Marlee Matlin has Nothing To Worry About

We're at sea for two weeks.  This requires two crew emergency drills.  After the first drill, the captain decides he's really going to stress his crew, and invites the passengers to participate in the drill.  (Right up to actually abandoning the ship.)  Now, he doesn't just want us to be good little passengers who hear the alarm, get our life jackets, go to our muster stations, and calmly follow directions to the lifeboats.  Oh hell no.  Captain Tom wants to really test the crew, so invites anyone with an interest to come to a "pre-drill casting session," where he and the first officer hand out parts to play.

I am so there.  I mean, when else am I going to have the opportunity to run up and down the corridors, yelling, "WE'RE GONNA DIE!!!"?

And that was, in fact, a role he was casting.  (The First Officer had a few dozen strips of paper on which he'd written short descriptions of how to behave.)  But there were fewer interested passengers than he'd hoped, so I had to let someone else take "panicked."  (There was also "aggressively drunk," "medical emergency," and one that wasn't actually called "Karen," but was a Karen.)  But he also wanted someone who speaks a foreign language and could revert back to it - on the theory that when people panic, they go back to their mother tongue.  And he wanted to see what his crew would do if faced with someone who all of a sudden couldn't understand English.

I looked around at my fellow volunteers, and nobody had the language skills.  I considered my own abilities and said, "I could, uh, be Deaf."

Captain and First Officer immediately decided this would be good for the drill.  I got the strip of paper intended for a non-English speaker and it directed me to approach the crew member and watch them panic as they can't communicate with me and try to find a translator.  Sounds fun.

I realized this was a risk.  My ASL skills are substantially out of practice.  (If they have an actual interpreter on board, I'm hosed.)  But I googled to confirm a few signs I figured I might need, and entered the drill on the assumption that my signing knowledge was likely to be better than their signing knowledge, which was really all we needed for this to work.

It worked.  It worked perfectly.  I put on my confused face, looked at all the crew gathering in their life jackets, started increasing my panic and signed "what's happening?" at the nearest crewmember.  He handed me a pen (he wanted to know my cabin number, but I didn't "hear" him) so I just wrote, "what's happening?" across his paper.  One of his colleagues picked up on it, sat me down, and tried to explain about the (mock) fire being (mock) fought with charades.  I was still confused.  At some point, she had a lightbulb moment and realized she knew how to fingerspell, and she slowly signed W-A-T-E-R and pretended she was waving a hose.  I calmed down.  (But I stayed in character, and never lost track of where she was, because she was the one crew member who knew how to tell me what to do.)

The entire drill lasted about 45 minutes.  In addition to those of us playing our roles (when the Karen put on her life jacket and asked "is this only size this comes in?" I nearly lost it), a BUNCH of other passengers decided to join in at the "abandon ship" bell, so a good deal of passengers lined up at the muster stations (and quite a few of them legit forgot where their muster station was) with life jackets and marched together to the lifeboat boarding area, where the drill ended.

We had a post-drill feedback session with the captain, where we all had many suggestions for improvement.  (I suggested they learn just a handful (heh) of signs.  You could do a lot with "safe," "stay," and "follow.")  A surprising take-away was that the lifejackets were stunningly difficult to put on.  (The nice lady had told me not to get mine; they would have extras before we get in the lifeboat.  And they did.  The drill ended with everyone passing me a brand new lifejacket from a cabinet near the lifeboat.  I got it over my head, but the damn strap would not unwrap, wrap around me, and click in front - without the help of two other people.  Not ideal for an emergency situation.  Someone else timed his - it took them SEVEN MINUTES to get it on him.)  This ship has different lifejackets from the rest of the line's fleet and it's pretty much item number one in the captain's notes for this ship to swap in the other type of jacket.  And I'm not sure they would've known that if the Captain hadn't encouraged passengers to participate in the drill.

Felt really good to help out.  And I later had a chat with my fingerspelling crewmember, who had surprised herself when realizing that she knew how to do that.  Now, she has a bit of added confidence that she could cope with this scenario.

Here's yesterday's sunset.  You're welcome.

Stargazing at Sea

I went to the rescheduled Stargazing.  A group of about 20 of us gathered on the forward deck in near total darkness.  (They even turned off the running lights so we'd get a better look.)  We're apparently 900 nautical miles from the Bahamas, and we were starting to get a little bit of light pollution from them and the East Coast.  From 900 freakin' miles away.  Which I guess shows just how dark it was in the North Atlantic.

We saw about a zillion stars (rough estimate).  It was dark enough that we could see the Milky Way (looking ... like a milky stripe, as it does).  I've only had that kind of view one other time - when I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  I'm gonna tell you how dark it was... We had about a half hour of gorgeous star cover.  That came to a close when some clouds rolled in.  Once the clouds covered the light from the stars, we looked over the railing of the ship and saw some patches of bioluminescence deep in the ocean.  (Super cool.)

Captain had a pretty strong laser pointer, with which he very clearly pointed out stars, and a couple planets.  (Saturn was bright; Jupiter brighter.)  Folks seemed pretty interested in seeing the constellations, so he pointed out the half-dozen or so that we could see.  I spotted the easy ones, but mostly ignored the rest -- I honestly don't care how I'm supposed to make out a winged horse out of that square of stars; I was way more interested in just leaning back and looking at the, you know, majestic carpet of stars rolled out overhead.  Fucking glorious.  (Some folks were trying to take pictures with their cell phone cameras; I'm pretty sure they're going to be disappointed with the results.)  Astronomer friend was there adding details about the stars.  (For instance, the captain pointed out that Sirius is actually two stars; Astronomer added that it's a primary star with a white dwarf about the size of earth orbiting it - and that this will be the ultimate fate of our own sun, once it burns up its own energy.)  First officer talked about how to navigate with the stars and how important Polaris is as the North Star (Astronomer added that Polaris is not perfectly aligned with the line connecting earth's poles as we careen through the sky and that the ancient Egyptians actually used a different star for North).

My pet interest astronomically-speaking is exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system.  This is of interest to me because, when I was a kid, I was taught, "we believe there are exoplanets, but we haven't proven it yet."  We've proven it now.  I was impressed when the count was over 800.  Current count of confirmed exoplanets is over SIX THOUSAND.  (Astronomer friend agreed that this is definitely a "within our lifetime" discovery.)  ANYWAY, captain said that the Orion Nebula (he's using his laser pointer and called it a lightsaber, stg) is home to a couple of "rogue exoplanets," which have no sun and are just rotating around each other.  Astronomer friend thinks this is no biggie, but my jaw actually dropped on account of I DIDN'T KNOW EXOPLANETS COULD DO THAT.  So there's one more thing about my understanding of the universe that changed in my lifetime.

Cool.

Grumpy Critic Rides Again (at Sea!)

Most of yesterday (and this morning) was pretty much the same.  

The "noon podcast" has continued to be adorable.  We all love it and it's going on my comment card as something that could be the hallmark of this ship.  (At one point yesterday, the captain got on and jokingly complained that the noonday report is supposed to be "delivered by the captain in a monotone."  Of course, he also reminded us to "continue our love affair with the handrails," and then something about the jacuzzi being available "for jacuzzing.")

We are Officially Going To Lose Trivia - on account of the days being worth vastly different numbers of points.  Maybe we'll win by one point on a day where there are ten or fifteen points available to each team.  Today, there was a massive 45 points available.  (That's about 1/3 of what most teams had going into today.)  It was Duets - you had to name the song and both artists.  We got ourselves a respectable 34.  (If we were PERFECT on what we knew, it would've been 36; but, you know, errors are sometimes made in a team setting.)  But the highest scoring team got a massive 43.  There's no way we're going to make up 10 points on a few more days of standard-scoring trivia.

(On the other hand, we did kind of, uh, slaughter on Musical Theatre Name That Tune.  26 out of 30.  I was annoyed at the ones I brain farted on, whereas the next highest score was, you know, 20.  But this didn't count for the progressive trivia.  Instead, we won a little bag of chocolates for crushing that.  (It was the birthday of one of my friends; he suggested I take the bag back to my cabin, then "present" it to him at dinner like I'd bought it as a gift.)

So:  Grumpy Critic.  I used to refer to myself as Grumpy Critic when I was reviewing, on account of believing I'm pretty hard to get a rave out of.  ("It was entertaining, but ...")  

Last night, there were two competing events on the schedule:  Stargazing with the Captain (and special guest, my (birthday) friend who is an Astronomer) and the Entertainment Manager doing his solo show of Broadway tunes.

Normally, I'd be all over the Stargazing even if my friend wasn't part of it.  But I was curious about Entertainment Manager's voice, and after our performance in Musical Theatre Name That Tune, it was hard to pretend I wasn't interested in showtunes.  We asked him to change the schedule, but he assured us that there would be repeats of the Stargazing.  (I'm hoping for clear skies tonight.)  So I reluctantly said my goodnights to Astronomer and went off to Entertainment Manager's show (as did Astronomer's wife).

Entertainment Manager has a legit West End credit (as a child actor) and has performed in theatre and cabaret, before turning to Entertainment At Sea.  He opened his show with "Love Changes Everything" and, reader, we've got us a legit power tenor here.

Grumpy Critic was immediately mentally rewriting his show.  He's a charming performer and has good rapport with the audience (getting plenty of laughs), but his encore was the absolute wrong song for the moment and he has a tendency to prefer Way Too Much echo in the sound system when he sings.  (Grumpy Critic would also report that she thinks the reason he wasn't more successful on stage is that his voice wants to be Young Leading Man, but he's pushing 40 and his look and personality are more Comic Sidekick, which probably limits opportunities.  (He said he was offered stand-in work on "Wicked" for Boq - this should give you some idea of his frame.)  I was trying to listen to him without actually looking at his face - bit of a challenge as I was in the front row, so made solid eye contact with his shoulder.)  

But if you parse all the grumpy out of that paragraph, I was pretty impressed vocally; I'm not used to cruise ship entertainment being able to pull out some of those power notes without scooping.  Props, my man.  (During his show, he sang one song which he'd said was requested.  It was fine, but not the song for him.  I went into my library and came out with something I think is more fitting for his voice.  He said he's never sung it in public, but will see if he can learn it.  We'll see if that was a blow-off or if he'll give it a go.)

(Also, the Entertainment Manager is a nice young man who LOVES musical theatre, enjoys dressing up in drag as Cher, says his favorite band is Queen and ... has a girlfriend.  When he mentioned this latter bit during his show, you could hear the murmurs of about 100 people deciding they need to take their "gaydar" into the shop for recalibration.)

It wasn't that windy, so I braved standing at Selfie Point at lunch, only to discover that the drop isn't DIRECTLY off the back of the ship -- instead there's a deck a couple stories below.  My brain immediately started posing the word problem ("if the ship is travelling at 13 knots and you drop your phone, will it land on the deck or in the water by the time it gets down there?") but I decided it was best not to try it out. 

I did risk a selfie, but I'd come from the gym and was still wearing a headband, so I'll have to aim for this shot again later.

Middle of the Atlantic

We were supposed to have a party on deck today to celebrate the halfway point of our ocean crossing.  You will note the "supposed to" in that sentence.  The clouds that screwed up stargazing last night stayed with us and decided to make a light rain.  The powers that make decisions on a ship decided that electricity (used by the band, for the party) would be a bad mix with the rain, so pulled the plug on the party.  We'll celebrate being 70% across when the weather is better.

Because the party was cancelled, I dropped by the daily art class, which is where I made Grumpy the Sea Turtle.  (I posted him on Facebook while he was drying.  Now that he's dry and I picked off all the salt - yeah, we used salt for some damn reason - I can show you the final product.  Look now; it's not like he's going to be framed on my wall.)

I'm not entirely happy with the lady teaching the class.  She sort of walks around and, when she sees something in my work she doesn't like, she just fixes it -- without even asking and certainly without teaching me.  Just "this part should be lighter," and next thing I know, she's wet a paper towel and is lightening it up.  I mean, yeah, those parts DO look better now.  But I would rather have my own shitty turtle than her better turtle.  Like I said, I'm not framing it on the wall.

Of course, even when she did tell me what to do, it didn't turn out well.  At one point, after I'd done the pink for his tongue, there was a little bit of white space underneath.  She told me to put a bit more brown there.  I did, and the pink from the tongue immediately started to seep over there.  (Thanks a lot, lady; I would have preferred the white.)  I'm ok with it.  It isn't seeping paint, it's the blood of his enemies on his chin.  Do not fuck with Grumpy.

We did drop 3 points in Trivia yesterday (for a total of 4 down) but we won today, so picked up a point.  So we're three out of first and holding second by a point or two.  I'm pleased, but also miffed; we should've had another point, but I missed a question because I did a stoopid.

As for the crossing, they gave us all certificates - even though the crossing isn't finished.  Seemed awfully optimistic of them.  (Not going to frame this either.)

It isn't just the awkward syntax.  The amusing part is that while the captain's signature is live ink, it's pretty clear that the hotel manager's initials were a cut-and-paste job.  (You can see how they're in the white square that doesn't quite match the white of the certificate.)  OK, yeah, the hotel manager is clearly busy what with the understaffing.  Still, the freakin' CAPTAIN found the time to sign these things.  (Flashback to when I had to sign a stack of Nominee Certificates for the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards, knowing that some folks were going to cherish them, while others were going to leave them on the floor at the ceremony.  You just tried to think about the folks for whom it mattered, and keep signing.)

The freakin' Captain is very personable and while I'd like to think he was hired for his ability to, you know, captain the ship across the Atlantic, it's also clear that he is quite good at the part of his job that involves dealing with the guests (and posing for pictures with the drunk ones).  He runs a ... well, I'm not going to say "loose ship," but he's allowing a little more fun among the crew, which is really enjoyable.  Every day at noon, the bridge officers do an update on our status - ship's location, bearing, speed, ocean depth, weather, ... stuff like that.  I've previously heard it delivered in that same buzzing loudspeaker voice that you hear on planes that starts with "this is your captain speaking."  Pretty dull stuff.  So, a couple days in, the captain was down in the Lounge to give us the story about the rocky weather we were facing and he was going to talk to us right at noon.  So we hear the update from the bridge officers, and it sounds like a couple of the younger officers got their hands on the mic while the captain was away (although I'm certain they actually had permission).  They are "welcoming us to the noon podcast."  They're kind of adorable and the captain is in the Lounge with us, watching how well it goes over.  ("I'm Matt."  "And I'm Ben."  "And we are ... Ben and Matthew.")  We actually applaud it.  We found out later that the two of them have only known each other less than three weeks, but they definitely have a chemistry and manage to crack us up on the daily.  Now we're at the point where the "noon podcast" has a special guest each day, as different departments are trying to get in on the fun.

I got invited to dinner at Matthew's table tomorrow.  I think it would be delightful, but had to decline on account of it being my friend's birthday and we had planned a special birthday dinner.  When I sent my regrets, I made certain to indicate I'd love to go another time.

Tomorrow is a heavily-scheduled day, what with rescheduling some of the stuff that has been cancelled before.  Gotta get my sleep on.

Addendum

Food came right after I posted.  :)

I inhaled it and headed off to the Stargazing.  I'm walking down the hallway between an older woman, wearing a bathrobe, and her companion.  I'm making casual conversation.  It doesn't take me too long to catch on to the fact that she is, uh, in her cups. 

She stops walking and grabs my arm.

Her:  Who are you?

Me:  I'm Sharon.

Her:  Where are you from?

Me:  Los Angeles.

Her:  Why haven't I seen you before?

My brain says, "You have; you're just drunk off your ass," but my mouth stops it in time and says something like, "I don't know.  I've been here."

We make our way out on deck in the dark (for to see the stars).  The Captain will be joining us in a few, but the First Officer is out there now, using a small red light to guide us so that we don't fall over but also don't ruin our night vision.  The sloshed lady from before is taking out her phone to get better light to see, which is kind of defeating the purpose (but I understand where she may be more discombobulated than most.  Someone ought to combobulate her right quick).

Sadly, the clouds have made an appearance and there isn't much stargazing to be done.  We can see one star.  Captain points it out (Sirius) and we all applaud.  He thanks us for coming and promises to reschedule when multiple stars will be visible.  We head back inside to the well-lit hallway.  As I'm leaving, I hear someone say that she's not going until she gets a picture standing between the Captain and the First Officer while she's wearing her bathrobe.

OK, then.  

Not Just a Blog Post, It's a Race

The crew is working its collective ass off.  The biggest problem with this ship is that there just aren't enough of them.  (Crew, not asses.  We have enough asses.  Mostly among the passengers.  But I digress.)

The problem is a physical one - insufficient crew cabins.  There's a really obvious solution and it's on the deck plan - 10 guest cabins on the Deck 3.  (The ship is set up so that all the places we have to go are on Deck 4 or higher (with the exception of the tender platform) and nearly all passenger cabins are on Deck 5 or 6, with some extra spendy ones up on Deck 7.  Deck 3 are the cheapest cabins and they probably sell (on account of being less expensive) but I reckon that if they drop those cabins, they wouldn't lose all the revenue -- some (if not all) of those folks would just pay for pricier cabins.  (There are upwards of 20 empty cabins on this sailing anyway.)  What I'm saying here is:  other than the costs of remodelling those spaces into crew cabins (and whatever other changes would go into that deck not accommodating passengers), there would likely be minimal loss of revenue with converting them into crew spaces, which would enable them to hire the additional crew they really really need.

Which brings us, by the way, to the race.  I'm ordering room service tonight because I don't feel like the big dinner in one of the restaurants.  When I called they were so busy they had to call me back in ten minutes.  The order went in and I started writing.  Will there be blog first or burger first?  (I'm betting on blog, but am happy to be proven wrong.)

(I am reluctant to provide today's Trivia Report, in which, rather than gaining ground on the team we were only 1 point behind, we, er, screwed the pooch and dropped, like, 3 more points to them.  A few other teams might have gotten ahead of us too.  Not our finest hour.  Half-hour.  Whatever.)

But I also wanted to show you my favorite spot on the ship, which was conveniently empty for good photographing.  On Decks 5 and 6 (where most of the guests are), most of the cabins have balconies.  Some of them do not.  There's a few lounge chairs set up in the very back of the deck -- I like to think of this as the communal balcony for the folks on the deck (like myself) who don't have rooms with balconies (although it's really open to everyone).  Look how welcoming!  

I even took a selfie!  (That railing was not nearly as threatening as that one by breakfast I posted the other day.)

Look at that!  Calm seas!  Occasional white puffy cloud!  Happy Sharon!

Indeed, the skies are so nice that the Captain has scheduled a little "Stargazing at Sea" tonight.  I'm thinking "middle of the Atlantic" should be pretty good from a dark sky perspective, so I'm hoping for some good viewing.

(After burger.  Which will, indeed, follow blog.)

The Yacht Club

The Yacht Club is the name of both Windstar's loyalty program AND the lounge with the windowed walls all around it.  (This has, on occasion, made for some confusing conversations.  You know, because the Yacht Club party is held in the Lounge, while there's private party in the Yacht Club.)

I have already turned in my mid-cruise comment card.  (I'm making a point of only suggesting things that can actually be resolved mid-cruise.)  But if I could have another card, I would suggest posting the Yacht Club hours and offerings by the door in the Yacht Club.  Or on the bar itself.  Because while its daily hours are listed in the app for each mealtime, certain nuances are in fact discovered when you're there.

For example, it has a "Continental Breakfast" until 11:00, and Lunch from 11:00.  Except, it only has a single employee in there, and it takes her about 10 minutes to do the food changeover.  So, really, it should be Breakfast until about 10:55 and Lunch from 11:10.  Which is not a major distinction, but is a significant one if you overslept and are trying to grab a quick muffin before Trivia.

(We started today down by one and tied on today's TV Trivia.  Tomorrow is General Knowledge.  I'm already preparing for questions on General Mills, General Electric, Modern Major-General....)

The listings also say the Yacht Club has lunch from 11:00 to 5:00, but fail to mention that scones magically appear at some point in the afternoon (I found them today at 4:00ish) and also that EVEN COFFEE WON'T HAPPEN after 5:00.  The club itself is still open but the service is closed, while the Yacht Club flips into a bar for evening hours.  I don't know how many times I watched the nice lady explain that folks had to go elsewhere for their coffee (and/or alcholic beverage) needs while I was quietly munching on my scone today.  Part of this problem comes from folks familiar with the Yacht Club on other Windstar ships - where it is pretty much the coffee shop straight through.  But here, it turns into a bar at night, and the staff gets an hour to do the conversion.  So, yeah, signage.

I also would rip the sign off the bathroom wall in the bathroom outside the main restaurant.  That sign is a little graphic showing that the door opens outward.  The door actually opens inward.  (There's another sign that suggests you open the door with your "paper towel," but these bathrooms provide little fabric hand towels, so that sign, too, is a bit misleading.)  Ah, the fun of being on a maiden voyage.

Had a nice little exercise in the gym today.  MUCH easier to walk on the treadmill when you don't have to keep a death grip on it for fear you'll go flying off at the next big wave.  The ocean is substantially less choppy (waves of only 2 meters, rather than the previous 3-4) and I even risked swaying my arms a bit while walking my mile.

Today's photo is from my table at lunch, in the little covered outdoor area in the back of the restaurant.  And also the back of the ship.  I'm not exactly sure WHY the deck is constructed with that little place to walk out right in the dead center.  I think of it as the Selfie Spot.  Or the place to pretend to be Rose and Jack (even though that was on the bow and this is the stern).  I also think of it as The Place I Won't Be Taking A Selfie Because I Didn't Bring A Strap For My Phone And Would Rather Not Have It Fly Off While We're Doing Thirteen Knots.