Equated - April 5

Noon, on the Equator, and we are out in the bright, hot sun on the top deck of the ship watching King Neptune conduct the Crossing the Equator Ceremony. If you have never crossed the Equator by ship before, you are a polliwog. Once you have crossed, you become a shellback. 

The ceremony could have been invented by immature fraternity boys. It involves kissing a dead fish on the lips, dressing in drag, and throwing food at the polliwogs. Still, people go to watch it.

I went to an origami class to learn to make a flower. The flower was extremely lame. It's not even real origami. The best part of the class was watching one of the ladies at my table trying to follow the instructions. She had come to the class directly from Happy Hour. Her flower turned out looking even worse than mine. 

We went to the Captain's Top 40 Cocktail Party this evening. That was kind of lame, too.

Afterwards we went to a Dolly Parton tribute show. The performer wasn't too bad, but we didn't stay to the end. A group arrived 15 minutes late, and sat down next to us. The woman right next to me was annoying and was starting to drive me crazy. 

After the stress of the continuing A/C problem, I do not have a lot of patience left for people who are annoying. It's really starting to wear me down. I haven't written much about it in my blog, but I have written a lot about it in my head. Today a technician showed up at our door unannounced at 8 am to check on the A/C. He plugged his computer into the thermostat and told us everything was operating correctly. We asked why, if that was the case, was our room so hot? He smiled and forgot how to speak English.

Ken went down to have another conversation with customer service. I just couldn't. I am so frustrated with them I don't want anything more to do with them. I will stop at this point, or I will have to write for 45 more minutes about this.

Oyasumi! (I am practicing my Japanese)