak and a somores and graham cracker and chocolate dessert. All was good. But way to much to eat, the steak alone was 14 oz.

Well, it is 10:20 now before we turn the clocks back, so it will be probably just 10 by the time we finally get in bed and have turned them back. Tomorrow will be our last day to see dry land and spend some euros. Excited to see some place we have never been before.
Well, I have to take my pills, floss, brush the teeth and fix my machine. Maybe a few minutes of kindle games before it is off to bed.

Love you all. Mom, Granny and Bonnie