Location: Underway to Mauritius
… Oh no… Oh dear, oh my, oh, blog-appropriate expletive, I have really gotten myself into it this time… It’s me; I’m the Halloween Skipper… It can’t be… On the spoopiest of all days, my most dreaded 24-hour cycle of the year, where I’ve ruined my pants every year since I’ve been able to adequately comprehend fear??? How did it turn out that I’m the Skip today?!?!
Halloween’s never been high on my list; it’s the antithesis of what I do here: there are no classes (no science to be done), and everyone’s dressed in fun, scary outfits (I wear the regulation same three sun shirt/pants combos I bought from ACE hardware before hopping on the flight to get here) and everyone’s enjoying the day making yummy cookies and watching spooky movies (that make me pee said sun shirt/pants combos!). How am I going to lead the ship today?! Luckily, my role of reminding everyone to eat lunch and dinner isn’t as integral to the operation of the boat as one might expect, so, me sheltering in my Anti-Spooky Bunker (TM) wasn’t as intrusive to the day as it could have been.
From the window of said Anti-Spooky Bunker (TM), it seemed like everyone had a really good day. Wes and his culinary company cooked up two incredible meals that I emerged from my shelter to enjoy (one he even made a bechamel sauce for… I honestly didn’t know we had the capacity to do that on the ship, but that was a bechamel sauce if I’ve ever seen one). Everyone gathered in the salon to watch the original New Zealand comedy, What We Do In The Shadows (Vampires = Scary!!!) and the much more thematic boat movie, The White Squall (storms on boats = Also Scary!!!!), and from what I could see, everyone seemed to enjoy it. I wasn’t around as a witness, but apparently, something happened with a large volume of sunflower seeds that has since been christened The Sunflower Watch… Your guess is as good as mine on what that’s all about, but everyone whom I mention it starts laughing, so I guess it was something good. We ended the day with a great cheesy pasta meal and took the time to give out some nice compliments to each other as part of today’s squeeze. We’ve been together for just over a month and a half now, and though that doesn’t sound like a long time, somehow it feels like we’ve all learned enough about each other to fill 5x that time. We really do have a great group on our hands here, and getting to hear everyone share what they appreciate about each other really did my heart good, even if we probably will never have enough time to say everything we could on the subject.
But you know what doesn’t do my heart good…? HALLOWEEN!!! I’d never label myself as a hater for anything else, but dang! The spoopy could be around any corner. Especially now! As I’m exposed, outside my Anti-Spooky Bunker (TM) writing this blog! I’m perfectly vulnerable! As a shell-less armadillo! I’ve made it this far, but as of this writing, there are still over 4 hours to go! Anything could happen in 4 hours! It really gets to ya, you know…? Especially the quiet… It feels too quiet. Much too quiet. Much too quiet for this boat… almost.. as if… something is… right.. behind.. me…….
*Addendum*
That was my last pair of pants…