San Diego, New Cruise Director, and song on the Today Show!

San Diego day.. well.. it started off with waking up after an hour of sleep. I got up quickly and ran up to where I would need to be standing to get through immigration. Sure enough there were already 30 people there. But that was fine. At least I had a good spot. As I stood in line, I turned my iphone on and it worked just fine, I had internet access and all that, so I diddled with the for a bit. But at some point a terrible smell hit my nose and made me want to gag... The smell was unbearable. I came to the conclusion that it was one of the philopinos around me. Hadn’t showered or something, but it was absolutely terrible. I didn’t do much to hide my reaction. Just put my nose in my shirt, and prayed the smell wouldn’t eat through that.
After about 30 minutes, the line behind me was 150 people long. Growing by the second. Because the line was going into guest areas, the head people “moved the line” in the crew stairwell. I was in the line facing out, and the line behind me wrapped around where they were beside us. And for the few minutes I was worried because it seemed like, it would be easy for them all to just cram and butt all of us. And sure enough, that’s exactly what they did. So I went from being 30th to around 80th, because of a bunch of immature assholes can’t be patient and wait their turn. Fortunately, a girl from china was very stern to make sure I was in front of her, so she grabbed my shirt and pulled me in front of her. The crowd eventually bottle necked into a line, and within a few minutes I was out of there.
The night before I had seen the day’s capper, and it said Marky Mark would be the cruise director this week. Confused, I asked Stu what that was about. Stu’s going out of town in Acapulco for a Cruise Director conference, so Marky Mark would be cruise director for two weeks. I was slightly confused because Marky Mark signed off like 3 weeks ago, and we have another assistant cruise director. But I guess the reason for bringing MM back to the ship was that he had been here so long and he knew the ropes a lot better than the assistant. Which is fine by me. I personally like Mark a lot. Good guy, and he’s funny and informative.
So I went to my room and showered up and got my phone and Iphone and went up to deck B and waited patiently until the ship would let us off. I emailed some people, and texted a few friends.
Then I went down to Deck A to see the line to get off was already crowded. I thought it would only be a matter of minutes before I got off.. But alas... it took 45 minutes. Time I could have been sleeping. I saw Eric walk by, so did the handshake good bye again. I saw Nunik, the bar waitress from when I worked in the piano bar. She was signing off today too. Which reminds me, the night before, Agnes stopped by and gave me a huge hug goodbye because she was leaving. So I gave her my info, and told her to stay in touch.
After the 45 minutes went by, I got off the ship and called Nick, and talked with him about his wedding, a funny commercial skit idea he had “Don-Don”. Um, Christmas, and some other various things. When we finished up, I went into starbucks, got a Eggnog, and got online and started downloading updates for my computer and such, and talked with some friends.
Afterwards, I went up to the sushi place and got some sushi... Which was delicious. Then I went to gamestop and traded in 3 games to get Modern Warfare 2. THEN I went to Sam Goodys to get Switchfoot’s new album. As I paid for it, the lady asked me if I saw them in concert yesterday. I told her no. She said they set up right in the store I was at and played for a couple hours. DAMNIT. I missed it by ONE DAY! The band is from San Diego, so, it’s pretty crazy that I was that CLOSE!
After that, called Dad, and went back to the ship. I was delayed a bit by a veterans day parade. I made it back to the ship, played my game for a little bit, and took a nap until boat drill. Had boat drill, and went to our meeting, where Stu explained the situation of the cruise director stuff to everyone.
Then we split up and I went and played more of the game until 7ish, and went and restrung my guitar. At 7:30, I got playing, and within moments it was a busy bar, and I was having the best time I’ve had since the large group my first rivera run. A couple girls Anna and Megan were watching me and they said I was the best on the ship from what they gathered, so I played lots of new songs and got a good reaction. I talked to them during the break. Anna’s birthday was the reason they were here on the ship. She was turning 18.
After my gig, I went to my room and watched the Switchfoot dvd, and fell asleep.

My alarm went off at 8 AM. I felt fine, but decided I didn’t need an hour to get ready so I went back to sleep until what I hoped would be 8:30.. But was 9:02, so I jumped up and quickly got dressed, and ran to class. We went to the bow of the ship and practiced some techniques one of the release cables for the lifeboats. We also examined the shell of the life rafts.
I went back to my room, and started working on a song recording for a special event I can’t mention here.
Then I got dressed up and had to play 5-6, 7-8, and 9:30 to 12ish. The crowd was off and on, but still better than the last 3 cruises. Megan and Anna bumped into me while I was at the Cafe, and I asked what they did for the day. They said not much of anything. There wasn’t much to do during the day. Which is kind of true...
They came back and watched me play for a bit, and then they went to see the jazz hot show. Then came back and asked if I wanted to see the comedian. I said if I wasn’t busy, I would. Sure enough, the business had died so I was able to go. On another note, ANOTHER person won 25k or the BMW. She took the car. That’s two 25k prizes and and 14k in 4 days. That’s insane!
I went to the comedian and sat with them. Tom was funny. I’d seen him before but he’s a funny guy.
Afterwards I talked with the girls and Anna’s brother for a bit. Showed them some pictures of my travel thus far, and clips of my album. Which they both really wanted afterwards. So, that’s neat!
They went to bed, and on my way to my room I bumped into Jackob, the trombone player, who was pretty tanked... And Anna, the room service waitress. I talked with them for a bit, then made my way to bed, where I eventually fell asleep.

I got up this morning at 8:30 and took a shower and got ready for class. When we got there, we had a few test questions. I think I got all mine right. We discussed them in class, and we were free. I then went to my room to work on the song more. Had lunch, and went and got an internet card, since I hadn’t been online in a couple days. Wanted to see what I missed. Turns out my song Stay or Leave was used on the Today show for one of their segments. Though it was just the intro, that’s still really cool! I continued working on the song, and now I’m a break from it to clear my ears. Then I’ll go back to it, eat dinner, work 8-1, and catch some zzzs for class, and my day off!!