Salt Touched

I should have gone right back to work after handing out the complimentary bingo tickets last night. I mean I really should have. But it had been a hard, slightly bizarre, day (let me put it this way, I had a drink before noon, that is not normal for me), and I was feeling so very out of it. So when one of my co-workers offered me chocolate and red wine, I am guilty of playing hooky.

What? Even good girls can get tempted once in a while…

For all of about 15 minutes before we had to head up for the opening night show.

Yes, I’m now officially included in said production. For about five minutes involving walking on stage, waving, smiling and walking off stage again. My position didn’t used to be included at all but since they cut the core entertainment team down to only four of us they need all the people on stage they can get. Besides, this team is fun to do the show with, we literally dance back stage every week. Just to one song, right before we go on stage, but it’s fun.

It ended up being a good night really, I got wine, I got chocolate, the show went well…I managed to clout Predator at least twice from clear across the map during our Call of Duty session…oh, and I’m introducing Amras to Doctor Who (note to all my nerdy friends: we’re only part way through season 2, looong way to go before we hit Matt Smith’s era, and yes, Firefly is next as I know it to be a necessity but I must convert him slowly to these things after all 😛 )

Have I mentioned that I like it here?

I just cleaned this place up! Can we keep it clean for oh I dunno maybe five minutes? ~ The Incredibles

It seems that every ship that I come to (with the exception of the flagship) I end up running an inventory. And it’s usually voluntary. Back in the day we used to have to run inventory every quarter, but the practice has gradually fallen by the wayside and on this particular ship the computer check out system had been in complete disarray for I really have no idea how long. The look on my supervisor’s face when I told him I’d managed to fix it was actually almost funny…

Can we just have one of you on every ship?

Anyway, so now that the system is up and running again, I have to actually get the lay of the land as to what’s in the collection, as it hasn’t really been managed for a long time, and the catalogue is incomplete in most cases – entries with only half of author’s names, incomplete titles, abbreviations that probably only make sense to the person who entered them. It’s a massive job, a full manual inventory can take the entire length of a contract; and it’s a one person job. While in the past I have run inventory with a co-librarian, it’s always a bit of a challenge to figure out where one person has left off and the other can pick up, plus everyone has their own system for doing it. So it’s one of those things where much as you might want help, you kind of are stuck doing it on your own.

That said, I might rope my Big Brother in to help me carry stuff…except I don’t know if I want to owe him that huge a favour 😉

Thankfully we only have one sea day on this itinerary, so there’s only one 10 ¼ hour day of total insanity, the rest of the days are all port days which usually have some blissfully quiet stretches that allow me to get some work done. Not that I don’t always find ways to get work done.

It’s a toss-up at the moment whether I’ll actually finish it. It might be that I don’t get the whole thing done until after September…but at least for now it gives me something to work on at the quiet stretches in the evenings.

When you only have one sea day per cruise (which in this case means one per week), getting through it can feel like pulling teeth. This is a really port heavy route, so there are a lot of things we can’t do simply because we’re in port all the time, so when the one sea day rolls around we cram everything that we can into it:

Two bingo games, two dance classes, the specialty luncheon, the extra bridge games, the service club meets etc etc. My schedule today reads like an eye chart.

And yet…that doesn’t really take much of the shine off the rest of the week(s). It’s only one day, and anyone can handle anything for only one day. This time last year, I felt drastically out of place because I wasn’t preparing for the flagship Grand, now I find that the further I get from her, the less I worry about her. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but I suspect it is. One of these days, I will leave the flagship, some other adventure – some other commitment – will call me onwards and I’ll leave her in someone else’s competent hands. Before that concept devastated me, because that ship meant more to me than some people I could name, but now…I don’t know, now I just wonder.

I do know that I could definitely get used to not being so frazzled.

Anyway…here we are again, steaming our way slowly through the Gulf of St Lawrence. The white horses are kicking up out there, but it’s not particularly rocky. It was last night; the ship took such a hard heel to starboard that all the crew cabinets decided to fly open downstairs! But now we’re just kind of making a sedate plotting pace along the shoreline.

The crowd on board seems to have fizzled itself out. After the immense success of the live karaoke a few nights ago, we fully expected the lounge to be packed for Motown night – but when I went up there after shift it seemed to be back to the usual setup : me, the band, five people at the bar and perhaps two or three other people scattered around. Fortunately it was at least a vibrant crowd, if small, so it didn’t feel quite like performing to an empty room, heh, I talk as if I actually had any active part in the band, when I don’t do anything except sit on the sidelines with a glass of white zinfandel and applaud. But hey…everyone needs a roadie! And as always, there is comfort in routine…

They say happiness is the folly of fools
Pity poor me, one of the fools
Happiness is smiling upon me
Walking my way
Sharing my day
Happiness is whatever you want it to be

When most people go back to work, it’s a drain, the end of vacation looms like some sort of dreaded event. I’m not saying that I don’t adore my vacations (BEST SUMMER EVER!!) and when they do roll around I need them. But Freya do I ever love my job.

I count myself very lucky to be among the few that can say that. I know it’s a privilege not everyone is lucky enough to have.

When I was hired to the flagship nearly four years ago (yes, I had been with the company only half a year before being taken on as part of the flagship team, I was hired in April of 2010, I was on the flagship by March of 2011), I didn’t really realize how much I was giving up. I love the flagship, I do, she’s been my faithful home for nearly my entire ship-board career. But my summer contracts – when I’m well away from her and all the inherit stress she brings – have on many occasions been when I’m the happiest. When I can feel the tension run out of my shoulders, when I do less sewing and *gasp* less reading, because I simply don’t need to escape reality as often. When I have time and energy to have friends, and an actual semblance of a balanced life. When I can actually consider going out to dinner without having to scramble about whether or not it’s “safe” to leave the desk.

This? This is shaping up to be one of those good contracts.

Although I should acknowledge that I’ve only been here a week, but you can gain the feel of a ship in that little amount of time.

And I think I’m gonna like it here…

Rain seems to be following us around so far this contract. Although it didn’t rain on me when I boarded in Montreal, it attempted to when we were in Quebec (okay, perhaps more than intended, Amras and I might have gotten a little drenched on our way back from lunch), it cleared up for Sydney yesterday and has once again opened up and poured on Halifax.

Which is fine by me as I have IPM today.

Definite weather for room service and sci-fi marathon.

Hmm…I wonder if this is the day I should finally get Amras introduced to Firefly (yes, I can hear all my fellow nerds gasping in shock, three years of being practical siblings and I’ve yet to introduce my Big Brother to Mal and co…).

More likely though, plans will be usurped by our anticipated Call of Duty session; our computer guru onboard has introduced most of us to the game, though he’s at an insanely high level and we’re all struggling beginners. Amras has at least been playing a few days, so he has a few levels under his belt, whereas I only installed the program day before yesterday (in other words? I’m SO rifle fodder) …so I’m almost a bit nervous to edge out onto the playing field. It’s been a long time since I’ve played a first person action shooter! But, hopefully I remember a little bit of my old skills from playing Doom with my father back in the day…

Enough at least to creep up through the ranks and surpass certain people…

Not that I’m competitive or anything…

Heh…

Suddenly all I can hear is My Cousin Vinny:

IF […] then the correct ignition timing would be 20 degrees top dead center

So sue me, I like being one of the boys sometimes…

*sigh* It’s really just too murky to go out there today.

Yes, it’s ironic sometimes, we appear to have such a glamorous life out here, but in reality we really don’t. Our lives are much the same as everyone else’s; at least in that, when the weather is good, we drag ourselves outside into the sunshine, and when it’s raining we batten down indoors and watch TV and play mindless video games, and listen to the rain lashing against the sides of the ship.

Do I have plans for tomorrow?
Yes. I’ll pick you up at 9

I’m quite used to Amras electing himself as my tour guide as of late. He’s been to a lot of the ports I haven’t, and while I could easily drag him around most of Asia and New Zealand…when we’re running along the East Coast or in Europe, I hand all navigational reigns for my port day over to him. And I make very sure to wear good walking shoes, as it inevitably ends up involving climbing many many stairs.

Which also proved the case in Quebec City. The stairs up to the old town weren’t quite as bad as the massive staircase that we climbed in Barcelona, but they came close. And here I thought I was in shape. Perhaps not so much! But the view from the top is worth it, the place feels like a little slice of Europe dropped into the middle of Canada. Only minus the spaghetti. I usually bear a certain amount of discontent towards the refusal of most of Quebec to acknowledge that Canada is in fact a bilingual country (it comes from the fact that on the west coast we are forced to learn French for the first 11 years of our schooling, but Quebec does not have the same insistence in teaching English – in short, don’t get me started) but it’s kind of hard to maintain that distaste when you’re wandering through a street that’s essentially an arts market and all you can hear around you is French and it somehow…seems to fit.

I used to know French once, well, a cobbled together broken version. It’s all locked somewhere in the back of my mind, the door to it long rusted shut by time. I should really find the mental key and refresh what little skill I had one of these days….but knowing where to start is always the problem. For now all I know how to say is the typical “do you speak English”.

Aaanyway….

Wandering and window-shopping our way through the twisted city streets and eventually into modern downtown I was lucky not to buy anything (though there was a pair of shoes I positively salivated over…but they were rather WAY out of my price range), we eventually settled down for lunch. I eat well on contracts that feature a lot of ports, though it often doesn’t do great things for my paycheque to eat ashore all the time, it works out better for my health in the long run.

By the time we headed back to the ship it had started to drizzle, then it started to do a little bit more than drizzle. Far from torrential, I mean I’m used to west coast rain which can sometimes get so thick you can’t see your hand in front of your face. For me this was nothing that my jean jacket couldn’t handle. But if you were out without a coat? Yeah, you were going to get soaked. And our search for an umbrella proved fruitless, so eventually you just have to laugh it off…because by that point you’re already wet enough that an umbrella would be useless anyway…

But sometimes getting caught in the rain really isn’t so bad….

I live in the margins of my itineraries. In the empty space between the places I visit.

I came across that quote in a series of files I found on my work computer that contained a short story – or rather photographs of the pages of a book of what I assume were short stories – whoever took the photos didn’t note the actual title of the book, but the story was about someone who worked on ships. And I can think of no better description about what this life is like sometimes. Where do you live? I don’t know…

That said, this is a comfortable ship. She’s different from the flagship of course – every ship is different – but the basic layout is the same, the layout of the library is identical. To the point where I sometimes forget where I am and go looking for things in places where they “should” be but aren’t. My predecessor left the place in a fantastic state (something she was nervous about, despite my constant reassurances that she had no reason to be), so my work is running very smoothly. I managed to repair the broken library database (or at least bring it up to some kind of working order) relatively quickly, though I fear that since the system was broken for so long that a full inventory may be looming in my metaphorical rear-view mirror sooner rather than later. I’m really not sure what’s here at the moment!

It is astonishing how quickly you fall into a routine. In some ways it’s as if I never was on vacation. One of the comforts of ship life is that at the same time that everything is different, everything is the same. The cabin you walk into is identical except for the tarnished brass number plate on the front of the door, the same tired/wired smiles, the same rattle of wheels down the I-95. You’re only the new kid on the block for the first few days, and then you suddenly become just part of the flow. There are lot of people on this ship that I know; I came here just expecting Amras (we knew we were working this contract together months ago), but so far I’ve run into people who know me from waaaay back in my time with the company. Of course a lot of them have changed positions, the solo guitarist from my second contract has become a computer teacher, my old supervisor from my second contract has become a cruise consultant (which feels a little strange really!), and at least two cast members from that contract remember me…some not in the fondest of terms I’m sure, that second contract was a rough one all around! But we live and we learn and we move on. Of course there’s always the challenge of remembering just where it is you know someone from…

Black Pearl?
Nope, never sailed her
Flagship?
Nope..
Explorer…?
That might be it…

Amras is of course, still Amras, had I not been almost expecting it I would have been bowled over by his golden retriever style tackle in the middle of the I-95. But I know my big brother well enough to suspect that was coming. He still owes me for surprising him by showing up on his ship over the summer, and one day I’m sure that debt’s going to be paid back in full.

And then of course there’s the books. There’s a routine you go through when you introduce yourself to a library, and at the end of the routine the book shelf in my cabin always has at least two or three new additions. Should come as no surprise that this contract is no different…

Strange world this really…you leave home to come home…and somehow neither cheapens the other…