March 31st 2023 Day 87 of 128

Sea Day 1 of 2

Good morning on this last day of March in 2023!! It’s a Sea Day on the MS Zuiderdam another day to enjoy the routines of life on the ship. We got up this morning and decided to skip breakfast as we have a lunch date in the Pinnacle later today. So I didn’t head out until it was time to go to Project Linus around 9:30 am. Megan stayed behind to work on some school work and showed up a bit later after she had completed her work. We enjoyed chatting with everyone and hearing about their last port excursions and see the progress on their blankets. I turned in another completed blanket this morning and and am chugging away on my next one already. One of the passengers who had to leave the ship due to medical reasons recently, left two incomplete blankets and one passenger took one to finish and Megan took the second. It is 81 tiny squares, 9X9, and they need to be sewn together. It is a Sudoku themed blankets so Megan has to “solve” the blanket before she gets to put it together. Cute idea, but lots of little squares to attached to each other. After project Linus Megan and I had lunch with Gail in Marty. Our first lunch ever in the Pinnacle Grill. We had heard wonderful things about the trip-tip sandwich and we all ordered it and it was delicious. It was a nice change to our regular routine. After Lunch Megan went off to play basketball up on the sports court and I went to acupuncture. The hip is feeling better and at this point I am suspecting all my new aches and pains may be caused from the mattress on our bed. Having NEVER had these issues before, that is definitely one thing that is different about my day to day life in the last few months. Fingers crossed and prayers these are temporary. After acupuncture I headed home to get a jump on some presale tickets on Ticketmaster. With the unreliable wifi we have been experiencing it was quite a nightmare. I was in the waiting room, then made it to the queue, and then when it was my turn to make a purchase the system crashed. I had to choose my tickets multiple times, fought with the credit card authorization and had to try about 10 times over the course of an hour before I was successful in purchasing my tickets. I will appreciated the concert more since I had to work so hard to obtain them right?!? LOL. During this time I was in and out of the Main dining room. Megan was sweet enough to order my dinner for me and she spent a chunk of time hanging out in there solo. After dinner we attended an invitation event at the Retreat outside on the 11th floor. Holland America hosted an “Out of Africa” party for some of the guests. Complete with hosted cocktail and appetizers and music by DJ Nyron again. It was so much fun. It was supposed to go till 7:30pm, but some of us (wink wink), stayed until about 8:30pm dancing and enjoying the evening. It was EXTREMELY windy last night and the wind was filled with sand from the Sahara Desert. It looked like there was fog in the air, but we were informed it was actually small particles of sand from miles away. After the party I headed home and Megan stayed out till abut 10:00pm. When she got home she had a craving for ice cream and she waited till 10:30pm for the late night buffet, no luck, and then came back and called room service to be told that the freezers were locked for the night. Morale to the story, make sure you order ice cream before the freezers are locked….it must be a hot commodity that they feel the need to lock it up. It was a great day at Sea today. Memories were made, there was laughter, and we did something good for others. A win in my book. Tomorrow is April Fool’s day and another sea day. I hope you are all ready for an amazing weekend wherever you are. Make some memories of your own!!