22 March – Aboard the Diamond Princess in the Tasman Sea enroute to Melbourne:

Today is a sea-day, no port calls or shore excursions. We have traveled 320 nautical miles from Sydney (a total of 12500 since leaving Dallas) and the seas are ‘slight’ with 4 foot waves. The drink of the day is the Cosmopolitini and exciting activities such as “Beginning Juggling” and “Adult Allcomers Shuffleboard” and “Line Dance Mania” are being offered. I think the odds are in favor of me experimenting with the Cosmopolitini, but are against me trying any of the other events.

Speaking of events….there are some things that you should know about events on a cruise ship before you stumble in on them. Take for example a few of events listed for today…..some events are properly described by their titles in the daily newspaper…..for example if it says “Adults Ping-Pong” you can be pretty sure that if you go to that you will see mature people swatting at a little white ball. Other activities for some reason are coded. Take, for example, today’s 5pm meeting of “Friends of Dr. Bob and Bill W.” I don’t know what really goes on in that meeting, but I bet that very few attendees actually are friends with anyone named Dr Bob or Bill W. Let’s just say that it is for people fighting an addiction and you won’t ever see this meeting being held in a bar. Then there is the 7pm meeting of “Friends of Dorothy / Rainbow GLBT”. Here any ladies who actually were friends with Dorothy would be very, very friendly with her. Let’s just say here that this wouldn’t be the sort of meeting that I’d go to looking for a date……although that is just what all the attendees are doing. If you don’t quite understand what I’m talking about then just do a Google search on “Friends of Dr Bob and Bill W.” or on “Friends of Dorothy”. But the moral of the story is that you shouldn’t just drop in on some of the events without knowing what is really going on. In any case the weather is warm and sunny…..perhaps even a bit too warm…..so many people are foregoing the organized activities to just sit by the pool and accumulate drink receipts.

This afternoon we have a gathering of members of the Cruise Critic message board that happen to be onboard the ship in the Skywalker’s Nightclub and then less than 2 hours later we have our first Formal Night on the ship….so I better start getting ready. Formal nights always seem to me to be a bit of overkill, but I do try to at least keep up appearances……but then for me and most other well-fed cruise people the appearance is not so much like Bogart at the casino in “Casablanca” but more like Shamu getting a day pass out of sea world. But the good thing about formal nights is that dinner generally has some extra-special goodies to choose from….just what I need an extra 3000 calories to add to the damage already done on this trip. When I get home I will have to spend 6 days a week going to spinning class…..(Note to Carol Shoop: I didn’t really mean that).

Tomorrow is a full day touring Melbourne, so I probably won’t get a chance to send this email until late in the day…..maybe I can provide some more details on the day following Melbourne when we are at sea.