Today is a “Sea Day” meaning that we’ll be sailing throughout the day with no port of call until tomorrow. These are some of my favorite cruising days. Breakfast at 8:00 followed by doing some laundry. A lecture at 11:15 on Scandanavia that was quite interesting. Lunch at noon. A question and answer session at 2:15 p.m. talked about life as a crew member on board the ship. I’m now catching up on some email and fixing some things on a couple of weblogs (Jaelene: You can now post pictures). We’ll have dinner at 6:15 followed by a show. Tomorrow we’ll be in Tromso and the tourist will kick back in again. It’s been a very nice day.

This is actually the second time I’ve written this post (or at least on somewhat like it). Because of the cost of Internet time (forty cents a minute), I write my stuff off line and then log in and post it. I had written some of the best prose of my life and saved it. I also needed to write a couple of emails. So, I wrote them and saved them … on top of the blog entry. So all of that profoundly moving entry is gone into bit-bucket heaven. It really was good stuff!

The lecture guy said that his contract allowed him to bring a guest … and that was his wife (otherwise, according to her, he wouldn’t be here). I thought that I could easily do as good a job, if not better, than he did. I need to find out how people get these gigs! Free or highly reduced cost cruising would be very interesting. During the Q&A session there was a couple of questions about social life and shipboard romance. We learned that the Cruise Director is married to the Food and Beverage manager. The Hotel Manager is married to the Cruise Consultant woman. Several others of the crew have their spouses aboard. Those that don’t are allowed to bring their families aboard for up to two months at a time. Their contracts are for six months followed by a two-month leave and then back aboard for six months. That was quite interesting.

My next activity after posting this will be to do some research on oil drilling rigs. Norway ranks third in oil exports in the world, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. About 95% of their oil is exported. Norway generates all of their electricity through hydroelectric power plants, some of which are deep inside mountains tapping into huge lakes trapped at the top of the mountains. Literally every town has a waterfall-driven hydroelectric powerplant or two to supply electricity to the local residents. As we cruise northwards oil platforms are visible on the left and the right of the ship from time to time. So how do they work? Are they just for drilling and then move somewhere else to drill again? How does the oil get from the hole they drilled to shore? I expect that there’ll be something about all of this available here in the library on this ship. The library is one of the best (and one of the more popular) places on the ship. Every seat is taken right now. I know it’s one of my favorite places on the ship!

In about an hour we’ll cross the Arctic Circle. That means the sun will not set tonight. It’s partly cloudy outside so maybe we’ll be able to see this phenomenon. If not tonight, then on another night Real Soon Now. I’m enjoying this Sea Day!