so many colors in theocean

MOVING RIGHT ALONG

We are now two hours earlier than Los Angeles. You can tell that the ship is moving along at a good clip. At noon everyday, the Captain or the officer of the day announce the demographics of the ship such as temperature of air, water; humidity, pressure etc.

There is wine tasting this afternoon and the captain’s party so Ed and I discussed our formal attire for this evening.  God forbid we should clash since he now has a nice wardrobe of cummerbunds and bow ties.

As I write we have the White House Press Conference on TV and Ed is mumbling his editorial observations. Sometimes it’s hard for me to really hear what’s being said on the screen.

Technology: I learn something new every day whether I want to or not. Currently I am trying to figure out how to transfer photos from the PC to the IOS devices and visa versa. The one thing I forgot to bring was the connector that would allow me to do that; it is with my SAGE materials! I’m sure we could stock a shop with all the device related hardware and peripherals we brought.

Repairs around the ship: they are never ending. While in port yesterday, the painters were at work on the sides of the ship. The bridge is above our cabin and I can hear some banging now and then though it’s not very loud.

Getting organized: we are still shuffling things around to try to put them in a place where we can quickly put our hands on them. Good luck with that! We know we have some things with us so we wind up doing a lot of sharing. And I am now very sure we left one piece of luggage with things we had packed in the beginning to take such as hats with a large brim. Sigh. So they had a Susan B. Komen race for the cure event the other day where I picked up a baseball cap for Ed as we both detest the one he got at the USS Iowa in LA simply because it was handy and they are a good cause.

Memory challenges: I went to this game this morning. It is stressful and humbling. The first one was a tray with multiple diverse items on it. The games master would take away 3 items and add 3 different ones and then you had to guess what was done. He also moved things around in position. I got close, got the light behind me, and was given permission to touch and manipulate everything before we began. Eventually I was beaten by Vicki, a lovely lady from No. Carolina which whom I’ve done some trivia.

The next game involved colored leis. The first person picked a color of lei and put it on the MCs neck. The next person had to remember the color of that lei and add one of his/her own. There were 5 of us at the beginning and it went around 12 rounds. Vicki and I were the last two and this time she missed one. There were no prizes given out for this. Sigh…

But we got no prizes except the anxiety of making fools of ourselves.

Trivia followed after. We were a threat to no one but we also had lots of company. We don’t even ask what the prizes are (this means all of us, Ha).

I went through the lobby and looked at the clothing on display. There are few bargains and I’m still stunned at the light but pretty over jacket for a smart outfit that is over $300! Who do they think sails on this ship? They did have T-shirts for ports we are not visiting for $5 each and so there was much chuckling about these are people purchased them. One (2 for $20 rack) has “crossing the international date line” on it and one man was muttering about why the hell anyone would buy that one!

Technology on a ship: the challenges continue. A fellow passenger told me that one of the reasons the same email keeps returning when we sign on is that we are deleting it before it downloads and thus it remains on the server. Until one gets this straight, you may have a backup of emails.

The same is true of Facebook.

Wine tasting:

Captain’s cocktail party:

Formal portraits:

Dinner:

Show: the elaborate dancer and singer productions are always done on formal night.

whose family was frantically looking for her as she gets lost. I was in the boutique this morning and heard this strange, regular in timing, guttural/nasal sound from behind me. When I looked around, it was an elderly lady with a cane who was ambling around seemingly goalless just wasting time. Well frankly we all do this sometimes but you have to wonder about her being alone. Another lady, quite with it and quite cultured, moves about with a cane always looking very chic, but she does require a lot of assistance and either staff or passengers “look out for her”.

At lunch today we sat next to a somewhat hyperactive little man(by his own admission) who was commandeered into coming along with his in-laws at the last minute. They were supposed to have a mini-suite, but that got confused when the first person who was to travel with the parents backed out. So they are all 3 in a stateroom and so it is a challenging environment for all. They are all leaving at Sydney and he is chaperoning them back tso San Francisco area. The father in law is 98 yrs old, likely the oldest on this voyage. He was a POW in Japan during WWII and the son in law told his story with gusto. It was an interesting story with lots historical sites and people in it.

Wine tasting: this is such a waste for me but occasionally there will be a wine that I enjoy. Ed does enjoy being exposed to new wines and learning about them. Since we are complementary it isn’t such a loss in my case. There were two tables of people near us who carried on a loud conversation throughout the Descriptions of the wines and it was hard to get them to pipe down so others could hear what the speaker was saying. We had sat at a meal with open seating with two of the couples before. The women were fairly quiet but the men were very loud and confrontational; the seemed to enjoy that form of conversation far too much. Our table mates were the 98 y/o and his wife. Sweet people.

Cemeteries: there is a Chinese cemetery in Papeete but customarily Polynesians bury their loved ones in their years so you see these lovely gravesites with head stones and cement covering over the body. Not sure what happens when you sell the property. Speaking of which, traditionally if you bought property high up on the mountainside, you owned the land down the hill all the way to the ocean.

I just finished reading: End of American Women’s History: a Very Short Introduction. I loved that it included all women: native American, blacks, Asians, and of course, whites. But the best part of all in many ways was the bibliography with these wonderful books listed some of which I had forgotten, and many more new to me.