November 16 - At Sea (still)

 It occurs to me that this has been a  very boring blog; I guess it's inevitable since we haven't had any strange sightings or close encounters. Someone told me last evening that a Princess ship is somewhere nearby but I saw no signs of her. Our days onboard revolve around eating, going to a show, lecture, game, more eating, and more lectures etc.  It sounds boring, but somehow it really isn't and the days seem to speed by.  I also feel much more relaxed than I have in a long time.  I've met some delightful  people and shared a drink  and a meal  with them.   On this cruise we are almost exclusively Americans because of the US entry requirements at the time we sailed.  That's a little sad because I have always enjoyed meeting people from other countries with different customs from our own.  I'm told that on the next cruise which I'm staying on for we'll have some people from the UK and EU.  That will make trivia teams more fun.

I have an observation about e-mail which is not relevant to anything to do to cruising but I guess is something I hadn't  noticed before.  At home I check e-mails a couple of times a day and my spam filter seems to work pretty well.  Here I check it maybe once a day and the filters don't seem to be working at all. Who knew I was in such demand for the labor force.  I've had many e-mails from Pepsi telling me they want to hire me to do something starting at $54/hr.  Amazon wants me to be a driver, warehouse fulfillment person and tech support, but they aren't paying as well as Pepsi.  I haven't worked in more than 40 years and don't plan to change that soon.  I've also found that my home is in great demand, despite not being on the market.  One of my new-found friends told me I should open the e-mails and click on unsuscribe. I'm not taking her advice because I've always been told that's the worst thing you can do with that kind of e-mail.

We're now just one hour ahead of EST.  These 25 hour days have been  wonderful! This morning I woke up at 7 AM ship's  time which is more like 9 AM according  to my body clock.  Tomorrow we all have to have a rapid antigen test before our arrival in Miami on Thursday.  Most of my shipmates will  be leaving there.  Even though I'm continuing on I will have to go ashore and have an "encounter" with Customs and Border Protection and present my documents (test results, vacc status and passport).  It may not seem so to anyone else, but I find a certain irony in the fact that I must do that and present those in light of other things that have been happening elsewhere. It's okay by me though.

Last night by popular demand we had another Liars' Club. All the panelists  were hilarious  again but the star was the Croatian Hotel Manager Zoran.  Here's a useless word to add to your vocabulary  CALLIPYGIAN. The liars gave such funny definitions but for the only time Zoran told the truth despite no team believing his answer could possibly be true.  So are you ready?  The word means large, rounded, succulent buttocks.  Try using that in conversation.

Well I've rambled enough. Soon it will be time for trivia. Yesterday was downright embarassing but we're not at the bottom.  One team has consistently been there and they keep trying to change their team name but the crowd won't let them. Most people take it in great fun but you can see that there are a few people who think it's a bloodsport.  I'm glad we girls just want to have fun.

More later...