GOLDILOCKS

April 18, 2019


We have been playing Goldilocks with the temperature of the water in our bathroom.  The first day, the water was too cold.  The second day it was too hot.  Today it was just right.  And the funny thing is, the position of the faucets, as we have turned them and twisted them have been the same all three days.  Go figure.

We played our first trivia today.  It was a music trivia.  We were walking back from lunch, looking for a place to cop-a-squat and Ulia (Julie in English), who was born in Ukraine, speaks Russian, but not Ukraine, and lives sometimes in Virginia and sometimes in NYC, invited us in.  I had gavarooed with her the first day on board, so we accepted her invitation.  She played a few seconds of a piece of music – from two seconds to as long as 16 – and we were required to guess the name of the piece and the artist.  She gave an extra point here and there if a piece was a theme song from a movie.  There were 36 possible points, and your favorite cruisers, who last cruise won a trivia and brought home a Ship On A Stick, scored four points!  That’s right!  Four out of 36.  I asked her if there was a prize for lowest score, but she said, “Nope.”  We got “Hit the Road Jack,” “Walk Like A Man” by the Four Seasons, and “Hungry Eyes.”  We have sworn off music trivia for the rest of the cruise.

Tonight we sat with normal people for supper and for the first time at any table on any cruise ship, we did not exchange names nor tell where we were from.  And no one was a cruise show off.  The waiters were great.  The meal was good.

On the way back to our room after the show, which featured a bald, comedy magician, one of our room stewards was still out in the hall.  He asked me if we had done an Atlantic crossing at this time of year before.  I told him we did one last year about this same time.  He asked how the weather was last year.  I think the reason he asked is the Captain says we are going to hit some rougher weather tonight and tomorrow.  There is a storm crossing towards Europe that he has been sailing around, but has had to turn north, so we are going to catch some of it.  I was curious as to why Agus was asking, but he volunteered that when it gets bad, guests stay in their rooms and that makes their jobs more difficult.  He and his co-worker, Aji, have 24 rooms that they service twice a day.  I told him I hope it is good weather tomorrow because my talk is about a shipwreck.

Thank you to the two regular readers who sent me news items about the disastrous fire at Notre Dame.  We were privileged to see it several years ago and the pictures seem to amplify the calamity.  It looks like there is a lot of restoration work ahead.  If it makes any difference, from what I’ve read this was an accident, not a terrorist attack.  We’ve had way too many of those.  No more, please!

Well, I’m going to rehearse “Tempest in the Atlantic” and turn the keyboard over to my traveling companion.

TTFN

Well, this afternoon I finished one of the several crochet projects that I bought with me. It was a Georgia Bulldog hot pad. Tomorrow I will start on a new project.

Nothing much exciting happened today. We were up at 6:30 and had an early breakfast. Today I opted for a bacon sandwich with mustard and tomato juice. I cut the crust off the bread because it was hard as usual. Then, it was off for my morning walk around the deck. There was no one out there but me. I wore my jacket because it was windy and cold. But I enjoyed my walk. Then, coming back to the room I picked up my crocheting and headed to the theater to wait for his talk. At 9:40 I thought maybe I was going to be the only one there. But by showtime he had a really nice crowd. The talk was one I had not heard for a while and one he had made a lot of changes to. It was good but would have been better if there system would have played two of the videos he had in the talk. Also, during his talk they decided they would run their 30 minute crew emergency drill including alarms that sounded over and over again during the 45 minutes accompanied by announcements for the crew and disclaimers for the guests that this was just a drill and the guests didn’t need to do anything!!!!! They interrupted the talk at least 10 times. Oh my!

Well, after the talk we came back to the room and then, proceeded to lunch. I wanted some soup and a sandwich. They had bacon with white cannolia beans soup. The beans were partially pureed. It was very tasty. I also had a roast beef on wheat with lettuce, mayo and pickles. Also very good. For dessert today it was a small coffee fudge sugar free ice cream cone. Yes, I said coffee and I don’t like coffee, but it was very good.

Then, after the trivia disaster we proceeded to the talk about the interviews with American singers. It was a little more interesting than yesterday. He interviewed Alice Cooper, Cher, and others. Then back to the room and a nap. Tonight we sat at a window table on the port side. Nice view. I had hazelnut crusted brie cheese, a salad, and weiner schnitzel and a sugar free mousse dessert.

The show tonight was a comedic magician who was bald. That was how he was advertised. He was okay. Mostly comedy and a little magic.

Well, we are back in our room. Our room does not have a refrigerator but for whatever reason they decided today to but in our room 6 cans of a variety of sodas and two bottles of evian water for our “mini bar”. They were sitting on the desk when we returned before naptime. The one liter bottles of water cost $5 each. Whoa!!
The sodas are 2.25 but we can get the cans cheaper if we buy them at a bar. He gets a discount. This price also has a 15% gratuity charge either from the minibar or the regular bar. Everything is charged a gratuity. Well, it is time for him to study and me to crochet or read, or play on the kindle. Not sure what I am going to do. The last advice the cruise director gave us at the end of the show tonight was to hold on to the rails tomorrow. It is going to get rough sometime in the night. The Captain told us in his noon report to secure anything that might go flying across our rooms. So hang on guys.

Love you all. Having a great time.
Mom, Granny, and Bonnie