adventures abroad, travel

December 17: At Sea (Last Day Onboard the Ruby Princess)

The morning starts well.

Lester has made sure my coffee is strong enough to be coffee, and not the colorful water they brought earlier in the trip. The bacon is cooked perfectly. And he offers to come by tomorrow to say goodbye (even though I tipped him this morning, just to make sure I didn’t miss him). I don’t plan to order coffee in tomorrow, so this is my moment.

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adventures abroad, photography, travel

December 15: At Sea

I missed last night’s sunset. We’re operating on East Coast time, so my dinner reservation fell intersecting the sunset. Alas, so be it. I wanted the early dinner time and the aft dining room; it meant the dining room was as “clean” an area to unmask as there could be, indoors on the ship, having been least used when I get there.


There are only a handful of us masking regularly at all times indoors or in crowded public spaces. But no one makes any remarks either way about it, so it’s fine. I only had one person ask me about it, at an indoor venue where we were crushed together shoulder to shoulder, but her question seemed like genuine curiosity (or maybe concern about whether I was masked because I was sick and maybe she should be giving me wider berth) but not at all a questioning of my choices.

Which honestly is a bit of a victory; on her last trip, S encountered people who felt the need to comment, but she’s a professor and a pediatric nurse who works with extremely at-risk kids. She does not say anything to grown people making their own decisions even if she disagrees with them (unless a child is actively being harmed / needs medical intervention, of course) but she is so over letting people make snide comments to her, or even passive-aggressively “joking” about her in her hearing. She doesn’t fight or shout – I don’t think either is in her nature – but she will be kind yet extremely direct with people who then have the audacity to seem surprised she isn’t going to just let them say whatevertheeff without any response.

I’m glad people here seem to have a live/let live approach to it here. Or at least anyone who is really bothered by it, is just staying away from me, which probably suits us both.

Anyway…

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