Travelogue Two, Day Six: A Petite Pastry Puff Entry

Ugh. I hate being seasick. Actually, no, scratch that – I hate this feeling of being halfway between seasick and not quite seasick. I don’t really feel that nauseated, but the constant rocking back and forth is giving me one of those annoying headaches that feels like someone is trying to stuff a massive amount of goose down and cat dander into my skull. It’s also making me incredibly sleepy, so it’s hard to focus on anything that I’m trying to get done. It’s SO incredibly annoying. You know how you feel when you’re stuck in the car for a long, long road trip through New Mexico and the A/C is busted and you can’t open up the windows for whatever reason? Yeah, okay, well even if you don’t, it feels like that, minus the overwhelming heat. Count my blessings, I guess.

I’ve got very little to mention today, except that I spent another couple of hours rattling off e-mails in the morning, many of which Philip insisted on overseeing, which never fails to make me want to grind my teeth down to powder. Why is it the perennial prerogative of managers to hang over their workers’ shoulders and make sure every task they do is slowed down to a crawl? I could’ve rattled off three or four e-mails in the time it takes for Philip to dictate, review, and shuttle out one…and at least half the time the e-mails being sent out aren’t even strictly necessary. Do we REALLY need to know who’s signed up on the Baltic trip while we’re still on the Navigator? Are we going to be able to perform some mystic feat of advertising gymnastics to suddenly increase our return rate while we’re still trying to wrangle out the details of Funchal, Malaga, and Barcelona? I think it’s an ultimate point of irony that the part of me that makes me good at what I do also happens to be the part of me that wants to strangle myself with a giant stinky pile of pig intestines every time Philip and I have a meeting onboard this ship.

Stewart ran tea time trivia today, which resulted in some absurdly difficult questions. Team Istanbul didn’t win, and we all puzzled over how obscure some of the answers were. The man sailed overboard and touched down a good mile away from the ship when he googled out that particular set of trivia.

About halfway through the afternoon, Donna gave me a call to let me know that there was no advertising for her book signing, and that she had absolutely no idea how to get her books moved through the ship’s system, which was great, because I’d had nothing to do with the advertising up to this point, and I also had absolutely no idea how to get the books moved through the ship’s system. Unfortunately, when one of the stars has no idea how something is meant to work onboard the ship, and I have no idea how that something works either…guess who gets to go and find out? So I spent a good two hours trying to hack out a time and method by which Donna (and by extension Pat and Lewis) could get their books signed, preferably after their respective shows. That ended up running right smack against Shirley’s show, which I arrived slightly late for.

I do have to digress here to mention that Shirley Jones is probably one of the most elegant ladies I have ever met. She is always impeccably dressed, her manners are always exquisite, and she has never had a negative word for me. In fact, not only has she been ever pleasant when I’ve talked to her, she has never demanded (or even asked, for that matter) anything of me. It probably seems a mite skewed that my opinion of someone is partially dependent upon how heavy a demand they make upon my time while I’m on this cruise, but considering just how LITTLE time I seem to have to do anything for myself, that seems considerably more reasonable that it initially sounds.

Anyway, Shirley gave an excellent and enlightening talk about her experiences as an actor, mother, and wife in film, television, and Broadway. The Show Lounge was as packed as I’ve ever seen it. It fascinates me when I consider how full the theatre is to be a measure for the relative star power of each of our performers. It always forces a certain existentialist contemplation from me, as I wonder what it is that everyone in the audience finds so specifically fascinating about a celebrity. Is it the perception of success? Wealth? A strange sort of mob mentality or popularity contest where the amount of adulation any given person might receive becomes a measure of how interesting that person is perceived to be? I think Shirley’s life was fascinating, but at the same time I think that Dotti’s experiences have been equally interesting. She’s traveled around the world, cruised on multiple ships, and seen things I couldn’t have dreamed of. What quantifiable factor makes Shirley a more interesting figure than Dotti, or hell, than David or Sumrall or Philip? She’s eloquent and charming and exudes this certain maternal sweetness, but what in the length and breadth of her life makes her necessarily a more interesting figure than, say, my grandmother, who lived through the Cultural Revolution? Most of these questions are ultimately rhetorical, and I don’t quite know why I contemplate them or what I think I might be able to learn if I can arrive at some arbitrary answer.

I went back to my room and felt like napping after Shirley’s show, but instead I forced myself to go through chest, shoulders and triceps. This is the third and last week of Phase Two P90X (well, technically the recovery week is the last week, but I don’t really count that.) I think I’ve made some very decent improvements in body shape and general physical fitness, and I think it’s encouraging that I can sort of view the fact that I haven’t always advanced in the numbers with a certain grain of salt. Before I got onto the ship, after all, I didn’t really eat enough to gain much in the way of muscles. Still, I’m already looking ahead and wondering whether I’ll continue with P90X or try to do something else to improve muscle mass after the twelve weeks are over.

Wow…I just read over the last paragraph and basically floored myself with how utterly inane I’ve become. Even more than usual, I’d say. I think that’s a fair sign that I should probably heading to bed. Another at-sea day tomorrow, with more shows and still more inanity to come, I imagine.

Travelogue Two, Day Five: Miles and Miles and Miles of Effectively Nothing

In that, I’m actually referring to my day, not the stretch of water that we’re on, ‘cause that’s effectively what happened today. Again, I woke up much earlier than I’d have preferred and promptly ran off to deliver messages, collect other messages, and gather materials I needed for the programs that the Navigator is going to print for our evening shows. I spent literally fours hours running from actor to actor, ship executive to ship executive, picking up bios and confirming schedules and making copies and basically trying to get this bloody program in a state where it can be printed. Most of the bios had to be pared down before they would fit properly, some of them were hand-written and had to be re-typed, and two of our actors still aren’t here, so I had to leave two programs unfinished – at least they’re two of our later shows and therefore something I can delay until later. It never seems like the programs should take very long, but they always do and I’m always at a loss as to exactly why.

Anyway, Philip gave his “History of the Theatre Guild” lecture today, which went about as well as expected, given that it’s Philip effectively giving an extemporaneous speech. The entire thing was punctuated with bawdy jokes and random tangents and unrelated asides, but people seemed to enjoy it and it proceeded without any particularly catastrophic Freudian slips. Philip did go on for longer than expected, which prevented Gene (our second guest speaker) from saying anything, but I don’t actually think he was particularly upset about that. I get the impression that he doesn’t actually relish the thought of giving a lecture about his career experiences.

So that was sandwiched between bouts of working and running and more running and did I mention sometimes that I feel like a lemming on speed? Why does the next item or person I have to find always end up being three decks down on the other end of the ship? I think that’s actually why I always seem to end up with no time to do anything, because I spend half of it in transit. I don’t even remember what I had for lunch or who I had it with – David and Sumrall, most likely. Then it was off to send more e-mails and more messages after lunch and before you know it it’s tea time trivia up in the Galileo Lounge.

I think I’ve mentioned tea time trivia before without really explaining what it is. Well, it’s pretty much what it sounds like. Everyone has tea and someone – usually Chris, the assistant cruise director – heads up a trivia game. We’re allowed six people to a team, there are fifteen questions to answer, and if you win you get a useless plastic token that, if amassed in sufficient quantities, can purchase things like bags and rings and cabbages and a king-sized seat in the Seven Seas Battle Royale. (No, you can’t actually buy cabbages, and no, there is no Seven Seas Battle Royale. Although I’m thinking it might be fun if there was one in the Show Lounge. I’m seeing all these octogenarians flinging seats and glasses and tables at each other and doing flying karate kicks in this massive two-floor melee. Kinda like a catfight over Fanta.) My team, Istanbul, hasn’t won yet, but we’ve done extremely well and the desserts that they offer over the tea are simply wonderful. I’ve totally given up on trying to eat correctly while I’m on the ship and just picking what I want. My one concession to general physical fitness, at least as far as food is concerned, is to eat smaller portions of all these desserts than I normally would.
Dinnertime has finally smoothed out to the point where I feel like I can more or less ignore everything else that’s going on around the room and just settle down to some good conversation and good food. I wish it didn’t take two and a half bloody hours to finish, but the alternative is become a hermit and eat in my room. Which isn’t necessarily unappealing to me, but I hate forcing the room service people to keep bringing me food.

Not much else to say. More letters and memos and wrangling with Funchal after dinner, since I still don’t really have any information about it and people keep asking me what we’re doing there. I guess Bermuda must’ve been quite a success if people keep poking me about what we’re up to next. That’s encouraging, I suppose…I really wish we’d stop leaving this sort of thing until the last minute. The reception desk is threatening to start charging me for the copies I make, since I pop by at least two or three time a day requesting fifty pages a pop. If you’re reading this, Sherry, we REALLY need to settle excursions before we even set foot on the ship next time!

Travelogue Two, Day Four: Machete Gangs and Diplomatic Governors

So I got up this morning a lot earlier than I’d have preferred – first random tangent of day is that the Navigator’s curtains are exceptionally good at blocking out just about all traces of sunlight that hit the room. It literally looks like it’s still midnight out there when it’s nine in the morning. It’s a computer dork’s wet dream. Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed, took a quick breakfast in my room (the contents of which I don’t even remember, but some kind of exceptionally sweet fruit yogurt was definitely involved), and gave a quick call to Pamela at the charter company to make sure the buses were on their way – they were, and Pamela sounded less than happy to hear from me. I don’t particularly blame her. I think I’d have wanted to pummel myself into a bloody pulp by this point as well. Unfortunately, Tanya at the governor’s office wasn’t in yet, which made my stress level in that giant thermometer metaphysically hanging behind my head go up just a teeny bit, but I crossed my fingers and just hoped that everything would be fine. After making sure I looked at least reasonably presentable (down down, damn hair!) I ran out to the disembarkation point to observe how we were docked at the port. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that just as the brochures and the maps had indicated, we were, in fact, RIGHT in the middle of downtown Hamilton. There were literally cars about twenty or thirty-odd feet away, buzzing down the road, minding their own business while the sun beamed down in a way that was far too cheerful. It was kind of surreal, actually, being docked literally alongside a city rather than in some port or dock area that maintains a certain degree of industrial separation from where people actually shop and roam and live.

Anyway, after double checking on how to get onto the street, I zipped back to the Navigator Lounge where, just as expected, a small gaggle of people had already gathered, waiting for me to make my grand entrance. I’ve discovered that my grand entrances tend to be rather hurried and disheveled – this is probably why I never did very well as an actor. It’s hard to be charismatic when it looks like a hurricane just swept you in from the ocean. Anyway, naturally, I got swarmed almost immediately as I walked from person to person and checked off the people on my list, but there were relatively few questions considering how close we were to our stated departure time. I guess my incredibly harried and hurried air manages to remain efficient-looking regardless of the circumstances, and is exceptional at calming people’s worries without my even needing to say a word. Fortunately, the buses actually managed to turn up early – I have to stop here to question the judgment of Bermuda officials, because their buses are this nauseating shade of Pepto-Bismol pink. This might be just this side of tolerable for a tour bus, but they also happen to serve as Bermuda’s public transportation and school buses as well. I think I’d rather walk to school than ride in something that looks like it’s meant to relieve elephantine levels of gastric distress.

Getting people onto the buses was actually fine, since, once again, this had to be one of the most convenient docksides that I’ve ever seen. We had two buses for our fifty-odd passengers and thus, two drivers. I shuttled Philip onto one and took the other for myself – I wasn’t particularly sure what, exactly, Philip would have been able to organize or accomplish if the other bus broke down (particularly since I had all the relevant contact information), but his presence would have been entertaining to the other passengers in such a scenario, at any rate.

The tour actually started rather well, if somewhat banally. Our tour guide, a robust black woman whose name even now escapes me, but had a character like Norma Jane or Louisa Mae, pointed out such remarkable features as the local bank, notable trees, the Flagpole (which is significant because it apparently marks the center of every island in Bermuda), and so forth. David kept making off-color comments about this information, and I tried to snap a few pictures of notable buildings. Bermuda buildings are actually very interesting – they’re all painted in shades of pastel, and they all have these stepped, sloping roofs painted a startling shade of white. Our tour guide explained to us why they white-washed their roofs, which is apparently an extremely expensive process, but I failed my “pay attention” roll and that tidbit slipped right by me. Despite the banal nature of the tour, it was actually quite nice taking in the sights and making observations about Hamilton buildings. The other tour bus tried to go into the driveway of the Princess Hotel (which, like the buses, was very, very, very pink), but got stuck behind a long train of cars, so our bus just breezed on by them and effectively left them to the wolves, which I found mildly worrisome. About twenty minutes into the tour, however, we pulled into this little cul-de-sac that sat next to an admittedly beautiful little inlet. We could see another pair of cruise ships in the distance, a large stretch of cyan water between us, and the remnants of a shipwreck at the entrance to the inlet. A series of small, private boats had been moored in the waters of the inlet, and it looked like the tide had receded while were still moored there, and as such all of the boats were clearly marooned. The effect was actually rather creepy, despite the bright Bermudan sun pouring down on everything in a golden haze.

So Norma Jane, or whatever her name is, puts the bus on idle and tells us that we’re close to the Governor’s mansion, but she’s got some time to kill before we go there. I kind of went, “Ummm…what?” just before she launched into a lecture about the crime rates in Hamilton, the prevalence of muggings even in broad daylight, and the presence of teenagers wielding baseball bats and machetes roaming the streets just last night. Apparently, they enjoy targeting tourists. Seriously: what…the hell? The way she was going on, it sounded like Hamilton was some kind of chaotic, anarchic hole in the ground where press-gangs wander the streets with nail-studded boards and swinging chains, just looking to bash little old ladies to the ground and steal her dentures. This was decidedly not the tour that I was expecting.

Part of me was entertained, part of me couldn’t believe what I was hearing, part of me kept flashing back to Rome, where the tour guide explained to us how to avoid getting pick-pocketed, part of me REALLY wished she would just shut up and drive us somewhere picturesque, and part of me was just repeatedly banging my head against the window. Apparently I’m capable of experiencing more emotions at once than I’d realized. After about ten minutes, even the rather lovely view outside was getting tiresome (oh, how short our attention spans are!), and I could tell the natives on the bus were getting a bit restless despite a continual string of questions about corrupt police forces and farmer’s markets. My attempt to politely get her to just drive us somewhere, however, was firmly rebuffed as an absurdity, as apparently the place I wanted to go was entirely too far away. I got this flash of all of us sitting trapped on this bus forever as this madwoman cackled and went on and on about how we would get raped and pillaged and murdered by vicious Bermudan natives if we took one step off the beaten path.

So finally, 10:45 rolls around and she decides that we’ve apparently been suitably warned about the dangers of wandering around Bermuda alone. Then she casually drops the bombshell that she’s never actually been to the Government House, and hopes that we’re going the right way. I was of a mind to leap out of my seat, drop kick her in the head, and seize control of the bus. Fortunately, she seemed to be in contact with her home office as to where we were supposed to go, and the mere fact that we were in motion, with a specific destination in mind even if we didn’t quite know how we were to get there, put me somewhat at ease.

A few winding roads later, we’d arrived at a neat set of wrought iron gates set into a stone wall that read, “Government House.” There was a bit of confusion with where, exactly, a security guard on a moped wanted us to go, but somehow we managed to get up in an incredibly scenic driveway with the truly enormous Government House to our left and an absolutely gorgeous view of Bermuda to our right. I’m not very good at recognizing architecture, but my impression of the mansion was that it was built in a Colonial sort of style, maybe a hundred feet or so on the long side and half that much on the short, with walls a faded sort of neutral beige color. The lawns were perfectly trimmed – eerily so, actually – and lined with patches of absolutely beautiful pink and purple flowers. Just over a low wall of cobbled stones we could see the rest of the island and that gorgeous blue sea. It was very picturesque – the only thing spoiling the scene was the fact that the entire place looked totally abandoned.

We were actually about ten minutes early at this point, so I hopped off the bus to inspect the front door (which was locked) and to try to ring the doorbell (which was nonexistent.) Just as I was about to head back and report on the apparent lack of human life, much less receptive human life, in the area, the other tour bus miraculously materialized out of nowhere, accompanied by our errant security guard. At exactly the same time, the front door opened, revealing that the building was, in fact, well-occupied by numerous well-dressed people, who cheerfully welcomed us to Government House. Looks like the carefully enacted panic scenarios that I’d arranged in my head were for nothing after all. Our passengers started filing off the tour buses and into the Government House, with a few sticking around outside to take a few pictures of the view. I managed a few snapshots before finally deciding to join the rest of the group inside.

The Government House is probably one of the nicest structures I’ve seen in a while. The entire place is immaculate, with paintings hanging in each of the beautifully appointed rooms. The main foyer or living room or reception area, whatever you want to call it, was covered in a luxurious carpet the color of vanilla ice cream, with elegant furnishing carefully placed tastefully around the room. There was a long table on one end covered with lines of coffee cups, and another table on the other end with rows and rows of banana bread. Sir Richard Gozeny, the Governor of Bermuda, was in the center of the room, surrounded by Theatre at Sea passengers, talking to us about the nature of the Bermuda government and giving us an overview of its history. There was such a polished, welcoming air about the whole thing that I was instantly reassured that this entire excursion couldn’t be anything less than a total success.

Sir Richard led us around the Government House grounds, showing us the beautifully manicured lawn, including the enclosed area that we had been unable to enter from the front entrance, answering questions the entire time. (Did you know, by the way, that Bermuda’s top two exports are insurance and tourism? The second was obvious, but apparently the largest insurance companies in the US reinsure the items that they have insured through companies in Bermuda. I had no idea…) The man is a consummate diplomat – he was exceptionally charming, eloquent, and informative the whole time, despite the fact that the arrival of sixty-odd tourists was probably as disruptive to his daily business as a stampeding herd of rabid elephants. He led us down into the back yard, where there were numerous palm trees that had been planted there by notable personalities, including Bob Marley, Margaret Thatcher, and George Bush Sr. and Jr, and took a few pictures with Carol Lawrence and Shirley Jones. Then we all went back inside to mingle and chat and have a sip of coffee. Of course everyone wanted to have a picture with the Governor, together with a few of the actors, if possible, but the whole time he remained pleasant and charming. I hope to be so elegant when I’m his age.

Anyway, we stuck around for about an hour, during which I learned that the tour operator on the other bus was hilarious as opposed to unnecessarily alarming. He was apparently a female impersonator in the evenings, and…yeah, it sort of showed. He also apparently had relatives all over the island (which is not really unexpected when you grow up on an island), and had great fun pointing out all of his relations to his passengers as they drove past. I have to say, that sounds considerably more entertaining than being warned about machete gangs.

Even though I kind of wanted to see what the other bus driver was like, I dutifully returned to the other bus as we continued our afternoon tour. Somewhat surprisingly, it went off smoothly, entertainingly, and generally without a hitch. We drove to the other side of the island to be tantalized by Hamilton’s beaches, which, even as the movies suggest, consist of aquamarine waters lapping at gloriously white sands. I wished we had at least a little time to spend exploring one of them, but alas, the most that we could manage were a few snapshots from an overlooking cliff. Actually, I didn’t even quite manage that, because my camera chose that precise time to conveniently run out of battery power. We then made our way to the botanical gardens, which seemed too narrow for a tour bus to drive through, and which apparently contain a special type of tree that bears fruit which turn into vegetables. I think high school science established that as a biological impossibility? I…don’t know. Have we not already established that our tour operator was just a little eccentric? She actually pulled the bus over next to a hilltop cemetery just to explain everything we could want to know about how Bermuda buries its people. I mean really – morbid much? Apparently, the graves are all twenty to thirty feet deep, and unless people pay for a family plot they just stick the coffins in one on top of another. I’m imagining all sorts of unpleasant things happening to the coffins on the bottom, when that stack gets to be ten coffins deep.

So after all that we finally make our way back to the ship, and I decide to hop off and go shopping, as I’d neglected to bring a supply of protein powder. I know, I know – I’m turning in such a meathead. I know there is an ample supply of food on the ship, but the problem is actually that so much of that food is meant to be…you know…ENJOYED. It’s all gourmet food and therefore loaded with saturated fats and processed sugars and all the other tasty things that can really wreak havoc on your body. I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to order scrambled eggs made with six egg whites. So I’m trying to supplement with some clean proteins, at least, if I’m going to be eating all this otherwise artery-clogging stuff. If I’m putting a halt to my fat-cutting scheme for the duration of this cruise, I may as well attempt to gain some muscle out of the deal. Anyway, I did manage to find a small health food store yesterday (did I mention this already?) that stocked some extremely unpleasant-tasting protein powder for a relatively inexpensive price.

Oh! That was the other thing. Bermuda is RIDICULOUSLY expensive. I was seeing things like $35 for a crappy pair of flip-flops that would cost all of two dollars in the US, and $120 for a box of gel pens. PENS! One hundred and twenty fucking dollars for a pack of ten pens! Jesus Christ, do these things spell and grammar check your essays for you? What the hell, hero?

Anyway, I made it back onto the ship after buying my protein powder, did my standard tea time trivia upstairs, and then retreated down to the computer lab to type up messages and memos and other nifty things. There was some kind of juggling thing going on in the main theatre, which might have been fun if I didn’t have to sequester myself in my room and fold papers the entire time. I ended up taking dinner in my room again, because I just didn’t have time and couldn’t be bothered to eat in the dining room with everything else that I had to do.

Okay, I think I have to mention here that the Navigator is a much smaller ship than the Crystal Serenity, and since we left Bermuda this evening it’s been pitching and rocking all over the place. Kind of like pirate ships did in bad action movies of the 50’s, except replace the pirate ship with a massive luxury cruise liner. It’s giving me a mild case of sea sickness and a serious headache, and consequently I just want to fall asleep all the time. In fact, I think it’s time to turn in. I know that’s kind of abrupt, but my head is killing me.

Travelogue Two, Day Three: It’s Not Boring Even If I Have Nothing Substantial to Say

This whole “avoid fattening foods and desserts” deal is getting to be much more difficult than I’d imagined. I know I said that I’d avoid dessert except during dinner but…peach mousse with chocolate sprinkles and a sprig of pineapple! How am I supposed to say no to that! I reiterate – if I weren’t trying to maintain a certain modicum of self-control with the whole P90X thing, I’d fucking grab one of every piece of dessert they’re serving me, and I’d wolf it all down and have no regrets whatsoever.

So anyway, today was our last at-sea day before Bermuda, and I admit to a little bit of apprehension. A part of me is dreading that we’re going to end up with another repeat of the Morocco incident (which I will not repeat here – you can find a concise report about Morocco in my first Travelogue from September, 2008. Yes, I’m advertising myself. Go read!), but we’ve had SO much contact and correspondence with the bus companies and the Governor’s House in Bermuda that someone would have to be holding an idiot ball the size of a beach ball in order for something to go seriously wrong. Plus, I’ll be making some phone calls in the morning to make sure that everything is kosher. Still, I can’t quite help feeling like some kind of Sword of Damocles is hanging over my head.

I woke up too early this morning, but there were events to oversee and things to be done. There was a Q&A with the actors this morning, which was decently attended and passed without any seriously retarded questions from anyone. For some reason, when we have Q&A sessions with the actors I keep worrying that one of the actors won’t get enough questions and it’ll seem like people aren’t interested enough in them. A part of me is going, “What do you care? It’s not your job to take care of the actors’ egos,” but a larger part is going, “The actors are still a part of the Theatre at Sea group, and it’s my job as general manager to make sure that everyone is happy, insofar as that’s possible.” Yeah, I know…I’m such a bloody pushover. INFP / Counselor / Caretaker indeed.

You know, looking back, I actually have very little to say about today. It passed virtually without incident, and everything seemed pretty routine. I’m still pretty annoyed that there’s no way for me to get a protein shake while I’m aboard, but I was pleased to find out that there seems to be a health store in Bermuda, so perhaps I can pick up a bucket of protein powder while I’m there and feel like I’m maintaining at least a modicum of effort in maintaining my exercise diet and schedule. Back and legs was hard…unusually hard, and not just because I stayed up too late last night doing karaoke and drinking too much. The ship’s rocking back and forth had a great deal to do with it, I think. I’m not precisely prone to sea-sickness, but I do get somewhat nauseated and develop a fairly irritating headache when the ship starts lurching like a wino at 3am. My numbers aren’t really going up, but I feel like I can see a difference, which is kind of odd and contrary to what I’m used to. I kind of feel like I’m approaching the best shape of my life, but dammit, that pooch in the lower abs just REFUSES TO GO AWAY! Rob is undoubtedly annoyed at me for being annoyed at that, but hey, we’re all allowed our little petty peeves, no?

Lunch was fine, but I ended up going right back to work after lunch. The general malaise meant I could only concentrate for about half an hour before I had to take a nap, and when I woke up it was almost time for the party upstairs, but in that time I actually managed to get a fair amount of memos written and records updated. On a semi-random note, I got a bunch of calls from people asking me where the party was, where we’re meeting tomorrow for Bermuda, and where the show is this evening, and part of me just wants to scream, “Do you people even READ the notices I send out? Why the fuck am I spending hours of my time writing them, hand-folding each one, and addressing them to everyone – adding personal notes if necessary – if you’re just going to bloody ignore entire PARAGRAPHS?!” I’m forced to remind myself that some of my passengers, like Philip, are advancing in years and don’t remember things as well as they used to, but my irritation, like most emotions, is irrational and doesn’t listen well to reason.

The party actually went fairly decently as well. A number of people turned up, and although I think I overheard a few people complaining that it ought to be more lively, I chose to ignore the comments and focus on the wonderful conversations I had with the rest of my passengers. One of them in particular took a particular interest in my life and my interests, and I do find it wonderful when I can form a connection with any of the passengers. Some of these ladies and gentlemen are more spry and lively than people half or even a third of their age. It’s really amazing to watch sometimes.

I ended up just making a cameo in the dining room to make sure that things weren’t on fire or exploding among the Theatre at Sea guests, but took food in my room because I just didn’t have time to spend two and a half hours eating dinner. I mean, come on – I usually grab something and finish it in fifteen minutes. Extending that by 10 times is practically begging my sense of efficiency and impatience to start tearing ragged strips out of me from the inside. I finished P90X, finding legs and back WAY harder than usual, and managed to shower and get to the show just a little after it started. Our cast did a wonderful job, as usual, and I managed to somehow bite through a martini glass halfway through the show.

Don’t ask.

We held sort of a green room reception with the passengers and our actors up in the Galileo Lounge after the show, and I had a serious moment of contentment as I looked around and realized that everyone around me was relaxed, enjoying themselves, and needed absolutely nothing from me. I danced a few times with Betsy and a couple of my passengers, and that was quite delightful – I kind of regretted having to bow out, but interestingly enough I ran into Matthew (the actor who did Wild Party last year) in the library. We chatted very amiably for a while and made plans to hang out in Funchal, once we get there, which should be a lot of fun. Madeira looks amazing, from the brochures that I’ve seen of it.

Anyway, I know this particular update was a mite more dull than usual, but I’m actually feeling remarkably tired after a fairly unremarkable day and I need to get up early tomorrow to make some phone calls. I’ll come back with a full report on Bermuda tomorrow, assuming I’m not eaten by my passengers if we get stuck outside the Governor’s house.

Travelogue Two, Day Two – I Thought I Was Supposed to Be LESS Busy on at Sea Days

So, so very tired. And so, so very drunk. Okay, actually, not that drunk, although I had a fairly absurd amount of alcohol. John, the bartender in the Star Lounge, has this unfortunate (or very fortunate, depending on how you look at it) tendency to mix very, very strong drinks. I had my first appletini tonight and it was a fairly impressive one. I have no clear conception of what goes into an appletini, but suffice it to say it seems to be a great deal of alcohol with just enough flavoring to keep the whole thing from becoming absurdly vile.

I actually don’t have a great deal to report today. This is our second at sea day – we have one more tomorrow before we dock in Bermuda, at which point the rehearsals are over and we see just how well G can herd a group of 50-odd people to the right place at the right time. Frankly, I’ll be amazed if we all manage to make it onto the buses without somebody being left behind.

I’d imagined that I would have somewhat less work to do with all of the days we’re spending at sea, but somehow, with everything else that seems to be going on, I’m finding myself with the usual dearth of time. Between meetings, shows, P90X, and dinner, I seem to be stuck in the exact same situations as I was stuck in on the Crystal Serenity, when we were docking at a port practically every day and I was constantly shuttling myself (and sometimes other people) off to some exotic new locale every day. I think part of the issue is the fact that I have to keep up with several Theatre at Sea shore excursions now, whereas with the Crystal Serenity we were restricted to Venice, Rome, and Monte Carlo.

I finally did find a way to get my pull-up bar to fit into my stateroom, although now it’s resting on a rather flimsy-looking piece of decorative wood. I’m hoping I’ll be able to go through the entire cruise without doing permanent damage to my stateroom, but every creak and strain in the woodwork while I’m doing pull-ups is making me nervous. As a tangent, I’m still kind of annoyed that I haven’t been able to make it past three wide-grip pull-ups. I know those are hard and back exercises are among the worst in my repertoire, but I feel like I should have more to show after nearly six weeks of P90X.

Anyway, we had our group meeting with all of the Theatre at Sea passengers this morning, which required me to drag my ass out of bed at 9:45 in the morning after having gone to bed at 3:15 the night before. Having gotten only about two hours the night before that, the six hours felt about as useful as one. The group meeting went well – only one or two people took up a disproportionate amount of my time with issues that have effectively nothing to do with me, which is actually a fact that I’m getting more used to as time goes on. Even as Jessica said – there are always one or two people on the cruises who will make your life miserable, and there’s not much you can do except let it wash over you, out the back of the ship, and fantasize about various ways they might fall overboard during the trip.

I had lunch, or at least a part of lunch, with David and Sumrall, and I very successfully broke my promise last night to eat dessert only during dinner. I can’t help it. They had goddamn Black Forest Cake mixed among, like, eighteen different dessert selections. It’s a testimony to my force of will that I only took a small slice of the cake and didn’t choose one of each item, like I would have if I weren’t doing P90X. Yes, I know I’m making excuses and no, I don’t feel guilty at all. We tread over this ground on my last post. I eat like an ascetic back in New York. I’m going to enjoy myself on this cruise, dammit.

Anyway, I napped through a lot of the afternoon, did my yoga (balance postures are absurdly hard on a ship that’s rocking back and forth), and showed up for a relatively nice dinner. Of course there were issues, but they weren’t nearly as pressing or as idiotic as they were yesterday and I was actually able to sit down for dinner at a reasonable time and have some reasonable conversation with some of my passengers. I know – someone roll out the plagues of boils and swarms of locusts. Did some work, of course, after dinner, but after that was done I flitted over and did some GREAT karaoke with David and Sumrall.

I do have to add here – this cruise would be SO much harder if I didn’t have the chance to unwind with David and Sumrall. I won’t deny I kinda wish I had someone special to share the cruise with me (I’m working on that), but in lieu of romantic companionship the two of them kick some major ass. I’m utterly bummed that they’re not able to come onto the next cruise – and the Crystal Symphony doesn’t even serve complimentary alcohol! Dammit!

Anyway, we have another at sea day tomorrow and our first show. I’m actually anticipating some time off and some rest after Bermuda is all settled, so there might be some fairly short (or fairly philosophical) posts from me for a while. We'll see. For now, however, I’m going to bed.

Travelogue Two, Day One: Bumbling Around in Blunderland and Other Misadventures

God, someone shoot me now.

I think everyone was expecting that, right? Did we really expect day one to sail smoothly by like a greased up sled over a lake of oily lard? God, I’m too tired to even be particularly original. As is usual with my procrastinating self, I stayed up too late last night doing…I can’t even remember what, actually, so it couldn’t have been terribly important, and as a result I got maybe two hours of sleep when I finally was able to make it into bed. Packing had gone fairly quickly so I convinced myself it wouldn’t take me very long to get ready in the morning.

Well, I was very wrong, and it took very long.

No, that’s a lie. I just said that because I wanted to make a cheesy rhyme. Actually, it only took me about twenty minutes to shower, eat some breakfast, and pack what I figured were the last remaining items that I needed into my suitcase. It’s worth mentioning here that this is the same suitcase I effectively snatched from my cousin, complete with a shredded back wheel that makes pulling it around feel like I’m dragging a dead body around behind me. It was probably about six thirty in the morning when I lugged that particular corpse out of my apartment and yeah, I was totally feeling that fact, as well as the fact that I don’t even go to bed until six thirty in the morning some days.

Everything went pretty much as expected until I got to the airport. Regent had effectively forgotten about me when we requested air for the actors and for the rest of our crew, so I ended up having to book my own air through Continental. Newark to Fort Lauderdale at 9:15 in the morning, arriving around 12:30. The train ride to Newark was unremarkable, although I did note once again that the route that snakes from New York Penn Station to Newark, New Jersey looks like the industrialized outskirts of Hell, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that’s where yuppies end up when they die. Anyway, after checking in and arriving at the boarding gate (stopping briefly to pick up a protein jamba juice), I learned that the airline had had an equipment change and now my flight was severely oversold.

Um…what?

So I went into standby for the time being, waiting out the standard volunteer time period while they asked people if they would be willing to take a different flight in exchange for a $300 travel voucher. I watched as a few people volunteered, some names were called, and people who had been shuffled onto standby were allowed onto the plane. Finally, we were down to two spots, and there just happened to be two elderly couples waiting in line in front of me. They got onto the plane, and I got a “I’m sorry, your flight is full.”

Son of a bitch!

Fortunately, I managed to retain my composure and an excellent, excellent Chinese face as I informed the service representative that I had to be on a boat by 3:30 pm, and if they didn’t get me there I was going to personally brain them with a trash can and then take a dump on their chests. Okay, no, I didn’t say that, but I did infuse my voice with a low, angry, and undoubtedly very masculine intensity that I’m sure was very intimidating. My obviously irked exterior was clearly able to cow the service lady into putting me onto the next available flight at 11:00 am, arriving into Fort Lauderdale at 2:00 pm. Not only that, but I was pushed into first class and given a $300 travel voucher for my troubles. Sweet! I should totally be late and inflexible for more flights.

First class was nice, but honestly, the first thing I thought upon sitting down was, “People pay five hundred bucks for this?” Yeah, the seat’s a little wider and you get a little more leg room, but for five hundred bucks more than economy class I feel like it ought to blow dry my hair, give me a manicure, and whisper sweet nothings into my ear before leading me into the back room. Oh, I did get a piping hot chicken burrito for lunch, together with a bowl of soup and some nifty cookies, but five hundred bucks for a couple of inches and a spicy burrito seems rather stiff (harr…)

Anyway, the flight got into Fort Lauderdale alright. Although the cab ride was nothing really to speak of, I was feeling oddly excited as we pulled into Port Everglades. It was a semi-cloudy day in Fort Lauderdale and patches of sunshine and blue sky were peeking through the waves of clouds, giving the city an admittedly cheerful look as compared to the damp, dreary, drizzly expanse that had been New York. I think I was also actually beginning to really look forward to getting onto this admittedly luxurious ship, despite my crankiness over all of the mishaps and misadventures over the past few days. Regardless of how annoyed you are and how much work you know you’ll be doing, there’s still something about getting onto a luxury cruise liner that makes your heart beat a little faster. The day that I start going, “Ho hum, another luxury cruise. How dull…” is the day that somebody with more sense needs to beat me over the head several times with a lead pipe. And then bury me in the basement and deny to the authorities that I had ever visited the area. And they’d be justified in doing so.

The check-in process was actually considerably smoother than it was on the Crystal Serenity. I dropped my bags off, gave the people my name, got a retarded-looking picture of me taken via web-cam, and less than ten minutes later I was on board the ship. The Regent Navigator is considerably smaller than the Crystal Serenity, so there isn’t that feeling of great…spaciousness, I guess…that you get upon walking into the atrium. It’s still gorgeous, mind you, but it does feel noticeably more confined. I snapped a few pictures, dropped some of my stuff off into my stateroom, and glanced around to make sure that I would be able to use my pull-up bar in my room.

Yes, I’m so obsessed with P90X that the second thing I did upon entering my five-star hotel room was to check and make sure that my pull-up bar could fit into the doorway. I’m totally turning into a meathead, and I can’t be bothered to care because I can actually see my abs sometimes, and that it kind of bothers me that that doesn’t bother me.

The answer to the burning question in all of your minds, incidentally, is…no, the fucking pull-up bar doesn’t fit into my room. I’m still working on how I’m going to do back and biceps tonight.

There WAS, however, a bottle of complimentary champagne that I managed to mostly ignore before running upstairs to check in with Philip and Marilyn. Naturally, the actors had had a major air malfunction – Donna McKechnie ended up having to buy her own ticket to fly with the rest of the actors, and Lee Roy and the rest ended up being nearly an hour and a half late, which almost resulted in a panic attack on my end and a heart attack on Philip’s. You’d never have noticed, with the way we calmly sat on the pool deck eating our bratwurst and cookies, but there was definite tension. Mmmmm…bratwurst.

Oh, that actually reminds me – as I was running around on the pool deck, I ran into one of the actors from The Wild Party, that I stage managed about a year ago. That was one of those incredibly odd Twilight Zone moments, because as I was walking past we both sort of eyed each other in that, “You look so incredibly familiar but you really shouldn’t be here because reality just doesn’t work that way and oh my god it’s actually you!” sort of way. Turns out he’s been singing for the ship since January. What are the odds? He introduced me to another actor on the ship, name of Stewart, who winked at me twice as we spoke.

I have to say here…that always kind of weirds me out. I always wonder if I’m supposed to smile and ignore it, wink back, make some kind of innuendo, poke out his other eye with a sharp object…what? Is that another one of those gay signals that we were supposed to learn back in homosexual school? I think I must’ve ditched class in favor of doing linear algebra or something that day, because whenever someone does that to me it becomes a serious deer-in-headlights moment. I need one of my fag hags or less clueless gay friends to tell me what, exactly, that’s supposed to mean and what, exactly, is the socially acceptable course of action in such a situation.

After a brief lunch there were, naturally, already issues to deal with and messages to send out, and naturally, in the middle of sending out a message to all the passengers instructing them on how to sit with the rest of the group during dinner, we get a bloody fire drill. So I’m toting my bag and folder and other essentials, fiddling with my terribly gaudy and even more terribly awkward life preserver, knowing that the message about dinner is very unlikely to get out to everyone, and that there would probably be Drama (yes, with a capital D) come dinnertime.

Yup. There was Drama at dinnertime. To set up the overall scenario, we made a request with Regent to have everyone in our group sit together in the same general area. The maitre d’ of the restaurant took note of this, but told me when I spoke to him earlier that the people in our group would have to arrive promptly at 7:00 pm in order to be seated together. Naturally, nobody got this message from me in time, so although most people were prescient enough to ask about sitting with the group, a few people didn’t and were consequently upset when they got seated somewhere else. Then someone else tried to hold a table for certain people to arrive, which really can’t be done in a situation like this because the restaurant doesn’t know who’s arrived and who hasn’t, and that became a big mess because they started antagonizing the head waiter. Then the maitre d’ and the food and restaurant manager got involved, and THEY became upset that the passengers were upset. And I was upset that they were upset and we ended up having to just solve everything in a free for all melee.

Or maybe I just told them I’d handle it and went back to schmoozing with the passengers. That was actually, for the most part, very enjoyable. Despite whatever complaints I’ve had in the past about incredibly demanding passengers, a lot of the people who come with us are genuinely nice people who understand that I’m pretty much stretched to my limit trying to accommodate all of them, who are willing to cut me a little slack, and who are fairly pleased just by the fact that I’m going around to greet them at dinner time. There are more than a few on this cruise, in fact, who are truly extraordinarily friendly, including one man who actually managed to dig up my blog. (Yes, I realize he might well be reading this, and no, I’m making no effort to change what I write on here as a result of it. This is my blog, dammit, and I’m not going to start censoring myself because I’m afraid of what other people might think of me.)

Anyway, it’s worth mentioning here that I’m one of those people who’s more likely to work hard for someone who’s friendly to me than for someone who just complains endlessly. If someone’s nice, then I don’t want to disappoint them by messing up. If someone’s consistently being a temperamental bitch, however, I’m somewhat more likely to let someone else, who probably cares a whole lot less than I do, deal with the issue, and if the passenger decides not to sail with us again, then…well…frankly, I’m not going to be heartbroken over it.

Anyway, dinner was basically a big fracas and I didn’t manage to sit down and eat until it was about three quarters of the way over. On the bright side, today also happens to be my freebie day, so I was able to eat whatever I wanted and choose some delectable desserts to boot. I think that may end up being something of a problem on this cruise, though. Half the fun of cruising comes from the truly incredible food you’re getting, and it’s going to annoy the shit out of me if I can’t sample some of the stuff because I’m trying to stick hard and fast to the P90X diet.

I think Rob would forgive me if I pulled myself off the diet for the duration of this cruise. ‘Cause honestly…five star restaurant! How often do you get to basically eat at a five star restaurant every single evening for two weeks? They offered bloody crème brulee as one of the dessert options tonight! I am not skipping crème brulee ‘cause of Tony fucking Horton, and I am DEFINITELY not skipping a chateaubriand, assuming it’s offered tomorrow night, just because it’s not a “clean, high quality protein.” I’ll do the fucking exercises as usual, but you know what, I’m making the decision right now – I’m on a goddamn luxury cruise, and anyone who thinks I ought to stick to my strict, clean diet while I’m here can shove their head up an elephant’s ass. I’ll try to eat decently during the day, but all bets are off come dinnertime.

Anyway, we have a meeting with all the passengers tomorrow, and Bermuda is until two days after that. Plenty of time, I’m hoping, to get everything sorted out and ready. God, I really don’t want another series of shore excursion debacles.

Shit, it’s almost 1 am and I still need to do back and biceps. Okay, going back to my stateroom now.

On a random note, I ought to take more pictures. The ship is lovely and I ought to capture more of it before it’s time to go.

On refusing to sleep because I'm an idiot

So I'm about to leave for Fort Lauderdale in about three hours, and instead of going to sleep I'm tossing out a tiny blog on the matter. Actually, I'm waiting to see if there's anything else I'm forgetting before I head out. I'm sure there are loads of things that I'll remember as soon as I've reached the airport, and I'll be tearing at my hair before the plane's left the ground. I've already e-mailed Sherry asking her to take care of a matter I neglected while I was at the office, and I haven't even bloody left yet. Yay for G's organization skills, right?

There will be another format change in the upcoming days of the cruise. As I did last September, I'm going to keep up a travelogue of my experiences on the Regent Navigator. It should actually be much easier to do so this time, because the ship is spending a great deal of time at sea, and I actually have considerably less to do when we're not at port. I think I'm also going to take advantage of any free time I have to go ahead and finish transcribing the last three days of the September cruise, for completion's sake, even though I rather doubt anyone is going to go back and actually read that.

Oh crap. AND I really need to go through and finish uploading pictures from the September cruise into my Facebook, then go through and upload the pictures from my trip to China into my Facebook. I'm developing a serious backlog here. I guess it's fortunate that a ton of the pictures I took don't have me in them, so I don't feel obligated to put them anywhere except in my memories.