Dianne and I on each of our past cruises opted to have our breakfast meal in the stateroom. No extra charge for this service and it made the day start off on the right foot. Once we had finished breakfast and dressed, we opted to make our way the eight deck to use the health club to get in weights and aerobic workouts. The treadmill area faced the front of the
ship. With glass to protect you from weather and wind, it was a unique view to travel on the treadmill.The weather had cleared since the early evening fog on Friday's deportation day. That was a blessing. While the coast was several miles away, it provided a comfortable, picturesque day to travel.
The newsletter on our bed Friday night noted several activities to consider for Saturday. Two caught our eye quickly. First, there was bridge playing available in the afternoon. Second, was the cooking classes. While Dianne and I love to play bridge, Dianne's choice was the cooking classes.
I traveled up two floors from our stateroom and visited the bridge room. Only problem, there was only one seat not occupied at the last table. And one of the ladies' son was to show up soon. So, my bridge playing consisted of one hand of bridge. But, I'm happy to report our opponents didn't make the sc
ore they intended. Not with my skillful defensive play.Now to the cooking classes. I had noticed before our cruise on HAL's website, you could take a panoramic view of several areas of the ship. One of those areas was the cooking room. And what a room it was. It doubled as a movie theatre at night. While I didn't count the seats, the capacity was probably fifty to seventy-five.
Wine and Cooking Magazine outfitted the "kitchen" area that was kept out of sight during movie time with a curtain. But, when the curtain was raised, there was all you ever wanted to use in cooking wonderful dishes.
Dianne, Myrion, and Morris were in cooking heaven! What they didn't know before the class was they would be eating what they had cooked. That doesn't mean the food was a disaster. Just the opposite, the food was tremendous. However, eating that much food mid-afternoon provide new challenges at dinner time.
I had noticed on the itinerary there would be computer classes. This was a class that hadn't been offered on any of our previous cruises. So, my focus in the afternoon moved to sit in on a beginner's class on how to take your digital images and move them to your computer and the hard drive for saving.
Trisha was the facilitator for all of the computer classes. She was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay in education. An avid photographer, like myself, she contracted with HAL thru Microsoft to offer these classes as a prototype activity. Since HAL caters to an older aged crowd, the thinking was some of these people would probably like to have these classes to become more comfortable with their computers at home. I believe it was receiving a very positive response when I walked into the beginner's class. A full room at the twenty something notebook computers and others sitting along the perimeter of the room.
While the class wasn't of particular interest to my skills level, it gave me some insight as to the teaching skills of Trisha. It became apparent very soon in that class that she is an excellent teacher and communicator. No question was silly or stupid, just not answered at that point.
Of course, the software that Trisha used was provided by Microsoft and available free of charge to PC owners. The software was very user friendly for these first time students and as the one hour class finished, you could tell the participants were more relaxed and comfortable with the process.
Since I use Adobe Photoshop CS2, an advance software with many more options, this class didn't have a particular interest on my part. What did interest me in these classes was two sessions on creating a blog page.
We had a full house for the first session to begin our orientation to the software and how to maneuver through the menus. Once again it was software from Microsoft which seemed more than what I would ever use.
The second session of the class ended up a one-on-one with Trisha. I don't know if the others in the first session decided it wasn't for them, or had enough information and didn't need the second session, or there were other activities that were more important to them. I didn't mind, since when I had a question, it could be answered quickly by Trisha.
While the information was well worth my time, I opted to use the same software our daughter uses for her blog page. My thinking was, if I hit a snag in producing or changing something on my blog, my daughter can probably rescue me.
When dinner time arrived, it was much easier remembering to travel two decks up and at the back of the ship, travel one set of stairs down to the main dining room level. The food selections once again were so tempting it was difficult to make the final selection.
The entertainment this night had a western music theme. All of us were thoroughly entertained by this small band of singers and dancers. During the "intermission" to give the singers/dancers a break, they had three cute audience participation segments. First, was the wife placing fake food on the plate position on a football helmet strapped on her husbands head. His job, walk quickly to the trashcan and dump the food inside. The second game was golfers using blow-up golf clubs to see who could hit the simulated golf ball farther into the audience. The final segment was husband and wives teaming together to make up a bed and create a towel animal. The results of all three games provided numerous opportunities to laugh and relief you weren't part of the stage entertainment.
Back to the room to see which towel animal was waiting for us and getting a good night's rest before our time in Juneau on Sunday
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