Cruising with Dr. Grumpy, #6

(It’s Spring Break! We are taking advantage of recession rates to take our brood on a Mexican cruise. So you guys can now enjoy a week of relatively medical-free posts, with me blogging from the ship).

Friday

At sea, going in slow loops back toward LA. Today was our last day on the S.S. Buffet.

After breakfast I entered a trivia contest (I won). It was run by the activities director, who kept misplacing things and forgetting questions. At one point I jokingly said, "I'm a neurologist, let me give you my card", and the crowd laughed. After the contest she cornered me. Said she had epilepsy, wanted to know what I thought of Depakote. That will teach me to keep my mouth shut.

You know it's time to go home because the amount of water you displace getting into the hot tub is a lot more than it was on day 1 of the trip. And those hot college babes in tight thong bikinis? After 7 days of nonstop meals they don't fit into their bikinis very well, and are now the size of shipping hazards.

A phenomenon you see on the last day are these forlorn 16 year old couples wandering around, holding hands, or staring into each other's eyes over a Diet Coke on the Promenade deck. They never knew each other until a few days ago, and now they feel like here, on a cruise ship, they've met their soulmate, and can't bear the thought of going back home to their respective home towns of Slotmachine, Nevada and Los Taquitos, California. And in 2 weeks they'll have a vague memory of each other, "oh yeah, this is a picture of whathisname, that guy I met on the cruise"

Why does every issue of the daily newsletter "Cruiseline Capers" list the captain's name on it? It's not like it should be changing from day to day. Is this to reassure you that there was no mutiny overnight? If there was, would they put the new captain's name on the newsletter ?

After a round of mini-golf Marie and I went up front to look over the bow. Occasionally you'd see a dolphin leap up, or rarely a whale surface and blow air. She, unfortunately, has now decided that EVERY whitecap on the ocean is a dolphin or whale. So when she sees whitecaps (which is often) she begins screaming that she sees a whale or dolphin. Mrs. Grumpy and I have learned to ignore her, but when she does this so many other passengers drop what they are doing and rush over to look that you expect the ship to tilt.

To wrap up our last day, we went to a comedy show in the main theater, where they were just finishing a round of Bingo. They were trying to get 5 numbers in a row. We all know how to play bingo. Apparently, it's simplicity is beyond the IQ of a lot. We would see people jump up and yell "Bingo" and start screaming wildly. So the person in charge would wander back to find they only had 2 or 3 out of 5 numbers in a row. This actually happened quite often. How stupid can you be? Or were they hoping the director would say, "hey, you only got 3 of the 5 numbers, but since you were willing to jump up and make an ass out of yourself we'll give it to you, anyway."

The day concluded with an excellent dinner, but by this point we were getting tired of food. You find yourself looking at the menu of prime rib and lobster and want to ask for a big bowl of Kellogg's Colon-Blow cereal instead.

So, from somewhere off Baja Calfornia: Merry Spring Break to all, and to all a good night.