New Year's Day

I realize that I put the Happy New Year post in Facebook and never actually went through the deets.

The deets were beautiful.  A few of us went up on the top deck of the ship.  Champagne was delivered and we had an unobstructed view of the fireworks in Tenerife.  I don't think I've ever been on the water to see fireworks before, and it was pretty cool.  

It's hard to show exactly how far away we were - what with pictures normally zooming out and then me zooming in.  In reality, my view was something between the two of these.

I was up there until 1:00 -- the official fireworks had ended but less official ones just kept going.  What can I say?  I was talking with friends, sipping champagne, standing on the deck of a ship in the freakin' Canary Islands and ringing in the New Year.  I had been looking for a break from reality for this trip and certainly got one.  Not sure how long it will last -- not sure how long it SHOULD -- but it was definitely a wonderful way to start 2026.

Slept in quite late today (omg, I missed breakfast) but made it to trivia.  My poem came in second place, so we got some good points for that.  We were definitely in first place coming in to today, and then we hit the roadblock that was Sports.  We did okay.  Actually, we did pretty shitty ... our score would've been pretty close to 50% were it not for the fact that he gave 1 point each for the colors of the Olympic rings, which pushed us closer to 70%.  We'll have to see how bad the damage is tomorrow morning.  (Possibly remedied, or worsened, by the "homework assignment" of drawing a crew member.)

As for the rest of the day, the ocean has been a bit ... oceany, ever since we left the Canaries (at around 2:00 a.m.), I did a lot of sitting and trying to not be seasick.  At one point, I was sitting in a lounge on an upper deck at the bow of the ship; there were doors to the outside on each side of the lounge.  I decided to pop out one door, walk around the front of the ship, and back in the other side door.  It was VERY windy.  I had one hand on the handrail and another keeping my scarf from flying into the ocean.  When there was no handrail, I put my hand on the walls of the lounge - all of which were windows.  I must have made quite the impression on the few people still inside the lounge, clinging to the windows like I'm Spider-Man or something.

They're having sign-ups for the passenger talent show tomorrow.  Wonder if I should perform my fantastic wind walking for a larger audience.