Lyons' last night in Chicago before leaving for his cruise contract turned into a pretty late and strange/fun night, which included jazz and drinks at the Green Mill, and then later, on the way to get 2 a.m. food, realizing we had too many people for one car... so Brady rode in the trunk.

Young, our designated driver, seems concerned about his safety, while everyone else takes pictures to post on Twitter.

From Sarah:

“In Bermuda I’m a Caribbean Detective. In Canada I’m a Wilderness Reporter. (Stick mic not pictured)”

I’m not 100% sure I “get” this one. Although, I think, since she labeled this picture, “Me with White birch press pass,” the thing sticking out of her hat is a piece of tree bark meant to look like an old timey “PRESS” badge stuck in hats in old black and white movies.

From Sarah:

"Hiking in La Baie with Andrew, Prescott, and Sean. I landed too early."

From Sarah:

"La Baie, Canada. I didn’t know that french fur trappers settled in Canada. But they did and this is one of them (or a descendant). All of these furs smell like pipe tobacco."

Sarah also posted this picture on Facebook and tagged me as the dude with the crazy beard.

From Sarah, on her new autumnal itinerary:

"Gaspé, Canada, is boring. To entertain ourselves we picked each other’s names at random, went to the dollar store and bought that person a $2 gift. This is mine. Gaspé is now fun."

It's fall.

The leaves are changing. The temperature is dropping. I pulled the A/C units out of the windows.

It's been a long summer. My summer started in January this year. I'm excited about finally having another season.

The office is looking pretty awesome, post-construction.

An anniversary gift from Sarah.

When I was leaving the ship she handed me this stack of letters she'd written to me.

Sarah: There's one for every day until I get back.

They're adorable. So far, she's tried to have each letter correspond to what might be happening that day.

Today's reads, "Football day! If I was home I'd be parked on the couch watching the Bears play the Rams. and you would probably sit with me and read because you know I like company during games."

Maybe one of the best gifts I've ever been given.

A going away party for Lyons (the one on the right, pretending to chug whiskey).

He's heading off next week on another ship contract. I don't know how many he's done, but he's done a lot. Last time he came back he vowed to never do another ship. And I think he made the same vow the time before that too.

Me: Are you looking forward to going back?
Lyons: I'm looking forward to making some money.

As for what's going on in the rest of this picture, I couldn't even begin to explain.

Boston.

Just enough time for a quick lunch before saying goodbye again for another month.

Sarah lived in Boston for a decent chunk of time during the beginning of our relationship so I still think of it as Long Distance City.

I sat at a table with some pleasant retired women from New Hampshire during the Murder Mystery. It was a bit strange to watch it from the outside.

I couldn't resist telling them, conspiratorially, "My wife is actually in this show."

I am my mother's son.

At first I was a little disappointed to be going to Bermuda again. Not that Bermuda isn't wonderful, but it would have been nice to see someplace new. Next week Sarah starts a new itinerary, sailing up the coast into Canada, which sounds fun but I couldn't make it work, scheduling-wise.

Still, riding scooters around the island again with Sarah has been a joy. She's determined to discover every road, every historic little church and abandoned bridge.

Back in Bermuda with my Baby.

I tagged along to a crew party on a small charter boat to celebrate a departing dancer or singer. I joked that we were trading a giant boat you can drink on for a smaller boat you can drink on, but this boat had one big advantage over the cruise ship (beyond the absence of cruise ship passengers): you could jump off of it into the ocean.

So we drank, climbed to the top of the boat, and jumped out into the slightly terrifying darkness.

With half the party-goers swimming in the ocean, when it was time to organize a group picture, one of the dancers yelled, "Picture time! Everybody back into the boat! Hey! Everybody! Shark! Shark! Get back in the boat!"

A belated anniversary date at sea.

Every anniversary we open a few of the red envelopes from our wedding, when we asked guests to write notes to our future selves. This round of notes mostly encouraged us to love and appreciate each other, with subtle encouragement to have kids. And one note was mostly just a drunken scrawl.

This ship is a sister ship to the one Sarah and I were on together during our contract. It is nearly identical. Kind of eerily identical.

In fact, some part of me thinks it is the same ship, only it's been recarpeted in the few months I was gone.

Reunited!

Sarah and I head back out to sea.

Packing to visit Sarah. Even with the stuff Sarah wants me to bring for her (after this week her itinerary changes to cooler climes), it really seemed like I wasn't packing enough stuff.

Then I realized, oh yeah, I'm only going for a week, I don't need anywhere near as much stuff as last time.

From Sarah:

"This huge crate marked ‘ENGINE’ made us all nervous. Except for Sean."

Happy second anniversary to us.

I left work telling everyone I had a "hot Skype date with my wife."

And it was nice. Although, here's a picture of me waiting for her to get back from a quick bathroom break.

Luckily, I'll see her in three days. I'm flying out for a week-long trip to be a guest in that cabin on the other side of the computer screen.

Continuing to try to keep pleasantly busy, I went to Pie Fest XIII over the weekend, hosted by friend and co-worker, Evan.

People bring pies in assorted categories, people vote, awards are given. Serious stuff. Lots of good pies and weird pies and occasionly good weird pies, like the tasty BBQ Brisket savory pie.

I didn't make a pie, but felt I needed to contribute something, so I brought two boxes of Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies and labeled it, "The Least I Could Do Pie." I heard later that I actually received a couple votes, none of them deserved.

From Sarah:

"The production cast (dancers and singers) on this ship are a lot of fun. Before their weekly musical revue, Band on the Run, we give them challenges. This week their first challenge was whenever they make eye contact with us they had to give a fake dance laugh. The other was that they had to make cat scratch paws while dancing. They knocked it out of the park. To the point that the cat thing seemed like some weird subplot.

"Before our sketch show Andrew and I found this wig head that looks like one of the dancers, so we took a picture with her doing our best dance laugh. She’s much better at it than us, in mannequin form and in real life."

Saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play at Wrigley Field with Meador and Nick and Nick's wife, Katie.

I'm not a die-hard fan, but I consider myself Bruce-curious, and when Nick said he had an extra ticket it seemed like something I shouldn't miss.

And I was right. Pretty mindblowing. They played for three and a half hours, non-stop, blowing through the 11pm sound curfew, bringing out special guests like Eddie Vedder and the guy from Rage Against the Machine. Normally I'd get antsy at a concert after an hour and a half, but Springsteen was such a ball of energy, jumping into the crowd, dancing with fans, grabbing signs with song requests and yelling, "yeah, we can play that one," that I rarely got bored even though I only really knew about half the songs.

Basically, I'm a convert.

Sarah ports in Boston now. On Fridays. Today she and Drennan got to have lunch with Lynn and RC who were in town for an improv festival.

From Sarah: “Lynn asked me about my cast mates and I literally was looking at her and couldn't remember them. My brain was like, ‘You're my castmate. Hurry up and eat we have to get back to the ship.’

“Also I told RC that I felt like the RC of Bermuda. He said, ‘Why because you're acting like a total asshole?’ and I said, ‘Yes… and because I know how to ride a scooter like you did and am familiar with the roads.’"

Also there for lunch were RC and Lynn’s friends Darius and Cavedon who had visited for a week during our last ship contract, and who introduced us to the terrible/wonderful game of Whiskey Slap.

Nick talked me into being in a Fantasy Football League with some friends even though I don't follow football even a little bit.

Here I am drinking and doing the live draft on-line, totally clueless about who know I should pick.

Martin: [via e-mail] "With God as my witness, Arnie will win this fucking league."

From Sarah:

"The cast went swimming at blue hole cave. It’s off the beaten path a little bit and hard to find so we were the only people there. Look what I found! Inside the box is a pad of paper and pen for people to sign and date, and maybe leave a note about where they’re from. Also there is a rubber stamp. I haven’t looked up what letterboxing is yet but it looks like it’s pretty similar to geo caching. I got excited about it so I put a note in there that I geocache and was excited to find it. I wonder if they get that a lot."

From Sarah:

"Back at the lighthouse. I’m way less scared of heights up here than I was last time. We ran around the perimeter as fast as we could. You have to try it when you visit."

The house is pretty empty.

My youngest sister, Allie, was in town this weekend for a bachelorette party. We had brunch together before she had to catch a flight back to Charlotte.

I still think of her as my little sister, but she's a fairly important business black-belt. That's not me using colorful language. She literally has a black-belt in business.

Ran into Mitchell on the bus today. "Hello," he said, waving his arms to get attention through my public transit mental blinders.

Back on the ship I'd run into him several times a day, of course. Oh, there's Mitchell in the gym. There's Mitchell in the bar.

It was nice to see him, for the length of about two city blocks, and be reminded that although the world is bigger than the ship, it's still not so big.

(I forgot to take a picture, sadly, so here's one from earlier this year, when we found a bunch of toys left in our rehearsal room.)

One more thing, heading home at the end of the night, sitting near the back of an extra long bus, I saw Mitchell again, saw him wearily get in the front doors and take a seat behind the driver. My stop was next so I didn't have a chance to say hello again, plus he looked tired. And I was tired. But I randomly saw him twice in one day, a ship amount.