The Day of the Green Flash

Since we turned the clocks forward an hour last night, it was 8:30 pm when we got back to the cabin after dinner. That is after the time Clay has been going to bed and to sleep anyway! I couldn't stay upright to type up yesterday's blog entry and went to bed right behind him. He was up walking deck 7 in the dark again and back and out of the shower and it still wasn't light. I was up and out of the shower and dressed and still the sun hadn't risen. I was trying to figure out our heading and where the sun would rise. If I'm up I hate to miss it. I went out on the balcony and looking starboard and forward, I could find the pinkest, brightest spot on the horizon. There were a few wispy clouds there but it looked pretty clear. Early on in this cruise, crossing the Pacific, an astronomer was aboard and lectured about the green flash. He described the perfect conditions for seeing it and argued that sunrise was easier than sunset because you weren't losing vision by staring at the orb of the sun. If you stared at the right spot in the morning, your green flash chances were better. So we've been trying. Today was perfect conditions at last. We saw the green flash at last. It was a couple of seconds at most of a speck of brilliant emerald green. It was thrilling.

In other news, this morning we found an invitation to the Captain's Quarters for cocktails at 5:30 to 6 pm for tonight's formal night. We have 6 pm reservations at Prego already. BTW, our last meal at Prego! We don't have to RSVP tonight  so we don't have to decide until the last minute. We did this earlier with the previous captain and were there with at least 50 others. If this invitation is the same thing, we wouldn't be missed, but we don't know. At noon announcement, the Captain sounded like he is struggling with a cold so that may decide us against attending. Knock on wood, we've gone all this way and all this time and stayed well when there has been some kind of hard to kick respiratory infection they call the Crystal Cough running through Serenity since at least November. We can't let our guard down now.