August 9, 2011

FALMOUTH, JAMAICA

The past few days have been VERY busy. We are being inspected on the ship. I am not sure what the acronym stands for, but the DNV (?), is on board this week and checking everything for safety, quality control, etc. Apparently this is huge. They look in storage lockers, everywhere. Well, the Cruise Staff has stuff stored everywhere, and a lot of it, since we give out so many prizes, etc. Our lockers all had to be cleaned out. Some of them had to be emptied, which means the stuff had to go somewhere. It was a general Spring Cleaning. The same went for the office. There is not a whole lot of spare space on this ship, so it is with some thinking that we have to organize everything again…while maintaining our duties as well.

I have not had very much sleep lately, and my cough is getting worse. It is a dry, unproductive cough but I am worried about the effect on my throat. I went to the doctor yesterday and he seems to think that I may have acid reflux. He gave me some medicines and I will check back with him in a week. My cough has eased today, but that could be just the codeine in the cough syrup he gave me. I am also a bit concerned since tonight is the Karaoke Contest and I have to sing the opening and closing numbers. I am not sure if Tara, et al, are going to be there tonight, but I hope so. I will have to contact them and see.

I have most of today off, so it is time for laundry and I also helped Amy move some stuff around the office. Susan is now in charge of schedules and Bingo. The Bingo host is a supervisor position. Someday I hope to have that. It is a nice way to get noticed for promotion. Susan is excellent at it. There is a lot of paperwork and office work involved. All financial records of sales have to be audited and sent to the Main Office in FTL, so everything has to balance perfectly.

Yesterday I had to host a jewelry making workshop. Beading. I had never done this before and was a bit concerned about my ability to host it. The workshop/Craft room is up on Deck 14 Forward. It is a large room with cabinets all around is serves as the workshop for the Scrapbooking and Jewelry Making Classes. I spoke with Joyce, who is the maven for the workshop and got the basics of what I needed to do as far as selling the kits, etc. Going up early I nosed through all the cupboards and cabinets to see what all was there, never having been in the room before. Basically there are seven kits guests can purchase, everyone a different set of necklace, earrings and bracelet. I found one I wanted to make, and as I finished setting up two ladies walked in. I sold them each a kit and we sat down and began beading.

I had seen my mother’s beading work before, so I knew the basics. As we chatted I worked away, and I have to say it was very nice. I enjoyed it. I am not going to say who the necklace is for, but I hope the person enjoys it as their Christmas Gift. It’s going to take that long to make as well….by the end of the hour the ladies were done with the necklaces they were making…and I had made the superb progress of 16 beads on a string…244 more to go…Obviously I am going to have to host this several more times in order to finish by the holidays.