Crossing the International Date Line – A Day Lost At Sea (February 3, 2016)

Reading Length: Grab ‘n’ Go Coffee

Kristin Reporting!

I started today by sending my best friend Whitney Brandenburg a “Happy Un-birthday” email!

Here is an excerpt from that email:

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM THE NETHER OF NONEXISTENCE! 

Sadly, for me, in the year 2016, February 2nd did not exist...

We are crossing the International Date Line, and the result is that we are skipping from 11:59PM Monday February 1, 2016, directly to 12:00AM Wednesday February 3, 2016!

I know... The outrage! Of all days, how did YOUR BIRTHDAY get to be the one day that was randomly cut out of MY life???

The good news is, that now, in my reality, you are younger than I am because if your birthday did not exist for me then you can't possibly have become one year older!”

Activities on This Sea Day:

1) I cleaned up my half of the room. I should have taken a picture first. I really trashed it. Even I was bothered by it but I was unable to clean it up yesterday due to a horrible headache. But, I did it first thing this morning and that took up a bit of my time.

2) At 11:30am this morning the Captain came on to inform everyone that there has been an outbreak of Norovirus on board. There are not that many cases so far, but it is spreading! This is that disease that is the bane of cruise ship existence. It is highly contagious and lives on objects (like serving spoons in the buffet) for a long time. Sometimes half the ship's passengers and crew can be laid up. It is like a bad stomach flu. As such, we have gone into PARANOID STERILIZATION MODE. This took up a lot of time this morning. We are now forced (politely, of course) to use the hand sanitizers when we enter the eating areas, however, the handout we were given and the Captain's statement both made it clear that the hand sanitizer is "only partially effective" against the virus. The only true protection is hand washing in hot water with soap.

3) It took up all the rest of my time today to copy off the photos and videos from every device and delete the bad pictures from 1/27 through today. Unbelievable! At least it was an enjoyable task. I wasted some time watching movie clips from our travel videos to date. Some are very funny and amused me a great deal! 

4) Davin continued to work on his map (or something like that…), and we did our usual visit to the gym in the evening.

Overall, it was just another typical day at sea.

Til Next Time!
Kristin Tenhunen