Work Work Work - 2, 3, 4, 5 December

Eileen and I have been working our tookuses off in the library and we are exhausted! On the 2^nd we had our confab over potato chips about the End-Of-The-Voyage report for the library that was due today. I spent the next several days honing the message and the words and finally got that sucker done yesterday. What a relief! In the meantime, we’ve also been removing books off of the reserve shelves and placing them back into the regular collection which involves a lot of computer time and shelving time. Neither are a good thing to do when the ship is rocking…which it has been! We encountered the outer perimeter of the storm that was hitting New England and the waves were horrible. This is the first time in the entire voyage that the captain has made the announcement that we are encountering rough seas. Duh! He told us it would last for another 24 hours. Not good, dear, not good. The timing of the storm was particularly bad because the students were having their first day of finals and kids were rushing out of exams to hurl. Poor things. I really felt for them. It’s bad enough to take finals but to add a rocking ship into the equation and it totally bites. I didn’t suffer too much other than a wee bit of nausea but not enough to keep me away from the French fries at lunch time : ) At dinner, we had the menu that a group of students won in the auction several weeks ago. They had the honor of picking out the menu which consisted of bbq ribs, mashed potatoes, chicken tenders and ice cream. I dove into the chicken tenders like they were filet mignon. My niece, Kelly, is a chicken-tender fiend and I understand completely why she likes them so much now. They’re the nectar of the Gods, as far as I’m concerned. The ice cream was excellent too. So despite the rocking of the ship, we all enjoyed a very tasty meal.

I invited my on-ship nieces and nephew to one last dinner at the hamburger grill the other night. It was the last time we were getting together so I treated them to a decent meal (I did it for me too!). One of my nieces didn’t attend because she’s been sick for the last several days. They were rather preoccupied with studies and finals so it was a quick dinner. I was also falling asleep in my burger since I was so exhausted and, as a result, conversation was at a minimum but I’m glad that we at least had a chance to exchange e-mail addresses. I told them I was going to stalk them on facebook like I do with my real-life nieces. They just smiled at me so I don’t think they took me seriously. Boohaha.

We had a mandatory meeting the other night for our arrival in Miami. We are supposed to bring our luggage to an appointed place tomorrow (the night before we land) so we will be living out of our carry-on luggage at that point. We also received plenty of lectures about not packing our passports in our luggage which would be really difficult to do since we aren’t getting them back from the Purser until we actually reach Miami. Riddle me that one, Batman! So far, I have two large duffel bags and four boxes that contain all of my worldly goods (get it?) from the last three months. I bought so much!!! I blame my rampant consumerism all on Eileen. She is a despoiler of innocent shoppers. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

I’ve been using all of my free-time in the evenings (what little there is) watching episodes 1-6 of this season’s Grey Anatomy. I’m an addict of the show and my sister and brother-in-law sent me a DVD in Spain along with Christmas decorations and the last batch of letters. Have I mentioned that I adore my sister? I crawled into bed and propped the computer on my stomach and had a Grey’s Anatomy-fest for a couple of nights. Sweet! I told some of my library students and my nieces that I had the DVD and it has been a hot property for the last several days. My niece has the disc today and was inviting four of her friends into her cabin to watch it with her. I’m a popular woman because of that disc! Thank you, Terry and Bill! I also received letters from my parents in Spain and it was a wonderful treat to get.

We have two more days until we reach Miami and it doesn’t seem possible. At this point, the exhaustion is winning over any desire to stay on the ship. I also can’t face the food anymore and am desperate to get back into my kitchen and make all of my favorite dishes. I have a mountain of packing that still needs to be done tonight and I hope I can get the majority of it completed since we have to hand it over to the crew sometime tomorrow. My to-do list doesn’t seem to be getting any shorter so I need to work on that tonight. 2 days to Miami!