Friday 11/2/07 At Sea LA to Acapulco 5
3:00 am

I’ve really settled into the swing of things fully now. Today was a very good but very typical non-show day (of which I have five…and only three show days) and also a very typical Sea Day (as in a day without a port...completely at sea, of which there are 3 every 8 day cruise). So I’ll walk you through the day and you’ll see what an average/good day is for me.

The day begain at 12:50 in the afternoon when Libby called my room and woke me up. We’d made lunch plans last night for 1:30 but she was calling to tell me she wouldn’t be there til two. I got up, my roommate and I watched some news and ranted about how much George Bush sucks, then he went to get some lunch. I had time to kill so I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica. I got to lunch at about 2:10. Libby didn’t make it until 2:15.

Lunch is usually done at the Market Café which is a free buffet style place. Today I got my usual: a small salad, a roll of bread, some carved meat that they carve for you on the spot that’s usually pork, turkey or meatloaf and is usually good, grandmotherly style…some carrots and/or potatoes and some watermelon and pineapple. Other days I get pizza or tacos and a Caesar salad. Dessert is usually free ice cream cones but today I went for the bread pudding and cappuccino cake.

After lunch I went to the gym. I won an iPod shuffle the other night in a crew Halloween party raffle so I was eager to try it out. I listened to Ben Folds’ new album, Songs for Silverman, decided he’s improved lyrically but not so much musically over his past album, and lifted some weights for a little…did mostly chest and core. Then, as it happened to be happening right when I was finishing with weights, I attended a spin class. The spin class costs $30 but for crew it’s free if there is space available. Only one woman had signed up so three of my friends and I did the spin class as well…my friend Andrej runs it and he’s very inspiring. Just having a dude with a German-sounding accent shouting at you (resistance is UP! RESISTANCE IS UP!!) makes you want to give it your all.

After spin, I get back to the room, grab my bathing suit and head over to the spa. The spa also normally costs some kind of fee, I think $20 a day, but it’s free for the entertainment staff to use. I shower off, join two of my JAR friends in the hot tub for 20 minutes, chat with them, swim a lap in the indoor pool, then lounge in a chair and chat with Libby for an hour, watching the sun go down to our left as we stare straight out the back of the ship via a giant wall of glass in the spa…seeing the trail of white water the ship has left in its wake all the way to the horizon. We make plans to see the 9:30 magic show.

After chatting, I go back to the room and hang out with my roommate and another second city guy. My roommate has been playing gameboy for 5 hours because I gave it to him last night and he got re-addicted to his childhood love: Megaman. I literally mean five hours. He plays for an hour longer while he, me and the other guy talk. We eventually get hungry and go down to Versaille, the free main dining room, for dinner.

The hostess is Olga, one of my good friends. She smiles and is excited to see me and she sits us down at a table. I order a lamb sausage with feta cheese and a dash of hummus for an appetizer, a spicy tortilla soup with shredded chicken for a second, a new york strip steak for the main, and a dessert of coconut cream pie. We finish eating around 9:10. I head over to the magic show and watch a two time world champion of magic perform tricks that I’ve seen four times now and yet still there are many I don’t’ get and boggle my mind. He’s a genius with cards and does an incredible 4 minute card-choreographed song to “Shape of my Heart” by Sting. Greatest thing ever.

After that I jump upstairs to the Spinnaker lounge, which is where most of the entertainment staff, JARs, spa girls, second city, youth counselors and other people with higher privileged jobs go after the day is done to drink and chat and unwind. They do an adult Newlywed/Not-so-newlywed game which makes me chuckle a lot, and then I let two of the spa girls convince me to take them back to my room to get room service, because I can get it and they haven’t eaten all day cause they had to do some extra work they weren’t informed about until it was too late to eat before it.

We get back to my room, and we order room service: two pepperoni piazzas, a turkey sandwich, a roast beef sandwich, two cups of mousse and some rocky road cookies. I wasn’t hungry tho so they ate the pizzas and split a sandwich, my roommate came in and ate the other one of the sandwiches. Even though they don’t expect tips, one of the spa girls gave four bucks cause she was so thankful for the food. I loaded ET up into my video iPod, plugged it into the TV, and the four of us watched half of ET. One of the spa girls fell asleep halfway through and they both had to get up for work at 7:45am so they bowed out early. I finished watching ET while my roommate dozed in and out, read a little bit from a Music Directing for Improv book that I have, and then typed up this note.

Often on days like this I will go to the backstage of the Stardust Theatre and play piano, because there’s a grand piano right in the back that isn’t often used and if it’s free I’m allowed to practice on it. I’ve practiced for two or three hours at a time without disturbance. There’s also a bar that doesn’t open until 5 that’s out of the way that has a piano I can practice on if no one is up there and I’ve used it with success as well. I hope to get some more practicing going on.

I’ve also been reading Al Gore’s new book, “The Assault on Truth.” I got it a little more than a week ago and I’m about half finished with it, and it’s finally opened my eyes to the real life impact this administration has had not just on Iraq, not even just on the world, but on the very fundamentals of democracy, truth, politics, trust and the use of the media as a brainwashing device. Very interesting read thusfar…I want him for our president. This is an excellent follow-up to 1984, which I recently read finally, because I am seeing so many direct parallels between the two books that it really frightens me and is exposing to me how manipulated our political system has become.

Also: I’m not hugely good with the phone, or even sometimes the internet in terms of just calling/messaging people out of nowhere to say hi and catch up. If you don’t contact me, don’t be offended if I don’t call you or contact you otherwise…I have very limited communicative access and it’s more just the random times I get free internet, whoever happens to be online at that time I’ll chat with for a bit. So if you ever feel out of touch with me and seek to amend that, drop me a facebook note or something and I will try to remember to call when I’m in LA.

Yesterday I was offered an extension on my contract to stay on the NCL star for an additional four months. I believe I will be doing this…I’m 90% sure. This means I will be on this ship, going through days like this, for another 7 months or so. This also means I will leave the ship with so much saved money that I can theoretically take 2-4 months off and travel and not worry about anything on earth financially until those months pass and I decide to either get on another ship or attempt to settle in one of the main cities of my life: Chicago, New York, Boston. It’s all well in the distance for someone who’s so in the moment right now.

My parents come next cruise to visit me on the ship. It will be sooooo happiness to have them see my life on this ship, meet my friends, eat the food and generally live the experiences I am living. I think it’ll make this whole thing seem a little more real to me…exactly like the first time they visited me at college. Having someone from your main walk of life come and check out what you’re doing when you’re out in the middle of nowhere with people you’ve never known before helps tie those people and that experience down into the fabric of reality.

Wow…and now it’s 3:40…definitely time for bed. Tomorrow I’m helping out with some kind of art auction thing for an extra $10/hr…gig within a gig: woot. I will buy most of season three of battlestar with the money from the afternoon’s work. Huzzah!!! I love and miss you all and hope you’re having a wonderful time of it all!!