Best Day Ever

The bass player/my best friend on the ship Marina is leaving a week from Saturday so we (us two, plus my new roommate Collin and a english stage staff named Jules) decided to finally do one of the things we had always meant to do in Cozumel. We rented a jeep and drove all over the island. It was only $100 split between 4 people and it took less than 5 minutes to fill out all the paperwork. I love Mexico... 

We stopped at every fantastically gorgeous beach bar we found and each one was more deserted and picturesque than the last. Seeing as I had a cold so I wasn't drinking and the Jeep was a manual, I was the designated driver for the excursion. I was in a state of ecstasy as we blasted down Cozumel's one main highway at 110 kmph. The best stop was an empty stretch of sandy beach with just the right amount of swell in the water. The water was the perfect temperature to be refreshing without being too cold. We stayed there and frolicked around, throwing seaweed at each other for an hour before we headed off to the last bar. 

HAPPY MARDI GRAS EVERYONE! For me this means instead of having to play both a full big band set and a jazz cabaret set, I just have to play about 8 minutes of new orleans street music on the promenade after the cabaret. My lips will make it through the day!

Speaking of my lips, I am determined to get better at trumpet so I just ordered a couple books from amazon. One of them, which was the first result for a search for "trumpet technique," was written by Ithaca's own Frank Campos. He has a great sound and from what I've seen has similar (but way better) technique to me. Aaaannyway thats enough nerding out. I'ma gunna post this thing already.

One more thing.... "planks" Ok I'm done.

Boiling Water is a Hot Commodity

Exciting news everyone! My new roommate Colin (alto sax) found an electric kettle in his old room when he was moving out! This means I can now make coffee in my room! Huzzaaaahhhh! Strictly speaking, devices of this nature are not allowed, but many people have them anyway. Considering my me has a full sized coffee maker in his room, I'm not super worried. I just have to remember to hide it in my closet on cabin inspection days.
I've also been handed down a delightful sealy pillow, a vacuum and of course a colossal room with a couch. I now live like a king.

My muster station leader told me today that the fleet chief was on board today. This is the guy who is in charge of aaalll the Royal Caribbean ships. He was here to make sure we were following all of the correct procedures for emergency drills and was displeased to discover that not even our chief safety officer knew all of the new procedures. Oops... I'm just hoping everyone up on the bridge knows what's going on and that there aren't any rogue icebergs floating through the caribbean.

I've been kind of sick with a cold the past few days, which is unique because I hadn't had a cold in almost two years. Today didn't help the situation, because the weather gods decided to pee all over mardi gras today and I got soaked all the way through on my way back from lunch in the French quarter. Then, before I had time to fully dry off and warm up I had to go to the passenger drill which involves standing outside with no jacket for 45 minutes. I've got my pjs on now though and have a nice 2 hour break to look forward to before rehearsal. Maybe I'll watch a couple more episodes of seinfeld and test out my new pillow.

Its Raining Gastric Distress!

Schwelp. Tomorrow I'm moving into a bigger room. It has a DESK and a COUCH and TWO, yes, TWO closets! This room, which is still significantly smaller than my bedroom back home, is akin to the Taj Mahal on this ship. You can stand up and walk 3 steps WITHOUT reaching the other side! It's almost too much.

Now that my fellow trumpet player isn't also the musical director (md from now on), more trumpeting responsibilities have been laid on me. I was recently yelled at by the md for not yet not knowing the 1st trumpet's solo in one of the production shows. He was quite visibly angry at me because the new lead trumpeter was having trouble with this plungery, growly solo. I calmly agreed that yes I would learn the solo, while wondering to myself why he was so angry about something that I had not yet not done.
Another new responsibility I have is to play the Jazz Caberet concert once a week. This concert has 21 songs back to back with no breaks and there are only two horns; me and the md on tenor sax. I played it for the first time this week and was pathetically nervous having to basically sight read the whole show while standing next to my short-fused boss. To say the least I made a couple of mistakes, which anyone would do sight reading that much music while that nervous. However, seeing as my boss wants everyone to always know that he is exactly that, THE BOSS, he called me to his cabin after the show to growl in my face and give me a P.O.L. No, I have no idea what that stands for, but it is the equivalent of a written down verbal warning. Getting one has exactly zero disciplinary consequences, so the only purpose it can possibly serve is to remind me that I need to practice (which I certainly was going to do anyway) and that my boss is in fact my boss, which I was somewhat aware of before. I suppose its too much to ask for to have a polite conversation instead...
All I can say is that it is unfortunate that those who are attracted to positions of power are often exactly the ones who will abuse it.

In other news, by which I mean the actual tv and internet news, Royal Caribbean is in trouble because of how much disease is going around its fleet. Specifically, its my ship The Voyager of the Seas that is causing all the trouble. Last week we had over 200 cases of GI and this week we still have about 26, with a few new cases coming up every day. This means that yet again, we have to sanitize the entire ship from top to bottom when we get to New Orleans tomorrow. Every hour or so an announcement comes over the PA system of an audibly exasperated person reminding us to please, please wash our hands continually. Normally, once we go 72 hours with no new cases reported, it would mean we don't have to continue the barrier cleanings, but now that there is all this publicity about it, this practice may have to continue for longer as well as maybe some new, even more fun routines. I can't wait to find out.

Oh The Brines They Are A-Changin'

Sooooo its been a little while since my last entry, eh? I still haven't gotten the tattoo, but the idea is most certainly not gone. I'm waiting to be able to print out a little copy of the triceratops so i can trace it or tape it on myself in various places to see where my favorite spot is. I've heard some tattoo artists are amazing at exactly copying things so I'm feeling confident it will come off having the same vibe as the original triceratops if I go to a good place.

In other news my ex roommate Smelly McStankyass is gone for good. He has been replaced by an American named Dan who has been playing drums on ships for 8 years. He even met his Croatian wife on a ship and lives with her in Croatia. He seems like a cool guy so far, I just hope his snoring wont be a regular occurrence because it will most definitely end up leaving me very sleep deprived.
We also have a new trumpet player named Bruno who is from Poland. He is a little short and probably somewhere in his 50's. He's been doing ships for "a long time" and seems to be a very good player who knows when to take it easy and save chops. Bruno is a good dude. You'd like him.

I forget if I talked about OPP the last time it happened on the ship, but we're back in it. If I didn't explain it before, it is when there are an abnormal number of cases of GI (gastroenteritis.) It means that the ship goes into crazy lockdown and has to do absurd amount of cleaning and sanitizing until the number of cases drop below a certain level. I guess as of yesterday it was somewhere around 174 people between crew and guests. There was a line out the door and down the hall coming out of the infirmary. They also punish crew by canceling all crew events and by not letting us off the ship. A lot of the precautions they take to prevent the spread of the illness feels more like punishment than like production preventative steps. Oh wellsies. I just hope I can get off in New Orleans long enough to go to a Target for a minute. Sometimes I think we never actually have any actual cases of GI and they are all just food poisoning cases or drunken vomiting. Between the quality of the food and the amount of drinking that happens, this is far more likely.

I've recently become more and more aware of exactly how many entertainers are drunk at any given point during a performance. I think last friday during our farewell concert, at least 80% of the people on stage (dancers, singers, musicians) were at at least a .05% blood alcohol level. In general, I'd say most people are drunk most of the time. I guess theres just nothing else to do on this floating lock box besides drink. Needless to say, I picked up a fresh bottle of Beefeater in Cozumel today. I'll need something to make the farewell concert a little exciting....