i got up at SIX THIRTY this morning. i don’t know why. maybe because i have a lot to do today. mostly today i have to make stuff for randy’s party tonight. i was going to space it out during the week so i didn’t have to do everything today, but i kept getting caught up in other things. yesterday i did no baking because i was baked out. plus i took the dogs running and mollie rolled in something dead that was exceedingly stinky (as opposed to marginally stinky?), so i had to give her a bath.
anyway, last night randy was here making out a list for the stuff he has to buy for the party and he finally said, after writing down “soda” and “oranges for wassail,” GRACE, YOU’RE DOING EVERYTHING FOR THE PARTY! I SHOULD PAY YOU!
yes you should.
no, not really, it’s not that much stuff, but like i said, it would have been nice to have some of it done already.
but at least mollie smells really sweet. for now, anyway. today if we run, she’ll be on the leash the whole time.
one thing i’m making for the party are those delicious blue cheese-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon. the ones i made at thanksgiving and GAINED FIVE POUNDS FROM. today i’m not going to eat any of them, because i now know where it’ll lead.
finally, here are more photos of the queen mary. i thought i’d post all of them, but there are too many. ALMOST done with them, though.
eating eating eating…as i wrote before, it was a good idea to wear the very tight dress at the first opportunity. we’d have a healthy breakfast at about 8:30, then lunch in the fancy dining room at 12:30. after lunch there was always a planetarium show, where we’d go in the fancy auditorium and sit in plush seats that tilted all the way back. they’d shut off the lights and project the show in the dome and some famous actor with a deep and sonorous voice would talk about…what? it was more like being lulled to sleep by harison ford, or tom hanks, or morgan freeman. every day i struggled to stay awake, and it was about the most vigorous thing i did during the trip.
at 3:30 there was a very fancy tea in the queen’s room. VERY FANCY – millions of waiters wearing white gloves served you endless little cups of tea on all the fancy china, and they kept bringing in tray after tray of delicious hot scones served with clotted cream and jam. clotted cream, fyi, is basically whipped cream. of COURSE we had to have more than one delicious hot scone. they also served us fancy little crustless sandwiches, but i managed to only have a couple of them because they were just ok. also they served very fancy-looking little cakes of all kinds. again, only a couple – they were pretty good, but the scones were the best.
after eating a lot of tea, we went to the early dinner, which was 6:30! crazy. there was always a healthy option for dinner, but many times the non-healthy options sounded way too good to pass up. plus the desserts…
luckily we’d done all that biking before getting on the ship.
here’s us with our new friends carol and mary, lovely english women who were our table-mates at dinner. our other table-mates were an english couple who now lived in florida. luckily they were still british citizens so they couldn’t vote because they DIDN’T VOTE FOR OBAMA, and one night we started talking about politics a little bit and the old guy was saying some unfortunate things about obama and democrats and luckily i was dressed in a fancy long dress so i didn’t feel like punching him. i then tried not to hate them, but they were actually very sweet people, in spite of their fatal flaw.
carol and mary, though, were lots of fun.
this guy was sitting at a table right by ours, and the first time i saw him i said THAT LOOKS JUST LIKE DAD! a much OLDER dad, of course. so kevin covertly took a picture of him one night.
kevin, Mr. Covert, is getting a SPECIAL COMMENDATION this morning. he has to put on a suit and tie and go to the state police headquarters. i wonder if he remembers how to tie a tie? i bet he’ll shave! he’s getting it for the workup they did on the killing of a state cop who died in that incident involving that bar out in the country that has since been closed down. so kevin is going to have a very busy morning, then he’ll go to wayne’s house this afternoon and continue laying tile in wayne’s basement. hmm, i feel that kevin will want to leave the party tonight at about eight.
kevin took this first photo of the clouds and sea.
i’d been out of the room, and when i came back, he was sleeping. i went out on the balcony and couldn’t help myself – i took many, many photos because it was just so beautiful.
looking out, it seemed that there was nothing but sea and land. the last day, though, i was up in the library looking out and saw a dolphin. “a dolphin!” i exclaimed to the guy sitting next to me, without even glancing over at him. “where?” he asked excitedly, and we followed the dolphin as it swam around to the side. i finally looked over at the guy. now, people weren’t really dressed up on the ship, but this guy was wearing flip flops and shorts and carried a big, serious bird book and some binoculars. his son was also there in the library, and clearly the family had spent much of their time looking out. the guy told me about the dolphins he’d seen, and the birds. “Birds?” i asked incredulously. i didn’t think there could be birds all the way out there.
but he said that if i just stared out for a while, i’d see them. he showed me, and he was right. he said that at night the birds would all cluster together and sleep on the water. it was very cool, seeing these birds that i’d have totally missed if i hadn’t run into that man.
and here is kevin sleeping inside. being on the ship made us very sleepy – not just from all the food, but we decided that because the ship was always gently rocking, it made us tired. everyone else we talked to on the ship felt the same way. we almost always had to nap at some point during the day, and we didn’t stay up late partying.
they had incredibly interesting lectures every day, and i attended almost all of them. john maxtone-graham is a frequent lecturer, and he has written books on ships and one day he gave a lecture about the titanic. there was also another guy, i can’t remember his name, who talked about new york architecture. he was really, really interesting. another day this same guy also talked about Thomas Paine.
he had written a short book about him and Paine’s paper “common sense.” kevin went to the ship’s library to get his autograph when he had a book signing. (kevin was the first person in line). it was a beautiful library. as i wrote about earlier, i videotaped everything on the whole ship, but kevin didn’t take as many photos. maybe i can capture some of those images from the camera…yeah, that’s going to happen sometime soon. we haven’t even looked at the video yet! come to think of it, we haven’t even finished watching our WEDDING video! how will we know how the day turned out?
the main lobby.
carol really wanted to do everything that was offered on the ship, and she signed up for art classes (there was a fee for them). i think they lasted four hours a day, which seemed extreme to me. carol ended up only going in the mornings, after she’d get up really early and go swimming. here she is with a fan she painted.
even though the ship gently rocked, it didn’t really affect us; we could only barely feel it. but the second or third night it was very rough, and when we got back to our room i felt that i had to lie down RIGHT AWAY instead of even taking off my makeup. lying down felt better. but that night carol got very very sick. they had to call in a cleaning crew to clean up the room. she saw the doctor, and then they made her stay in her room for one entire day. they brought her horrible, bland broth and really boring stuff. they had given us all a paper about SARS when we board the ship, and i guess they were afraid she might have it. she didn’t, and she was fine the next day, eager to make up for the day she’d had to spend in bed.
we really wanted to get a photo on the deck but it was SO WINDY. this is one of my favorites because my hair looks so crazy.
almost every morning we walked around the deck. this was quite fun.
we were also going to work out in the gym, but the first day it was unbelievably crowded. i went there later on during the voyage, when it was raining, and there was almost nobody working out. clearly, people lost interest.
there were always workers out polishing the wood and working working working. it would be really hard work, having a job on a ship.
here’s our fancy dining room. this was the main dining room; there was another, smaller dining room for people in the REALLY expensive cabins. when we walked the deck we could peer into that room and it didn’t seem nearly as lavish, just because it was smaller.
here’s me with a delicious chocolate desert on the last night. one night we had baked alaska. this, though, was one of those chocolate cakes with a molten filling. i’d thought that was what was on the menu at lunch, so i’d ordered one, but it was just a regular chocolate cake.
i think i had at least four desserts that day.
whew, now i feel full just thinking about all that food. that’s all for right now; maybe i’ll have more time later today to post the rest of the ship photos. THEN there are a few photos from our short stay in NYC.
ok then, i hope your friday is filled with holiday treats and happiness!
grace ready to whirl into action after two cups of very strong tea.