Days 17 - 21 - Tuesday, 1/22/25 through Saturday, 1/25/25 - At Sea

I know, I know. I owe you almost a week's worth of updates. Guess what? I'm gonna wrap five days into one entry. We have spent the last five days at sea traveling between Los Angeles and Honolulu. As I mentioned in my Los Angeles note, by the time we got home we were pretty tired. We did not leave the cabin Tuesday. We had food delivered one time. We've sat on the balcony and watched the world go by. It was a little cool so we weren't out there long, but you get the idea. I binge watched a season of Reacher Tuesday and Wednesday. Mary sat down and actually read a non medical book. She says it's the first non medical book she's read in 20 years. It was about 470 pages, so that was a real book. She said she really enjoyed it. She's already started on the next real book. We both slept quite a bit.

I guess we just needed to recharge. The stress leading up to leaving and the pretty hectic pace we kept for the first two weeks, finally caught up with us, I guess. We realized that we were only at the beginning of this trip and that we needed to pace ourselves. Of course, we could go crazy every day, but we don't need to.

On Wednesday we only left to go get breakfast and dinner. Thursday and Friday we were a little more out and about, but we were in do-little mode. Thursday night we did go see a comedian/musician. His name is Steve Moris. He was a warm up musician for The Beach Boys for 35 years. He tried to explain it, but I took it to be like a warm up act for a headlining band. He would go out before the headliner, The Beach Boys, and try to get the audience riled up, for lack of a better term. Anyway, he was funny. He was on stage for about 45 minutes. His musical talent was pretty good. His joke telling talent was awfully funny in parts. The one I remember was 20 years ago when he and his wife just had a baby. The wife says, “You know our son is going to Notre Dame, right?” Steve says, “You know Notre Dame's gonna cost $100,000 a year. How are we gonna swing that?” The wife replies, “You better get funnier.” You may not agree, but I chuckled again writing it. After the show, we went straight home.

Friday night after dinner, they had a hypnotist. Up front I have no experience with hypnotism. I would have to say that I was skeptical at best. Of course I was not gonna say it is complete bunk, because I'm smarter than that. I'm a firm believer in anything is possible - Even things that don't sound possible. The hypnotist, Nadeen Manual, talked a little bit about hypnosis. She talked a little bit about her history. There were 10 or 12 chairs set up on the stage. She asked for volunteers to come down from the audience. They all appeared to be volunteers because they came from all parts of the audience. It's not like she picked them or anything. She worked with them for about 15 minutes getting them into a deeper sleep. After that, for about 30 minutes, she made these people do things that were just downright funny. None of it was mean or demeaning. She made one think she was a world class sandcastle builder. The hypnotist instructed the lady to go build a sandcastle. So the lady walks over to the green square and begins building a sandcastle. She then instructs the second lady to stand up and be a band leader in the green square whenever she hears this particular piece of music. A couple of seconds go by and the music comes on. The second lady walks over to the green square and starts dancing on the 1st lady’s sandcastle. They all but go at each other. Separately, she instructed one man to be Elvis every time a certain piece of music came on. That music came on and this guy thought he was Elvis. He was shaking just about everything. The guy had to be 70 or so, so tomorrow he's gonna hurt in places he didn't know existed. There was also a part where she instructed one lady to be mad at the audience every time they laughed. They made-up a new list of swear words and instructed the lady to use these swear words to try to calm the audience down. It was just crazy. Then at the end, she woke everyone up. Ending the show by discussing how hypnosis can potentially fix things like pain management, PTSD, Weight loss and cigarette smoking. I cannot believe that it is untrue. She puts these people in some sort of sleep where they are highly suggestible. It piqued my curiosity. I will have to do some more research on it. At the end of the day, true or not true, it was flipping funny.

When we went to bed Saturday night, we felt rested and ready to face the next leg of the trip. I apologize for not getting this note out sooner.