Here's the sixth installment from Southwest Airlines Customer Francisco Delgado who is currently deployed on the USS Nimitz.  The previous chapter can be accessed here.

Seventh Inning Stretch

Beep. Beep... The sound of my dreaded alarm. The snooze button and I have become really good friends, but in the end, the snooze button cannot save me from going to work. As soon as I enter my work center, I head over to our calendar, and I cannot believe it is August already. We have been out to sea 30+ straight days, and our last port visit was India. Everyone is running on empty.

This night, we advanced our clocks one hour yet again, which translates into one hour less of work for me and one hour less of sleep for our day personal.  I was eager to get through the night because the next day was "diversity day." It was a day to celebrate all of the different cultures on our ship. We have 5,000+ people on our ship, so as you can imagine, many different cultures were represented. Throughout the day, we had concerts showcasing the various cultures. We also got the chance to eat food from different cultures. Besides having the concerts, we also had basketball tournaments, volleyball tournaments, and a tug of war tournament. While all of this was going on, our ship was passing through some straits, and I headed up to the flight deck to get a better view. It was rainy and cloudy. To me that is perfect weather. Back when we were in the Middle East, there were no clouds, and rain was a distant memory.

We have a lot to accomplish before we pull back into San Diego, and we have to be reminded that we still have a job to do. It is easy to think about home when you have been out to sea for four months. Before we know it we will be back in sunny San Diego, and I will be on a LUV jet headed back home to New Mexico.