Those Bleak, Bleak Skies of Bar Harbor

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The CD Michael has done quite well with those Greek Weather Gods of his that he seems to be on such good terms with. A couple of his “Nifty Iffy” hedges have actually panned out into beautiful days; or, at least for what passes for beautiful days for a New England autumn afternoon. So his “Fifty Fifty (Nifty Iffy)” projection for today at least had the promise of a lobster roll for me! But the bleakness of the chilly white soup outside our obstructed view was not reassuring, and atop in the Lido our worst fears were confirmed. At first we could see a second cruise ship, smaller than the Rotterdam also at anchor in the bay off our starboard stern. Just thought that I’d through a few nautical terms in for you so you may think I actually know what I’m talking about. We watched the passport control folks in their tiny skiff make their way from our ship to the one farther out. Everyone would need to clear passport control in the casino later this morning on our entry back into the US. But by the end of breakfast our view of that second ship had vanished into the even thicker foggy soup that enveloped us. I had just a couple of those tiny cups of Swiss muesli and some rolls; while, Sharon went with a waffle. 9AM was our time to get cleared for re-entry into the US; although, that seemed to slip into 9:30AM. We got our room key scanned, and later punched with a hole, and an official looked at our passport (and at us) and that was that. The process is a bit more involved for those not carrying a US or Canadian passport, with entry visas and such. And crew meetings were being conducted as well. After Dennis and Erin made it through the process, we decided against tendering ashore this morning unless conditions improved substantially.

Back in the cabin Sharon and I did our daily Sudoku from one of the three sets of sheets that I’d gotten earlier in the cruise. Again it was close on the Easy puzzle; but, Sharon had made a few too many annotations. On the Hard puzzle it wasn’t quite as close. Sharon was trying to tell me that she’d won the daily challenge because she’d done better than me on the Enjoy Sudoku Daily puzzle on her phone: Well, Let me tell you this. I figured that if she could pull out the Difficult puzzles count on weekends (because she’d beaten me on that but not the Intricate that particular day last December; then, I can pull the “The Official Onboard Puzzle is the HARD one from the Exploration Café”.

We met Erin up in the Crow’s Nest and found a nice table with chairs to play some cards. We decided on Spades; and, as nobody had played recently we used my old favorite standby “John’s Rules on Card Games” which more or less means that I’ll let them know what the rules are as they’re needed. I can see Sharon rolling her eyes. But what does she have to complain about, she won easily, the only one of us with a positive score. Erin and I were both tied with a negative (way too many points to record here).

For lunch I had the Cannonball with French Fries up in the Dive-In, and Sharon got a plain burger and fries. Trivia was at 2:30 PM so we were hoping maybe those retired teachers would show up late, or better, after it was all over. Michael was on time, and trivia started. Michael wanted to know “What Broadway and West End musical was based on the rock group Queen?” We thought that we had a pretty good answer with “Rock of Ages”, as evidently many other teams. The right answer was “We Will Rock You”. Then Michael came up with another word that I’ll need to add to my spreadsheet acronym list… “What does the “H” in “VHS” stand for?” We figured “Video Something Something” and couldn’t do any better than “High”; but, high what? The whole thing stands for Video Home System… of course it does. I realized that another of my brain cells had died when I couldn’t verbalize “What is the process called when a substance transitions directly from a solid to a gaseous state?” I’d know it if I heard it. Sharon’s cousin Jack instantly knew the answer the next day in Boston where we would be having lunch with them. I knew it wasn’t vaporization which was all that we’d come up with. Erin said that she didn’t think that she’d ever known this answer; well, at least I haven’t forgotten that I once knew what they called the solid form of iodine going directly to gas. When Michael finally said the answer “Supplication” I was thinking, that’s not it either. It’s Michael’s accent that was getting me, and he repeated “Sublimation”, just like Jack blurted out. “What did surgeons begin using for anesthesia in 1847 to control pain during surgeries?” Well we came up with ether. Unfortunately, Michael was looking for chloroform. We’ve noticed that Michael likes country code letters on license plates, and this time wanted to know what the letters should be for “Estonia”. Now, I did make a column for these in my spreadsheet last year when we were asked what country does “LS” represent. And we got consensus on our team for “EST”; although, at least one on our team thought that must be too easy or too obvious (someone’s wife who I will not name… I’ll bet Mary and Jack can figure out which of their cousins that might be). Let’s just say we could cross of “E” for possibilities; because, that one would be for “Spain”, and “ES” would be “El Salvador”, so it turns out our guess was pretty good. We needed my mother for this next question, the answer we were looking for is from her favorite book; although, we didn’t know that was the answer. Michael’s literature question for the day, “Which book begins: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” That would be “Pride and Prejudice”. Michael wanted to know who the first woman astronaut was, and I struggled with the name some, but finally came close enough to Valentina Tereshkova to get credit for the point. The bonus was to name the three sisterships to the Rotterdam, which Sharon easily dispatched with Zaandam, Amsterdam, and Volendam. We thought that we’d done dreadfully, with our 12 out of 18 points. And we didn’t notice those pesky school teachers hiding in a new corner of the room. We noticed that not many people were clapping when Michael was asking to hear from teams with ten points. At 12 we thought it was just us; except for a faint little almost imperceptible “clap-clap” which caught Michael’s attention on the far side. They didn’t miss a single question. Second place, again. Ugh!

We played another round of Spades, refining the rules slightly, but it had little effect on the outcome. Sharon again had a big positive score; and, Erin and I were struggling in the lower negative double digits. Sharon was beaming “I like this game.” Erin says her goal is to get to minus triple digits.

Sharon and Erin went to mass. Afterwards, Dennis and I met them for dinner and we went to the dining room. We had to wait with a pager to be seated together, and finally were seated upstairs. This was the surf and turf night with fresh lobster from bar harbor. Erin and I both tried the pork medallions instead, she because of her diet and me because I wanted to try the sun dried tomato spätzle. Erin didn’t care for them; although, I liked them. And besides, I was getting the “surf” part of Sharon’s dish. Sharon even had the blueberry soup, so she wound up quite full. I had the macadamia nut ice cream for dessert.

The Show featured live music scored to a collage of footage from the BBC production of the Frozen Planet. Scenes of the polar bears, and the penguins (not in the same scenes of course) were spectacular, and the music was very moving.

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