After two days at sea of not doing very much at all, I decided to be a little more active today. Following breakfast, our first stop was the cruise ship fitness center. Working out on vacation is not my idea of relaxation, but with all the food we’ve been eating, it’s a good idea to hit the gym occasionally. If my clothes don’t fit when we return, I want it to be because of pregnancy, not because I just ate too much.
Apparently the morning is the busy time at the gym, because it was pretty packed. Dan and I were able to do what we needed to do, and I worked on my balance skills – using an elliptical machine on a moving ship takes some serious concentration. After we got showered and cleaned up, it was time for morning trivia. Dan and I made a new friend today, Steve, who was very anxious to join a trivia team. He’s from Portland and was checking out trivia while his wife was involved in a very intense Scrabble match against some kind of Scrabble champion. (Yes, these are the types of people we are cruising with.) Steve was hilarious, and while he didn’t add much to our trivia answers, he was fun to partner with.
We ate a light lunch in the buffet, because our afternoon plan was to catch a movie in our stateroom with all kinds of snacks. Before the cruise, I had envisioned day after day of camping out in a lounge chair by the pool. Then, one look at the leathered faces of our fellow passengers told me that I did not want to follow their lead and bask in the sun all day every day, so we planned an afternoon in today. I’ve been wanting to watch Million Dollar Arm, and we arranged for room service: chips and guacamole, chocolate covered strawberries, and cheese and crackers. It was a great, relaxing afternoon, although we did miss Captain Dale’s talk on business jets and whether or not they make business sense. Oh well – I’ll take a true-story sports movie any day.
Dinner with Mimi and Robert was more of the usual, but after dinner we were able to go to a martini demonstration, where we learned how to make a few of the ship’s 52 martini cocktails. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to sample any, but those who did said that they were delicious. I savored my mocktail of the day instead, a “Tropical Blend” that was basically an orange-banana smoothie. We participated in 70s Music Trivia this evening, which was hilarious. I wanted to go just to see if we would know any of the answers. My mom is a big fan of music from the 70s, so I thought I had a shot at getting a question or two right. It turns out, we did a lot better than some of the other groups, despite not even being alive in the 1970s! True, I knew the ABBA answers because of the musical Mamma Mia, but that’s beside the point. The point is, we weren’t totally dumb! Coming up later in the cruise is 50s Music Trivia, so we’ll have to see if our luck continues.
Dan’s karaoke escapade has become the talk of the ship, and I am not even kidding you. I had a lady come up to me at the lunch buffet today to say that I was incredibly lucky, because life with my husband would never be boring. (She doesn’t even know the half of it.) She said it was exactly like something her husband would have done. Then, as we were leaving the dining room after dinner, a man shouted out, “Hey, Pina Colada!” as we walked by, so we chatted with him for a minute. It’s been really funny. Dan is already looking forward to the next karaoke night, and planning his next tune, so I’m sure you’ll hear more about that later.
OK, that’s it from me for this trip. Dan takes over all blogging duties tomorrow, so you’ll be getting lots more detail and history from him. Catch you back in NYC!
