Wait, there's more!

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about meal times! All of the officers eat in the "wardroom" for meals. Every meal time falls in about a one hour time slot, so you go down to the wardroom at some point during that hour and look in the window. If there are empty seats, you go in and sit down (there's room for about 15 people). Before you sit down, you have to ask the highest ranking person at the table "May I join you please, ______ (whatever their title is)." Then you have a little menu of things to choose from for the day (spaghetti, pizza, fish, brussel sprouts, soup, that kind of thing). You circle what you want, and then someone brings it to you. There was always something playing on the big plasma screen TV, so mostly people would watch that and make small-talk. I've heard on other ships that sometimes the atmosphere can be intense depending on the tension among the officers, but it was pretty low-key on my ship. One night we had a formal dinner where we wore ties and had filet mignon and lobster. That was very high class; no wine though! My tie might have been a little too long, however - what do you think?
All of the officer's meetings are also in the wardroom, so after meals, the table got cleaned off and became a meeting table. Unfortunately, since there wasn't much room at the table, if you didn't get there early for a meeting (or you weren't the Captain or Executive Officer or a Department Head) you ended up on the surrounding couches or standing up! Bye for now!