World Cruise - Day 20 - Feb 1 - At Sea

We watched the Leave It To Beaver marathon on the TV in the room last night and again this morning.  Lots of fun, although both Krissie and I realized that we haven’t really seen most of the episodes since we were kids, so now we’re watching the episodes through the eyes of Ward and June, rather than Beaver and Wally.

Sunrise wasn’t that great this morning, my best pic was pre-sunrise:

Giulianna, the bartender and coffee barista in the Club Restaurant on deck 5 gave me a lesson using my camera this morning.  She knows all about aperture, shutter speed, F-stop, ISO.  I’m still learning.  New telescopic lens arriving on Friday at the UPS Store in Honolulu.  I’m having fun with my new camera.

Got second in ping pong again.  Lost to Dan in the finals.

We won at trivia this morning.  OK, we actually tied for first, but then tied again on the tie breaker question.  Got our free pen.  I’ve got a lot of this stuff, I need to start giving more stuff away.  It was a tough trivia session, we only got 12 out of 20 (showing how difficult it was, that was tied for the best score).  Here are some of the questions we missed: When Crayola changed the name of its controversial “flesh” color crayon, what did they change it to?  Peach (we put taupe).  Does a rubber band stretch further when it is cold?  Yes (we put no).  What product has the tagline “Never oily, never dry”?  Kraft peanut butter (we put Oil of Olay).  Who was the first explorer to enter the Arctic Circle?  Cook (we put Perry).  Tiebreaker question: On what continent is Tim buk tu?  Africa (we got it correct).  Bill was awesome again today in trivia.

They’ve been offering free art classes onboard the ship.  Today it was painting pottery bowls:

I caught a pic of Terry and Jackie Eckstein in their “usual” spot by the pool on deck 9:

We think they should have their name engraved on a plate on the table, they hang out there most of the afternoons while we are at sea.

Hi Sonia, I guess they didn’t have Leave It To Beaver in the UK when you were growing up?  Jerry Mathers played Theodore Cleaver, A/K/A Beaver.  It was a staple program on TV reruns while we were growing up (I think the original series was in the late 1950s?).  Anyway, going to see Jerry Mathers (who played Beaver) in a few minutes.  And you’re wrong on Chuck’s age, but let’s just say that he’ll appreciate it.

We just got back from hearing Jerry Mathers.  We met him on the way into the theater and his wife Theresa offered to take out picture with him:

He’s a really nice, decent guy.  Very humble and very down to earth.  We very much enjoyed his presentation:

A few of the things I learned from his presentation: Barbara Billingsley wore a pearl necklace because she was a model in New York before the show and she had a very skinny neck and her so her skin was somewhat caved in on the front of her neck.  The producers of the show were worried that it would look like she had a tracheotomy or some other type of surgery, so they agreed to have her wear a string of pearls for each show.  And high heels.  And the rest is history (and a great setup for Airplane).  Jerry (real name: Gerald Patrick Mathers) started acting at age 2 and is now 63.  He was recently in the role of the father in Hairspray on Broadway, where the show had standing room only for over 6 months after he joined the cast.  He and Tony Dow have been lifelong friends and they have continued to act in shows together.  He is the oldest child in his family and Tony Dow is the youngest in his family, the opposite of what it was in the show.  Yet he still considers Tony to be his older brother and best friend.  Hugh Beaumont was a minister before he got into acting and could not afford to raise his family, so he went into acting.  Leave It To Beaver is the longest continuously running TV show in history, starting in 1957 and is still running in syndications in 140 countries.  The show itself ran from 1957 to 1963 and stopped at that point due to the introduction of color in TV shows, where they would have had to make changes to how they produced the show, so they decided to stop the show instead.  Jerry Mathers entered normal high school at that time and Tony Dow went on to college.  He talked about the other actors on the show and he has a great fondness for all of them.  He’s a very nice and humble person.  He has worked in acting, banking and real estate during his adult life.  He is on with us until Pago Pago and will be giving two other presentations onboard.

Glenn Smith performed again tonight:

Tomorrow is our last sea day on our way to Honolulu.