Friday, March 2, 2007

groundhog day

you get into funny habits on cruises. some are required (i.e. early
morning rising, dinner at 5:30, midrats, pneumatic impact wrenches)
and some just evolve. one that has evolved for me is that I wake up
to a movie every morning. desperate for an alarm clock in the first
few days on the ship, having already damaged my sleeping schedule
from travelling through at least 30 time zones, some repeatedly, I
realized the cabin TV has an alarm feature -- you can wake to either
a movie or tv. since winch tv only has sound when there's people
talking on the ship radio, it's too unpredictable, so I raided the
lounge. i have a tough time in video stores picking out a movie. no
exception in the lounge. it was february 3rd so i picked groundhog
day. since then, I've watched groundhog day about 3 times in full,
and after realizing i could switch it up, watched american graffiti.
recently my roommate had been watching the deer hunter, so I've seen
a few parts of that. strikes me as a tough movie to 1. wake up to
and 2. watch in discrete parts.

anyway the reason i bring groundhog day is that we're about to live
the same day twice. i had thought we were on pacific time for the
past few days, but it turns out we were on the same hour, just a
different day (one ahead, like when we left NZ). I thought the date
line was in control, but it turns out on a ship, the captain is.
some payroll issue made it easier to repeat march 3 than some day in
february. What power!

this leaves a lot of room for thoughts about the arbitrariness of time.

p.s. i just realized i kind of repeated myself abut the helium
channel process when checking to see if i'd talked about my alarm
clock yet. i've intentionally been sending these emails without
looking back, but i guess i have to since i'm forgetting what I've
talked about. don't worry I've got some new ideas -- it probably
won't happen again!

We'll see what tomorrow (today) brings!

2 comments:

NatDeFreitas said...

hey chris! i've made some images from google earth tracking the coords you've given. micaela and i are headed down to PA today, so i'll make sure to share them with Liz.

here's the link for you and your faithful followers:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/natty/sets/72157594567524869/

Unknown said...

I wonder if Chris can see the lunar eclipse that we just finished watching. Can't tell if he's "in the zone" or not. And, how it would look from there. And, how the moon looks on all that ice anyway.