It’s 4am and the wind is HOWLING outside. IT doesn’t help I’m on the front corner of the building. Nice whitler. I’m awake enough to stay up and read some more, but I don’t really want to be up for the day yet. Looks like it’s spitting rain. I doubt that’s a warm front! It was beautiful yesterday. Sweatshirt weather today? I’m betting it’s going to be COLD.

I’m mentally packing…putting away my nice jacket (I don’t want to get that dirty) and LAYERING. Luckily I have this balcony…I can check the temperature before dressing! Gonna try for one more nap.

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Yup – Cold front came thru! Bloody BRRRRR!

Overcast and C O L D this morning.

Off to find Italian coffee and breakfast. Took a shower…they have a weird shower in this hotel. Corner shower and the doors slide one to each side. Hot water? Turn the one spiggot for both to the RIGHT not left…YIKES! Off I go now, all refreshed.

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Breakfast was in a cave under the hotel – VERY cool.

Cocoa Pops (in 8 different languages) wit milk, OJ, cappuccino (delish!) and an orange marmelade croissant – WONDERFUL. It’s POURING outside! And the waves are “Molto Masso” – Very Big! That’s what the newspaper calls them. Didn’t even think to bring Dramamine! OH! I pray they don’t bother me. At least the sun is coming out now. Packing up and heading over to Evan’s lobby to wait for the bus. Here we go!

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It HAILED on me!

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FOOF! What a day! We akk kiaded yo ib 3 buses (there are more contractors than just TDS) and got transferred over to the port. It was about a mile from our hotel. We entered into a fort to get there. IT’s a pretty neat fort. Once we got there, we had to go check in. They took our passports and gave us our room keys and a Crew Cash Card (for the bar). I’m in room E308 on the Emerald Deck, which is Deck 8 and is also an Ocean View Room. I’m right between 2 life boats – lucked out on that one! Unfortunately, there’s a light on all the time out thee. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep with the curtains open. There’s no walking deck, so that’s a shame.

 

Anyway, once we got our keys and stuff, we went to board. Outside security said to me “This is for contractors. Are you a contractor, Ma’am?”

“Yes I am.”

He swalled his surprise and said “Well, Ok. Come on board, then.”

HA HA. Up to the room and dropped off my stuff. Looked around very quickly. Not too bad. Bigger than Carnival’s inside stateroom. And off to work.

 

First thing we started removing tile at the Calypso Bar, so we can put in a new deck. Our container with all our materials in it was on Deck 16 all the way aft. Calypso Bar is Deck 14 almost mid-ship. We had to unload a lot of materials…Hello stairs! We ended up using the elevator once we had to use the hand cart – up and down…up and down. It seemed farther using the elevator for some reason. I don’t think it was, though.

 

Then, the 4 boys started jackhammering. NOISY! Yowza! Got my earplugs in.  After I helped get the container unloaded (panels, epoxy, filler, etc) Oli told me to come help him tie down the job boxes (smaller boxes with material in them such as tools, etc) so when we started sailing, they wouldn’t move. Then, I started my job…cleaning up tile. The guys were into making quite a mess with those jackhammers and someone needed to shovel up the tile and dust…that someone was me. I had a blast! MAN! I got dirty! I shoveled it all into 5 gallon buckets (3 of them) and then once the buckets were ¾ full, I stuck them on a hand cart and lugged them up a deck to the dumpster where I dumped them. Why do I have a feeling tomorrow will entail a pain pill?

 

We worked until 8pm. We took ½ hour for lunch some time today – I have no idea when. I have to check with Evan about my hours for today, so I can log them.

 

After we cleaned up (we still have a little more tile to take out) we went down to dinner. Lunch for me was a salad, some rice and a roll. Dinner was a salad, some roasted taters (they were yummy!) some cheese and a roll – oh and a blueberry cake dessert thing, but I only ate ½ of that. If we’d eaten an hour earlier, I’d probably eaten more, because I was starving then! Not so much by the time dinner came along. I had cranberry juice with dinner. After dinner I cam upstairs and took a shower. One fo the guys (Erik) had invited me to the Crew bar and I thought I’d go, but by the time I got dressed it was 9:30…breakfast is at 6a…work STARTS at 7a…on the nose…no showing up at 7a with your coffee thinking you can eat your donut and chat a little first. 9:30 is too late to be going out. I got undressed and put my jammies on…Maybe tomorrow I’ll go to the Crew bar.

 

Now, waves are getting bouncy. Cinderella Man is on TV. It’s 10:00 and I think I’ll go take my contacts out.