Another Day At Sea

Robin gave two presentations today; one about Macbeth and another about All's Well That Ends Well. The Macbeth presentation was very interesting. Since I'd helped with a practice run-through of the All's Well presentation back in Santa Fe, I wandered around the ship with my iPod blasting some Trans-Siberian Orchestra while I shot video of stuff like sun-worshipers who shouldn't be wearing bathing suits in public, and people snoring in deck chairs. You can't get footage like this just anywhere.

I also sat in on an interesting presentation about the history of pirates in the Caribbean.

At 5 PM we went to a two-person "Macbeth" performance by John Tufts and Christine Albright, Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors. They're the two fairies, Puck and Titania, that have been successfully passing themselves off as mortals for years now. The performance was in the form of a deeply disturbed Macbeth talking to his psychiatrist. Very interesting.

Tomorrow, or sometime during the night, we arrive at St. Maarten. We'll dock there for the day. We're going to rent a car with friends Duane and Margie from Ashland, Oregon, and explore the island, rather than take one of the regular tourist tours. Details tomorrow.


Robin teaching Macbeth.


John Tufts and Christine Albright answer questions after their Macbeth performance.

Now Is The Seasickness Of Our Discontent Made Glorious Summer By This Pill Of Meclizine

The seas were a bit rough this morning. Enough so that I left breakfast without eating, and slept through Robin's first presentation of Why Read Shakespeare? After a two-hour nap and a magic pill I felt great the rest of the day, even before the seas calmed down.

I forgot to bring the cable that connects my Garmin GPS to my laptop, so below is a pretty bad shot of the GPS device showing our position at the moment (7 PM Saturday night). We're scheduled to sail all night and all day tomorrow before we get to our first port of call (St. Maarten on Monday, November 10).


Trusty GPS. The white triangle is us. The red line is a track from last year's cruise. The small red dot behing the white triangle is a track from yesterday.


The ship's Atrium.

Puck Is Here!

Once again, I'm not kidding. John Tufts, the actor who fabulously played Puck (also known as Robin Goodfellow) in this summer's Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, is here and I spoke with him.

For me, he defined the role of Puck. So now it's like he's actually disguising himself as a mortal so he can walk around undetected. And it doesn't help that the woman who played Titania, Queen of the fairies, is with him (using the cruise-ship alias and disguise of Christine Albright).


Puck and Titania sometimes disguise themselves as John Tufts and Christine Albright, or even as Romeo and Juliet, as shown above.

The Staff Deck

As the Noordam left the Ft. Lauderdale harbor, Robin and I searched for the access to the bow of the boat so we could have a good view. It seems the bow of the boat is for crew and staff only. It also seems that if you ignore staff who say you can't get there, and if go through several heavy metal doors and up some hidden-away steel staircases, you eventually go through the tiny Officers Club Bar and onto the deck at the bow of the ship.


Robin impersonates a Noordam staff person.

When we left the bow, we had to go back through the private officers club. Too bad no one was there. I wanted to ask the Captain about the stripper pole (for pole dancing) in the middle of the tiny dance floor (I'm not kidding), and when the music starts.

Or maybe it's just to hold onto while drinking in rough seas.

Ah, The Worst Part Of The Cruise Is Done

Getting to the pier and onto the ship is the worst part of going on a cruise. But that's done now. Fortunately, we knew from experience that we did not have to wait at the hotel with the horde of other passengers for our assigned, noon-ish bus. Instead, we jumped in a cab around 10:30 AM and took it straight to Pier 26. Even with the glitch of computers going down at the Holland America check-in, we were roaming around on the M.S. Noordam by 11:00 or 11:15. Staterooms weren't ready until 1:30 or 2:00, so we toured the ship and had lunch.

This ship is similar to last year's, but a little bigger, nicer, and more options for eating 24 hours a day. We've been onboard for four hours and I've had five meals. Just kidding.

We have a good strong Wi-Fi signal in our room. That's good because the Library, a Wi-Fi HotSpot, must be at least a three or four minute walk from here.


There's something fishy about the bar next to the pool on the Lido Deck.

Helvetica

On the flight from Houston to Ft. Lauderdale, we watched a movie on my iPhone (I've downloaded four full-length movies to my 8 GB iPhone, and I still have almost 4 GB of storage available).

We watched Helvetica, a documentary about the ubiquitous font named Helvetica. A very interesting movie if you're involved with typography and design. And, as Sarah Palin might say, in addition to being ubiquitous, it's everywhere.


Helvetica from the Hilton in Ft. Lauderdale.

More Sidney Supper Photos

Photographer Melanie West gave us a disc of photos she shot at the Sidney Supper. I've included 16 of my favorites in a web gallery. Click the image to see the gallery (shown below).