The Severed Cortex

Today is going to be a total day at sea. We've got several miles (or knots) to get to Nassau and even when we get there we aren't planning on leaving the boat. It seems like yesterday when this whole odyssey started.

We've agreed to meet everyone for breakfast in the dining room this morning instead of eating the buffet upstairs. At 8:15, everyone shows up and strangely enough we are seated next to other people from Illinois. One is a father and his two kids and the other is a farmer from outside of Pontiac. I have some farming anecdotes to tell and he has some for me. Most impressive is that farming has changed greatly since I last worked on a farm in 1985. Apparently farming is much easier, although I'm sure the same risks are still involved. Everything is done using auto steer and GPS. Even the chemicals are mixed for them ahead of time. For breakfast I had a ham and cheese omelet with sausage. Breakfast in the dining room is basically no big deal. I'm sure we'll just eat in the buffet from now on.

After breakfast we noodle around the ship a bit. I head back to the room to finish up some writing. I've got the window open to the stores on the Promenade and occasionally I glance out when I try to map out what I'm going to write next. One time when I'm daydreaming of thoughts I see the woman in the room directly across from us taking her top off. She had to have seen me sitting there because I was typing in front of the window. Even if she didn't see me, it seemed kind of crazy for her to change her clothes with her window open.

After I finished up writing I decided to head out to deck four to smoke one of my Cuban Cohiba's. Unfortunately they were cleaning the deck on the leeward side of the ship and I had to sit on the windward side. It was pretty darn windy, but I managed to get the cigar lit. The seas were at five or six feet so there was a good deal of rocking happening. I listened to some Charlie Hunter while I tried to read, but the calming effect of watching the rolling Atlantic Ocean coupled with the smooth Cohiba put me in a sort of dreamlike state. I didn't get too much read in my book. Instead, I focused on watching the handrail rise parallel over the horizon point on the sea, then slowly dip below as the ship rocked from port to starboard and back. Very calming. The Cohiba was very nice although I did get a little dragon tongue near the end. I attribute that to cutting too much off the cigar. As I finished the cigar I text messaged Jay to gloat over my good fortune. He returned my text to say that he was broken down and stuck on I-80 between Omaha and Des Moines. I felt like crap for gloating so I promised him one of the cigars when we got back home. He still called me a bastard.

It was around 3:00 pm when I decided to head back to the room. I once again laid down for a moment and the next thing I know Nancy is waking me up for dinner. My sleep schedule is going to be all screwed up for another week.

Dinner was pretty good although I wasn't feeling all that great. I took a Dramamine, attributing my stomach ails to the rocking of the boat, not the cigar. In reality it was probably a mixture of both. For dinner I had:
Crabcake with Wasabi Aioli
Center Cut Porkchop
Baked Alaska
No wine.

The Baked Alaska was very tasty, but the pork chop was kind of dry. It had good flavor, but it was overcooked a little.

After dinner I talked Parker into hanging out with me. First we went to the 13th deck to play some miniature golf with Jen. I won, although I wasn't really trying to. OK, maybe I was trying to win a little since I can't stand to lose. After Jen left, we went up to the 14th deck to hang out in the game room. I brought my own deck of cards (casino deck from the Ameristar) and taught him how to play an old 'hanging out at the Caruthersville Country Club swimming pool' game called Tonk. He caught on quick enough and after a couple hands we decided to duck into the bar to get a drink. I got a bottled water and he got a Cherry Coke. We were gone for three minutes tops and when we got back, someone had taken my deck of cards. I can't believe someone would do that. Fortunately there were other decks of cards and we played some more Tonk. After we got bored with that I taught him how to play two handed spades. Once the novelty of playing cards wore off, we headed to the video game room. We burned up about ten bucks worth of Galaga, which I was surprisingly still good at. It was my favorite one growing up. I headed back to the room expecting to go to bed, but Nancy wanted to get a coffee. We headed down to the Promenade deck to get some and hung around and talked in the cafe a little while before retiring to the room to read and fall asleep.