Well last night… er well early this morning, I had my first watch of this 2 week old cruise. It lasted from 0000 to 0400. It was a security watch, and the point of the security watch is to look for the 3 F's – Fire, Flood, and Fornication. Luckily the second one was the only issue that we had to deal with. One of the fan rooms (a roomed filled with- are you ready?- FANS!- its used to circulate air from the chillers to different parts of the ship) had flooded. Now when I mean flooded I mean there was a significant amount of water on the floor. We removed 100 gallons on my watch alone and hardly made a dent in it. Other than that the watch consisted of roaming the ship closing water-tight doors and wasting time. Our fearless trio of security was lead by a senior who told us many great stories and helped pass the time. Now the lack of sleep that this midnight adventure caused (the same lack of sleep that caused me to delete the first version of this post by accident) is going to make carrying out another watch tonight quite interesting. ( oh yeah, they just changed the watch bill today (after it had been "set in stone" to since the beginning of cruise) and I now have the 0000 – 0400 watch again "tonight" , the night before my first midterm. I will leave out my feelings about this change and the reason for the change.)
But all is not lost, for there is one soul aboard this who goes the extra mile ( its really more like 500 miles) just to make the late night watch standers smile. She is known as "Mom". Mom is the baker both while at sea and also while at school. She makes all the deserts and calls to all of her "sons" to come get one of her goodies. But she truly shows her true colors by waking up EVERY NIGHT, to bake fresh food for the 0000 and the 0400 watches as they come. She does this every night stormy seas or fair weather. I cannot even begin to describe how great she is, it is really something one must experience.
In other news…. After many boiling days on the route south, the staff has finally okayed the cadets to wear Khaki shorts with our uniforms, which means I can get started on that farmers tan that has been long in hiding since last summer ended.
Peace easy.
SS
P.S. feel free to leave comments; it would be interesting to see what you felt about what I wrote when I get back
Are Bermuda shorts only approved to be worn in Bermuda or are they Kosher instead of Kakis?
ReplyDeleteI was so impressed with your writing(I won't say surprised)I forwarded your blog site to Carden Hall. Actually, I did it in response to your invitation to the reunion picnic to let them know what you would be doing instead. Love you!
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