The Vacation Part 3: All The Rest

The bulk of our interesting adventures at Disneyland happened on Wednesday. On Thursday we went to the other park, California Adventure, which is right next door. Over there, they've taken little bits and pieces of things from various parts of California and worked them into a nice theme park. They've also incorporated a lot of the Disney characters so you definitely get the Disney experience.

Thursday was the day for CC to ride all the BIG rides (and for me to watch her do it). Right from the start we headed over to the big roller coaster. Unfortunately it was closed for maintenance at the time so we went over to this other ride where you sit, strapped into your seat, and it just sort of shoots you straight up. You'll get to see video of all this on CC's site. I filmed it all.

Then we wandered over to Grizzly River Run, which is your usual river rapids type ride. Those are SO much fun. The whole area is done up like Norther California, up in the mountains. Sort of gold rush period. They have a band called the Miner 49'ers and CC (along with several other park patrons) got to join in and play washboard for a bit. We have video of that too, you betcha :-)

Naturally we there were more stops to take pictures with Disney characters. This time though, they weren't ALL good guys.

Our next stop was the Aladdin show. Over in the Hollywood part of the park, they have a theater that runs a live-action, Broadway-style show based on Aladdin. I was expecting something a bit corny, a short version of the cartoon maybe, nothing major. DAMN was I wrong. They seriously went all out on this thing with LOTS of special effects and a WHOLE lot of jokes thrown in for the parents. The guy playing the genie was GREAT! I wasn't overly fond of the Robin Williams one in the cartoon because he has a habit of over-doing everything. This guy was more like a toned down Jim Carrey instead. DAMN funny and he had GREAT timing.

From there, it was over to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. This one is sort of the opposite of the ride CC went on first. Instead of shooting you up, this one DROPS you. There's an elaborate set-up about with some videos as you walk through it and get into a HUGE elevator. That elevator then takes you up to the drop point and WHOOSH! What's cool about it is that the drops are random. It drops you several times, down, then back up again, then down some more. Those are generated by the computer. It randomly determines how far down, how far back up, so the ride is different every time.

By this time, the roller coaster was running again so CC got on that. Great video there of her being launched, by the way. That's one advantage of me not being able to ride these things. I can camp out along the way and get some good shots :-)

Back to Disneyland for some shopping. We'd pretty much saved our shopping for day 2 so we wouldn't have to carry everything around. It also gave us time to figure out what we'd be buying and it allowed us to check out the California Adventures park to see if they had anything better.

Friday we had more visits with family planned and a trip to Hollywood. Hollywood is a very weird place. It's pretty much exactly as it looks on TV, right down to the very strange characters roaming around dressed like famous people. That's right, you to can have your picture taken with any number of celebrity impersonators. A huge gathering point for them is Grumman's Chinese Theater. MAJOR stop on any LA tour.

Of course the place was packed with people taking pictures of the handprints of famous actors. We took quite a few ourselves in fact. It's great fun to look at. Some of them had such small hands and feet! Bette Davis, for example, her feet are so TINY!

That's pretty much how we ended our vacation. After spending some time in Hollywood, we went out to dinner with CC's aunt then drove back to their house (we spent the night there).

If this last entry seems a bit rushed, well I guess it was a bit. I've still got some things left to do before I head back to work tomorrow and who knows when I'll be able to get back to the blog entry. I wanted to put in as much as I could while the memories are still fresh.

Speaking of which, I hope you enjoyed our little trip because I'm sure you'll be hearing about it for quite a while. We had so much fun and there are so many little stories to tell that there's no way to fit them all in just a few blog entries. I'm sure something will happen along the way and we'll suddenly remember something that happened on our trip. Hope we don't bore you too much :-)

Just one more blog entry to follow I think. I'm putting together a few slide shows so you can see the shots that DIDN'T make it into the blog entries. Enjoy!

The Vacation Part 2: Disneyland

According to my wife, a visit to Disneyland is every American's birthright. Now, I don't recall anything about Disneyland being in the Constitution, so I'm not so sure it's actually a RIGHT. I can say that it's one place everyone should go to at least once, no matter how old you are. Unless, of course, you can't check your adulthood at the door. That's the one big rule for Disneyland, you check your coolness at the door. In fact there's a sign right past the gate that says pretty much that exact same thing. And you know what? Most people follow that simple rule. I can't tell you how many people I saw wandering the park, big guys with tattoos and NASCAR t-shirts, goth girls with multiple piercings, people from all over the planet, all wearing Mickey ears or Jack Sparrow hair. Disneyland SO rocks!

First thing that happens to us, as we hit the park, I lose my wife to a dog. We stopped at City Hall (which is where guest services is housed) to pick up a little device that would close caption the rides. We're crossing the center of the little plaza at the end of Main Street, looking at our maps trying to figure out where to go first when suddenly I hear, "OH MY GOD!" and VOOM! My wife is gone. I didn't even see where she'd rushed off to at first but after a cursory scan of the area it was pretty obvious. Yes, that's right, Pluto was making the rounds and she dropped everything to go get a picture. I caught up to her just as she was getting to the front of the crowd he had drawn.

What CC REALLY wanted to see, more than anything else, was the Haunted Mansion. We'd seen it on TV on one of the travel shows. They did a special about all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes and the special effects were really cool. Me, I wanted to take things a little slow, work our way up Main Street, look in the shops, that sort of thing, but it got pretty obvious pretty early that CC wanted to do the Haunted Mansion NOW :-) We plotted the fastest way to get there and off we went.

Now, the whole park is done up for Halloween and that means a lot of the rides are also done up for Halloween. The Haunted Mansion, for example, had been redone in a Nightmare Before Christmas theme. This made things kinda funny because instead of being dressed up as a haunted mansion, it's dressed up in a sort of mixed up Christmas-Halloween. All the characters from the movie were there, of course, and they even re-recorded the audio to match (which made the captions pretty useless but also interesting in that I sort of got both versions).

From there, since we were in the general area, we hit the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which was pretty cool. They've redone that one a little bit as well to match the movie. They've put in several animatronic Johnny Depps and they've got a pretty cool Davey Jones in there projected onto a wall of fog that you pass through. WAY cool ride.

Now, one joke that we kept making, and probably shouldn't was the New Orleans joke. See, they have one area set up like New Orleans. That's where Pirates and the Haunted Mansion are, along with lots of little shops and places to eat. We kept joking that at certain times of the day, the protective dikes that hold the water in the main pool will break to give you that REALLY authentic New Orleans experience. Yes, I know, bad taste but we couldn't help it. Besides, we didn't say it loud enough for anyone to HEAR us :-)

The rest of our first day at Disneyland was a mix of character photo shoots and CC on roller coasters. Me, I don't go on them anymore because after the surgery to correct my hearing, I'm WAY more prone to motion sickness and vertigo from the more extreme rides. But that didn't keep me from filming CC while she went on them. She's got the video on her hard drive and will post it later, I'm sure.

Towards the end of day 1, we made our way over to Tomorrow land just in time to catch something on the schedule called Jedi Training Academy. Now, I was a bit skeptical at first, but I thought it might be kinda fun to see what they do. Little did I know that it would turn out to be a MAJOR highlight of our day.

CC has the video on her site so make sure you go over there and check it out. There's a little stage there and the kids all gather around that. The music comes up and the Jedi come out. They ask for volunteers and you should SEE the kids go nuts, jumping up and down for this one. The kids that get picked come forward and are given a Jedi robe and training light saber to use then they're taught a series of moves as part of their Jedi training. At that point stormtroopers come in! Then Darth Vader! Then Darth Maul! Ok now we've got a problem. Jedi to the rescue!

The kids line up and take turns going through their newly learned Jedi moves, fighting either Darth Vader or Darth Maul depending on where they're lined up. Oh it's a REAL hoot. Imagine, you've got your 3 foot tall kid holding a little plastic light saber standing in front of 6 foot something Darth Vader. All the while the head Jedi is making some REALLY funny remarks. We know these are funny because at one point he uses the Jedi Mind Trick to tell us that we'll find all his jokes funny.

Let me tell you, if I was still a kid, I'd be right down there in front jumping up and down with the rest of them. That looked like SO much fun. And, in the end, you get a little certificate saying you've been to the Jedi Training Academy! How cool is THAT!

At that point, CC and I were both dragging a bit. We went through an exhibit on high tech things that either will be coming out or are already out. They had all sorts of little displays, like one where you stand on a scale and it tells you how much you'd weigh on every planet in the solar system. That was pretty cool. That's where we got the shots of us in the space suits. Everyone in front of us was doing it all BORING so we spiced things up a bit. Here's me playing the role of the guy who makes the really awesome discovery right before he gets ripped apart by aliens or blown up in an explosion or something. You know this guy. In the movie he's usually the guy who fixes everything and has his hat on backwards.

We wandered around the shops for the rest of the day and watched the parade that night. Then we joined the throngs of people heading for the parking garage. There's WAY too much to do at Disney to cover the whole park in just one day, which is why we set aside TWO days for our visit :-)

The Vacation Part 1: The Arrival

It all started with me being out of uniform. What's that you say? You didn't know there was a uniform for vacation travel? Oh yes, especially when you travel during the week, first flight out of the day. You see, that's when most of your business travelers are out and about and there is a specific male uniform that you wear. Starting at the bottom, brown or black shoes to go with khaki pants (gray pants are acceptable if they are light gray). Moving along you should wear a blue shirt, freshly ironed. Color blue is the choice of the wearer. Over the shirt, dark blue sports coat. Yellow tie optional. I forgot to wear my sports coat.

It was a pretty amazing sight there at the airport that morning. There must have been hundreds of them, all walking around with their carry-ons and brief cases. They all matched. Most of them carried a styrofoam cup of coffee and had the Wall Street Journal tucked under one arm. Those in lower management had USA Today under their arm. Salesmen had either Sports Illustrated or a copy of the local paper.

We boarded the plane and crawled into our seats. Coach. Oh yes, how fondly I remember coach from my last flight. You know, the seat on the plane in coach is actually smaller than the seats in the waiting area at the gate. The ones in the waiting area probably recline further too.

Nothing eventful happened to us though. There was a pug in the row behind us. Never heard a peep out of it. We spent the 4 hours just reading and dozing and playing video games. At one point CC borrowed my PDA to listen to some music but that's it.

And so we reached LA. Exiting the gate in LA is quite a bit like walking into a shopping mall. Apparently that's how they've chosen to decorate the airport there, at least at the level where the gates are. Must make people feel more comfortable before they fly. It's just another trip to the mall, no big deal.

Anyway, out of the gate, through the airport to grab our one suitcase and out to wait for the shuttle. Our rental car agency operates out of the Radisson hotel by the airport so we hopped the shuttle to the hotel and picked up our car. That's it right there, a PT Cruiser with the touring package. I have no idea what's included in the touring package but I do know that it was pretty comfortable and got great gas mileage. Over the course of our whole vacation we only used up 3/4 of a tank.

We arrived pretty early in the day so we had quite a bit of time to kill before anyone expected us. Tuesday night we were staying with CC's grand aunt Lola Baby somewhere in the suburbs but we weren't expected until later. So what to do with the free time? First we had lunch. Our flight didn't offer lunch to those of us stuck in cattle class. Best we could do was a snack box for a few bucks. So we drove around the airport area until we came across a Boston Market and had lunch.

We then decided that since I hadn't seen the beach from the ground in YEARS, we'd drive towards the ocean and see if we could find our way to the beach. At the time, our GPS had yet to figure out just where we were so we did all this by map. Not bad when you consider that I've never been to LA before and CC hadn't driven there.

Anyway, we found ourselves at Venice Beach. You've seen it on TV, it's a notoriously weird place that's supposed to be filled with all sorts of colorful characters, assorted beach bunnies, muscle men, etc.

I can say for certain that it was filled with colorful characters. Granted there weren't as many of them as you see on TV but I took that to be because we arrived early and on a Tuesday. And while we did see a few surfers out there, the place was pretty much free of beach bunnies and muscle men. I guess they import them for special occasions or something. Or maybe they're only available on the weekends.

All that aside, it was a very nice beach and we enjoyed walking in the surf and feeling the sand between our toes. At one point I wandered out a little TOO far though and the water went a LITTLE deeper than I had planned. Not that it really mattered. By the time we got back to the car I was pretty much dry anyway. We were hoping to make it back later in the week but we just ran out of time. No big deal though. I'm sure Venice Beach will be around a while.

Then we hit the highway. You know how they always show scenes of LA traffic on TV? You know how it's always REALLY bad? You know what? They aren't just doing that for TV. LA traffic is HORRIBLE. We left the beach early, around 2 or so and by 2:30 we were stuck in traffic. On the plus side, I have to hand it to them, traffic was actually MOVING but still, it's been a LONG time since I had to share the road with that many other people.

About an hour or so later we managed to reach the suburbs and get to where we were staying. It was a great house up in the hills. Pool, hot tub, you name it, they had it. Not that we had time for any of that of course. It was very nice of them to let us stay though and it did save us a bit on hotel expenses and food and so forth. And given the prices of everything along the way, trust me, any time you can cut costs on a vacation like this it's good :-)

I noticed something kinda funny though during our stay. You know that show J.A.G.? It used to run on CBS a while back and now they show it on USA in the mornings. Well, apparently that show is in CC's blood because her family out there in LA watches it too. I figure given the different personalities, taste in TV and movies, different locations, it HAS to be something in the blood :-)

After dinner and chatting it was off to bed for us. We'd had a busy day and another busy day was in store for us. Tuesday we arrived in LA but Wednesday we were going to Disneyland!

Fall Decorating

Currently Reading: God Emperor Dune by Frank Herbert

As noted in last week's blog, it's fall and we are BIG fans of fall. One thing that's sort of new to me is fall decorating though. Growing up, we didn't really do much seasonal decorating. Yes, we did decorate for Christmas and maybe a little in the spring but mostly our decorating corresponded to spring cleaning or the purchase of new furniture.

CC, on the other hand, really likes to change the decorations around to match the seasons. In spring, she'll break out all the colorful flowers and moving into summer, she'll change the colors or patterns. Now we're into fall which means everything changes to reds and oranges and yellows and browns. Last year we spent a HUGE amount at the craft store buying decorations (it was our first year of real fall decorating) so this year we didn't need to spend quite as much. This year we really just added to what we already had. One benefit about decorating for fall is that you don't really need a color scheme. The colors have already been picked out for you so unlike Christmas, you can reuse everything year after year with no problems (my wife likes to be color coordinated for Christmas with each year having its own colors).

The 17th was our third anniversary and one of our anniversary gifts was a lovely kimono print, framed and ready for hanging. I wasn't sure where we were going to put it at first but CC pretty much knew right where it should go: the entrance hall. Of course, having it hanging right there looked a little too plain. Too much open space. So we had to buy something else to put in the hall WITH it. While we were out grocery shopping Monday evening, we came across some shelves. CC had already spent a decent amount of time online looking at hall tables and things like that with no luck. These shelves, however, seemed to be a good fit. They're simple, they're open, they don't take up much space, and the colors match. Even better, she can put anything she wants on them, swap things around, change things to fit the season. The only problem I have with this plan as a whole is what to do with our shoes. See, that entrance hall, right where those shelves now are, that's where we used to keep our shoe rack. Ok mostly it held MY shoes. CC has too many pair and they're hanging from a huge rack in the bedroom. Point is, now I gotta find a convenient place to put my shoes :-)

We get asked, quite often, what we did for our anniversary. Did we have plans? Did we go out? Did we do anything special? The answer to all that is, not really. You see, our anniversary fell on a Monday and I had to work that Monday. Worse, my boss has HER anniversary on the 16th so she was taking a 3-day weekend to celebrate. So, not only did I not get Monday off, I had to work Tuesday as well. CC and I don't mind that, of course, because we're doing our REAL celebrating next week when we travel to California for a 5-day vacation :-) Anyway, we DID manage to do a few things, sort of a mini-celebration I guess you'd call it. Sunday we went out and got decorations for fall, as I've been mentioning and as you can see in the pictures. It's been a bit slow in the salon so I was able to leave at 3. I picked up CC and we went out and did the shopping. We also managed to eat out between stops.

Monday, again, more work for me and for CC of course. And grocery shopping after that. And, naturally, more decorating. So, I guess you could say that we sort of celebrated our anniversary and the coming of fall at the same time. We hung decorations (ok it was mostly CC) and we set up the little displays that you see in all these pictures. The apartment looks and smells like fall and it's very relaxing. Just remember, we're doing all of this in addition to that California trip so you could say we're doing WAY more than most people would :-)

Speaking of which, the CA trip next week is going to include a trip to Disneyland! I think I've mentioned that before but it's worth repeating. I'm going to Disneyland! It's the sort of thing that makes people at work a bit jealous, especially my boss. You see, CC and I tend to take really good vacations. We pretty much always have fun and we don't usually spend a lot of money doing it. When we went to Nashville, for example, we had a great time, came back with lots of stories and pictures and it was a whole lot better than what other people did with their vacation. We've been setting the bar a little higher each time I guess you'd say. WELL, now we're going to California, hot on the heels of my boss taking a mini-vacation herself. Right now we have NO idea where that is but hopefully she had a LOT of fun and came back to work thoroughly relaxed and re-energized.

I was reading an editorial by Cal Thomas on Monday and in it he was lamenting the results of the latest quiz on American history and civics. A group called the Intercollegiate Studies Institute has released this year's Civic Literacy Report which is based on a test taken by American college freshmen and seniors (you can take it by clicking here). The teaching of history, government and economics leaves quite a bit to be desired in this country, especially at the college level. Going to a "better" school didn't help. In fact, chances are it actually HURT your score. I guess they're not really teaching much up there in those fancy, Ivy League schools. Even worse, in the case of Cornell University, the seniors scored LOWER than the freshmen which would suggest that not only did students NOT learn much history and government, they actually FORGOT what little they knew in the first place.

Now, I will grant you that I'm not what you'd call a big history buff, at least not American history and I will further grant you that I fell asleep a LOT in my history classes, government classes and economics classes. I will go further still and grant that economics and government not only make my eyes glaze over, but are almost completely incomprehensible to me. Given all of that, I STILL managed to score 80% on the test and that's 15 years out of college. CC, who's never had an American history class EVER scored 55%, placing her smack in the middle of the list.

Head on over to the website and check out the findings as a whole. It's pretty interesting stuff.

Now, for those of you who have been living in a cave for the past month or were otherwise far, far away from a television set, let's review the latest Britney Spears meltdown. This one came as the opening act of the Video Music Awards which themselves are growing pretty irrelevant these days.

Notice the glassy-eyed stare, the sort of stumbling walk and the complete lack of caring in execution of those "dance moves." I'm not sure if she's stoned out of her mind or just scared stupid because she knows she can't dance anymore.

I mention this because of a video I saw on the E! show The Soup. This is a clip posted on You Tube by a guy named Chris Crocker.

Talk about having a meltdown. He's having a MAJOR hissy fit over all of this. It's the sort of thing I could understand and be more sympathetic to if it was about someone with some real talent but come on, this is Britney Spears we're talking about. She's a marginal singer at best and is mostly famous for being well-marketed and being extremely rich white trash. She's not worth it.

Naturally the Internet couldn't just let something like that go unanswered. Let's face it, there are LOTS of guys out there with little better to do than post things on You Tube. The response to Crocker's fit was fast and furious and DAMN funny. One of the best comes from Seth Green. If you don't know the name you know the face and/or voice for certain. He's been in several TV shows and movies and does the voice of Chris Griffin on Family Guy. Here's his video:


And that's just ONE response to the Crocker video. To quote Ghost in the Shell, "The net is vast and endless." And, I might add, filled with smart asses. :-)

Fall Classic

Currently Reading: God Emperor Dune by Frank Herbert

Ok, I'm right back where I started with my reading list, at least where the Dune chronicles is concerned. I know, not much of a big announcement right? Just warming up, that's all. You'll have to cut me a little slack.

You see, as September starts to slip away, we're entering one of my favorite times of year: fall. Why fall? Well, the colors for one. I mean, how can you go wrong with all the great orange and red trees all over the place. Yes, there are lots of falling leaves and those leaves will have to be raked up. But not by me, which is another part of the attraction I suppose. Besides that, unlike the spring flowers which color my OTHER favorite season, the fall leaves do NOT leave me sneezing and coughing and wishing I was indoors.

And let's talk sports too because that's another big part of the season. You've got football for real now. The teams are starting to get their acts together, they're playing more like teams, they're not screwing up nearly as much as they were in pre-season. Of course, the games actually count now too, I've mentioned that in a previous blog. You've also got a HUGE array of weather to play football in this time of year. Out on the west coast and in the south, it's still warm if not downright HOT. On the sidelines you'll see those misting machines to cool down players between downs. But up north and back east, well the temperature is slowly dropping and pretty soon, during those night games especially, you'll start seeing long sleeve shirts, the sweatshirts, then jackets and coats and finally, my favorite, snow :-) Oh sure it's too early for snow right NOW, we probably won't start seeing that until November but we're close. You can feel it right around the corner. Just a little nip in the air, maybe a brisk wind from time to time. It's out there.

The baseball season is winding down now as well and the fall classic will start up in October. Looking at the standings, we'll probably see quite a few of the usual suspects in the playoffs. Who knows, we might even see another Yankees vs Red Sox series and those are always great. They're gearing up for one now in fact. Unfortunately it'll be played over the weekend and I'll be working so I doubt I'll get to see any of it. That's another thing I like about the playoffs. To maximize television exposure, they play most of their games at night when I'm off so I'll get to see them. Yes, I know, all you non-fans out there will complain about having to wait a little later for the new episodes of your favorite FOX shows and I can understand that. Just remember, this only happens once a year and hey, overall it means fewer repeats down the line right?

And let's not forget one of the HUGE attractions this time of year: fall temperatures! FINALLY we can shut off the air conditioners and open up the windows. Let the apartment air out a bit so it's not so stuffy. We can go out and enjoy our balcony and our lounge chairs out there and just watch things go by out in the parking lot. Dangerous to do that this time of year though, if you're prone to naps that is. You might just end up sleeping half the day away. I know I've felt like that the past few days.

September also means we've got to finish up the paperwork for the INS. I sent out an e-mail to a lot of people (most of whom read this blog anyway so you already know about it) asking them to write up a little letter telling the INS that yes, CC and I are still married and aren't faking it. It's all part of making sure you don't have people getting married JUST for the green card like they used to in the old days. Now you get a conditional green card for a few years then you can apply to have that condition removed. That's what we're doing now. Next step after that is citizenship for CC if she wants it. She says she's going to go for it but I told her she doesn't have to. It's not like we force it on anyone. I guess she really wants to vote. She's already been called for jury duty so she probably already feels like one of us (no, she didn't have to serve on a jury; she's not qualified under the rules due to her not being a citizen).

We're going to California in a few weeks too, that's sort of our anniversary present to each other. We're taking a nice short vacation and visiting some of her relatives in L.A. We're also going to DISNEYLAND! I could only get 5 days off though. Yes, we'd prefer a longer vacation but the salon can't afford for me to miss more than 5 days. It's just not possible. On the plus side though, it's probably better for us financially to only stay the 5 days. The longer we stay, the more money we spend, the less we have for the holidays and you know the holiday season gets more expensive every year.

I think I'm going to go outside and enjoy that fall weather for a little bit. Maybe have a nap on the balcony while I'm at it. This season only comes once a year you know :-)