Mid-Cruise Update

We are half way through the cruise. It is our third of six days doing the transatlantic portion of the cruise. If you can believe it, we slept ten hours last night instead of our now routine nine. What does that say about us aside from the fact that sleeping conditions (a cool room!!!, darkness of the deepest kind, a constant and consistent gentle rocking) are ideal?

When you have six days at sea, you see the pattern for entertainment after the second night. The first and second nights are acts that get on board at the last port before departing. The third night is the dance group that stays with the ship. Then the whole thing repeats. So, tonight will be dancers, followed by the wonderful pianst. The final night will be the Frank Sinatra wanta be that we had last night. He is British and speaks fluent Portuguese in what I assume is a humble way based on his gesturing. He would unleash a load of Portuguese then put a question mark at the end with his body as if to say, "Did I say it correctly?" Then the crowd would roar approval and he would bow. I can only assume I understood what he was saying, as the words were far above our limited language skills which include greetings and politenesses such as please and thank you. If you are fluent in Spanish you probably have an advantage with the Portuguese language which resembles a Spanish with hard edges. Buenos Dias, the greeting in Spanish becomes Bom Dia in Portuguese. Many of the Portugese say Bon Gia instead. I asked a bilingual passenger about the difference, and discovered that the Southerners and Northerners in Brazil have the same accent differences that we have North to South. I wonder if it is their Southerners marry their sisters too.

We have been reading like crazy. Mike brought a book about politics with him, "Game Change" about the 2008 preseidential election. He roared through it, loving the inside/backstories about the various characters. Now it is my turn... the politics skeptic. The two writers, one from Time Magazine and the other from New York Magazine covered the year leading up to the election then interviewed over 200 people to gain the insights for the book. Not very flattering pictures of either Elizabeth (crazy wacko) or John Edwards (philandering egomanic), confirmation of public images of Clinton (driven with poor people skills) and Obama (brilliant deep thinker family man) and more to come when I get to the McCain and Palin chapters. As I read it I can't help thinkiing it is like an in-depth People article about the players from the election.

Meals have started to slip. Two days in a row we have sat down at dinner, scanned the menu and wondered what we could want that would be good. Last night Mike tried some slow cooked beef shoulder in wine reduction which turned out to be a decent rare sliced roast beef. Not much of a pasta fan, I nevertheless ordered penne with shrimp and mussels (canned) as the least objectionable meal. Let's hope it improves.

I'll end now before I bore you to death. Love, Deanne