It's all vacation fun, but you want to take advantage of so much that you feel burned out by the end of the day. Here's today:
0900 : Wake up, after staying up until 2AM (which was then 3AM, because we move the clocks forward every day); I groan at the hour, and hastily head to the gym.
1015 : Get back to cabin, miss Connie, who's off doing laundry, grab magazine, have breakfast at King's Court buffet for speed. Just have cereal, can't face all that bacon and eggs and more every day.
1045 : Make it down to Illuminations theatre for talk by astronomer on possibility of devastation from space impacts. Actually amateur astronomer who had been an MP in Britain and worked to propose SpaceGuard funding - funny and not sensationalistic, it was an accurate estimate of the odds. Got a question in about how much warning a Spaceguard program could give, and he claimed 100+ years.
Noon: Got back to the cabin, to get the blog posts finished. Barely do.
1245: Hit the deck for a run until my calves are arching, grab a hot tub and hot shower to recover. Three circuits of the ship to a mile, and I'm up to eight; I'll hold it there until my calves muscle up to the job. (The next day, I get the advice to run at 6PM during the first supper sitting, to avoid having to treat so many walkers as an obstacle course).
1400: Connie and I go down to "Lion D'Or" pub for "pub fare" lunch, as in fish & chips for me, "cottage pie" for her - and some beers, the only thing we are charged for. It's almost a fantasy version of an English pub, higher-ceiling'd, brighter, generally nicer than almost any, even the best of them in SoHo and King's Road in London.
1500: Have to get up to the Chart Room, where a jazz quartet consisting of
four professors from Juilliard(!) do a few improvisations alternating with
taking questions from the audience. The place is packed and I have to
sit on the carpet.
I again get in the last question, which
was whether they ever "got into a corner" improvising, didn't know where to
go, and how do you get out. The leader passed the mike around to all four,
they all gave somewhat different answers. I mean, wow, how often do you
get a chance to quiz four eminent jazz musicians with some 1200 recordings
between them about their art and how they teach the best music students
in the USA?
1615: Hit the web, get the web pages uploaded and do blog posts to link to them, a few E-mails to tell friends they are there.
1700: Make it a few minutes late down to Illuminations again, they're showing "Shrek Forever", which we missed in the theatres. A little loud, but good fun; the screen is the same size as most big box theatres on land.
1900: Back to cabin, where Connie finishes up laundry, starts prep for supper. I offer to help, then slip up to the Concierge Lounge for some newspaper reading when she lets me off.
2000: Back to cabin to dress up in tux, head down to Brittania room for
supper, and again our table gets to talking - between a young American couple,
us, and two friends who are English and an American living in England, we got
into politics without anybody getting upset and yak until the place is closing
down.
2245: Connie begs off the rest of the night with a headache coming on, so I
go alone and a little late to the Royal Court Theatre, which was showing one
Emma Sinclair, one of those huge voices that can do opera or blow you away
just doing show tunes and movie themes.
I hang around after and miss the
last of the available CD's, but she takes orders for them to be mailed to
you, autographed.
Midnight: After getting back and changed to casuals, hit King's Court again for a last tea and snack, do this diary.
The day was just packed.
