The Day After

Fetch Awards
Originally uploaded by cscottredding.

Hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween. We had a blast here on board. A late night last night and a busy and groggy day today. Phone calls to make, e-mail to send, rehearsals for the new girl and a new atmosphere to deal with. Change. Before change, let us go back to last night. The costumes were pretty much all inside jokes amongst the cast, so I won’t go into that. All I can say is that I dressed in my knee high striped Alaska socks with brown shoes, cargo shorts hiked to my chest with a short-sleeved collared shirt tucked in. My hair was slicked down from the middle with an alfalfa cowlick sticking up in the back and freckles on my face. I was donned with goggles, a backpack, pocket protector with pens, pencils, and calculations. I had my ruler, calculator, and notebook in my lab coat which was pinned with a “Hello my name is:” sticker. On the sticker I wrote “Science Camp.” It’s a long story, but nonetheless everyone got a kick out of it and I didn’t have to get anything extra for it. Just what was already on board. The pocket protector was handmade of course since I’ve never owned one in my life. We had 3 cross-dressers, 2 super heroes, a cow, army gal, cowgirl, some fruit, and a character from Gilligan’s Island. Our super heroes put together a gala called the “Fetch Awards” (reference to the movie Mean Girls) where we were all handed funny awards encompassing personalities and traits in the contract. We reminisced about the funny moments and had a sappy ending since one of our singers was leaving. Our party shifted to the crew bar where we made the party happen and then petered out to bed around 3am.

Today is a different story. It began at 7am with a mandatory immigration inspection of all crew. Yuck! So we had breakfast and said our goodbyes. Tears were shed. The atmosphere is already different. We welcomed our new singer to the cast. She seems lovely. We’re nearing the end of the contract. Last night was a fabulous run down memory lane. Now we have a hectic week or two of rehearsals to familiarize her with the shows before we can cruise out the rest of the contract heading toward December. There’s no shore leave today. Hurricane Wilma has messed things up a bit here in Ft. Lauderdale and left them without power the past 7 days. They’re now at 77% capacity and limited fuel. Another change and creepy feeling. I don’t know what’s going to happen to our itinerary since Hurricane Beta ripped through Nicaragua and parts of Costa Rica. It may mean a change to Jamaica or Key West. Who knows? Change brings adventure, sadness, pain, excitement, and closure. It’s not a bad thing. If we didn’t have change, life would be boring. These next 3 cruises bring lots of change. People coming. People leaving. A family dispersing. We still have shows to do, ports to see, and fun to have. Some of us are hoping to be together again in March. We’ll see what the future has in store.