Friday, October 14 - A Day at Sea

How we write these:  We write our musings, yes, musings, independently and we do NOT read the other one before we write ours.  Then I, Ami, proof mine and Blaise’s (I just correct spelling – his punctuation is his own thing) combine them, then log on and post.  I read Blaise’s before I post them, obviously, since I proofread it, but the only one of mine he has read is yesterday’s accounting of this week.  I tell you this because in today’s blog we use the same terminology in one instance.  Perhaps this is our 24 years together coming out in how we say things.

FYI, blogspot is doing things with the fonts I can't fix, so we will have to live with that for now.  Sorry.

Ami Says . . .

Yesterday was our first full day back on the boat. Yesterday and today (Friday and Saturday) are both sea days.

The ship’s doctor called twice Thursday telling me she needed to see me on Friday and that she needed the documentation from the emergency room.

We also received a call from the excursions desk telling us they were refunding the excursion we paid for months ago to take the Skyrail and train ride while we were in Cairns since we were not on the boat to take part in the excursion.  That was wonderful news because we thought we were going to have to argue with them to get the money back on that one.

All in all, I think Celebrity Cruises has been quite fair about everything and has treated us quite well during this ordeal.

So yesterday after breakfast, I headed down to deck 2 to see the doctor. Everyone there knew me and wanted to know where my husband was. Either they thought I was an invalid or they were charmed by my husband.  The only person I remember from Monday is the doctor. But they all knew who I was.  All commented on how much better I look than they thought I would.  Scary because I am quite a fright still. Apparently they thought there would be more bruising than what I have. I am really more cut up than bruised at this point. Still a big bruise under my right eye, a lighter one under my left, and my right eyelid is quite bruised too. I have several cuts across my nose, one very close to the inside of my right eye. I still have the stitches on my forehead.  The swelling has gone down somewhat.

But I digress. Back to the ship’s doctor. While I was waiting to see her, a young Asian couple (looked like they were in their 20’s) came in to see the doctor and were in the waiting room. The woman would not sit and kept bouncing around and taking steps backward and forward.  I kept thinking does she need to pee or what?! One of the nurses came out and asked what the problem was.  Apparently while in Cairns the day before, they were severely sunburned; she on the back of her legs and he on his back. The woman told the man to show the nurse his back.  He said, no I’m not going to and she insisted. Oh my, was his back red!  The back of her legs were red, but nothing like his back.  Now why this was all happening in the waiting room, I’ll never know.  The nurse suggested aloe vera gel which they knew nothing about.  The nurse had to explain to them what it was.  I found it a bit odd they didn’t know about it but they clearly lived in Australia so maybe folks in Australia don’t know about the healing properties of the aloe vera plant.  Many Australians are a bit weathered in appearance, so maybe not.

So I finally got in to see the doctor who proceeded to tell me all the things that could have been worse about my injuries – things like leaking cranial fluid through my broken nose, pushing the entirety of my nose into my face, and many more. All quite lovely thoughts but in many respects, I WAS lucky it wasn’t worse.  I didn’t break any teeth and my eyes were not injured.

As I was leaving the doctor, I headed to deck 3 to turn in our excursion tickets we were cancelling for Darwin.  We were going to hike through a rain forest but given my injuries, not wanting to sweat into my cuts, and my clear inability to walk without falling, we decided to go a different route in Darwin.  I am disappointed, but not much I can do about it. I walked up the stairs from deck 2 to 3 and was walking toward the excursion desk, when a man in uniform stops me and says “Mrs. Decker?” Oh great, I am recognized by my injuries! It was Dwight from the excursion desk who had talked to Blaise the day before.  I told him I was coming to see him and he said he would take the tickets right there and take care of things for me.  He was very kind.

A lady at the elevators was gawking at the whole exchange so when Dwight walked off she asked what happened so I had to go through the whole story. Again.

We floated through the Great Barrier Reef yesterday.  Over 900 islands, 600 named. Lots of sand bars. You could see the darkened areas where the reefs were.  I found out today, that every ship and boat that goes through the channel must have a reef pilot aboard to help the captain navigate since it is a protected area. The reef pilot gave a talk today about it because for some reason he is still on the boat.

I finished my book The Secret Keeper yesterday.  Big twist at the end.  Well worth the time to read it!  I am glad I stuck with it because early on, I almost gave up and tossed it. Figuratively not literally since it is on my Kindle.

The rest of the day was uneventful, thankfully.  Dinner was lovely.  No curmudgeons or the other couple.  Just Blaise and me.  The maitre’de (Ok, I know that’s not spelled correctly but Word doesn’t have a correction for me – it’s the dude at the front of the restaurant in charge of seating everyone) kept walking by and staring at me.  He finally came by and welcomed us back on board.

More reading today.  Tomorrow is Darwin, Australia on the Northern side.  It is warmer now.  While it was in the 70’s in Sydney and all the other locations, every place has gotten increasingly warmer. Now we are in the high 80’s.  So I suspect Darwin will be quite warm tomorrow.  Lots of crocodiles in the Darwin area.  Apparently Darwin was bombed many times by the Japanese in WWII.  Or plan is to roam around on our own. Let’s hope things are not closed because it is Sunday.

Blaise says . . .

So yesterday was Friday the 15^th, basically a week and a wakeup before we make the trek back home from around the world.  We were at sea again so the happening/goings on around here are fairly mundane but I’ll do my best to bring you up to speed from my perspective.

I finished up my management book early in the am and began reading a book I first attempted, yes attempted, to read about 3 years ago on a bet from a coworker, it’s called The Lords of Finance and it’s about the 4 most powerful in each of the country’s of Germany, France, England and America during the run-up to WWI and moving through all of WWII.  They cover how/why we went to the gold standard and subsequently dropped it as well as how each of them handled the financing of their portions of the wars as well as how they addressed the additional gold reserves needed, and how they hid it (in France’s case) when they were invaded.  It’s a slow read but the data points are interesting especially when you consider the ongoing debate about whether or not we should return to the gold standard now.  This author thinks not but I’ll reserve judgement until I have an opportunity to pull some additional information pro and con before I make my final decision.  But I digress back to the boat.

We are on the port side of the boat which is to say that when they circumnavigate Australia counterclockwise all the landscapes, less a few scattered islands are all on our side, what a stroke of luck!!  So we have hundreds of miles of beautiful pristine beaches that we are so close to that you can see that no one has ever stepped foot on and most unbelievably is there isn’t a house, shack or yurt for those same hundreds of miles; it reminded me of Chile, except for the mountains and glaciers, but you know what I mean.  I thought about swimming for it but I figured AJ wouldn’t follow so a calmer head prevailed.  But what I would have given to have our very own picnic lunch on a beach that I’m fairly certain hasn’t had a sole on it in years would have been priceless, when I see Mr. Rourke and Tatu that’s the fantasy I’m going to request!!

The rest of the day was spent reading and shuttling AJ off to see the Medical Staff, who REALLY wanted to see her, they called twice in the 24 hours since our return to badger her into going.  I didn’t go with her, I thought there wasn’t anything they could do to hurt her but tomorrow will be a different story, she gets her stiches out.  Hopefully she’ll be less self conscious about her owies once they’re removed. 

The rest of the day was uneventful except to bring you up to speed on the Curmudgeons, they made no appearance for dinner at all, we had our two topper and theirs and the 4 topper next to us all to ourselves, btw who sits down at a 4 topper closest to a 2 topper if you have an aisle way on the other side?  AJ and I can’t figure it out, it’s like a guy coming in to use the restroom and there are 5 urinals, you’re at the far right and pull in to the 2^nd from the right, what are you doing, a clear violation of etiquette on both fronts, AJ discussed this breach of etiquette for 10 minutes I think, that’s what you do on sea days! 

I should say dinner is always quite good, I always have the French Onion soup with the Gruyere cheese melted over it, fantastic; and then whatever entrée looks appetizing that evening, ribeye did it for me but tonight I think I will go with the Salmon.  Frank and Barbara, sorry, no Barramundi on the menu yet, I was hoping they would pick some up in Cairns and offer it as a local delicacy but no way.

I think that’s all, one more sea day before we hit Darwin, looks interesting, can’t wait to see it… more later!!