If it's Tuesday we must still be at sea

Tuesday, September 23, 2008



Tuesday, September 23, 2008 [LATER]

We spent a quiet day again. That’s what we like about sea days, and we will have plenty more before we reach our first port in Japan on the 29th. Even with losing a day to the International Date Line, it will be a lengthy sea voyage just crossing from Seattle. After a late breakfast, we settled in at the Ocean Bar. D found a table by the windows near an electrical outlet and plugged in the computer so he could update the journal and philosophize [see above]. We stayed at the table until Trivia Time and settled in with Russ, Patti, Anne and Chet for the competition. Although we thought we should have done a little better, we were still good enough to win more HAL initial mugs. So far, there have been 5 trivia games; we have won 3 and been second once. It’s a good start. Most of all, though, we are having fun cheering as each answer is read, regardless of whether we actually had it correct. It’s starting to unnerve some of the other teams.

We had lunch in the dining room, shared our money with slot machines and then read until nap time. We had received an e-mail from Keiko our Goodwill Guide in Kyoto earlier in the day. She offered 5 possible sites to visit when we are there October 3 and wanted to know which 4 we would prefer to see. We arranged to have a drink with Roxanne and Ed before dinner where we discussed the choices. Roxanne had brought a guide book to Japan, so Ed read descriptions aloud. We voted informally to eliminate the Kiomizu Temple from our tour on the basis of its having a lot of steps and a steep hill. Our collective knees would have been most unhappy with that as a stop.

MA has caught her “I’m on vacation far from home” cold, so after dinner [stuffed pepper for MA, chicken for D] she went to bed after self-medicating and D took the computer to do the journal. He also submitted Japan’s entry/exit form to the Front Desk and played a few hands of blackjack [but not few enough!]. Before turning in, he e-mailed Keiko with our choices. Tomorrow promises to be interesting weather-wise, but we’ll have to wait and see. Oh, yes, we turned the clocks back again so that there will be an 8 hour difference in the morning.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Well, we slept away a whole day. Actually, we crossed the International Date Line last night and woke to find the elevator rugs say that today is Thursday. Yesterday, they said it was Tuesday. It is very confusing, especially since the pills we took this morning came from the compartment labeled Wednesday. For those passengers who are staying aboard until San Diego, there will be one day that repeats itself [Can you say Groundhog Day?], but we will not enjoy the return to “normalcy” at leisure; we will face “the longest day” again when we fly home from Singapore. We have more than a month to go, so it’s too early to worry. Actually, we will meet Jon et al. one month from today in the Singapore airport.

So far, the day has been quite quiet. Despite the dire predictions of the captain, the sky is clear, the seas are calm and we even saw sea gulls at breakfast, a sure sign that we are near land. Today will be another in the sequence of relaxing sea days – breakfast, read, trivia, lunch, read, nap. It’s as if our schedule were created by Garfield; all we need now is lasagna.