As alluded to in our last blog post, I have fallen completely in love with Captain Christopher Wells, or, as I like to call him, my boyfriend. Today I got all ready for the 12 noon Captain’s briefing, so I could record it. I actually got nervous, afraid I would miss it, or mess up the recording. Happily, though, I did not, and once we get back to land and an unrestricted internet connection, I’ll post it to YouTube and then add a link here. You should definitely check back, round about Sunday or Monday or Tuesday, as today’s briefing was a particularly good one, full of interesting information about the Titanic (tonight we will be passing near where she sank) and icebergs, as well as the normal information about the state of the sea floor over which we are passing. Update – here’s a link.

Another thing my boyfriend did in today’s briefing is explain why we have whitecaps today, even though the swells are only moderate – it has to do with the way the wind is blowing. And, in the course of explaining, he called them “white horses,” which I shall do, too, from now on, because my boyfriend knows best. As you can see from the picture I dug through all our Daily Programmes to find for this blog post, my boyfriend Captain Wells is about the doofiest looking thing imaginable – which perfectly matches his jaunty, nerdy briefings, and only makes me love him more.  Note from Lis: Hummmph!

Yesterday I posted on Facebook that I had seen birds off the starboard bow of the ship, which confused me because I thought we were in the middle of the Atlantic, not near any land, so where did the birds come from? I invited my wonderful fb friends to solve the mystery for me, and last time I looked, a couple people commented that they would do some checking. After I posted my question, however, I remembered that during my boyfriend’s briefing for that day, he mentioned that we were passing over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an undersea mountain range, and that some of the mountains are tall enough to break the surface and be islands (he named some, but I can’t remember the names – the Azores, maybe, and some others…?). I wonder if these islands are where the birds come from – I’ll be curious to see what my Facebook query yields!

Not much else to report from today – we both woke up feeling sort of tired and puny. Which surprised us, as we haven’t been doing much of anything (me, especially). But we’ve been doing lots of walking, hitting our goals of 8000 steps (Mary) or 1 hour (Lis) every day of the cruise, and attending some shipboard activities (Lis, especially). Last night we got all excited about today’s Daily Programme, wondering how we would fit Romeo and Juliet at 2pm and the Paddington movie at 5pm in with our regular routine of Planetarium and Cream Tea and blackjack and promenade deck walk. The answer is that we wouldn’t – we didn’t do any of the new things, and skipped the deck walk (though we may go later, after dinner – we’ll see). I think maybe our bodies are trying to keep us from overdoing things on what is supposed to be our restful recovery time from our busy European vacation. I did do my daily blackjack, though, and am happy to report that I am now up $19 (I would be up $20, but I tipped the dealer a dollar, as I saw someone else do it earlier, and I want to be a true high roller).

The nice thing about the way today worked out is that Albert, our sad sack, often inept room steward, who has spent the entire cruise coming to clean the room at the most inconvenient times, and then making us feel terrible with his lachrymose “No, it’s fine, I’ll come back later” responses, actually had our room done when we came back from breakfast. Which meant we had an entire glorious day of lying about the room reading (Lis has almost finished the novel she started last night – rock star!), NEVER having to worry about the timing of when Albert would come because he already had! So perfect for a day in which we just wanted to do nothing.

LIS: I have now completed the entire novel, called Elizabeth Is Missing, written by Emma Healey. I had never heard of it, but it was a Sunday Times bestselling novel, so obviously very popular in England. I enjoyed it tremendously. It is written in the point of view of an 82 year old woman named Maud who has fairly serious memory problems but knows that her friend, Elizabeth, is missing. So it’s part mystery and part an examination of aging. I definitely recommend it. When I first got the book from the ship’s library, even though it is the book club book, I had no intention of going to the book club. But I have since changed my mind. Since the median age on this ship seems to be about 92, I think there might be some interesting conversation at the book club meeting. It is tomorrow at 3:30 and of course I can’t stay longer than 45 minutes because I don’t want to miss cream tea, which goes until 4:30. Today I almost missed it because I was napping and then took a shower but fortunately Mary was willing to go get me a scone and the fixings. (Note from Mary: Isn’t she the best?!?)

Also, she didn’t mention that we did go to a planetarium show today, this one called “Stars Over The Atlantic”. We got two of the last three tickets for the 1:30 showing, which was a very popular time because Romeo and Juliet started at 2:15, and the other planetarium shows were during Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet was a live performance put on by students from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. I really wanted to go but was too tired. I did stop in at the theater and look at the set, which looked great, and I was bummed that I was too tired.

Anyway, I refused to stand in line to get into the planetarium so we ended up with seats at the very front which were definitely subpar – you had to crane your neck a little to see some things, but still it was a fabulous show and I relearned some things that I had once known but forgotten. The Daily Programme for tomorrow is a bit boring. The movie is The Second Best Marigold Hotel, which I have heard is awful, and the planetarium show is the same one as today. I wish I’d known that because then I would have gone to Romeo and Juliet today and the planetarium show tomorrow. The only things that interest me tomorrow are the book club discussion at 3:30 and perhaps the guest talent show at 5 pm.  That could be VERY interesting. Ok, signing off for now.

Oh wait, I just saw what Mary titled this blog post. This is really getting out of hand.