20 lbs later...

Last night was the pizza feast. Known as Aloha Friday, some of the crew celebrates by donning their Hawaiian shirts. I'm also not sure if the pizza happens every Friday as well (like it was steak night every Sunday on the Revelle), but I hope for the sake of my waistline that it doesn't! Not only was it a pizza buffet (I indulged in a slice of veggie, pepperoni, AND Hawaiian), but it was also a brownie sundae bar! Complete with fresh brownies, fudge, shaved coconut, crushed oreos and M&Ms, cherries, and a freezer full of ice cream to top it off (oh yeah and gummie bears if you're weird like McCall). Needless to say, the food is still excellent. Good thing I slept through breakfast yesterday! I also caught one of the crew members on a rowing machine outside yesterday. I'm not sure if that is personal equipment, but I found out where it lives, and I might have to get in on that. It'd be nice to work out on deck!

My eyes were much better yesterday, still not up to snuff, but it didn't feel like I was dragging them over concrete every time I blinked anymore. They also weren't watering so bad. This morning they are still doing better, still a bit dry, but I think I'm on the mend. Like I said, I slept through breakfast yesterday to get a few more hours of shut eye and maybe that helped. I might have to start making that a regular thing.

Yesterday Julia and I watched Hot Fuzz during the last part of our shift, and that helped pass the time a whole lot. We might have to start making a movie in the morning a regular thing too. At least when we are transiting and the rest is boring. During our afternoon shift we got to take off for a little while to help with the filming of the "I'm on a Boat" music video. I put on my gangster face (and my flippie floppies) and let my Miami swagger flow. If you haven't seen this SNL skit, you must google it and check it out. Featuring T-Pain and Andy Sandberg. Everyone is having a lot of fun dancing around on deck, and one of the OBS techs is taking me completely by surprise. I pegged him to be the quiet type, but as soon as his sun glasses and skull cap come on, he's a straight up G.

The water has been so calm it's almost glassy. But I don't think it's going to be like this for long. Word on the street is we are headed for a tropical depression and they have been working to secure everything on deck. I guess it's better we run into weather now rather than when we are trying to pick up OBSes out of the ocean (not that there isn't any guarantee that that won't happen too). So we'll see how bad that's going to be. After hitting the typhoon with 40 knot winds and 30 foot swells last year, I'm not too scared. But, I don't know how this double hulled boat will handle big waves. Apparently you can hear them crashing into the space in the stern that separates the two hulls. Sounds like fun.

The Quoits tourny has officially begun! I think the first match was played last night, the Rayleigh Waves lost to L-CHEAPO. How do I know about this? The winners printed out a fake ESPN news brief about their victory and left it in the lab for us to enjoy. People are taking this pretty seriously! I practiced a little bit yesterday and it's pretty fun! Apparently my advisor has been practicing like there is no tomorrow and getting on his partner's case for not doing the same (go figure, he is a very competitive guy!). McCall seems to think that we can fall back on distraction if our beginners luck begins to fade, being two of the five ladies on board ;)

So keep your fingers crossed for us for not too terrible weather in the coming days!