A day to get caught up - 14 September

This has been the perfect day to get caught up on everything - sleep, e-mails, blogs, and total laziness. After going to bed at 1:00 am last night I slept in until 9:30 and it was wonderful! I would have stayed in bed until noon but remembered that we finally had internet access again since we were back at sea. So I leapt out of bed, well, staggered actually, and put on a sweatshirt (still in my jammies), grabbed my laptop and headed upstairs where the wireless access is best.

This was my opportunity to give my family a call on Skype. After dithering around with the settings and making a test call to the Skype robot, I put through a call to my parents. It was about 10:00 pm on the 13th on the east coast - still my birthday (convenient, yes?). My mother answered the phone and sounded quite shocked to be talking to her youngest (and favorite!) kid. My father was soon on an extension and we had a lively conversation despite the lag time. I shared with them my escapades in Tokyo and assured them that I was still in one piece and having a great time.

Heady with the success of calling my parents, I then called my sister, Terry. She also sounded shocked to be talking to her favorite (and only) seestor. I've really missed my conversations with her since I'm lucky to live close to her and see her once a month. We've been exchanging e-mails but it is great to hear her voice again. Since I was having so much fun talking to the 'rents and sister, I made the circle complete and called my brother, Scott. Unfortunately, the weenie wasn't there but I had a great talk with my sister-in-law, Elizabeth and got caught up on their news too.

At that point, it was noon time - ipso facto, lunch. I headed to the dining hall, still in my jammies, and had lunch out on the back deck. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one still my my jammies but probably the only faculty member. I figured it was time to get dressed but then changed my mind when I went up to the pool area and found Alexis enjoying herself in the sun. So I hastily went back to my room and put on my swim suit and toddled back to the pool for a couple of hours of sunbaking and swim time. This is probably the only time I'll get to do this and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I even splurged on an ice cream cone. Life is good.

I decided it was probably time to get some blogs done since I was several days behind so I reluctantly took my baked body back inside and got dressed. I spent the next three hours updating my blog and next thing I knew, discovered that it was 6:00 p.m. How the heck did that happen?

I rushed back downstairs to get all gussied up - well sort of gussied up for dinner tonight. The asst. dean had announced that we would be having a five-course dinner tonight - similar to the one we had with the captain. Since there are so few people on board, the galley went all out for us. It was delicious. It wasn't the orgasmic filet mignon like the other dinner but it was still damn tasty. Alexis, Lara and I sat with three male students who looked rather alarmed to be placed with us. I think they had intended to sit with a couple of babelicious female students but they got us instead. But they rallied and we had a great conversation and enjoyed the meal.

Tomorrow morning we land in Kobe and our internet disappears while in port. Festivities begin at 6 freaking 30 am with dancers and musicians putting on a show for us in the terminal. I'm not even sure we'll be allowed off the ship that early. I'm thinking it was really optimistic of Kobe to schedule this event. We'll see. I'm sure I'll have lots to report when I get back on the internet in a couple of days. In the meantime, I have places to see and chopsticks to conquer. See ya!