A day of rest

Today was supposed to be day five in a string of shifts for me, but we had a low census. I found myself at 1:30 this afternoon with my Friday afternoon and evening suddenly wide open. Sometimes it's nice to just wander without a clear purpose. In fact, John Steinbeck wrote it best in Travels with Charley:

"In Spanish there is a word for which I can't find a counterword in English. It is the verb vacilar, present participle vacilando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere but he doesn't greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.... Let us say we wanted to walk in the streets of Mexico City but not at random. We would choose some article almost certain not to exist there and then diligently try to find it."

And so that was my state of being today. I ended up perusing the books in the library (hooray for Jodi Picoult!) and exploring some of the ship more. In the end, I got to spend some time with two of the girls I flew in with (two weeks already- wow). We headed out to join the group after dinner for ultimate frisbee. It had been a very long time since I'd played and the uneven, sandy ground both contributed to some hesitancy on second thought, but I went ahead and played. It was fun! It felt great to run around and stretch, focusing only on a piece of plastic spinning through the air and keeping my legs underneath me. Given the broad spectrum of players, I felt pretty comfortable in the mix. Dirt and sweat everywhere- always a fulfilling experience.

I spent nearly the rest of the evening with the two girls again after a quick shower. None of us was particularly motivated to do much of anything besides sit on the couch in the lounge to read, update pictures online (sorry, evidently not me), and stare vacantly at the tv. For the record, cricket is the most baffling sport. It made my brain hurt. We consumed an embarassing amount of FanMilk, Pringles, and a various assortment of processed sugar. We tried to make it look like Hannah ate it all, but I doubt anybody believed it all belonged to her.

After they drifted off to their cabins and the flow of people in the area slowed to a trickle, Hannah's husband, Tim, found his way up (she's working her last night shift for this rotation). I spent the next few hours talking with him. As a former Marine and fellow Mercy Shipper, I felt like he had a lot of helpful and relevant insight. It was a very reassuring conversation and pretty fun too!

So all in all, I'd call today a success :)