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 He has been replaced by an American named Dan who has been playing drums on ships for 8 years.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....