{"id":1779,"date":"2012-11-30T11:11:10","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T00:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=1779"},"modified":"2012-11-30T11:11:10","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T00:11:10","slug":"fathoms-below-again-at-sea-11232012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1779","title":{"rendered":"Fathoms Below, Again \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [11\/23\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/30\/fathoms-below-again-at-sea-11232012\/king_neptune_and_his_queen__by_candra-d4z82zg\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1780\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1780\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/king_neptune_and_his_queen__by_candra-d4z82zg.jpg?w=212\" height=\"350\" width=\"248\" \/><\/a>Arrh\u2026so you think ye can cross the equator without payin\u2019 tribute do ye. Avast matey\u2019s ye have another th\u2019ot comin\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Sorry. I had to. Even though I wasn\u2019t a pirate this year. This was by choice really, because being a medic is more fun, but also (though I didn\u2019t realize this till after the fact) in the kind of weather we\u2019ve been having lately (read boil-a-lobster) if you\u2019re a medic you actually stay cooler because you\u2019re ankle deep in pool water.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, you\u2019re also drenched head to toe in pink and blue meringue but hey, you can\u2019t have everything\u2026<\/p>\n<p>In all honesty, I have to say that this morning\u2019s crossing the line ceremony was probably one of the best I\u2019ve been involved in (and by now I\u2019ve done\u2026five? Four? I\u2019ve lost track). It\u2019s hard to explain exactly why, but I think over all it just <i>felt<\/i> good. It\u2019s been a while since all of us had that much fun.<\/p>\n<p>There were fewer (vile) pollywogs than usual, sometimes they\u2019re hard to find on the flagship as the returning crew have all gained trusty shellback status a long time ago in most cases. There may have been fewer of them, but they were much more into the spirit of the occasion than I\u2019ve seen in the past, in fact, one photographer was <i>literally carried<\/i> before Neptune, begging for mercy. Of course, \u2018mercy\u2019 isn\u2019t exactly a word that enters into one\u2019s vocabulary during a crossing ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>As usual, the pollywogs from the entertainment department went last. No one quite knows why this is so, but it always is. I suspect it\u2019s because we\u2019re the supposedly the most visible department. There were only two entertainment pollywogs this year:\u00a0 one of the lifestylists, and my fellow librarian. A couple of days ago, Langford had asked me what this whole crossing thing was about:<\/p>\n<p><i>Well, I have two pieces of advice. First: wear something you don\u2019t care about. Second? Pray you don\u2019t end up on my table!<\/i><\/p>\n<p>For a moment it actually looked like he <i>was<\/i> going to end up on my table, but at the last minute they swerved him over to the other side. Not that it did him any good really, the fact that entertainment department goes last means that they get hit with the dregs from <i>all<\/i> the medics. There were eight medics and only two pollywogs, so they ended up with four to a table. How to make people look like the creature from the black lagoon in only a few minutes. There\u2019s one photo of the poor lifestylist that you can\u2019t even tell who she is she\u2019s so covered with goo. And then, just when they thought they were finally going to be allowed to slide away from us, Neptune slammed his trident on the ground and announced:<\/p>\n<p><i>ENOUGH!&#8230;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>And we all step back, prepared to help the hapless victims off the table and await their judgement. But Neptune wasn\u2019t finished:<\/p>\n<p><b><i>ENOUGH!! \u00a0TURN THEM OVER AND FINISH THE JOB!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p>So we turned our poor teammates over on the slime-coated table and proceeded to attack their other side.<\/p>\n<p>Mawhahahaaha! HA!<\/p>\n<p>Once Neptune had taken his leave and the band had played their last drumroll, we all dived into the pool to clean off our rainbow colored coating. Shortly after that I made the mistake of taunting one of my \u2018victims\u2019 who then promptly threw me <i>back<\/i> in the pool. But I deserved that. Soon after that I returned to my room and threw myself into a very warm very long shower \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p>And so we are safe to proceed across Neptune\u2019s domain for another season\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arrh\u2026so you think ye can cross the equator without payin\u2019 tribute do ye. Avast matey\u2019s ye have another th\u2019ot comin\u2019. Sorry. I had to. Even though I wasn\u2019t a pirate this year. This was by choice really, because being a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1779\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-asiaaustralia-2012","category-theme-events"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-sH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}