sea day

had to get up early for one more training i had to sign off on for health, environmental and safety issues….at 8 am!  yikes!  if i work til 1, i will be up at least ‘til 3 just winding down, so i had to get up to get some coffee first… turns out the guy in the café was one of my favorite piano bar waiters ever from another ship!  i keep running into more folks i have already met elsewhere…

i had called my boss in seattle on embarkation day and left a msg asking him to email the purser to make it a smooth process to get my reimbursement for luggage, lunch and dinner on the road, etc.  since it is the wknd, i didn’t think he’d be in on saturday to do it, which is when the purser can see me, and i didn’t want to wait ‘til monday to get the money i had planned to use for phone and internet cards, and that went super smoothly also.  thanks, boss!  on some ships, things just work well, and on some they don’t, and i feel so grateful that things here run quite smoothly!  i am having a very non-hassled transition here, and i am feeling lucky.  i’ve only been on one ship of all that i have been on where things were just crazy, and i am now gun shy when going n a new ship… i think that must have just been an aberration… lucky me!

last night i had so much fun… it feels so good to feel that way about working!  and while the ship gig for me is always fairly fun, last night was a standout night for me… i had a group of lively canadian gals from the first night come back (those canucks know how to party!), and then at 11:30 or so, about 25 gay guys showed up and we were rocking out and singing ‘til about 2am!  (they were good tippers, too!)  both groups made friends, and we had a blast… i think the highlight was “these boots were made for walking” and the guys cheered on the canadians doing some interpretive dance… you had to be there, i guess… what was especially nice was that there were also several other couples in the bar, and i held my breath wondering if there would be a clash of ideology and a fox-news- watching-contingency exodus, but everybody was just having fun and getting along… it’s like the piano bar gets it’s own little community in there, and it’s a democracy – everybody gets a turn and can choose songs, and people are a little more tolerant to wait their turn than perhaps in some other areas of life… my own personal peace movement!  save the world through piano bar unity!  it’s a pleasant break for everyone from the news and from their problems, anyway, so as time goes on, i realize that my job actually does serve a little bit of a higher purpose and i believe can be considered, in the buddhist way of thinking, “right work.”  so cool…

my 9 o’clock themed set was “piano bar legends,” the music of sir elton john, billy joel and ray charles… my bar staff was wonderful and they had to add another server in there last night… i think we will have a pretty packed room!  more soon… it was a sea day, cloudy and gray (my favorite!) and lovely…