Latitude

Right now, we are about 850 miles or so from our first port of Funchal, Madiera in the Canary Islands. I don't know if that's nautical miles or land miles.

Anyway, rehearsals in this truncated install period (usually three weeks, only one for us) have been crazy but certainly very considerate of our time and the other demands put on us(safety meetings / training)while we're learning to be on the boat.

Phone and internet time are at premium... in every sense of the word. Luckily, the crew internet cafe is usually not packed and I'm able to take a few minutes to get online.

Like now.

Pictures soon, maybe. The costume people are amazing and the costumes are some of the best-looking I've ever worn.

It's very odd to be so out of the usual loop in every way - no cell phone in my life has made a big difference. That and the removal from "life" while out here is very interesting and isolating in a way that I'm not sure about yet.

More later...

I'm Sailing Away

Wel, not actually "sailing", as the Voyager uses a high-tech "dolphin pod" propulsion system which will allow us to remain silent and undetected as we run missile drills off your largest cities while listening to your "Rock and Roll"... then to Cuba, for...

Actually, I imagine the RSSC Voyager has little in common with the Red October.

Last night we gave our "presentation" for the honchos from the office, had a nice gathering at the producer's lovely home. This morning we all loaded our luggage onto a rental truck to be delivered to the ship, and tomorrow morning we will travel to Ft. Lauderdale to board. Then it's hell week - installing all three shows in a week, performing our first one on Friday.

Within 36 hours, I will no longer be in the U.S.A., so please hold my mail and write down all my messages.

Next blog will likely be from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Write or call today to say Bon Voyage!

"...set an open course for the virgin sea"

So goes that familiar line... except there's no real virgin sea left, is there? It's all pretty well travelled. "Set an open course for that whore sea" isn't as inviting an image, so I think Mr. DeYoung was wise to be kind in his appraisal of oceanic virginity.

What was I posting about? I don't remember... oh yeah.

We're all tired and ready to be on the ship. We're going to have a "hell week" of rehearsing in the middle of the night and trying to tech out all three shows at once, not to mention lifeboat drill training and such things in the daytime... so by the time we reach the Canary Islands we'll be so dizzy we won't realize where we are until Casablanca.

Today is a great example of how tired we are... from the start of the day no one had anything to give, and while we have had days like that in the past it usually improves. Now, not so much. We started at 0% and got to say 25%. Who deserves a break today? Well, deserves? Not so much... needs? Yes. And we had a day off YESTERDAY.

BTW, I'm typing this post on my computer. It came back to me, but I did in fact lose EVERYTHING so anyone who has any copies of photos or recordings or things I've written... please send. Contact me. I gotta get back to rehearsal now.

Sometime soon I'll tell you all about the great people I'm working with.

Crash Assistance

I leave the United States in a week and one day.

Finally I blog, and I'm sorry it's been so long, but...

I could use some help.

See, my computer died. My hard drive committed suicide. I had just bought a pocket drive to back up all my important data and hadn't done it yet.

Thus, I have lost all my music, recordings of myself and others; all my photos; all my writing; all my... you get the idea. My computer has been fixed and is on its way back to me, but if anyone out there has photos or recordings or anything I've ever sent you, I will be forever in your debt if you could send them along. Contact me and I'll let you know the best way - connections will be slow and downloads all but impossible, I'll wager, while on the ship. On CD is probably best.

This SUCKS.

If you can help me out, that'd be great. I had all this great video software as well, the CDs of which I of course packed and put into storage while away. Mainly it's all the photos I'll miss most. Help?

On the boat as of next Saturday.

Lizards, Space Travel, Bizet, and Elton John

...all these things have been part of my life in the past couple of weeks. My brain is full. There have a beena staggering number of beautiful days which I've noticed during our occassional 10-minute breaks, and we've still managed to have a lot of fun, but there's no question this is a lot of work. Somehow my fellow singers have managed to make it seem like not quite so much, though. It's really a good group.

Of course, now that I've said that on my blog something will go horribly wrong, some terrible secret will be revealed, and... yeah. Jinxing it all, I am, by saying this publicly.

Did I mention my computer blew up? It's at the computer hospital now, and my biggest hope is that it won't develop a case of amnesia whilst there. I need it to remember a lot of things which only it knows.

Yesterday my 7-year old self was made quite happy by a visit to the Kennedy Space Center. My adult self was floored by the price of admission to same.

My (cough) year-old current being is wearing a shirt that says "NASA" on the front and "I Need My Space" on the back.

Indeed.