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(Hmm, perhaps if I take the blog out of "html view," I can actually compose without having to drop paragraph codes into it.  Wouldn't that be nice?)

It's nearing 11 p.m.  I have a quick break to post before I'm meeting friends up on deck for the big ol' countdown to 2026.  (I'm also half changed.  That's right, Nekkid Blogging.  Try to contain yourselves.)

Big excitement today - we are actually in port.  It's the only real stop on this cruise and was definitely a bit of an incentive to go.  We're in Tenerife in the Canary Islands.  To be sure, I didn't take much advantage of the sights to see here, but it was a LOVELY day.  Like, outrageously lovely, given the rains we had in Malaga.  Actually, we're supposed to have high winds starting shortly after midnight today.  High winds and large waves, right when we're getting back under way.  I don't want to say the crew is battening down hatches, but we noticed them removing all glassware from the beverage station.  (And when I came back to my cabin, the glasses they supply were all huddled in a corner on the floor.)  I dunno, apparently 3 meter waves are ... highish.

For those following our Trivia exploits, our team is now in the lead -- well, we were tied for the lead after yesterday and we won today, which should put us in good stead.  But there are a lot of bonus points out there for the poem contest and mine did get submitted, so we'll see where that leaves us.  (It went over well when he read it aloud, which was nice.)  For tomorrow, we have to submit a sketch of a crew member.  So even if we do ok poetry-wise, we've got to hope our art goes down well.  And nobody on our team is an artist.

(There was an interesting Name That Tune today, which had originally been intended as some sort of speed game but turned into regular team Name That Tune.  We didn't win, but performed respectably.  There were some that I had instantly - so I probably would've done well on those in the speed game; but there were others that definitely required a good think.)

Your first photo here is our ship from a distance.  There's two ships here because Star Seeker (where I am) happened to be park next to its sister ship (from Windstar) the, er, Wind Star.  They got the sails, we got the bigger motor.  (For which I'm sure I'll be grateful in the 3 meter waves.)

The sky looks a little threatening over there, but that's just in that direction; turn your head and it's freakin' beautiful.

I had a walk in Tenerife.  I went up the shopping street but didn't end up buying anything.  (Why would I walk into New Era and buy a Dodgers cap in the Canary Islands?)  But it was a good 8000-step walk and the day was, as previously mentioned (look at it!) freakin' beautiful.  Here's the view from my cabin when we were docked.

I'm not going to get all philosophical about the New Year.  There was a lot I didn't really dig about 2025, but right now, I'm not in the frame of mind to dwell on it.  I'm with friends in a lovely place with (albeit momentary) shockingly good weather.  I'm gonna grab my party hat and noise maker and get out there and party like it's 2026.

(And pants.  I'm gonna grab pants.  It's not that kind of party.)

  

Time Zones Are Weird

There's "ship time" and there's "real time" and they aren't always the same thing.

Because, I mean, you can cross into a new time zone at any time of day or night, and the ship isn't gonna immediately flip the clocks back. So they sorta just plan the clock changes at night, when convenient, even if that puts you off from what the time "actually" is.

All of which is background for the fact that they told us sunrise was at 7:56 this morning, and when I bounced out of bed when my alarm went off at 7:55, it was pitch freakin' black out there. Sun didn't rise for another freakin' hour. But this was basically because sunrise for our location WAS at 7:56, but the ship hadn't changed the clocks to "real time" yet.

This is complicated by the time zones in this part of the world. We started in Malaga, Spain (in the sea), the jogged on around the Rock of Gibralter into the North Atlantic, and are now tooling down the coast of Morocco. Technically, we should've jumped into the light green colored time zone as soon as we entered the ocean, but actually, Morocco is on the same time Spain is, and (as we go further South) it's still on Spanish time (the beige one) even as it juts further West. (Meantime, we're headed for the Canary Islands. Which are still owned by Spain, so you could make an argument that they should be in the tan zone extension, too. Or, just based on location, put them in the blue zone. But they're in the green anyway, for ... reasons?)

Yeah, so it was dark until about 9 is what I'm saying.

I was less green today - much less pinballing - and I slept LONGER, although still not ENOUGH. I'm having trouble adapting to all the ship noises at night. I decided to crank up my White Noise app and - in a burst of creativity - I set it to the "Ocean Waves" setting. This was actually ideal; rather than hearing the hum of the engines and the creaking of the ship, I now hear waves crashing while my ship rocks me to sleep. I'm clearly not on a quiet sailing vessel, but I can pretend that I am!

We came in second in Trivia again - but it might have been to a different team, which keeps us competitive in the long run. The entertainment director also gave us homework for Extra Points. Each team is to write a funny poem about New Year's Resolutions. My little team of over-achievers ended up producing 3 different poems (we're forcing one of the ones who didn't write to choose which one to submit for judging). Anyway, I sat in this window, looking out over the ocean and waited for the rhymes to come.

And as I'm pretty sure none of my competitors are reading this blog, I'll share with y'all the product of my labors.

::: clearing throat dramatically :::

Should I resolve to take more cruises?

Or to drink a bit less boozes?

Stop obsessing over the newses?

Or buying more expensive shoeses?

Instead, I think I'll get some clueses.

Be the person that I chooses.

Shake off the sadness and the blueses.

Greet each morning after I snoozes.

Be kind to creatures - even the gooses.

Eat more healthy; drink all the juices.

Try veg and fruit, like the pamplemousses.

Love all the angles (acute and obtuses!)

Roll with the punches and the bruises.

Celebrate the wins; accept the loses.

With love to all and no excuses

Happy New Year to all of youses.

That's What Friends Are For

I discussed loo rolls falling off the holders today at breakfast. My friends agreed that it is a problem, and also thought mine was particularly bad due the downward angle. (Seems theirs were installed parallel to the floor.) At dinner, one of them surprised me with a present! She had MacGyvered up a little strap to go through the TP and keep it attached to the holder!

I can't wait to see what the cabin steward thinks when she sees it!

My other photos today is this. The floor. Specifically, this dark stripe in the pattern which I keep thinking is spilled coffee. I'm going to get myself so used to thinking, "it's not coffee, it's not coffee" that I'm going to walk right into it if someone actually spills coffee on the floor.

Not much else to report. I didn't get much sleep last night (still adjusting to the new sounds and the (literal) motion of the ocean. The exhaustion made me not as good as I should've been at our first day of multi-day trivia and our first Name That Tune competition. My friends had been talking me up as just being awesome at all of this, but my brain was very much not at its best. (We were still competitive in trivia and we won the Name That Tune anyway, but it was a squeaker. It was also TV Theme Song trivia and we may well have won because I was the only one in the room who watches "Doctor Who." We thank our Welsh Entertainment Director for throwing that one in there. I'm definitely going to aim for More Awake tomorrow.

(Also hoping to be less, er, green. I'm still "pinballing" down the corridors, but hopefully, without the nausea.)

(Honestly, that's all I've got for you today. I just didn't want to end on, you know, that word. Which I guess I'm still kind of ending on by calling attention to it. Flowers. Kitties. Crimson, Eleven, Delight, Petrichor.)

Tale of a Toilet Roll Holder

I am (as Pam Braun figured out) on an ocean-crossing cruise that just departed Malaga and will eventually dump me in Miami.

Pam knows this because she and I met on a Windstar cruise. A couple years ago, I met some other folks on a Windstar cruise crossing the Pacific. The ship holds over 200 people and there were less than 30 of us on the ship. The crossing was AMAZING, and we had a great time spending two weeks being greatly outnumbered by the crew. The folks I met on that cruise were planning on this one, and invited me to join.

This cruise held particular interest because it is the maiden voyage of a new Windstar ship. I'll admit a certain level of curiosity as to what Windstar was coming up with on its next generation of ships. What I had not counted on was the curiosity level of other folks. While that Pacific crossing was near empty, this ship is full. I'm told every cabin is occupied.

They did some testing and a short shakedown cruise (she floats!) but we're basically the Beta testers here. So, yeah, it took a stunning amount of time to actually get served dinner - it was the first time they've actually had to serve a full ship. I'm not COMPLAINING here -- good Lord, I'm on a freakin' CRUISE for crying out loud. More than that, I'm on vacation, enjoying conversation with nice people -- it isn't like there was someplace else we had to be for those two hours. But, still, I'm sure it got marked down in a book someplace as something they were going to work on.

Which brings us (finally) to the toilet roll holder. Cabins in other Windstar ships have a certain logic to them. And that logic is: make the best of use of space. There's storage EVERYWHERE. Folks on this cruise are (politely and quietly, but near unanimously) questioning the itty bitty closet space and insufficient hangers.

I'm going to go a bit further - and I'm doing it on my personal blog rather than the Facebook group for this cruise (because I feel like if I say anything negative about the ship, I'm going to get glared at by Windstar Groupies for the next two weeks.) But the fact is the space just isn't well thought-out. If I were to come up with an overall theme for the design of the cabins, it would be: Luxurious appearance, practicality be damned.

Observe the toilet roll holder. Simple, elegant.

Look again. Angled slightly downward. And at the downward edge...

That itty bitty little stopper supposed to keep the roll on the holder. Even though it is pointing downward. And on a moving ship. As soon as you pull on the sheet to get yourself some TP, it spins, jumps the stopper, and rolls across the bathroom floor.

Could've prevented this with a less sleek design. Or even angling it slightly upward. But the elegance of this design is going to result in everyone dropping their TP on the floor, likely more than once.

(I don't want to say this design philosophy permeates everything, but it does. The TV mounted with a lovely backlight, but the mounting prevents you from watching TV from the sofa. The bizarrely-designed shower with a hand-wand, a rainforest head, AND a body spray -- but there's no moving or angling the hand wand holder, so the shower is basically a dance where you're constantly adjusting among water coming at you from one side, the other side, or above. And don't get me started on the onboard spa facilities - housed on Deck 4, but you have to enter via a winding staircase on Deck 5. Because that makes sense.)

So, here I am on a LOVELY ship, with friends, a charming crew, and cabins that appear designed more for instagram than for actual human use. There is NO WAY I'm going to bitch about this or let it undermine my vacation in any way. But I am going to have a laugh about it every time I'm chasing my toilet roll across the floor.

24 Hours in Spain

I find myself in Malaga. Well, it isn't exactly surprising; I planned it. But I'm on my way to other things, and overnighting in Malaga was part of the plan. Doing damn near nothing here was less of a plan. There's a Picasso Museum that might be worth a look. But it's raining. Not grab-an-umbrella-and-suck-it-up rain, but phone-screaming-an-extreme-weather-alert raining. The alert itself is in Spanish, which is of limited use to me. (My phone is buzzing so annoyingly loud about it, I want to "accept" it off my screen before I think to screenshot it and run it through Google Translate. But I eventually hunt down the text - they're expecting 120 mm (4.75 inches) of rain over 12 hours. Add in the winds which were pushing me up the block (conveniently, I was headed that way anyway) and this is no time to explore. This is time to grab some food at the restaurant next to the hotel and hunker down. (Yeah, we all know my Spanish is not up to the challenge. As an Angeleno, I come here with the ability to count to 10, ask for another beer, seek out the library, and understand my soft taco options at that stand that used to be at the Music Center. Oh, and some swears. Hello, Google Translate.) So, my taxi driver (with very little English) and I (with un poquito Espanol) made it to my hotel in friendly silence. Once I settled in, I went for a walk around the block to get my bearings. Was pleased to pass a local comic book shop - didn't go in, but I felt like I knew where my nerds were. Spied a few places that were worth further exploration, but the winds really started kicking up on the third leg of the square and I decided to indefinitely postpone further exploration and instead slip into the highly-rated tapas fusion joint next to my hotel. It was mostly empty, but set up for two massive parties, so I got crammed in a tiny table in the corner. I'll be honest, I'd researched menus of nearby places earlier, and while it isn't exactly a traditional Spanish dish, I'd kind of been wanting the mushroom and duck breast risotto here. OMG, yes. Soooo tasty. But I also have a rule about stepping a smidge out of my comfort zone. Not TOO far, but I've got to try something a bit more localish. So, my risotto was on preceded by some chicharron de Cadiz, which was extremely flavorful and I sucked it down as though I'd actually intended what I'd ordered and hadn't just took a wild shot at the local pork thing. Had a hard time getting my bill and paying. I made all gone with my food and politely declined a coffee, but the bill - she didn't come. By this time, the massive parties had arrived and the wait staff was going crazy serving then both many plates of tasty goodies and the bartender was working double time too. I had put on my jacket, held my wallet in my hand, asked Google Translate how to ask for the bill (and had done a deep dive into Spanish tipping practices while waiting) and still couldn't catch anyone's attention to get la cuenta. Eventually, I managed eye contact with the bartender and successfully completed the transaction. Popped over to my hotel just as the rain started falling. My hotel is home to a little bakery/cafe, so I grabbed a tea and dessert for later, took it up to my room, and settled in to watch the one English-language channel while the storm raged.

Magic Kingdom Photo Dump

Disney wants an insane amount of money for my photos. 

There's "photopass photographers" all over the park, and they'll snap your picture, and it'll show up in the app (with all your ride photos) covered in watermarks, and you can download a Whole Day of Photos (watermarks removed) for the low, low price of $75. 

Or you can take that $75, have a lovely buffet dinner out of the crowds, and take all the pix you want with Pooh & Friends.

We were celebrating "Friendship Day!"  (It's Friendship Day every day.)

Eeyore figured I needed a hug.  (Or I figured Eeyore needed one.)

Tigger was just the best!

Piglet and I shared a giggle. 

They all came around a second time (to take pictures with more guests as they arrived), so I amused myself by trying to get pictures of all four of their butts.

You're welcome.