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.)