Thank the lord in heaven, I finally made it to a Starbucks and a wifi connection. The downside is I had to pay $4 for a two hour block. But $4 is a friggin blessing for high speed internet compared to what I've had available to me these past few weeks. It's amazing. You just click on a link and the page just opens instantly. Unbelievable. I'm catching up on all of my downloading tonight. [View Full Entry]

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I forgot to mention that I found a good Sushi restaurant Dowtown last night. It looked like half the menu involved tempura or deep fried rolls, but it had all the essentials. Since South Carolina seems to be some sort of crab capitol, I opted for a roll with crab in it (that counts as eating local food, right?). I got something called the SC Crunch Roll, which had soft shell crab in a roll topped with shrimp and avocado and covered in sauce. I also got Salmon, because it's a compulsion with every Sushi outting. The fish was actually quite [View Full Entry]

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Did I mention that when a ship goes into dry dock that females become a scarce minority. There are about twleve women on the ship and about 900 contractors. Suddenly, one has never felt so self conscious than when walking into any room and having all eyes on you. And they aren't just staring, they're ogling. So far I've been called "deary", "baby doll" and "angel", and none of those terms seem very endearing when they are preceded by whistles or leers. So I've been spending some time off the ship considering all the guys I'm working with are staying at [View Full Entry]

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Charleston, South Carolina. I don't really know what to make of it at the moment, but the shipping yard we're residing in is not very exciting. I actually had the day off today, so I did manage to venture off the ship long enough and catch a ride to WalMart. But not just any WalMart. It was a supermart Wal Mart. I've never seen such a one stop shop for the masses in my humble, sheltered existence in Los Angeles. It was bigger than CostCo. So today I feel a bit refreshed because I didn't have to work. You're lucky I [View Full Entry]

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The last shipful of passengers got off today for the next month or so as well as two thirds of the crew. Now it's just contractors and technicians on board for five weeks. I kind of like it. The absence of passengers and decorum fomalites is much more comfortable for me. The lack of good food round the clock is a little harder to get used to. We're leaving Miami today to head off to Charleston, South Carolina. The work is going to pretty much suck for the next few weeks, but once the cruises become active again, my job will [View Full Entry]

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I started this my first night on the ship, but didn't get a chance to upload anything until today. So there's a lot of information about my first day, and less and less about the other three days. I'll update more once I get into the rhythm of everything. Day One: I woke up bright and early at 7:15am in my dumpy hotel room with just enough time to get ready, grab a quick bite from the complimentary breakfast area and made it to lobby promptly at 7:50am with all of my belongings to catch the shuttle at 8am. And then [View Full Entry]

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So I'm in Miami. One wouldn't expect to feel worn out after sitting all day long, but maybe the varying altitudes makes a difference. And yet, I'm still awake, because it only feels like 9:30. I left Sacramento at 12:25pm today and landed in Atlanta, Georgia at 7:40pm. The in flight movie was The Sentinel starring Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland about uncovering a plot to assasinate the President within the Secret Service. It wasn't bad, although the 8 inch screen was about 20 feet away from me and the $2 headphones were not very good about actually getting sound to [View Full Entry]

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