Day 66 Mar 10 (sea day)

Breakfast on Lido. Tai Chi (we're up to move 13 of 18!). Vantage group was a lecture about the Middle East and Islam. It is amazing how the Brits and to some extent the French helped to make the mess we have at present in the Middle East. The history of Islam (to the extent Chris outlined it) is also interesting. Most of us don't have any idea what brought about our current situation. It is too late to undo some or all of what was done in the past but I think there is no hope of finding solutions without understanding the history. I'm afraid not many politicians have a long enough attention span to learn the necessary facts to find a path to peace. Hopefully that will change.

Trivia vs the Crew today. The Crew got 6 right. We got 11. Unfortunately, the best group got 16 right. I'm not happy with one answer I had disqualified. The question was, "Where was the first atomic bomb exploded?" I answered Trinity Site, New Mexico. The "accepted answer" was White Sands, NM. The instructions had been to be very specific. Oh well. We still wouldn't have won. I ate with Sheila and Ron (fellow Trivia players) and then we went off to the game room and played a game of Scrabble. I'm a bit rusty and was a gracious loser. (OK, as gracious a loser as I am able to be.)

Went to my room and took a brief nap and then watched "Juno" on the tube. Then dinner and the show. We had an amazing violinist named Ian Cooper. Awesome fiddler! He played a mixture of types of music and did it all extremely well. One of the best shows so far.

I also hooked Claire on Sudoku. Our evening gifts were placed in our room while we were at dinner and I picked mine up on the way to the show. It was from Sharper Image again. This time it was the New York Times electronic Sudoku game! (I know we're getting a car on our beds in Ft. Lauderdale!) Anyway, I took mine to the show and while we waited for the show to start I taught Claire to play. She had never learned. She is now an addict. What have I done. She played into the wee hours of the morning and was nowhere to be seen much of the next day - she was sleeping in her cabin to make up for the lost sleep.

OK, GET READY FOR THIS. . . . . . . . . TONIGHT WE GAIN ....30 MINUTES!!! Don't ask me to explain it. We set our clocks back half an hour tonight. Best I can figure out is that India is too big for one time zone but wanted to all be on the same time. I guess they compromised and put the clocks halfway between the two "normal" zones for this longitude. I guess if you have more than a billion people (yes, they either already have or soon will replace China as the most populous country) you can do whatever you want with time zones.