4833 The moon reflected on one of the elements in the compound lens of my camera. Yikes!
4850 The solar eclipse at about its peak.
4857 Dale wearing his Eclipsers looking at the eclipse. He’s a chemist and his shirt as the word chocolate spelled out using blocks from the Periodic Table of Elements. Very cool indeed.
Nov 14 & 15 – At Sea: The 14th. Today was not a normal day at sea. To start off the day with a special event Holland America Line arranged to have the moon fly in front of the sun. If we had stayed in Australia we could have seen a total or nearly total solar eclipse but this much further west we are going to get about 50-60%. The ship issued Eclipsers, special glasses to view the eclipse safely. When I first walked into the room last night I thought they were going to show a 3-D movie but when I read the note that accompanied the glasses I found out that they were for the eclipse.
It had been cloudy all day yesterday and this morning started out very overcast as well so I didn’t have much hope that we’d see anything of the sun. Just when the moon was supposed to start crossing the sun, 8AM, the clouds parted and stayed that way for the whole 2 hour transit. It took me quite a while to turn off all the ‘helpful’ programs on my camera. Just setting it to manual operation did not do that, oddly enough. Once I did I got as good a picture as you can get with a camera like mine and no special equipment. In one totally accidental shot I caught an image of the moon reflected on one of the layers of glass between the outside and the imager. Amazing. They are grainy as could be but you can see it pretty well.
Lots of people took advantage of the chance to view it but not as many as I would have predicted. I got one picture of a friend, Dale, looking up at the sun with his Eclipsers on and caught the light refracting off one of the lenses. Another accidental, good shot. This event got the day off to a good start.
The second event that made the day special was the Medieval Knight’s Dinner in the dining room. The staff decorated the room and entry with banners and the waiters wore a knight’s outfit with cowl and cape, the assistant waiters work squire outfits and leather helmets. The all looked very warm but everyone maintained the same cheery personality as usual. These guys work really hard.
The third thing that made the day special was our evening entertainer, Melissa Manchester. She put on a great show!! Best yet by a big margin. She sang some of her old hits including Grammy nominee ‘Don’t Cry Out Loud’ and the song that won her best female vocalist of the year 1982 ‘You Should Hear How She Talks About You’ (never a favorite of mine but it did win her the award). She also sang some of the songs she co-wrote that have become radio standards like Midnight Blue and Whenever I Call You Friend. She performed for 70 minutes; the usual max is 45 with some running shorter. It was a good night, capping off a good day.
The 15th. It’s going to be tough to top yesterday so I’m not expecting anything but a low key day today. That’s exactly what I got. Some writing, some reading and a lot of goofing off. . We’ve lost an hour a day for the past two days. These 23 hour days are killing me.
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