The internet was down when Anne finished her missive so I'm sending it for her.
Jim
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Our cabin stewardess had thoughtfully placed a plate of heart-shaped cookies and a card showing a couple looking at a heart-shaped iceberg. The text? “I only have ice for you”.
We’ve had a couple of moderate to moderately rough days coming back from Yankee Harbor. The B Deckers again had the added experience of Arctic winter and the endless night for about a day and a half due to closed porthole orders from the bridge.
I don’t know about you, but one joy of travel is escaping home repairs and housework. We have not been so lucky on this cruise. The first night on the return from Yankee Harbor for this upper decker was filled with household repairs. I found myself dreaming about a bowling tournament. When I realized there actually WAS a bowling alley in our room, I lurched out of bed and swayed, trying to determine why was anyone bowling. Gary groggily said “It’s in the bathroom”. Sure enough, the shampoo bottles were doing a fine imitation of pins and balls as they crashed around. Once secured, I settled back to light sleep. Next up was the rattling of keys to Davy Jones’ Locker. I circled on all fours, looking for the rattles. Hmm .. coke cans in the fridge? Struggle to the bathroom, find towel and stuff in refrigerator. Rattle repair complete. By this time, dawn was creeping through the curtains.
We awoke to a ‘stabilizer off’ breakfast as the stern of the ship rolled in the seas. Wave heights ranged to about 7 meters and calmed throughout the day to probably 5 meters. Gary rallied the troops, lined up a pianist, lined up Michele as the back-up pianist and got ready to premiere the ‘B Decker Boogie’. There were two looming issues: first, the B Deckers had the same fitful sleep we did and second, the ship was rolling in the ‘stabilizer off’ position. Not to be deterred, the performance pressed on. What the B Deckers lacked in volume they made up for in turnout, safely seated to avoid falls brought on by the rolling seas. The pianist, Bob from Australia, was hoping to do a shipwide performance. That was unanimously voted down by the B Deckers. Ah well … a fine performance it was by all concerned.
No outdoor barbeque was in the offing, so we decided to toss Junior in the La Verandah grill a challenge. We needed the GOLLY lunch repeated. The race to prepare one grande platter of onion rings was on. After the main dining room kitchen staff ran around like chickens to meet this need, someone else claimed the steaming platter containing those tasty onion morsels. Hmm … do we summon a posse to catch the thief, by GOLLY? Heavens no .. let the kitchen staff create two miracles in one lunch. Finally, after much patience, the grande platter of onion rings arrived. They were wonderful, and we completed them at 1:53 pm, just in time for trivia.
Grant Heathman Productions earlier laid down the Bittle Educational Advancement Test challenge (the BEAT). This was designed to determine if memory or unparalleled disk drives filled with trivia storage drove the Bittle All-Inclusive Trivia champions (the BAIT). Dena served as independent advisor to the research staff and carefully culled 18 questions for prime-time usage using the ever popular three-team, four-body format. Participants were advised questions had been taken from the UK version of Trivial Pursuit, and the decision of the judges was FINAL. The Bittles are trivia champs for a reason: strategy and execution. First, they strategically split up so they had a 2 out of 3 chance of winning the challenge. Questions were posed and answers decided. Our favorite question (see how you home gamers do with this one): Name the performer in a TV program that starred a very strong swimmer whose friends called her ‘Suzie’.
As the answers were read out, one question managed to elicit a controversy amongst the judges. The championship was hanging in the balance. Instead of a 11-10-9 outcome and a Mrs. Bittle victory, it was decided to go 11-11-9 and go to the tie break. The East Coasters had the advantage with the question relating to the water route used to get to Sing Sing prison. In LCT ‘happy is good’ fashion, two titles were awarded: Mrs. Bittle leading her team to a Dena decided victory while Gary lead the Bittleless team to a Grant tie-break victory. After considerable clamor, Heathman Productions decided to run another round of trivia for the masses this afternoon.
Two rounds of POOCH in the afternoon, as new records were achieved. Ngaire is currently holding high score with 128. We got ready for the captain’s farewell party and the outcome of the photo competition. Our very own Grant Heathman scored the ‘best in show’ for the photo competition. They will be sending a copy out in a special Regent photo frame when the frame shipment catches up with the ship. We gave Grant a big round of applause in the dining room. The chateaubriand at dinner was among the best I’ve tasted. This was due, in no small part, to the captain’s decision to put the stabilizers out during dinner.
We headed off to the lounge for dancing and drinking. Once again we enticed the penguin dancers and a lounge waitress into the LCT penguin dance song, and the band played us off to sleep with ‘YMCA’. Cheers, Anne