Well the trip to Orlando / Kennedy Space Center was here and gone in the blink of an eye. In retrospect we should have probably allocated another day or two up there. It was too fast.
On Saturday I was a busy bee knocking out my long list of mostly short chores to prepare for us being gone for 3 days. I cleaned, swept, washed and picked up for a good portion of the afternoon. Ali had a luncheon/Pampered Chef thing going on and then went into work for a few hours afterward.
Late in the day I decided to watch Transporter 2. I saw Transporter 1 and enjoyed it for the most part. The original was very good except for the few times in the movie where it stepped so far away from the reality that it was ridiculous. To me, the character in the movie is good enough that it doesn’t need the unbelievable scenes, just kick ass and it would be fine. The hero in Transporter is an ex-military guy. His thing is he never kills people with guns, he always uses his hands or something he gets his hands on.
Well transporter 2 was very much like 1, an entertaining movie with a few scenes that were so crazy you just had to laugh. Let me describe them. The Transporter is racing through the city, trying to get away from the cops. The scene is great with action galore. Then for some reason he decides to “escape” by going up into a parking garage. In the car is a little boy he is sworn to protect and a female villain that has a gun to his head. he gets to the top of the parking garage, followed by a swarm of police cars. Not so smart eh? Wrong! the Transporter had this planned all along. He points his indestructible Audi at a wall, plows through it and sails through the air into another building that just happens to be under construction next door. He manages to calculate his speed and angle of entry just perfectly enough that the Audi slides through an area of the building that has no exterior walls yet. The car slides to a stop, inches from falling out the other side. The next moment he is back out on the street with the car with no explanation of how you got a car down from the 10th story of a building.
The next scene the Transporter once again is in dire straights. The bad guy has planted a bomb on the bottom of his car which is stuck there with a magnet. Transporter sees the bomb but is forced at gunpoint to get in the car and drive away. The bad guy wants to get good and clear before blowing up our buddy. So in the few seconds in between, the transporter rips out of the hangar and somehow spots a ramp. Above the ramp is a construction crane. He hits the ramp in such a way that the car does a 360. At exactly 180 degrees into it, the bottom of the car scrapes the arm of the crane, scraping the explosive device off just split seconds before it is blown by the villain. The car completes the 360 and lands in one piece, no worse for wear. Hahaha.
The final comedy scene occurs when the Transporter finds himself circled by no less than 10 guys, all armed with axes, swords and other blunt weapons. All the Transporter has to defend himself with is a fire hose. He manages to turn a fire hose into the deadliest weapon ever and knocks out an entire football team of bad guys with ease. It was so damn funny.
The movie moves along quickly which is a good thing, winding up in less than an 1:25. It was entertaining, even with the periods of lunacy thrown in. B-
We told Mom we would pick her up on Sunday morning between 9 and 10. We said goodbye to a dejected, moping dog and got to Mom’s a little after 9:30. Ali had made the suggestion on Saturday that on the way up we stop at outlets that are way up on 75, shortly before it intersects with 4. We have driven by these many times but never stopped. When Ali originally suggested it, I laughed it off. However I told her on Sunday that if she wanted to stop, it was fine, it is Mother’s Day after all. So we left it up to Mom and she is never one to turn down shopping so we stopped about halfway into our journey at the outlets.
The drive so far was fine. The Camry is very comfortable to drive in. I spent time on Saturday getting it nice and clean for the trip both inside and out. Well that was a waste of time. We are in prime love bug season. Love bugs are these decent size black bugs that are EVERYWHERE this time of year. They seem to especially like migrating in front of the front ends of cars speeding down the highway. The front end of the Camry looked like it took a direct hit from a huge bug bomb, it was nasty.
These outlets reminded me of the Miromar outlets which are close to home, just a slightly less fancy, older version. I am not a shopper, I can’t tell you the last time I walked stores and bought myself clothes. However, I was determined to be a good sport. Again, it was Mother’s day and Ali and my mom like this stuff so I was ok with participating. Mom scored some shoes early on, Ali looked at a lot of stuff but hadn’t bought anything. Then a weird thing happened, I actually bought stuff for me. I got two pairs of shoes to replace the cheap, Payless shoes I have been wearing since I moved to Florida six years ago. Who knew you could wring so much use out of shoes that cost less then 20 bucks? Then I got some shirts as well and then topped it off by getting yet another Eagles hat, a cool one with elastic headband and embroidered logo. I definitely could use some new footwear and duds, it’s just weird that I actually got them. The ironic part was here I was shopping up a storm and Ali bought nothing. As we left she went into the one store and bought a blouse she liked so it wasn’t a total washout. We piled back in the bug mobile and hit the highway again.
We made good time for the trip, probably averaging between 70 and 80mph. We had the GPS set up which constantly amazed mom with it’s ability to accurately guide us time and time again. Our stop at the outlets took up enough time so we arrived at the timeshare about 20 minutes before the official 4 pm check in time. We checked in and headed to our 2 bedroom unit.
Mom was impressed with the timeshare. She may not have been quite as impressed if we went with our original plan which was to get the 1 bedroom unit with pull out queen bed. We planned to sleep in the queen while my mom would get the real bed which surely would have lead to conflict. But we decided at the last minute to pay extra money for a two bedroom unit, which worked out much better. The unit had a nice view of the lake, was spacious and clean. I took the luggage cart down and loaded all of our junk on it and brought it back up to the room. As I looked at the bug coated front end of the car again I just shook my head.
Shortly after getting the bags inside and situated mom was starting to get hungry so we were right back out the door. We went to Downtown Disney. I had the idea of going to the Rainforest Cafe, a chain that has an inside that looks like a jungle, complete with fish tanks, wild animals and thunderstorms every 20 minutes. The restaurant was on the far side of downtown Disney so I had plenty of time to people watch and there was plenty to see. Visiting Disney parks does a few things to me. First, as I have mentioned numerous times before, it makes me feel small and insignificant when I see endless waves of humanity everywhere your eye looks. It’s moments like this that reassure my feeling that the world is just bursting at the seems with the parasites we know as human beings. Second, at Disney I am in a very small minority. I am one of the very few that does not have a mountain of flesh spilling over their belt line for all the world to see. The massive display of human gluttony was on parade everywhere you looked. Fat ass after fat ass waddled slowly around the stores and restaurants.
Even though we were there early, shortly after 5, we still had an hour wait until we would be seated. I stood guard listening for our name to be called while mom and Ali walked around looking at the shops in the near by vicinity. They came back and we waited the rest of the time sitting on a nearby brick wall where I could continue my scientific study of the state of human beings. Finally our names are called and we get seated.
Even though the place is a visual and audible bonanza, I realized once we sat down it may have not been the best choice for a mother’s day dinner. It was so loud at times that you could hardly hear what was being said across the table. The one bonus was our table was right next to one of the fish tanks which provided me a large amount of entertainment throughout the meal, watching the tropical fish mull about.
Our waiter identified himself as Jorge’ even though his name tag read “Jawad” I would have asked him why their was a discrepancy but didn’t care enough to pursue it. He was nice enough. He took our order, brought our drinks and then we just hung out waiting for the food. A lot of the time was spent just looking and listening to all the stuff going on. It certainly was far from a relaxing atmosphere, it was more frantic than anything.
Our food showed up and we dug in. Mom got some sort of fish thing that she said was quite good. It was good enough that she cut off a piece and plopped it on my plate to try. I tried the first piece and it was good enough. It was breaded in something that was tasty. I snagged what was left. As I looked at it, it looked like it was a tail but for some reason, that visual did not stop me from putting it in my mouth. Within a split second I realized that tails of fish, even if they are breaded, are not meant to be eaten. My mouth was full of tiny fish bones. Now I had a dilemma. I have a mouth full of bones but I don’t want to be a redneck and spit the entire thing out on the plate. Instead I am trying the best I can to weed through the mess in my mouth and pull out the bones without making much of a scene. I am sure I looked ridiculous. It was a mess. I bet I was pulling bones from my mouth for 5 minutes. My mom apologized but it wasn’t her fault, it was mine for ignoring what my eyes told me. Finally I got most of it out of my mouth but I am sure I swallowed a few. After that, I was quite happy to just stick to my pasta dish.
Other than the bone incident, everyone enjoyed their food enough although it certainly wasn’t spectacular. On top of it being very loud in the restaurant, it was very cold as well. It felt good to get back outside into the warm evening air. We didn’t really see much more of DD except what we walked by, we found our car and headed home. On the way out I decided to stop at the gas station on Disney property. For whatever reason, it was the cheapest gas I had seen by far, more than 20 cents a gallon cheaper than back home. I filled up and then had the brilliant idea to run it through the car wash to blast all the damn bugs off the car. I paid my extra 7 bucks, went through the wash and then pulled off to the side to verify that the bugs had been vanquished, I was annoyed to see they had not. The splatter from them had been cleaned off but the lions share of their carcasses were still glued to the front end. I walked over to the pumps and grabbed some paper towels and scraped off what I could. Damn bugs.
On the way back we stopped at Publix to pick up a few things. Even though it was Sunday evening, what I would assume is not a busy time, the place was SWAMPED. I waited in a line 10 deep to pay for our few items, sheesh. While we were paying for our stuff, Ali was getting very annoyed with the child of some hispanic family behind us. The parents were oblivious as the child was picking up candy and throwing it on the floor and then running up behind an unmanned register and pressing every button and throwing every switch he could reach. Ali made several loud comments which either the parents ignored or didn’t understand, great parents.
By the time we got back it was shortly before 9. Mom and Ali were tired, Ali especially. After she watched Desperate Housewives, she collapsed into bed, dead to the world. We had a busy day planned the next day so I fell asleep relatively early as well.
I woke up without Nicki encouraging me to do so at 5:30 am but then was able to go back to sleep until about 7:15, a late morning for me. We talked about leaving around 9. I had some time to kill so after I ate my pop tarts I decided to go out to the fitness trail and do a mini 300’ish workout. Before I went out my mom and I spotted a huge hawk that was hanging out on the pull up bars for a long time.
The fitness trail was a simple path that was covered mostly in red mulch. It looked like it hadn’t been weeded in quite awhile. Stationed around it were fitness stations although there were no instructions on what exactly was supposed to be done at each station. There were conventional pull up bars and a bench looking thing but after that it was up to your imagination. So I walked a lap around the track as a warm up and then hit the pull ups, I only knocked out 13 as a result of doing it so early in the morning and doing it on a very high bar that allowed my body to swing back and forth as I was pulling which used up extra energy to control. Then I went to the bench thing and did 25 step ups with each leg. These still did not feel good on my left knee. Then I walked down to what looked like a balance beam and dropped down and did 50 push ups on it. Then I walked some more and came to a weird looking station that had 4 small platforms at different heights. I got up on the first one and then went up and down the set 8 times. It wasn’t physically tiring but worked your balance to the max. Then I reversed direction and went back to the bench, this time to do ab raises similar to the wipers I do in the gym. Doing this on a piece of wood did not feel good at all. I had to go slower than normal to minimize the abuse my back would take. After that I went to a station that had two low sets of bars and did lateral step overs. Then one more set of pull ups and a set of push ups, this time on the low bars, and I was done. The intensity didn’t match one of my gym workouts but it was tough enough that I felt worked. Ali originally talked about running the trail but got up too late.
So I quickly showered and we left the timeshare a little later than I planned, maybe 9:20. The drive over to the space center went smoothly although the clouds looked increasingly foreboding as we got closer. The forecast called for a 40% chance of showers. The parking lot wasn’t very full which was a good thing in my eyes. We walked in after turning in our vouchers for tickets and then had to go through airport type screening. We went through metal detectors and then had to go to another security guard that made you turn on your cellphone and hit a key. She also had me turn on my digital camera and show her a real time image on it. I managed to clear security.
We had a map of the facility, there was a lot to do. The first thing I wanted to do however was grab a cup of coffee. As we walked over towards the snack stand outside, a woman that we just passed from there screamed. We spun around to see her muffin thing on the ground. One of the crows swooped in and tried to steal the food right out of her hand. Evidently the birds in the area are very brazen according to the clerk behind the counter.
I got my small little cup of coffee and internally gasped a bit at the $2.25 price tag. It was a good indication of how food prices were there as I would find out later. At first I had the idea to walk around the area first and then take the bus tour to the other areas later. Mom had the idea to do the buses first before it gets too crowded which was a good idea.
So we followed a crowd of people that lead us to the bus loading area. It had started raining lightly shortly after we arrived, yea. The buses were very nice, they were “kneeling” buses. They have the ability to drop their front end down when loading and unloading people to make it easier for them. The first leg of our trip took us to an observation area that was all about the space shuttle. After we arrived we watched a short film about the shuttle and then got to see various exhibits about it. Then we walked outside and climbed an observation deck that was 4 stories high. In the middle of it was a shuttle engine which was impressive as hell to look at. From the deck you could see the various launching pads as well as the big building where they put the shuttle together with the fuel tank and booster rockets. The rain was now coming down pretty hard and made the visibility pretty bad unfortunately. This area was right next to the river rock filled “road” that the crawler uses to take the shuttle out to the launching pad. We were a bit bummed out to find out that the next day they were planning to roll the shuttle out to the launch pad (where it sits for 30 days prior to launch) that would have been really cool to see.
We grabbed a big soft pretzel and split it between us before we moved to the next leg of the bus trip. As we sat there, once again the evil birds were only feet away, ready to pounce. The one crow actually flew over and plopped himself on our table briefly before mom shooed him away.
The next stop was the Apollo / Saturn center which was all about the Apollo missions and Saturn rockets that took man to the moon. Of the three stops on the tour, this was my favorite.
After another brief video upon arrival, we moved into a big room. It was the original control room for the Apollo missions. They turned it into a huge interactive presentation with three big video screens and all of the equipment apparently still in working order. They simulate the countdown and launch of the Saturn rocket. All of the equipment in the room realistically counting down perfectly timed with the video and sound that filled the room. It was awesome. When the rocket took off the sound vibrated the ceiling above us. It really felt like you were standing there back in the 60’s when it all happened.
After that we exited out into the main hallway where you are smacked in the face with something so visually impressive you can’t help but gasp. They have a full size Saturn rocket suspended in the hallway horizontally. The size of this thing is just incredible. Trying to imagine the brute force power required to get this thing in the air is staggering. Then when you think about how this occurred in the 60’s where technology was so primitive compared to today made it all the more impressive. I spent lots of time just looking up, admiring how impressive this piece of man made history was. The hall was filled with various cool info-boards and kiosks. We went into an area where you could pilot around something similar to the rovers that are on mars. We got close looks at the lunar module and the rover that was used to train astronauts for the ride on the moon surface. It was all extremely interesting to me.
We decided to eat our lunch here. A got a good case of sticker shock here, dropping almost 40 bucks for 3 standard lunch platters. They called it the Moonrock Cafe, because they had a golf ball sized moon rock on display. All of the buildings we had been in all day were like ice boxes. Ali was lucky enough to have brought a sweater, I was in shorts and a t-shirt, mom had short sleeves on and was freezing. It was here that we went into the gift shop and mom bought a long sleeve t-shirt/baseball cap combo. She threw on the shirt with the intention of giving it to me afterwards. It did a good job of warming her up. I just gritted it out and ignored my cold nose and appendages.
The final stop on the tour was the space station area. This area had some examples of the various modules that are used in the station that you could walk through. I was surprised to see that even these modern day pieces of equipment had some very old fashioned looking switches and dials inside them, not quite as high tech as I would have imagined. This area also had a lot of information about the original Skylab as well as Mir which was very neat to read up on. There was a walkway that took you over to the real production facility where they are building actual modules that are going to be installed on the station. That was cool to see.
The bus part of the day was done. The bus rides were fine for us. One leg of it wasn’t great for my mom when she was joined in her row of narrow seats by a huge blob of a woman that sort of melted over on to mom’s side. Luckily none of the rides are long so she didn’t have to deal with it very long.
So we were back to the main complex which we hadn’t even begun to see. There is a new exhibit that is supposed to open in a few weeks, the Space Shuttle experience, which simulates a shuttle launch. Damn it, I would have liked to do that. The bus tour took quite awhile. The day was 2/3 done. We walked up into the space shuttle they had on the grounds and looked around in it. There was surprisingly little to see inside, the big cargo bay and the cockpit which looked extremely old fashioned. The size of the shuttle was impressive.
After that I wanted to walk over to the Imax theater and see when the shows ran. I never saw an Imax flick before. Mom said because of her bad eye, she can’t see Imax stuff right(it is a double image that you use 3d glasses to see) I felt bad that she wouldn’t be able to see it but she said she was ok with just checking stuff out while we saw it, the film was only 45 minutes. We went to the 4 o’clock show about the Space Station. There was another show about walking on the moon that I would have loved to see but time didn’t allow it.
As we waited for the show to start in the theater we noticed how noone around us was speaking English. All day long we saw tons of foreigners. I guess thay just don’t have anything like this back home. The lights went dim, we put on our glasses and WHAM, movies in 3D. It was f’ing awesome. The videography would have been impressive enough in 2D, but to see it with the added dimension was incredible. During one scene where a camera was positioned close to a launch of a rocket, I moved my head to avoid the flying debris that was zooming towards me, it was so cool. The flick was just great, giving a soup to nuts story about the space station. Damn it lookes fun to be weightless.
When we got out of the movie Mom was waiting. By the time we got out it was close to 5. The place closed at 6. So after a jaunt through the gift shop where I bought a very touristy space shuttle tile sample piece. (which is proudly displayed in my office) we were ready to go. Even though we spent the majority of the day there, there was much we didn’t get to see. Our admission also included the Astronaut Hall of Fame which we didn’t set foot inside of. I would definitely go back and hope to sooner rather than later. I took a bunch of pictures that I will be posting later.
The drive back to Orlando went well. We had decided ahead of time to just order pizza that night so mom and Ali could watch Dancing with the Stars. I half watched the show, half read my magazines. I was pretty tired from the busy day and hit the sack shortly after the show ended.
Tuesday morning I woke a bit earlier, about 6:30 am. I just hung out and read magazines as I ate my pop tarts. Once Ali got out of bed and ate breakfast, we got packed up and ready to go. I expected the clean up to take longer than it did as we had stuff strewn around. Packing simply involved jamming all that junk into bags so within 45 minutes we were packed up and ready to go. It felt like we just got there, probably because we basically did. We only had one full day there. We should have done three or four nights.
I loaded up the car, checked out with little hassle and we were back on the road headed south. I had tunnel vision on the way home. We didn’t stop once and got back to mom’s place in a hair more than three hours, great time. For the trip I averaged right around 38 mpg which is good for driving as fast as I did. We went inside at mom’s place and ate the leftover pizza from the night before as a quickie lunch. Mom thanked us for the trip and we took off.
Of course Nicki was estatic to see us, acting like it has been years since we left. The house seemed to still be in one piece. Ali and I dug into unpacking, sorting and putting away, trying to return to normalcy as quick as possible. While Ali sorted laundry, I pulled the hose and bucket out and took on the nasty job of bug removal. I wet, soaped, scrubbed, and repeated several times until I was able to get the majority of the bug guts off the front end. By the time I got back inside Ali had most of the stuff put away and laundry started. She was feeling sick so she laid down to take a nap. I finished up what I had left to do and then sat in front of the computer.
One of the first things I did was try out this website that I read about in one of magazines.
http://www.novelconcepts.co.uk/FlashElementTD/ It is a flash version of a Warcraft 3 mod that I played for a long time, tower defense. If you never tried it before it may seem a bit odd at first. If you have played TD before you will feel right at home. It is highly addictive.
Then I dug into WoW for a few hours while Ali dozed. After she woke up we had three hours of Survivor on Tivo to catch up on. The show featured one the biggest piece of shit people I ever saw on reality TV, “Dreamz”. I already ranted about Dreamz in a prior entry. He made a deal to give Yauman immunity if he won it during the final four round in exchange for Yauman giving him a 60,000 dollar truck he won. Dreamz agreed, swearing to God and on his children. Last week Dreamz tried to slither out of his bargain by getting Yau kicked out before the final four round which didn’t work.
In the next round, Yauman won the immunity so he was safe once again, so they were down to the final four round, the round in which Dreamz swore to uphold his bargain. It was one of those torture challenges. They had to hold on to a trapeze looking thing with their hands on a platform that Jeff Probst increased the angle of every 5 minutes. Oh and for fun, they have water running on them the entire time as well. It was a very hard challenge that came down to Yauman and Dreamz. Yauman lost his grip and Dreamz won, setting him up to honor his word and give immunity to Yau. Before tribal council they showed multiple scenes where Dreamz bragged about how he was going to do the right thing and give it to Yau because he is a man of his word, blah blah blah. So they get to tribal council.
Of course Jeff makes a big deal about the decision, probing Dreamz repeatedly about it. Dreamz isn’t the most educated young man and did a lot of talking in non-sensical circles, abusing the english language constantly. Finally they get to the moment where Jeff asks Dreamz if he is going to give up immunity. After a long dramatic pause he says he is going to keep the immunity idol. I immediately burst out with a long string of insults at the tv. I was disgusted with this f’ing guy. He is given a 60,000 dollar truck in exhange for something and he backstabs the guy he made the arrangement with not once, not twice, but three times… What a piece of shit he is. After he made the decision he had tears in his eyes and acted all sad about what he did as Yauman got voted off even though by far he played the best game. He made the fatal mistake of trusting this punk with his word.
After the vote, back at camp, Dreamz switched gears and was bragging about what he did, saying he planned it along, which he obviously didn’t. The guy is a chronic liar and has the ability to make himself believe the lies. Two of the three people left had no business being there, Dreamz and the black chick who was so under the radar I don’t even remember her f’in name. She did nothing to deserve to be there. The other guy left, Earl, was Yau’s ally all the way through but in the end, backstabbed him and wrote his name down, so I wasn’t happy with him either.
The final tribal council was a joke. Earl was going to obviously win since the other two so didn’t deserve to win. Dreamz was ripped apart during that final tribal council, trying to explain himself in an illiterate manner that only further dug his grave deeper. At the live show it was revealed that Earl not only won, but got ALL of the votes, something that never happened before, a testament to how lame the other two were.
Once again at the live show, Jeff tried to pin Dreamz down on his decision process which was a waste of time. All Dreamz would do is smile and talk in more circles. What a fine role model he made for young black males. He is top of the heap as far as reality show assholes go, he is A number 1. Dreamz the ignorant, illiterate, lying, backstabbing, piece of shit king. F him. I hope his Ford F-350 gets stripped down to bare metal in the ‘hood…..
Oh, I got an email from Wired magazine. They want to publish my rebuttal to their hybrid review. I wasn’t all that surprised, I thought it was a strong letter. Look for it in the next issue or two.