I wanna rock and roll all night . . .

There are quite a few unforeseen aspects of living in a boat. When I mention them, you may think they should have been obvious to me. But I'm from a landlocked state, so I don't feel too bad about not knowing the intimate details of ship dwelling.

1) Unreliable plumbing: Sometimes the showers don't drain. I discovered this as I overflowed ours. It was DELIGHTFUL. Especially as it was my very first Sunday on the ship. I felt rather stupid about the whole thing at the time, but then it would not drain for anyone. Appropriate parties were called, and a GIANT hairball was removed from the drain. Weird how that happens in a cabin with 10 girls. Anyways, now the shower drains fine, but usually in several explosive sucking episodes, which is how the sinks drain as well.

The worst thing is that the toilets don't always flush. As you can imagine, sometimes this is more inconvenient than at other times. But it makes for some amusing stories, which are mostly about the panicky search for working toilets. Ahh memories.

2) Rock and roll: We're docked, but man, this ship can MOVE! Today at work I realized that some cupboard doors were sliding. Which delighted me is that I didn't really feel the rocking until I noticed that. It's a good day when you realize that you're not feeling everything the ship does. We are in a very busy port, so ships leave many times a day and night. Also, the wind sometimes blows us, and when it's really choppy, we rock a lot. Even though we can't always feel it, it affects how we walk down the hall, which is funny.

3) BUGS: We had a brief infestation of weevils that we quickly ended by freezing the products they were in or throwing them away. There are cockroaches, but I haven't seen one yet. Flies are a problem, but in the cafe we have an electric fly swatter which makes for some amusing attempts to avoid smacking one's coworkers in the face with an electrically charged tennis racket looking thing.

I know there are more, but I can't think of any off hand. I will probably post more when I think of them. This weekend is a ship holiday so most of us have a three day weekend. Exciting!