There’s not much to say about today. At sea days are kind of boring, from a blogging perspective.
Well, I decided to do some aerobic work in the morning, just to help stretch myself out a little, so I went up to the treadmills and tried my standard circuit training - minute and a half of heaving running at a near spring, minute and a half of light jogging, cycled for about half an hour. That usually puts me into the three/ three and a half mile range by the time I’m done, and it’s a pretty decent workout (especially considering I’m not terribly fit aerobically). Well, about a third of the way in, I was wiping some sweat out of my eyes and completely misjudged the length of the treadmill. I slipped, fell onto the track, and was pretty much carried on my ass off the treadmill and onto the floor. Most of the people in the gym missed it, but Richard happened to be next to me and gave me a thumbs up for my efforts. Nice G. A springtime ballerina I am not.
Today also happened to be a two-show day, with Laurence doing his show in the morning and Brian doing his show in the evening. (That’s Laurence Luckinbill and Brian Bedford, in case you need a recap). I’d been slightly worried up to this point, because although musical numbers are very popular with the old crowd on board, I wasn’t sure how well a straight performance would go over with them.
Oh, I have to tangent here – I’d mentioned before how I thought there wouldn’t’ be anyone on board remotely close to my age, right? Well, I was totally wrong. Somehow I’d managed to completely forget about the crew, the majority of whom are young, and of course the ship company consists mostly of younger men and women. What rather surprised me, however, was that even among the passengers there seems to be a sizable spread of younger folks. Of course most of them are well into their sixties, seventies, and eighties, but there are actually a fair number of people here who are under forty. There’s one couple who can’t be more than thirty, who are on their honeymoon. David and Sumrall are both around my age, and there are more than few passengers who brought their children or grandchildren along. The mix on even luxury cruises is much more varied than I’d imagined.
I’m glad I cleared that up.
Back to the matter at hand, both Larry’s show and Brian’s show were great successes. Larry was tremendously powerful and extremely engaging in “Lyndon,” and Brian was a delight to watch and listen to in “Ever Yours, Oscar.” I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn’t expecting what they gave me, and I’m glad. My worries were largely unfounded, as both shows were packed, and the applause at the end of both was uproarious. Richard popped over after the show to congratulate me on my Grade A spill in the gym this morning, which was both funny and rather embarrassing. You know, I think I have a slight crush on Richard. He’s got to be at least in his forties, but the man’s in great shape and looks terrific. Too bad he’s a) straight and b) effectively married to Susan. You know, it occurs to me I probably shouldn’t be mentioning this in public. It’s almost certain to bite me in the ass later.
After the evening show, Sumrall invited me to join her, David, Sherry, and Rita over at Prego, one of the ship’s two alternate restaurants. That was a really incredible experience as well. Of course all the food on the ship has been incredible so far, but from Prego I had some really wonderful filet mignon, which was certainly comparable to the chateaubriand I’d had on the formal night. As an extra bit of niftiness, the photographer dropped by and took a picture of us all, which I’m looking forward to seeing on the morrow.
Since today was an at-sea day, there was karaoke again at the Pulse disco. It wasn’t nearly as crowded in there as it was last time, and David decided to join us this time, although he didn’t do any singing. I was encouraged, somewhat, by a pair of extremely exuberant and extremely bad singers from the ship’s officer ranks. I did a decent rendition of “Kryptonite”, tossed in a really weird duet of “All I Ask of You” with Sumrall, did the classic “Losing My Religion” (of course), and closed the evening with “Memory” from Cats, which I hadn’t really intended to sing but which somehow ended up getting turned in at some point during the evening. I did a lot better on Memory than I expected, which was encouraging. Rita actually joined in our karaoke night tonight, which was fun and endearing, because she really got into it. It’s also worth mentioning that although Rita has got to be nearing ninety, the woman outlasts me most evenings. I’m dragging my wimpy ass to bed around 10:30 or 11, and she’s still kicking it at half past two. I hope I’m that lively when I’m an octogenarian.
So yeah. That was today. I’d like to close with something funny or witty or remarkably insightful, but I’m stuffed full of extremely excellent food and all sung out on pop and showtunes. Tomorrow we land in Taormina, which is in Sicily, which brings to mind delicious pizza, sun-drenched villas, and throngs of olive-skinned boys with sensuous dark eyes. We’ll see how that goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment