barbarafett

4th May, 2014 - Day 4

Mostly cloudy skies. I forgot to mention: It rained on us a little last night, forcing us to move our games of shuffleboard over to leeward.

Bermuda is now 250 nautical miles behind us. Our average cruising speed has been 18.4 knots; we are doing about 20 knots at the moment, and should be in Lisbon on time.

Seas approx. 7-8 feet. Sunset at 2030 hrs. tonight.

The above two paragraphs are notes taken during the noon report.* Personal notes: This morning, I had breakfast, then walked 2 laps (stopping to report our laps so far to the Activities Director and staff), then we rigged church (in our case, that means we went up to the Skylight Chapel and had a very short Episcopal church service). We only did the Gospel reading for today, and EM spent about two minutes preaching. The whole thing took about 30 minutes. We had two guests who were cruise passengers from outside our group (EA invited them) and one ship's staff member who attended.

Walked 2 more laps after church. We turned our clocks ahead an hour at noon, which didn't give us time for a real lunch, so we grabbed sandwiches and brownies from Café Promenade and went to the Schooner Bar to meet up with the Cruise Critic slot pool. We each got $12 back of the $15 we each put in, which I'm told is above average when the winnings from a slot pool like this are divided. But now I know how the game is played on a slot machine and what it's like to play it, which is totally worth the $3.

I went from one activity to another this afternoon: slot pool to choir rehearsal to mask-making. We finally got all the way to the end of our song, and we rehearsed until 4:10. The poor catering staff had to stand around and wait for us to get out of the lounge so they could set up. Then we went to the Conference Center to make masks for the Black and White Ball on night 8 of the cruise.

We rested before dinner, and after dinner, I walked 3 more laps and listened to music, then read until it was time for karaoke. A bunch of people from my group sang, including myself: “Something More” by Sugarland. It was one of the happiest, most joyful, most fun experiences of this cruise so far. Everyone said I did a good job (no one has to know I completely improvised the bridge because I have no idea how the music to it goes), and everyone else in our group did a fantastic job, too. We all had a great time singing and hearing each other sing.

Moon: Still waxing crescent, looks like it'll be at 1st quarter tomorrow.

W4W: Mom and I did 4 laps together, then I did 3 on my own, so my total today was 7.

Steps today: 11,882 (although at least a few hundred of those aren't really steps, but hip thrusts to the music while I was singing karaoke - my mom insisted that I count them anyway, though). Total so far: 50,782.

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Editor's notes:

* When you're on a cruise ship, the captain makes an announcement over the ship's public-address system every day at noon, during which he announces the ship's position, the sea and weather conditions, and other information about the voyage. On this cruise, I inferred that this custom is almost certainly descended from the naval custom of the noon observation with which we Age of Sail fans are so familiar.