Wednesday, November 19

At sea. A much calmer sea, in fact. After a couple more work sessions today (each necessarily short to let the glue dry in between additions), the dragon is almost done. We’ll have a “private showing” for our table mates tomorrow evening, then she gets turned in for judging on the 21st.

Thursday, November 20

Ae sea and once again out of range of CNN! O Joy! O Rapture!

The second passenger talent show was this afternoon. While some passengers repeated their acts with slightly different material, there were also some new ones including a very nice flute/piano duet, and the HAL Chorus had a new song to add to their others. They did an excellent job again. Probably no wonder as our Cruise Director, Bruce Scudder, was a child prodigy on the organ and holds a master’s in music from U. Michigan plus a double master’s from Julliard in piano performance and conducting. With all that and his sense of humor, he could probably get music from row of deck chairs, much less from a group who are actually interested in singing (regardless of actual talent, although there were a good number of nice voices among the 40-45 members of the chorus.)

This afternoon I was out back on deck (the fantail?) and came up with the following:

Sun road behind us -
glaring white on blue ocean.
The journey’s ending.

I can’t decide whether to being packing some things now or to wait and do a “panic pack” on the last day. Either way is a bummer!

Friday, November 21

Still at sea and getting closer to San Diego!

Well, the dragon’s done as you can see. The sign with her reads: “Delilah Dragon-dam brings us the gift of a wonderful cruise.” And we did manage to use at least one of everything on the

“required” list including one paper hole reinforcement in an inconspicuous but highly appropriate place. There were seven entries in the contest. We didn’t win, but got lots and lots of positive and appreciative comments.

The top two vote-getters (intricate to the point of fussiness) were disqualified because they didn’t use one or another of the required bits. The winner was this very detailed rendition of an oriental temple complete with a lighted buddha inside. It was quite nice as you can see. As with the trivia competition, the best part of not winning is not getting any prizes that have to be packed to carry home or otherwise disposed of.

I’ve been on somewhere between 35 and 40 cruises now. I usually buy a copy of the photograph of everyone at the table in the dining room taken by the ship’s photographer just as a record. This time, however, the photo is actually really good of all seven of us! Nobody squinched their eyes or had an odd look on their face! I was amazed!

Tonight is the last formal night at dinner, so I’ll probably begin packing after that. *sigh* Unless something really interesting happens tomorrow (other than more packing), I’ll end this account here. It’s been a truly fabulous trip, and I’d do it again in a hearbeat!