Auction Day - 20 November

Tuesday has been much better than Monday just as I had hoped. I got some items checked off my to-do list in the library and I didn't have any run-ins with peeved students so I consider this day a success!

The best part of the day was the evening though. I invited my nieces and nephews to join me at the hamburger grill for dinner tonight. We had two icky meals today so everybody was ready for it - especially me. We all ordered cheeseburgers and had a great time scarfing them down and getting caught up on each other's lives. I finally have a group photo with all of my family to include. From left to right: me, Mike, Julie, Lindsey, and Brigitte.

After the dinner there was an auction to raise money for charities. It was so much fun. The items that were being auctioned off were donated by the passengers and crew on the ship. Some of the items included: 7-night stay in the Outer Banks at a passenger's summer home; four- and five-day stays in Bermuda, Jackson Hole, Puerto Rico and many other places in the homes of passengers. The crew is donating the navigation map from the voyage, the honor of blowing the ship's horn as we pull into Miami, dinner with the captain at the Ambassador's ball, and the list goes on. One of the most outrageous bids was $2000 for a private dinner in one of the fancy cabins - we were all in shock with that one! My favorite for the evening was when our 91 physics professor won the bid for hula lessons with one of our students who is from Hawaii and has taken hula lessons from some of the top dancers in the islands. He has given us several demonstrations and is really good at it. This is a photo of him giving us another demonstration last night.

The auction lasted until 11:30 and they raised a lot of money. I heard one estimate at $29,000! We have some students with a lot of money. I couldn't even begin to compete. It made for a very late evening for me but it was totally worth it.