Cruise Day Thirteen: The Pride & Prejudice Channel

It's not exactly boring with six straight days at sea, but then again, there's not an awful lot to do either. Once we left Madeira we left the land of satellite television, presumably to come back as we near the US coast, but for now the televisions are filled with whatever is in the video library.

For example, for two straight days, we had nothing on the sports channel but an NBA highlight show, the same show, over and over. We never watched it except for flipping past it, but in the end I swear we'd seen the whole thing.

Then there is the Captain's Log channel, which gives, in one minute updates, our position, the weather, the state of the sea, how far we've travelled from Civitavecchia, how far we've travelled from Madeira and how far we have til we reach Fort Lauderdale, the time in various locations, and a whole lot more. There was one point where as far as I could tell, we were essentially equidistant from Europe, Africa, North America and South America. I guess you'd say that we were in the middle of the Atlantic, huh? Another interesting fact: the temperature of the water has generally been a few degrees warmer than the ambient outside air temperature. The former is a pretty constant 71 and the outside temperature has been more like 68. Not counting windchill, and today we had near gale force winds all day again, though from the southwest instead of the northwest, so the ship has been riding much smoother.

Then there are the movies. They have shown the Keira Knightley version of Pride & Prejudice basically every day at least once, some days all day. They have shown the Emma Thompson version of Sense & Sensibility almost every day. They have shown Four Weddings & A Funeral a number of times. This has led us to speculate on when we'd see related films, like the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma (and they have shown us Shakespeare in Love a number of times), or Notting Hill (since Hugh Grant is in both Sense & Sensibility and Four Weddings & A Funeral).

They have also shown two great Billy Wilder classics, Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment, which we've enjoyed.

And some real duds, like that thing with Robin Williams as a priest. And some of Marjorie's least favorites, like How Does Love a Guy in 10 Days or whatever it was called.

It's not that we're watching a lot of television--we aren't--it's that with so many hours to fill in a day (and most of our days are 25 hours long, to account for the six-hour time change between Europe and the Eastern Time Zone), there are times when television has been a welcome source of chilling out.

No news, though, except for a daily New York Times update, which includes too little of too much. I actually snuck a peak at ESPN.com today when I was sending Phil an email (and getting a wonderful email from Mary and Barbara), and at SeattlePI.com, to see what was going on in the world of sports and at home. Oddly, tonight we sat down at dinner next to a woman who came from Shelton and used to live in Burien, and her brother who was born in Seattle (she was born in Ypsilanti after the family moved). First Washingtonian we'd met on the cruise, and we were her first Washingtonians as well.