5th Day- Sea Day

Fifth Day on Board- Sea Day

                Sea Days are quite nice.  Most of the time the theatre is dark and there are various activities for the guests to do so they don’t bother us.  I woke up around 11.  I went downstairs to the mess hall and grabbed some things to eat.  I’m starting to notice a pattern in the hall.  There is always one form of pasta, lots of rice, and there is always something like curry or veal.  Most of the officers are Italian so it figures that they would have lamb on board as a regular entrée.  I spent most of the day in my cabin relaxing and sleeping.  Around three David, the office guy that’s training me, came up and wanted to go through the plot and replace the burned out lamps.  We grabbed two whole boxes of HPL lamps and two boxes of fuses and went up to the grid.  I thought that this was a little excessive with all the lamps but in the end I’m glad we brought two.  The grid is not like any other grid I’ve been in.  It is catwalk based but the platforms are really narrow and twist and turn and follows the apron of the stage.  It was probably about 20 feet up and sometimes the catwalks ramped up which involved me crawling on my hands and knees for the majority of the work call.  Sure enough we went through both boxes of lamps and both boxes of fuses.  About every other scroller needed a fuse and maybe every fourth light needed a new lamp.  Later in the evening I went out to the crew bar just to socialize with people and pretty much have a good time.  It’s funny; every time I go there I always hear the song “I’m in Miami” over the loudspeaker system.  “Drink all day, play all night. I’m in Miami…”  It’s a pretty regular club song but I guess they just like to hear it.  I chatted with Brad, one of the performers at the piano bar, for a while and he mentioned that he and a friend, Song, was going out to get Thai food at Cozumel and wanted to know if I wanted to go.  I said it would be wonderful as long as I could stay away from the terribly spicy stuff.  Honestly, I didn’t have a lot of plans for Cozumel so it worked out in the end.  Another thing that I’ve noticed at the crew bar: there is always one person who will buy you drinks.  Never in a bar has so many people bought me drinks.  I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.   I played nice and tried to repay the favors every time I have the opportunity but I guess it’s because beers are a dollar and mixed drinks are a $1.25.  I played nice though and watched the drinks carefully and went to bed around 2.