No Noon for You! and other onboard stories

That's right, folks. The noon hour is not a thing on the QM2, at least heading eastbound. Makes sense, right? By the time we get to Southampton, we need to be on the Greenwich Mean Time, the ultimate time zone. Wouldn't that be nice. Wrong though. It's actually British Summer Time (BST) right now, and really, I can attest to it being the BEST time zone, or I am promised as much. At any rate, what I mean to say is that on the QM2, time resets every day at noon. It's weird. I'm used to the overnight time change, so this skip an hour in the middle of the day thing is a bit jarring. We have not seen noon on the Atlantic. It does not exist. 11:59 turns into 1:00. I think you get it by now, but I'm gonna keep up this convo. Also there's math involved, because as a money conscious person, I don't have my cellular service turned on. My computer and all other helpful devices think it's 7:44 in the morning. But right now it's actually 11:44 AM. No noons x 4. By the time I'm done typing this entry it will be no noons x 5 and time for the daily shuffleboard tournament, which is decidedly an afternoon event. Fear not, though, we will get all of our noons returned to us on the way back, when the QM2 repeats the noon hour each day. I understand this is really more than you want to hear about this topic, but believe me, this is a BIG event onboard.

I didn't post a blog yesterday. It feels like every day is so similar, so much like the last and the one before that that it seems repetitive to blog about it. But last night was different. We had the second of two formal dinners onboard, which requires passangers to dress "smartly" in order to be seen at all on ship. Silly, I know, but it's the price of passage. And it was actually quite fun last evening. The theme was "20's fashion" so Mom and I, with the help of a large, unnamed retailer, procured fancy 20s outfits. I had some killer red suspenders, a red bow tie, a red fedora, and a cigar (which was not red). Oh and a fake pocket watch. My 89 year old tablemate told me I should take it to the Antique Roadshow for evaluation and I didn't have the heart to tell him its provenance. Mom wore fingerless gloves, a very showy strand of pearls, a headband with feather (best example of one on the ship IMO) and a very long cigarette holder. As you may imagine, we were received with large rounds of applause as we entered the dining room (okay, maybe not, but we did get accolades from several jealous, sequin-wearing, featherless, bow-tie-lacking passangers). The most fun, though, was our private (read: self-done) portrait session on the balcony of our state room. Each photo was comical, worthy of acclaim and adoration of the masses. But you will see none of them because I've discovered that I can't post pictures using our ($140, seriously??) poor internet service. 

Late last night I couldn't sleep and I was trying quite mightily to make no noise as to not wake Mom. But then I saw her phone flick on. Upon asking, I received confirmation that she, too, couldn't sleep and she was trying to keep quiet as well. A plan unfolded and we two decided to don our coats (or not in my case - mom donned hers and I regretted) and head out onto our balcony to see the stars. These moments on our balcony, as most of the ship slept, were magical. The breeze was fresh and salty, the water was mixed with fog up to the the horizon and then the sky cleared into the most dazzling display of stars, a view that can only be seen in the middle of the ocean, hugging your mom, speechless with wonder, freezing to your bones and not caring a bit. I will never forget those moments on the sea with Mom. It's a forever moment. I'm so glad insomnia visited us.

Tomorrow we land in Southampton and transfer to London via a coach. Expect a slew of onboard pictures and a recalling of our first London adventures from the BST time zone. We will even recount how we spent the noon hour!