Much ado about nothing

Life is just different at sea.

Back home, I hear that news happens.  Here, we are cut off from everything but wikipedia, and accessing that depends on our cranky internet.  Sometimes it parties like it's 1980, and other times, you just sit and wait.

But we don't much care.  Things get done slowly, or they don't get done, but either way it's soon time for lunch.

I got an email from my Land Boss, who politely reminded me I was seven months overdue on setting goals for this year.  Mm, maybe I'll just retire instead of doing them.  They don't seem terribly relevant under the best of circumstances, but from this distance I couldn't even pretend to care.

My goal, I said, is to learn to multi-task.  I would like to be able to point AND shoot my camera.  I am doing pretty well so far.

Around 1420, my Sea Boss invited me up to Deck 7, optimal viewing for the Event About to Happen.  This is where knowing the right people pays off.  I was sworn to secrecy, but the Captain was going to steer the ship right through Sea Zero.

Since the course of the ship is shown on closed circuit TV throughout the ship, literally second by second, it was not much of a secret.  Anyone could see we were heading closer and closer.  Still, Jim was not allowed to announce it, because the big moment was going to occur during class time.

The big event is the equivalent of your car's odometer turning all nines, or having a date that's a palindrome.  Interesting, but not exactly cause for a party.  Unless you're on a ship.

We took pictures of each other.  Nancy took some pictures of Jim jumping.  This is something the students particularly enjoy doing.  It requires point and shoot and jump, which is way beyond this year's goals.  A few students with GPS-enabled cameras snuck out of class.





















Once it was over, I could put a little blurb in the Deans' Memo.  Remembering Jim's prank about the yellow rope on the International Date Line, I wrote, "Did you see the orange buoy as we crossed through 0-0 0-0? (Neither did we.)"

I heard from several people there WAS a buoy.  It's white.  On the starboard side.  I stand corrected.

No one can give me an explanation for how it stays in place, three miles above the ocean floor.  No one  has been able to turn up any data on it.  But then the internet was down most of the afternoon.

And pretty soon, it was time for dinner.