Because of all the issues surrounding our room yesterday, I failed to post this picture. A beautiful rose was given to all the women leaving the dining room after dinner on our first night.
Getting behind on the blog already! I remember we had breakfast and then I signed up to take a watercolor class which starts tomorrow. Then stood in line to get assistance with Holland’s Navigator App which allows us to chat back and forth with shipmates, see what is happening on the ship, check our account, access the internet and peruse the evening menu in the MDR and access our excursion tickets. We stood in this line for about an hour but visited with those around us.
When we finally got to someone to help with the app, she said I had a very old version (been using it since it came out). After she uninstalled and reinstalled it, it worked flawlessly. Then she helped Jeff set up his account so he could use the app.
At the captain’s noon briefing he said we have traveled 310 nautical miles and 3046 more to go to our first stop. We’re moving fairly fast … 19.3 knots. Sunset and sunrise and both at 5:30 (of course, one is pm and one is am 😊). Clocks move forward one hour tonight.
Went to have a quick bite to eat for lunch and Jeff stopped to get a caffeine fix and said he’d find me around the buffet. He didn’t! I walked around and around and around the buffet line while I ate my slice of pizza and decided to head to the World Stage (main theater) which is where we were planning to go next. There he was, sitting in OUR space. He said he looked for me. There WERE a lot of people in the Lido but I also know how Jeff looks for stuff, then asks for my help, and I move one thing in front of him and show him what he was looking for. I guess the problem is my fault, I wasn’t with him to show him where I was at!!
The presentation was by Andy Fletcher and titled “There’s nothing there, but nothing is really something”. Here is my one takeaway that I remember … there are 8 billion people on planet earth. We are all made of atoms. Atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, electrons and emptiness. If a proton is blown up to 1000 pixels (size of a grapefruit), the nearest electron would be 11 miles away. There is a million billion times more empty space than matter in an atom (1,000,000,000,000,000). If you took all 8 billion people in the world and got rid of all of the empty space in their atoms, everyone would fit into an M&M with enough room left over to fit an additional 3 BILLION people!
He was so interesting … here’s one more …. The nearest star to us is 4 light years away, 24 trillion miles of empty space full of nothing between us and it! I can’t stop … one more … there is ONLY one star in every 100 billion cubic light years of space and the average distance between stars in the universe is 4,150 light years, or about 100 times the distance between the Sun and its nearest stellar neighbor…. AND NOTHING IN BETWEEN!! Anyway, if this piqued your curiosity and your mind is boggled and you need more, you can buy his books online www.lifeuniverseverything.org (I don’t get anything from this plug and it doesn’t matter because after all his numbers I feel really, really small!!) Now, I’m walking around contemplating how insignificant we are in the entire scheme of everything.
We had a block party in the afternoon with the captain making a quick and very brief appearance (he did have to hit every single hallway!) This is such a good idea, let’s you meet your neighbors. I’ve only seen it done on the longer cruises. The wine flows freely for an hour!
We are at a table for 6 for dinner, and two of our table mates showed up for dinner this evening for the first time. They are Marcia and Jim from Bend Oregon. We had a nice visit and I wonder how we can sustain dinner conversation for the next 70 some odd days … stay tuned.
Capped off dinner with a beautiful sunset this evening. Tonight’s main stage entertainment was Hannah Howie, a Scottish singer of musical theater. We opted for music trivia and Rock and Roll instead. At the Rolling Stone bar we met a very nice couple from Michigan – Patrick and Cyndi Camling. They are on the cruise as hosts for a group. IF, and that’s a big IF …. I were going to go back to work … I would want their job!
