Day 10 LA to Hawaii Cruise

Day 10 January 25,2013-- Formal Night Dress
Partly Cloudy/ Sunny High 75/Low 68
Sunrise 7:35 Sunset 6:38
At Sea
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All night we had more rocking than in travel through the islands. However, it was still not as bad as a couple of days getting to the islands.

I fell back into my usual ship routine:

Breakfast at about 7:30. (We gained an hour going East ... So we were working on ship's time. We eill do this one more time before we get to LA, since Mexico is not on Daylight Savings Time.

Today, people seem a little less frenetic. I met the naturalist in the morning in the elevator. He was headed off to give a lecture on endemic- vs indigenous plants and animals and their migration to Hawaii.

I went to the lecture.  It was a good talk with lots of photos on the big stage of the Golden Princess.


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 Ukulele Lessons
 
I went back to the room to get the ukulele. In class I met a man and his wife who lives in Tampa Bay. He bout a new ukulele on board and paid as much as I did for the one on shore. His had more veneer. He was having difficulty tuning his with the tuner that he bought.  I couldn't get his tuner to work either. It had a little light that flashed when the proper note was reached. It went crazy with all of the ambient sound that was in the room as people fired up their ukuleles.  Two 20+ year old girls had brought me their ukes too. The instructor had gone over tuning the ukes twice but new ukuleles were hard to maintain a tune since the new strings had not been stressed and then tuned again. They had not bought a tuner like the snark, so I was happy to show them how it worked and passed it to them to get their ukuleles in tune.

We started to work with some of the the songs that will be played for the performance on the night before the last day on the ship. They are pretty difficult and will need some practice. Pearly Shells, Little Grass Shack and Aloha Oui. It will be interesting to see how many of the 50 people taking lessons will show up to perform. There were some new facees in the group at this stage of the lessons. Some people  had picked up ukuleles on shore and some wanted to start from the beginning. This could not happen... so the instructors had to give the disclaimer... you can stay and learn as much as you can but they really could not go back and pick up all the basics that were taught as we headed to the islands. They stayed and stumbled along.. no worries. The lessons were provided in the wheelhouse bar on the 6th deck... the promenade, which is L shaped and has large high back upholstered chairs. We kind of had to sit on the edge of the chairs to have room for our ukes and see the sheet music. This led to some players developing what the instructor called the "chicken wing". The instructors did not want people to throw their elbows in the air at an angle as they tried to play the new chords.

Today was the first day back at the lessons after 4 days of on Hawaii port landing. Its been fun to jump in and learn a new instrument while on board. There are lots of people taking lessons that are were interesting to talk to and together we worked out what we needed to learn to play. 

The instructors liked the set up in this bar because it is close to the music synthesizer which can slow down a background rhythm. Everyone can work the chord changes. They are always good about counting down 54322 in rhythm when a chord needs to change. The instructors would teach from the center of the L shaped room and people from both sides of the L could see and hear.
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Laundry
 I thought that 2 hours would be plenty of time to do laundry- well--- on the ship not. I thought that I could do laundry before getting dressed for the second formal night. I found the laundry on the 10th deck. It was 3 floors down from our (14th really the 13th deck.. there is no 13th deck on the ship because of superstition). When I checked there was one washer open and one dryer. By the time I had the washer load done, there were no dryers. Some guy came in and was drying in three of them. Then he reupped the money in them and used the fourth. I waited until it was ready and finally a lady from Ohio was finished. they live 10 minutes from where Bob grew up in Columbus. As always in laundromat situations, there is an unequal time that it takes to dry clothes vs wash them. There are 8 different laundromats scattered throughout this ship. This one looked like the closest one with availability. It is really worth the time to take fewer clothes and spend more time getting them washed and reintegrating. 

The flat screen TV was playing Sleepless in Seattle was almost finished before I could pull the clothes out and hand the pjs and the cottons around the room to finish drying. $2.00 to wash in quarters and $2.00 to dry. Both were sturdy Maytag units..

Dinner:

Overall I just was too full to eat dinner tonight... so it all worked out with the timing.