April 28 - Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

I’m old enough to remember that song by the band Chicago.  Here on the Odyssey that question is very real and the next line is getting to be appropriate too – Does anybody really care?  We’ve had one hour forward time changes for 5 days in a row and a date flip too with another change coming tonight.  For us passengers it’s not so bad, but it must be awful for the crew.  We can sleep late in the morning but they have to be up and cheerful regardless of whether their internal clocks say it’s still the middle of the night.

We’re still chugging along on our way to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians.  This morning I made it to breakfast for the first time in a few days.  As I ate I watched us pass through a snow shower and then five minutes later into sunshine.  I went out on my veranda for two minutes and then had to come back in and warm up.  It’s just a couple of degrees above freezing and with the wind it feels much lower.  Well, it is the north Pacific so I expected it.

Last night we had a wonderful variety show before dinner.  All of the guest entertainers that I wrote about yesterday except for the pianist performed along with Melody, the same young woman who almost missed the ship.   Yesterday I would have nicknamed her “Madcap Melody” but today I think I’ll change it to “Marvelous Melody.” She sang a duet with the Australian who sounds like Johnny Cash and they did a great job on the song “Jackson” (“we got married in a fever…”).  Then she sang a duet with the R & B singer which was fantastic. The last number in the show was especially good.  All the entertainers including the cellists and our cruise director John sang and played “Amazing Grace.”  (That’s one song that always makes me teary-eyed.  Someone very near and dear to me sang it on two significant occasions.) But back to the show, it was such a good idea to combine all the talent on the ship.  I hope it’s done more often in the future.  

"Johnny Cash" and Melody

I haven’t written much about trivia lately, but we still play every day at noon.  It’s a cumulative game and we were way ahead until yesterday when we had an awful day.  Today we made up a little ground but we’re still 20 points off the lead. I’ve posted a photo of our good luck mascot “Miss Kitty”  a couple of months ago.  Her waving arm no longer flaps back and forth. (Maybe she’s having trouble adjusting to the time changes too. We put a new battery in and that didn’t help.) We think our miserable performance yesterday is Miss Kitty’s fault because of course it can’t be that we don’t know the answers.