A Typical Day in my Life
Part 1: Sea Day!
My hours are 8am-11am, 1pm-4pm and 8pm-10pm on Sea Days, pretty much without fail.
I wake up either at 7 or 7:30, depending on a) how late I went to bed the night before/time changes and b) whether or not I took a shower in the afternoon the day before. I do my usual morning routine, then head upstairs to grab a quick breakfast at the Lido restaurant, where I eat all my meals. This includes grabbing a small mug of English Breakfast tea that I take with me up one deck to my domain. I am usually at the library between 7:45 and 7:50 so all the gates will be open by 8.
Once there, I have a list of morning activities to complete:
1. Open all the book gates: we actually have gates for the books so a) passengers can’t take books out overnight and b) the books won’t fall if we encounter rough seas at night, and since we’re always at sea at night this is a distinct possibility.
2. Turn on the Giant Screen TV
3. Put out the new Daily Quiz
4. Put out the selection of current magazines
5. Fold all the newspapers left for me. These are mostly single sheets printed on paper double the size of usual 8.5x11 standard paper, however the Times Digest is two of these so I have to fold each of those individually.
6. Check e-mail
These usually take me until about 8:30. After that, I will usually check the dropbox to see if I need to return and shelf books. This can generally wait until the afternoon. Then, I’ve got 2.5 more hours. The mornings are generally quiet, so if I want to read, I can easily do so. I tend not to in the afternoons when it’s busier. If I have downtime, I work on some piece of writing.
At 9:40, my watch alarm goes off and I run downstairs to set up bridge. This is #1 in the list of not-typical-librarian-jobs jobs that I have. We always have twice daily bridge play on the ship at 10 and 2. My job is to run down early and set up two decks of cards, two score sheets and a pencil on each table. This is where my ‘are you going to teach us bridge/play bridge’ questions come from constantly. The answer is a polite: No, sorry!
During this transcanal trip, on sea days, we do have a bridge instructor who does a lecture and organizes/leads duplicate each day at 10 and 2 as well so mine is just a backup for those who don’t want to play the organized thing.
Other than that, my job for the rest of the morning is just to organize the books, keep them straight, keep the library clean (which is harder than you might think – just remember we’ve got the café and bar in our backyard), etc. At some point soon, I need to make a concentrated effort to stamp books with the Holland America Line stamp – so far it’s been haphazard at best, but I want them as close to done as possible when I hand the library back over to Diana. If all those things are done as best as possible, then I usually read and/or write. Like it’s morning now on a sea day so I’m writing.
On some sea days, I have additional activities to do – one is Service Club where any of the Rotary, Lions Club, etc. type clubs can come and get credit for attending a meeting with their boss organization. These are usually very poorly attended. I’m not sure if people just can’t be bothered with all the other things going on on ship or if they don’t understand the purpose or what. I’ve had two this cruise and one got two people and the second only one. The other one I’ve ‘run’ only this cruise is a Veteran’s Meet, where I pretty much just make sure the vets are all in the same place in one of our larger lounges so they can talk. I’ve done two and both had at least 5 people. I love listening for a while as they reminisce and chat and usually wish I could stay longer.
These are usually at 11, so I stay an extra 10 minutes or so to make sure I catch everyone and then I’m off for two hours. This means naptime most mornings for about an hour and then I get up, eat lunch and head back to work.
My schedule has differed a bit on this trip. Usually I have to be back at the desk at 1, where I again check the dropbox, organize, deal with any new e-mails or messages or stuff left on my desk, but most sea days since San Diego I’ve had book club at 1 so I come up about 15 minutes early, make sure I have everything printed and organized and then go around the corner to meet with my book club group (6-7 ladies and one man – David is such a good sport) until 2. Again, full post devoted to my book club probably next week after it wraps up. As well as checking books in, I have to check those books that were checked out using the self-checkout out in the excel checkout sheet too. Because of the system, this can sometimes take a while.
At 2, I plop down at the desk to do all the routine things with time to write if I finish. Afternoons this cruise have generally been wildly busy so I barely have time to check books in or do whatever necessary things let alone do anything fun! I kinda like it, though, keeps me hopping and thinking! I do, however, think that the shelf set up on the ship is…well, let’s just say it’s pretty obvious whoever designed them never worked with books/in a library. For most of the sections, instead of having regular shelves, they have cubby holes that usually fit 6-8 books. This is okay, I guess, and is maybe designed to prevent them from falling off, but it’s really hard to try and keep the books straight and not toppling, where if we just had regular shelves, I could use bookends to keep the books up and neat. It becomes an obstacle course or puzzle to keep the books as straight but not jammed in as possible. It also makes it so I’m constantly realphabetizing sections depending on what comes in. Not impossible, but a bit of a pain.
I should probably mention that, for this cruise as well, the hours I’m off during the sea days are being staffed by Katie (my roommate) and Stephanie (the head of the kids’ program and thus Katie’s boss) because they have no kids on board and it keeps the work level for me down for the hours that I am here, which is most excellent. This probably won’t happen again, though!
I’m off at 4 and get four hours to do whatever – this usually includes hopping online for about 15-20 minutes to check up on the world, and then doing some combination of: the gym, shower, reading, watching a show/movie, writing and dinner. Dinner is, food-wise, the worst meal of the day, in my opinion, but it’s one of the best times of the day. A lot of the entertainment staff (and assorted awesome others!) tends to congregate around the same time up there so there are always cool people to talk to and hang out with. This time often eats up close to 2 hours of my 4 hours off, especially because our cabin steward comes around 6, so I always head up then. I can’t complain, though, because it’s so much fun.
In the evening, the library tends to be slow. I often get to listen to Chris, our solo guitarist, until 9 playing in the Crow’s Nest but other than that, it stays pretty quiet. This is the most frequent time I empty the dropbox to make sure it’s empty for the next day and I have to swap out for the next day’s Sudoku puzzle (super popular), post the answers and winner to that day’s Daily Quiz and pull that day’s quiz and pull out the next to put under my desk for the next morning. Obviously, about 10 of 10, I have to reverse the morning’s chores: turn off the TV, put away the magazines, shut the gates, recycle any extra newspapers, etc.
Gabriela and I put out a 4000 piece puzzle (we always have a puzzle or two going on our one big table) at the beginning of this cruise, so we’ve also spent some time most evenings chatting and puzzling with our regulars when there’s no one else around. After two weeks, we’re finally hitting the home stretch! No one we’ve talked to has ever done a 4000 piecer before. ETA: We totally finished the puzzle and it was epic!
After 10, then Gabriela and I usually go either see the 10pm show or head to one of the two officer’s bar for some wind down. I try and be in bed between 11:30pm and midnight.
A few more details on the ‘odd’ jobs in my Port Day post (since that’ll be shorter).
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