It’s sometimes strange to realize how much your expectations of things have changed in what seems like so short a time. As you all know, I started on 7-day cruises. Very nearly this very route as a matter of fact. From there I moved up to three week runs, and ultimately ended up on the 110 day Grand World. The shift happened quickly but gradually at the same time, which sounds strange, but isn’t.
My point is – I’ve become used to the upper-end cruises. I’ve only recently come off a contract where “formal night” meant formal, where your gown had to touch the floor and your hair, nails and make-up were all expected to be something beyond perfect. Where every man on board wore a suit if not a tuxedo. Where your cruise director wore a tailcoat (granted, a gold, sparkly, tail coat but a tail-coat none-the-less) and you caught hail Columbia if you dared wear a cocktail dress – no matter how formal – to a ball. To go from that to an environment where “formal night” is…nothing – where people walk around wearing jeans and t-shirts, kids don’t even own a pair of dress shoes and even the chartered customers just …don’t care.
It’s so very, very strange…
So here I sit, dressed like something out of a fairy tale surrounded by people who can’t even be bothered to put on any make-up…
I am once again struck by the strangeness of my life…
Currently we are in our second week of Alaska cruises. Steaming towards Juneau…again.
About the most exciting thing in my world at the moment is that I’ve at long last gotten the new library system up and running. So long to the cumbersome, constantly glitching excel system (which, granted, is has been a lot less cumbersome since I rewrote it almost from the ground up three ships ago), hello scanners and barcodes. Finally.
Yes, small things like that please me once in a while J
In the nitty gritty details of things, life goes on. The electricity blew in my cabin this evening – an occurrence that no doubt owed its roots to the fact that two long haired girls in two separate cabins both blow drying said hair at the same time. The circuits below the waterline can only handle so much. With any luck by the time I’m actually able to post this, it will be fixed – otherwise things might not be so much fun for a while.
It occurs to me that those of you who’ve gotten used to the normal somewhat poetic tone of this blog might be disappointed in the last few entries. I apologize, I really do – but it’s difficult to wax philosophical about something you barely have time to get used to before it’s gone, when you haven’t been able to get off the ship for a week because immigration won’t let you, and when you’re days are spent dealing with charter-driven-insanity to the point where all you want to do at the end of them is crawl into bed and be blessedly unconscious for a few hours before starting all over again.
Never-the-less…
Bright blessings,
Shaughnessy
“no doubt owed its roots to the fact that two long haired girls in two separate cabins both blow drying said hair at the same time.”
Blondes? 🙂
Not that I’m knocking blondes, just saying.
Well, one of us, me – I’m not a blonde