World Cruise - Day 21 - Feb 2 - At Sea

We’re getting into a routine on most of the sea days that goes something like this: 1) put out the order for breakfast the night before, which includes for me a half grapefruit, All Bran cereal, skim milk, hard boiled egg and for Krissie a half grapefruit, oatmeal, banana and yogurt; 2) wake up somewhere between 6:00 and 6:30; 3) I shower and get ready while Krissie says her prayers and does her Bible study; 4) then she gets ready while I say my prayers and do Bible study; 5) go get coffee and a bran muffin either from the 9^th floor (if I wake up at 6:00) or the 5^th floor (if I wake up at 6:30); Ken typically goes to the 9^th floor at about 6:30-7:00 or so and to the 5^th floor for about another half hour after that, so I usually see him in the morning; 6) drink our coffee and eat the bran muffin on the balcony; 7) go take some sunrise pics (sunrise can be anywhere from about 6:45-7:45, depending on where we are at the time; 8) breakfast is delivered, eat breakfast on the balcony; 9) Krissie gets ready for Zumba and I show her my sunrise photos to pick the best one(s) for the blog; 10) update blog entry for the day with sunrise photos; 11) repeat.

I know, it sounds kinda repetitive, but it is nice to have a morning routine to get started each day, at least for the sea days.

Here are the best sunrise photos from this morning:

This was my pre-dawn pic above.  It’s a photo where I wish I had the telephoto lens (that I will be picking up tomorrow in Honolulu) to focus in closer on the center clouds, which would look something like this:

So that pic above is simply a crop of the prior photo, pulling in the part of the photo I would have focused upon if I had a telephoto.  It isn’t as sharp and detailed as it is if it had been taken with a telephoto lens, but you get the idea.

This pic is the one Krissie picked out of the 60 or so that I took, capturing first light and also as the clouds above are being lit up by the sun peeking over the horizon.

Krissie also liked how I changed up the lighting (white balance) to get a different effect on this photo.  OK, enough playing with the camera, I think I’ll go join Krissie at Zumba class.

I did most of the Zumba class with Krissie today.  I stopped to take a few pic:

Krissie and Lorraine doing their steps.

Collette is great at Zumba, but very difficult to photograph, since she is never standing still.  Some people talk about Frankie from the last cruise, but I’m pretty sure Frankie never did Zumba.

The whole room is filled on the dance floor and even the back of the room is filled.  Chelsea is in the back of the room with the others who are participating (about 30-35 people in total).

I won at ping pong.  And we won at trivia this morning with a perfect 20 out of 20.  Bill is again MVP of our trivia team.  Patti, everyone has their category in trivia.  The key to winning at trivia is diversity (and a ringer like Bill on the team).

They played volleyball in the pool today:

They string up the net (loosely) between the two hot tubs.  Nice diversion on a sunny day.  OK, not entirely sunny, there were some very cool clouds in the sky:

Doc, you commented about making your recommendation of the Canon PowerShot not working out for me.  Actually, I am still using the PowerShot as much or possibly more than the Rebel EOS, since it is pocketable and I have it with me pretty much everywhere I go.  So the shots above of the pool volleyball and the clouds are both with the PowerShot.  So is this photo of Krissie sunning on the deck:

I’ve become somewhat the backup tech support guy onboard.  So far, I’ve helped people with Kindles, laptops (variety of issues) and even a Macbook (Brandon would be proud).  Trevor in the Internet Café is usually there to help as first line tech support, but I end up getting some of the overflow.  I’m always happy to help out.

Rebekah, yes, that was me wearing the “Hobbit” shirt.  Although to be clear, it’s a Hobbit gift, not really a Hobbit shirt (i.e. not a shirt that a Hobbit would wear).  I called it the Hobbit shirt because it was gifted to me as a Hobbit would gift a shirt.  Anyway, I guess you have to read Tolkien to understand.

We wore Hawaiian shirts to dinner tonight in celebration of coming into Hawaiian waters with our arrival in Honolulu tomorrow.  I took this pic of Rui, our head waiter:

…because Rui reminds me so much of our friend Jim Chance.  He’s like a Portuguese version of Jim, just as funny, great laugh like Jim.  Anyway, interesting to meet people in other parts of the world who remind us of friends back home.

Tonight’s entertainment was a combination show of Bobby Borgia and The Huber Marionettes, both of which we had seen before.  It’s pretty common to have the mainline show from a previous night do another ½ show with another performer.  We went again and enjoyed both acts again.

Julie, some people send home a package of stuff along the way so that they don’t end up with accumulated stuff at the end.  In particular, American Samoa and Guam are both U.S. Territories and us the US Postal Service.  So I know some people will be sending stuff home at that point.  For us, we’re not really buying anything and plan to have everything in our luggage at the end of the trip.  We brought some things with us that are consumable and will be replaced with whatever minimal things we buy along the way.

Tomorrow is Honolulu.  We are going to the USS Arizona Memorial in the morning.