The previous post is Notes At Sea (Wednesday, March 28).
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Notes At Sea (Friday, March 30) · Apr 6, 10:17 AM

1312 EDT — An hour before lunch.

Us riders and a handful of enlisted seamen are hanging out in the crew’s mess. I’m through books one, two, and four of the Dune series now. Yesterday I was going to take a shower after breakfast but I chickened out. In the afternoon after lunch the ship was busy with drills. After dinner I hung out again in the crew’s mess to join the Dennis (a Navsea rider here for the test, like me) and several guys for Halo 2. I sucked, but it was over quickly — they put on Borat. After the movie I was finally really ready for a shower, but it was 2230. The mid-watch starts at 2400, and the kitchen is open for midrats 2300-2400, so the bathroom was (probably) busy with sailors getting up and ready to relieve the evening watch. Instead of clogging up that process I racked up and read until 0030. A cleaning crew was working in the head; they had System of a Down blasting (quietly enough not to disturb the guys in the adjacent compartments sleeping. I got my shower finally (and was only about 45 seconds slower getting in and out than another seamen — either I’m good or he was lazy).

Five hours later I’m up for breakfast at the end of the line. After breakfast I craw back into my rack to work through the second half of Dune Messiah, alternating chapters and cat-naps until, over the intercom, “this ship will be making steep angles”. At this point, I should have moved to the crew’s mess, just for the fun of it, but I hunkered down in my dark rack while we went through some extreme dive angles. Anything stowed improperly clatters and clashes around — I heard a lot of this happening in the kitchen. The drills set back lunch fifteen minutes.

I’m in the crew’s mess again, and it’s after lunch now. Dennis is flipping through something from the ships library (which fits on one shelf, it’s so small). Petty Officer Shearer and another civilian rider from Portsmouth Naval Shipyard are playing cards. A half dozen guys are talking or studying. Two are working on laptops. One has an ipod. My maglight is missing and my flip-flops stink.

The testing starts tonight, 0300.

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