The seas have calmed nicely overnight, so this morning can be a normal morning (at least for me) with gym, breakfast and then Cabaret for lectures:

• Dr. Aleksandrs talks about Understanding Solar Eclipses which includes how the moon was formed from a violent collision of earth and the planet Thea billions of years ago; the fact that the moon has an inclined orbit which makes it unusual and makes the collision theory the only possibility; the eclipse can be seen from the space station. 
• Dr. Svetlana talks about Life in our Universe – Are we alone? The Drake Equation, that tries to determine alien existence; 100,000 million stars in Milky Way alone, a small fraction of those could have inhabitants with scientific technology – but that is still a ton of planets in our galaxy alone! And there are 100,000 million galaxies in the universe; lots of planets suitable for life; how many aliens could there possibly be?   We don’t know, but likely they are out there.

Next up: lunch and cabin time, today spent blogging to catch up on all the days I’ve missed!  Thank heaven for sea days.

Our routine is a little compressed today as we have the Loyalty party at 5 – so early gym, no after gym drinks and off to the party we go.  The line starts early – and even though this is “smart casual” the number of men in shorts amazes us.  We figured everyone would be dressed up, but no, so wrong!  Bizarre.  The top cruisers are, well top cruisers!  We know Pam and Bob are not in the top cruisers group this cruise –  and we don’t know the others but 885 days was 3^rd place, over 1,000 was 1^st place.  We are but mere pikers. 

Dinner in Discoveries – the shrimp cocktail comes in a completely different format, lovely presentation – Living Room and then cabin for a successful end to our sea day.