MARCH 31, 2008 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DANI TOMORROW

We woke up after 8 am after going to sleep after midnight. I’m stuck on this new book; it shouldn’t take long to finish as it’s 200+ pages. Ed went to exercise and I’m finishing this so I can upload it. There isn’t much going on this morning except for Trivia at 11:15 am. It’s a slow day this afternoon too.

MARCH 30, 2008 – SUNDAY BRUNCH

We woke a little after 6 am and I got up and pulled together the laundry.
LAUNDRY: there were 3 people on one side of the hallway and two on the other when I arrived at the laundry room before it opened. The folks who were there seemed not to understand when I asked them who was the last one in line. “You” they answered. It took a while to figure out that two of them were only visiting with others in the line. When the door opened, the three in line ahead of me secured all the machinery so I worked my crossword puzzle until washers became available. Several folks dropped by and seeing the flurry of activity in the room, left. A few folks came only to use the ironing boards.
Ed brought the rest of the laundry for me after a while. I eventually secured 4 washers (3 devoted to dark clothes) and later 4 dryers. Ed went to eat and returned with the clean bags we put our laundry into; we folded, he ironed the shirts the way he wanted them, and I hung my permanent press to air dry in the room. All of this was accomplished by 9:15 am so while you all know how much I hate the laundry process on this ship (and others too), it wasn’t the worst. Well there was one peculiar thing that happened. I was sitting waiting for a dryer to finish; there isn’t any sound to let you know. A lady came in, and somehow saw that the dryer had just ended and asked me if it was mine. I came right over, and she said: you know we can take the clothes out when the dryer stops. I tried to explain to her that I was right there and it had just stopped. She repeated her mantra, this time with a smile, but the oddest part of it was that she didn’t want to use a dryer nor was there anyone else around who did!
There must be something in the air of that room.
CULINARY DEMONSTRATION: It is fun to watch him make all this stuff and give little hints. He will be putting all of the recipes he’s been using, and which aren’t already in the cookbook we purchased, into a book which we will get as a souvenir at the end of his demonstrations. We will get our certificates delivered to our cabins and we can bring them to have our photos taken with him by the ship’s photographer on the last day he has a program. He’s still working on the book of recipes from passengers and he’s clearly having fun with the recipes.
TRIVIA: 3 of us were in place and ready to go when the questioning began; the other 3 slid in and were in place by about question #3. One of the men was the scribe today and I think he developed a new appreciation of how annoying that task can be with everyone giving him instructions. As it turned out, he put down an answer different than the one the group had decided on. And as luck would have it, the answer the group wanted but he hadn’t put down, was the correct one. The perfectionists among us never have time to double check the answers before we turn over our papers for grading to another group. This last minute flurry of demands for their favorite answer to be put down for a question is crazy making. One person reminded us that they had the correct answer for one question and the group didn’t take it. That person seems to have forgotten those times when their answer WAS taken by the group and it was dead wrong.
Well the “nice people” won again today. This group is the one Fr. Austin tells everyone, “We’re all geniuses on this team you know.” I saw him on the stairwell and he gave me a good hint I’ll pass along: when going on a trip, put the address of your destination on your luggage tag. When returning home, change it to your home address. This team was allowed to choose the “prize” they wanted from a selection in a bag; Father chose a luggage tag. In the course of our conversation, he “donated” his luggage tag from today’s trivia to me. I’m delighted; we don’t have any of these and I’ll remember him each time we use it.
BRUNCH: Today is the Sunday brunch and Commandatore visits with folks in the dining room. The food is sumptuous and there’s something for everyone. We sat at a table with other trivia players and bridge players; one of our team members is the husband of a bridge player. She was going to be on our team but the bridge wears out her brain so she sent her husband to be on our team.
We sat and thought of all these trivia questions that haven’t been asked but would be good, such as: “What country in the world has the most camels?” It’s Australia: they export them to the Middle East.
LIFE IN SPACE; LIFE ON EARTH: this presentation by astronaut and Scientist Rusty Schweickart was well attended as you might expect. His photos are gorgeous and not easily found; many of them were of space within the past few days. I wonder what site he uses to get them. He talked about his experiences and the current program, pros and cons. For example, there’s no advantage to building a station on the moon to be a supply depot for other missions. Then he responded to some very interesting questions from the audience. Clearly this speaker is non-controversial. He will be giving one or two more speeches while he’s with us.
OTHER BLOGGERS: Here’s another blogger from this cruise: http://www.sbrmaim.blogspot.com . this might give you another perspective in our experiences. I haven’t checked it out yet.
PACIFIC PRINCESS BOOK CLUB: I went to see Amber, the staff person who handles the book club, returned the Kite Runner, the most recent book, and explained that I couldn’t attend today because the time conflicts with the two speakers this afternoon. She gave me a copy of the next book for the club, and it is one I’ve been curious about: Into the wild by Jon Krakauer. It is being made into a movie.
THREE OR MORE TENORS: This was a discussion about Opera again. He focused on Placido Domingo after discussing (and clarifying) his remarks about the castrati who were early singers of opera. He mentioned Pavaroti but I had to leave for trivia so I missed his remarks about him. His lecture will be on the ship’s TV so I hope to see the parts I missed.
NEEDLEPOINT: I’ve been making several needlepoint projects based on kits you can get here on the ship. Unfortunately, the only kits left are the ones I’ve now made 3 of. They may get some others before the cruise ends. I’m enjoying trying different stitches and as I’ve told you before, I do not put Princess Cruises into the stitches as the canvas shows.
TRIVIA: some folks stayed to finish the opera lecture so there were some groups with different compositions this afternoon. One of the members of the “Four Nations” group did the trivia today. I like this fellow and his was the least disliked of those done by folks other than the staff. Still, our group tied another group with a score of 9! (this gives you an idea of the questions we were dealing with). So there was a tie breaker: In 2002, out of every 10 businessmen interviewed by (I’ve forgotten the name of the men’s magazine), how many said they had cheated at golf. I said 7; one of our members said 9 and pushed for it, so we settled on that number though some thought it too high. The actual answer is 8 and since our group had the number closest to the correct answer, we won. One of the members of the newly constituted group, the same group with which we were tied, said to one of our members, something about remember, you won with only 9 correct answers. I hope this was kidding rather than a snide remark; I don’t recall ever seeing the speaker before.
We were given luggage tags, a first for us! So I asked Father if he wanted his luggage tag back. He laughed and said no, and asked if I wanted passport holders. I told him we’d always put them to good use among the family, so he gave me two more and asked me if I needed any baseball caps. I chuckled and told him we were OK in that department. We do have fun with him.
SABATINI’S TONITE: there’s a special restaurant on board that is supposed to be special to go to. It requires reservations and there is a charge of $20 per person for it. I told Ed I’d go once on this voyage since it’s important to him; I think the food in the dining room is just fine and very good. We joined Phyllis and Ralph, the couple who sailed for 6 yrs alone on a small boat and Ralph is the one who gave a talk on solar power. So this will gave us a change to really visit and talk about stuff we’ve been saving up.
The meal is several courses and all Italian. Even though the servings are modest, it’s still a lot of food. Since I’m not crazy about most of the seafood dishes, I had less trouble with the amount of food. The dessert was my downfall however. I had panna cotta (sp). A funny thing: the dessert tray is brought around and the portions are on the small side, so you make your selection. When your dessert actually arrives however, it is a much larger portion than you picked on the dessert tray. The food was good but I still like the dining room just fine. We had a nice wine with dinner; I couldn’t tell you much more about it.
This couple is a wonderful visiting experience. He worked as an engineer with NASA and Boeing; he still does some consulting. His wife is equally accomplished but I can’t recall the details. They have 3 children who all live near them in the Seattle, Puget Sound area; they actually live on an island there. They have two grandchildren there.
When they sailed for 6 yrs, their children became closer and began to celebrate holidays and special occasions in each other’s homes, a tradition which continues now. All of them have very responsible jobs and are in their late 40s, early 50s.
They also lived in the East Side of New Orleans for several years when he had a job related to the Saturn project (I think), so we talked a lot about that city then and now. Their years there were very happy ones and they lament the recent problems there.
He went to China in 1979 to consult and study the space related programs and equipment China had at that time. This was so interesting in view of how early it was, about 4 yrs. After Nixon was there, and how advanced much of their knowledge was at that time. The society wasn’t very advanced however, and the Mao suits were still the clothing worn by all. He went again in 1982 (?) and Phyllis went with him. The wives on that trip visited the soldiers in Xian and were allowed to actually stand among them, something I’m sure is unthinkable today.
Many couples have remarked that the conversation at their dinner table was exhausted long ago and they are hungry for what almost all spontaneously call “intelligent conversation”. We described how “active” our table is when all eight are present and what a miracle it is that someone hasn’t come to blows given our political split and strong opinions, some documented better than others. But they were a very bright, intelligent couple and we discussed such a wide range of topics; it didn’t hurt that our politics are similar.
ENTERTAINMENT: When you go to Sabatini’s, due to the number of courses of food (and the conversation!), you don’t leave early. We got there at 6:30 pm and didn’t leave until they almost had to kick us out after 10. The show tonite was something I would have enjoyed, a Billboard charted artist, but the conversation and experience more than made up for it.
Many of us have remarked on this trip about the fact that while we’ve had some illnesses and injuries that have required that someone leave the ship in an earlier port, all of the people have returned and are on board now. The rumor mill had the death rate during this voyage up to seven before it was discussed with one of the staff who assured all that there had been none; this is also quite unusual considering the length of the voyage and the age of the passengers. We continue to be amused by how much bigger, taller, older, etc. stories become as they traverse the rumor mill.
And they can accommodate almost anything in that medical clinic downstairs, which by the way, is never without patients waiting during it’s open hours. That doesn’t include the events that are responded to outside of clinic hours.

MARCH 29, 2008 – 4 MORE SEA DAYS

We woke up sometime around 8 am and drug around until later to get ready. Because of the lecture this morning, Ed said he wasn’t going to exercise.
UNDERSTANDING FOREIGN POLICY – MAYBE… This was presented by Robert R. Fritts, University Senior Fellow (College of William and Mary) and former US foreign service officer. What I found fascinating is that everyone with whom I spoken so far, heard him and folded his remarks into what they wanted to hear. Basically he presented a model for how to look at foreign policy. One of the components was morals, represented in his scheme by a large capital “M”. He then used the Iraqi war to demonstrate how morals were the guiding principle in the initiation of the war. Then he put a large slash through this M and said realism is what is now operating. I’m over simplifying his remarks. He presented as one would in the classroom where you provide the students with one idea, and then give them it’s opposite pole to consider.
He is not a defender of the Bush administration or strategy from what I heard, but the die hard Bush supporters seemed to have interpreted what he said that way. As an aside, one of this latter group was talking with another individual about Scott Ritter and she said she thought it was “reprehensible” that Princess had him speaking and she had complained strongly about him.
This speaker will be giving many more talks and so it will be very interesting to see how the “audience” responds to his other talks. I’ll keep you posted.
TRIVIA: We were all present. This was a tough one; we didn’t even fall into the top 3. As usual, there were some answers we had batted around but didn’t put down in the end. I really dislike the last minute flurry of changes in our group. Ed was the scribe today; he’s never really happy if anyone else is the scribe though I’m not sure he recognizes this fact. I learned long ago not to be the scribe if Ed and I are in the same group because I would kill him someday when he told me to write something differently, or just as often, hanks the page from me, erases and changes the entry.
Anyway, the prizes today were can covers again so it’s just as well.
LUNCH: Father Austin, Bill and Lea were at the table with us. We talked about undocumented immigrants, no fault car insurance, and much more. The time passed much too quickly.
AFTERNOON NAP: For Ed that is. I left to do some other things. I had asked him yesterday about reorganizing our luggage and he had said he wanted to go to the movie, South Pacific, which was being shown at 2 pm to 5 pm today. So I gave up on all that. I went to the movie at 2 pm and saved Ed a seat. By 3:15, I decided to leave. I went to the room where Ed had left a message about planning to do the luggage but I wasn’t there. I don’t know where he was.
INTERNET CAFÉ: I went up here to catch up on email and had to wait in a line. The first cubicle opened up and the mag stripe wouldn’t take my card. So I let the next person try it and soon enough I went to the next cubicle. Same story. Eventually, I got the card to work at the 3rd cubicle. The fellow who had been using this one had a wet bathing suit so I sat in that while I cleaned out my email. In the interim, Ed had come in to do his email also. By this time, it was time to go to
TRIVIA: We had a different staffer reading the questions today, a young lady from India. You can tell this was a hard one; the group that won had only 10 points; we had 9. One of the questions was interesting: true or false: a “rosary” is a place where roses grow. Fortunately one of our group asked her to spell it. R o s e r y so the answer was True. Many groups hadn’t listened to the spelling and so most got it wrong. There were other really tough ones. We consoled ourselves because the prizes this afternoon were again can covers.
DINNER: Everyone except Hank and Erna were here. We discussed the first speaker of the morning. This is kind’ve tip toe conversation because we are all across the spectrum politically. We also got into talk about Turkey and Atta Turk, Israel, Abba Ebin…well you can imagine. We might touch on anything.
ENTERTAINER: For tonite is a magician. Ed loves that stuff. I’m staying in to read more of Rashi’s daughters.
By the way, the show last night was the banjo player now from Thailand, originally from New Orleans. He was enjoyable enough. Wore a black tux with a bright red shirt and a red and black bow tie! Whoopie.
TIME CHANGE: Back one hour, again. We’re now on Arabic Standard Time and the city is Baghdad. Something kind’ve odd about that.