Souvenirs

People collect all sorts of souvenirs as they travel. I've always saved pins, that I used to put on a hat until they became too many. Now they are all in a cork board in my room at home. I sometimes collect stickers from different places to put on my trombone case, though they eventually get scratched or ripped and come off. Any popular tourist destination will have its souvenir shops, where every tourist can find their item of choice, be it T-shirt or magnent, backpack or hat, shot glass or teaspoon, key chain or pen. I like souvenirs that are more real....like a rock I picked up on a trail, or a flower petal I saved and pressed into a book, something that actually reminds me of time I spent somewhere, or experiences I had there. One of my favorite souvenirs is a scar I still have on my left little toe from when I scraped it snorkeling in Bermuda. But all this time, I never knew my laptop was collecting its own souvenirs. Every time my little MacBook accessed a wireless network, it remembered the name of that network and the password, just in case it should ever need to join it again. Looking through this list of networks on my computer gives a unique recounting of my travels throughout the world. I can look at each one and remember when and where I was at the time I used it. Here's a few favorites from that list:

apuwifi: from my university days

Vino100: from when I worked next door at In the Woods

the laundry network: from a movie studio in Hong Kong where I hung out with an awesome Christian Chinese-Australian guy until the wee hours of the morning

London Bridge Resort 5: family vacation in Arizona

Wifi, The Green Turtle: internet cafe in Civitavecchia, Italy

Hotel Welcome: Villefranche, France

Gibraltar Arms Free Wireless: a pub in Gibraltar with awesome fries.

Helsinging kaupungin WLAN: a coffee shop in Helsinki Finland, on a rainy day

RCCL-CR-ITRF: the ship wifi. Expensive.

Caviar and Bananas: coffee shop in Charleston

The Fluffy Bunny Brigade: no idea where this network was, but it was so funny I had to post it.

I hope my laptop and I will both be collecting souvenirs for a long time yet.

Making up for free time

Well, I did sign up for some tours this week as mentioned before, to fill up some of the free time afforded me this cruise. In Juneau I finally went whale watching, which was really neat. It was kindof like living the discovery channel. The highlight was seeing a group of about a dozen humpback whales bubble-net feeding, where the whales coordinate with each other to creat a ring of bubbles, then chase the fish trapped inside it up the center and up to the surfaces, where they come up with mouthfuls of fish. It was truly incredible to see all the whales break the surface at once - I actually stopped breathing a couple of times.

In Skagway I went on a hiking trip on the Chilkoot trail that ended with a rafting trip back down to the trailhead. It was very similar rafting to what I did last week in Skagway, but this time my tour guide let me row the raft for part of it. Awesome!!! I did pretty good, too, considering I had to control a raft with 8 people in it. It was so fun....It was nice to have something more like an adventure than just sitting in the raft.

My side jobs have been keeping me busy, which is great. Unfortunately I only have one more week of art auction before the gallery leaves the ship. We still don't know if they will be replaced right away or ever with another gallery, and if so if that gallery would hire assistants in the same way, so I'm not counting on anything. I have 6 more weeks of Port and Shopping (that jobs finishes at the crossing), and I'm not sure if shore-ex will still need help after we do the crossing, or when we get a new manager, so that is up in the air as well. But my philosophy is just to ride the wave while I can, so to speak, and do as much work as I can while its still available.