They had me in Stitches

Cruise #8- This cruise was filled with curve balls. Seemed like every time I would plan to do something other things would prevent me from doing it. I will go into detail later in this post. Things here continue to be great. I am loving my job and meet new people everyday. The shows we are doing have slowed down quite a bit as I have learned to do them without notes. This has proved beneficial because now I can focus on what is going happening on the stage and not my notes. The days are flying by. I can't believe I left two months ago. I'm nearly half way through my contract.

The fly-ons for this cruise were Percy Crews, Marcus Monroe, Karen Grainger and Carl Strong. This is probably the most energetic group we have had since I have been on. All of their performances are extremely high energy with lots of dancing and moving around on stage. Percy Crews is a comedian who lives in Duluth, Georgia. He is very down to earth and cool to hang out with. His comedy is in your face and very funny. Marcus has added a little something to his act. He has two men from the audience help him get on his seven foot unicycle. He does a few things while they are up there and then sends one of them off. He has the one that is left throw him clubs while he is on the unicycle and then he juggles. At the end of this he shakes the gentleman's hand and holds on for WAY too long and then sends him off. When the guy turns to go back to his seat he holds up a watch and says, "thanks for your time". It pretty funny and has been getting a good response. Karen Grainger is a vocal impersonator. Her voice is amazing. She does impersonations with costumes. She does Alanis Morreset, Macy Gray, Aaron Nevil, Willie Nelson and Britney Spears. Sorry if I misspelled some of those but I am not waisting my Internet card to find out if I spelled Alanis correctly. Anyway, the most impressive thing she did was a duet by herself. I wasn' t familiar with the song but it was done by Poverati and Celine Dion. She did both voices accurately. Carl Strong is funny and uses the show band for his show. He sings but mostly he is a comedian. He has the most random segues I have ever heard. He went from talking about buffets to talking about drunk driving in one sentence. Then, he went straight into a bit about MoTown.

Our first port this week was San Juan, Puerto Rico. We were planing on going to El Castillo de Cristobal. Which means Fort Christopher. It is a Spanish fort built around 1535. Karen's rehearsal ran longer than expected and it was too late to go there by the time we got off the ship. I met up with Jenn(lighting tech), John(piano soloist), Lisa(nurse), Ben(roommate), Jay(guitar soloist), Yetro(show band guitarist), Greg(sax) and Robby(trumpet) for dinner. We ate at the Chicago Burger Company. It was quite good. I had the Cuban burger made from pork. It was basically a gigantic Cuban sandwich. After dinner, we didn't have much time left so Ben and I went to a local pub and watched the first half of the South Carolina vs. Ole Miss game. We split a pitcher of local ale and then came back to the ship.

The next day we sailed into St. Thomas. Ben, Jenn and I planned to flying over St. Thomas and the surrounding islands. Ben has his pilots licence a so we could have gone anywhere we wanted. All the planes at the airport were booked so we were unable to do this. Our cruise director Malcom arranged for us to go to Paradise Point for free. He had arranged for us to hang out at the owner's pool for our last St. Thomas. It was awesome. Easily the coolest hang we have had at port. His pool overlooked the bay that the ship was in. He had stocked his fridge full of beer and cokes and other refreshments. We swam for several hours and mostly just goofed around in the pool. We spent a good portion of this time using noodles as water cannons. The view was spectacular and the company was better. It was the perfect alternative to flying.

Our next port was Grand Turk. I was planning on doing some maintenance to the dance floor and then going on a walk around the island. My only task I wanted to get done was replacing some bad patches of Marley(dance floor material). I had one large(4" x 30") and one small(3"x
7") that I wanted to replace. It took me nearly two hours to remove and replace the big patch. I then got to work on the second patch it was easier this time because I had learned some valuable lessons on the first patch. I glued it down and only had one last thing to do before I went to the beach. I only needed to edge the extra off and then I could clean up and go. WARNING:STOP READING IF YOU ARE EASILY GROSSED OUT. The exacto knife I was using slipped and went directly into the muscle above my knee. Without thinking I pulled it out immediately. I then turned in the direction of Ben and Jenn and said very calmly, "Hey guys I think I'm going to need a towel. Ben started to walk slowly toward me and I said, "No, I need one quickly." He realized then that there was blood streaming out of my pants. By the time he got back with the towel I was standing in a pool of blood. He then got me chair and Jenn got me a wet towel to put on the back of my neck. While all this was going on the nurse was on the way. She arrived and immediately told me I would need stitches. Two of them it turns out. I'm fine now but needless to say I didn't go the beach. Grand Turk will we ever meet again?

This New York I slept in because I am on port manning this cruise. Each department has to have a representative on the ship at all times. It is mandatory that I stay on the ship. So I slept and got some laundry done.

If any one has any questions for me shoot me an email and I'll try to answer them. Sometimes I feel like I am writing the same things every week.

Talk to you soon,

Chris

Picture #1-Sunset from deck three starboard side on the second sea day.

Picture#2-El Castillo de Christobal from deck four.

Picture #3-Some office buildings in Old San Juan.

Picture #4-The Carnival Miracle and harbour from Paradise Point.

Picture #5-View from balcony of harbor and pool in St, Thomas.

Picture # 6-Jay, Matt(drummer), Me, Jenn and Greg at the pool party.