Category Anything and Everything

A three day weekend filled with ups and downs. This was Ali’s birthday weekend. She is 30 this year so we needed to do something out of the ordinary. A few months ago I got a fax at work for government employees about a special weekend package. At the time I did not realize it was a timeshare promotion, that was explained to me later. For a reduced rate we got 2 nights at a hotel and 2, one day passes to the parks. (somehow I interpreted this as 2 one day passes for 2 days, more later on that)

Check in wasn’t until 4pm so we were in no rush to leave Friday morning. We didn’t pull out until around 1. An average speed of tween 80 and 85 got us there in just about 3 hours, good time. When we checked in we were directed to the “special” guest relations office. At this office we had to present ID, a credit card and had to sign a form that said we were married, made at least 50k between us and that we weren’t lying about it. No big deal. We got directed to our hotel, a nice, new Country Inn suites. Our room was fine, right across from the game and exercise room and was on the first floor.

After we unloaded we/I came up with a gameplan. Within the first half hour we went to the exercise room for a quick 20 or 25 minute workout. Yea odd I guess, but I figured it was the only time I would get during the weekend so I went with it. Afterwards we went out to eat at Outback. A very nice dinner and we were back to the hotel by 9. I got to catch Christmas Vacation for the second time this season. Love the movie, never tire of it. During it they advertised that Saturday night they were showing Xmas Vacation II!!! Wow I never knew there was a second one! More on that later. We hit bed to prepare for our big day tomorrow.

Our timeshare presentation was early, 8am. We knew nothing really about timeshares except that normally when you hear people talk about them it is in a negative manner. We sat down and prepared for the hard sell. We didn’t realize it was a one on one thing, we assumed it was a group thing. Nope, our sales rep summoned us. He was actually quite nice, no hard sell, and the facilities were new and impressive. His pitch was a good one, good enough that we actually tossed the idea around a bit. But when we asked for a few minutes to talk it over ourselves we tossed around the numbers and realized it would be ludicrous for us to jump into something like that right now. We don’t vacation much, we are trying to knock off long term debt not add to it and the holidays were not the time to throw done a big downpayment on a timeshare. We informed our sales rep of our decision, he came back with some other lower cost alternatives but we respectfully declined. He was a good guy. We got our card stamped and headed down to get our tickets. The ticket clerk said what park do you want your tickets to? I said MGM and Magic Kingdom. He gave me a puzzled look. He said you want one ticket for MGM and one for Magic Kingdom? I said no, one set of tickets for Magic Kingdom and one set for MGM. Wrong! Somehow, someway I totally misread what we were supposed to get. On our paper it says in black and white, you get 2 free one day passes to any Disney park. I managed to get it in my head that we were getting 2 sets of one day passes. My bad, oh well. We quickly decided to use the passes for Magic Kingdom. At least that meant I could get home on Sunday to watch the Eagles.

We were ready to hit the park, but boy was it cold. The forecast high was only 55. I had on a t-shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a sweatshirt. Ali was layered up as well. Once we got to the park it was painfully clear we were underdressed. Our first stop was the gift shop where we found Ali a knit hat and gloves. I said I didn’t need any additional covering. The park was decorated for Christmas, very pretty. Our idea that the park wouldn’t be that full since the kids JUST got out for xmas break quickly evaporated. The park was packed, armies of couples pushing strollers rolled down the crowded walkways. A loosely organized mob scene.

Our morale was still high, hey we were in Disney at xmas, who cares if it is in the 40’s and it’s packed? We went to hit our first ride, Buzz Lightyear spinning adventure thingy. The line was huge so we decided to take advantage of “Fast Pass”. Fast Pass is a system Disney has to make waiting in line easier. You go to a ride, get a fast pass that basically says come back in an hour or two and you can get in the fast line, minimizing your wait time. But there is a catch, you can only have one fast pass at a time, meaning you can’t go to all the popular rides, get your fast passes and then come back to get in all the quick lines. Instead you get your fast pass and then you have an hour or two to kill so you wind up going and standing in a different line. Don’t get me wrong, without fast pass you would be standing in long lines for EVERY ride instead of every other ride but I wish they let you load up on the fast passes, it would make it much better. It didn’t take very long for us to realize that with only one park to visit, we picked the wrong one. The rides were generally tame and on the boring side for adults. The best ride was Space Mountain and that is a million years old. Everything else was unmemorable. The Haunted Mansion didn’t even get a scream out of Ali so you know it was lame. In total we rode maybe 6 or 7 rides. The cool weather really sucked some of the fun out of the entire process. We spent a lot of time hopping into the gift shops just to take some of the chill off. It might of made it into the 50’s for about an hour out of the day. Speaking of the gift shops, I have never seen so much as Ali terms it, “Crappity crap” You know, the kind of stuff you buy for yourself or someone else that is basically stuff you’ll never use, costs a bunch and is more or less a waste of money. It is staggering all of the different Disney related products they have for sale. We broke down and got mom some Mickey Mouse wine glasses but at least we know she will use those.

Around 5:30 we both agreed we had our fill. We were cold and worn out from doing battle with the Disney mob all day. We hopped the tram and both agreed MGM was where we should have went. We piled into the car and threw the heat on full blast. Even though we didn’t have a great time in Disney, it wasn’t through any fault of the park itself. The park is immaculate, the attention to detail is amazing and any employees we interacted with were courteous and helpful. We went back to the room, cleaned up and then went to Olive Garden for a good dinner.

We got back to the hotel in time to catch the last half of Christmas Vacation II. It took all of 45 seconds to realize this was a horrible attempt to cash in on the good name of it’s predecessor. Mind you I missed the first hour but here is what I gathered. Somehow Randy Quaid got marooned on a desert island for xmas. The only characters from the original that are in this atrocity are Quaid, the women from SNL that played his wife, their dog Snot and the girl that played Chevy’s daughter in one of the flicks. (not the xmas one) This is a recent production so Randy Quaid is now a fat, saggy looking old man trying to reenact his role from 20 years ago. Words can’t really describe how bad this movie was. It may be the worst xmas movie I have ever seen. Way worse than Emmet Otter Jugband’s Xmas, the prior leader in the pack of bad xmas specials. If you ever get a chance to see Xmas Vacation II, just watch 5 minutes of it to see how bad it is, I can’t believe National Lampoon would allow their name to be put on it.

Sunday morning we popped up, well rested, ate our continental breakfast and rolled out. A record setting 2 hours and 45 minutes to our exit later, we were home. We got home about 12:15, just in time for the Eagles! Nope, they don’t play till 4:15! Argh I should have checked the schedule. So we used the down time to unpack , get things in order and survey the damage that was done by the dog. Nicki followed up her present destroying session by chewing the remote to the big screen tv to bits. We are still missing 1 AA battery that we are hoping she didn’t swallow. She will be spending much more time in her crate when we are away until she earns my trust again.

4:15 rolled around so it was game time. The Eagles didn’t play a very strong game and got beat in the end on a bad interception. I am disappointed but after their horrid start I can’t complain that they just blew getting the best record in the NFC by one game. Unfortunately, this loss probably will throw a wrench into any possibilities of a Super Bowl appearance but hopefully they can prove me wrong once again. The wearing Eagles garb good luck charm thing finally failed. If they find a way to lose to the Redskins next week we have some big problems.

Long recap……sorry.

Let it snow, let it snow…..

One of the three presents that Nicki ripped into was destroyed. Wouldn’t you know it would be a football game for the Xbox I had asked for. The case was chewed apart and the back of the disc is scratched to hell. It’s funny how dogs know when they did something bad. She looked very guilty.

I rushed home to try some test flights with the toy copter I got for my bday. I charged it up quick, took it outside and squeezed the trigger. That is the only control, 1 trigger. Hmmm wonder how u make it turn? I found out you don’t. Up it goes, probably 100 feet high in no time. The light breeze started pushing it away from me rapidly. Hmm if I let the trigger go it will lose speed and crash, if I keep it going full throttle it is going to fly away to who knows where. So I start walking after it. It’s now across the street and up the road. Once it crosses the road I see it is above a vacant, high grassed lot so I decide to ditch it there. I let go of the trigger and down it goes, rapidly, behind some trees out of my site. I run over there and hit the trigger so I can hear the motor. I managed to find it quickly with no damage other than some tall grass wrapped around the rotor. Whew. Later that night I watch the instructional video. It says the way you change direction is to slow down the copter so the tail rotor starts to spin it and then when it spins to where you want it, gun the trigger again. Hardly an exact science. It’s a bit of a bummer but I will see if I can get good enough to at least keep the crashes to the controlled nature type.

Tomorrow we are going to Disney for a three day weekend. It is one of those timeshare presentation deals. The way it works is you get a reduced room rate and free passes to any of the Disney parks in exchange for attending a time share presentation. We’ve never done anything similar before but I figure as long as you don’t agree to buy anything there is nothing to lose. It is supposed to be pretty chilly by Fla standards this weekend with temperatures not getting much above 60. However that should be fine weather for walking the parks. It will be cool to see Disney decorated for xmas.

Got a report from mom today that the dog ripped apart several presents. Grrrrrr.

After the wild football game it can’t be expected for my birthday to compare. I felt like I was in a haze all day from the limited sleep. After going to bed at 4am I was awakened at 8:15 by the dog crying. I got up and let her out and never went back to bed. I spent the morning blogging the game and ripping off the pics from it. AT 11:30 I left to do some stuff. First I hit the gym, I got the idea to do 3 miles on the treadmill for my bday. I haven’t run that far in ages. I managed to do it, barely. My heartrate was in the 170’s at the end. Next was the mall.

I had a few people to buy for but had no general idea of what to get. So I wandered around the mall looking for inspiration. I found 3 small things. Next a “quick” stop at the bank drive thru. For some reason with only 2 cars in front of me it took 20 minutes to get to the window. Incredibly slow. My last stop was the dreaded post office to mail some stuff for Ali. I figured, mid afternoon on a weekday would be a safe time to go. Wrong. Line to the door, an hour wait. They are soooo slow. Hate going there. Oh well worst was behind me, time to drive home. Bang, the road to my house is blocked, traffic at a dead stop. Evidently there was an accident. I do a u-turn and have to backtrack to another route to get home. What I thought would be 2 or 3 hours out turned out to be 6.

My birthday dinner was eggplant parmigiana from Sam’s. Ali asked if I wanted to go out for my dinner or have her make a cake but I just wasn’t into it. After dinner I opened up my stuff. The one cool part of living away from home is all of your presents are delivered to your door. I scored some cool stuff including one of those RC helicopters we have all been getting spam about, a new volleyball, the Hulk DVD, an XBox game and a new electric razor. Great gifts.

Not a memorable birthday but once you get to be this age you don’t expect them to be. My bro, sis and dad called me and wished me well. Dad was exceptionally chatty and once again spoke about bringing down his motorcycle to Florida so he could give it to me. Personally I think he’s crazy to go 1200 miles on a motorcycle but if he wants to have the adventure, good for him. If he does bring the cycle down it will live a very protected life, it would see very limited and cautious use by me. I’m old enough now to know that mom wasn’t kidding about motorcycles being dangerous. Helmets aren’t required in Florida but you won’t catch me on a motorcycle without one.

Just call me Mr 36

Here are the pics from the game. A lot of them have captions to explain it a bit. Some are a bit blurry, my digital camera pretty much blows in low light conditions unfortunately. Some good ones up there.

Watching the NFL on TV is great, I enjoy it immensely. But after my second live game of the year, nothing beats being there in person.

Our drive over went well, only one wrong turn and we were very early so it wasn’t a big deal. Once we parked it became immediately apparent that the Eagles were well represented by their fanbase. Birds fans were EVERYWHERE. As we walked through the tailgating area other fans told us they were expecting as many as 27000 Eagles fans! Incredible. We were yelling to other Eagles fans, slapping hands, doing Eagle cheers all through the parking areas. You heard the E A G L E S EAGLES chant echoing throughout the grounds. We spent a good hour and a half walking around before they opened the gates. We both got some drinks but didn’t eat because we wanted to wait and eat inside the stadium. The 2 glasses of zinfandel on an empty stomach knocked Ali into silly street and soon she was just as crazy as everyone else, yelling, jumping and carrying on. It was funny.

We got inside just as the gates opened, collected our Mark Duper and Mark Clayton commerative coins (they retired their jerseys at halftime) and headed up to our level. The upper deck was a sea of green, cheering, chanting, taunting and smiles everywhere. We immediately hit the food stand and took it up to our seats to check out the view. We were way up there, maybe 20 rows from the top of the building but even there our views of the place were great. By the time we finished eating we still had close to an hour and a half before kickoff. We walked around the stadium some more, just taking it all in. It was as close to a home game as I can imagine a team can have 1200 miles away from their home city.

Just prior to kickoff, Mark Dupers brother sang God Bless America, a good rendition. Then the national anthem was something I will never forget. Evidently in Miami they don’t have a singer do the anthem. The anthem is played by a guy on a trumpet, and all of the fans sing the anthem. I mean they sing it loud enough for all to hear and then just as it ends, perfectly timed, 4 F14’s scream over the stadium with their afterburners blazing. I have a hard time describing how cool that moment was but all I can say is after they went over Ali had tears in her eyes and she hugged the Dolphin fan to her right. The sound and feeling of overwhelming power of those planes was something I never ever felt before.

Can it get any better? YES! The Eagles score a touchdown in 3 plays!!!! The Eagles fans went nuts. I don’t need to recap the game on the field as that will be well documented elsewhere. The activity in the stands was classic. Chants going back and forth. Clearly, the Eagles fans were more agressive, our cheers came more often and were in many cases louder than the Dolphin fans. Some of the cheers heard courtesy of Eagles fans, AUTO-MATIC (when Akers kicked his field goals), DOLPHINS SUCK, YOU CANT STOP US, ASSHOLE (to a few Dolphin fans that were trying to piss of our fans), IT’S ALL OVER, MVP, THIS IS OUR HOUSE and when it was apparent we would win the Nah nah nah goodbye song was sung repeatedly to the disappointed Fin fans milling towards the exits. The Dolphin fans had a few good cheers, the most memorable was F*CK THE EAGLES. I had pretty much lost my voice by halftime from yelling so much. It was the most I ever cheered and yelled for a team at any sporting event by far. I had to make one third quarter bathroom run and was dreading that the Green Bay sink pissing drama would unfold again. Luckily the sinks were still being used for washing hands but when I got to my urinal, it had a beer bottle, a beer can, and a plastic cup in it. 🙂

Once Fielder threw his final interception to ice the game for the birds our fans went beserk. It was such a cool feeling. The trash talking got pretty severe. The one guy behind us was running back and forth the aisle yelling to the Dolphin fans “Why are you still here?? It’s over, go home, this is our house now!” I must have slapped hands with 100 Eagle fans. Game over, Eagles 11-3, 9 in a row, unbelievable.

The journey back home was not so fun. As we walked out to the cars there were some isolated pockets of angry, drunk Dolphin fans that were looking to start some trouble. As I was walking to find our exit gate a bunch of 10 or so were heckling every Eagles fan they could. I just gave them the one finger salute and continued on. While we were stuck in gridlock, there was a small mini-bus filled with Eagles fans, they were heckling a car of Fin fans. They were just chanting stuff like Dolphins suck! Well I guess that was all it took because the Dolphin guy got out of his car, went to the back of the bus, and slammed the glass with his fist, breaking it! When the bus driver got out, the guy jumped back into the car and sped off. That sort of crazyiness is a bummer but it is hard to be avoided when football and alcohol are involved. All in all the interactions between the fans was loud and biting but not terrible.

We got in our car at about 12:45. We didn’t get onto open highway until at least an hour after that. The drive across alligator alley was very tough for me. I had a cup of coffee and it did very little to keep me alert. By the end of the trip I was hallucinating and catching myself literally dreaming with my eyes open. The last 45 minutes of the trip I kept myself alert by holding my breath a minute at a time. It worked. 🙂 We didn’t get home till almost 3:45 am, my head hit bed at 4.

I am off work today, I have no voice, I’m tired as hell but man was it worth it. Happy birthday to me.

Look for pics soon….

I don’t get it. Maybe it’s the brain shutting down after 39 days on an island feasting on crap, being eaten by bugs and smelling like garbage. Why do people at the end of Survivor always take the wrong person with them? It happened once again last night, Lil had a guaranteed win if she took rat bastard Jon with her to final two. She doesn’t and gets beat 6-1. STUPID. The finale was pretty good. We watched it at our friends house. However, due to football running late, which in turn made 60 minutes run late, the festivities didn’t begin until a little after 8:30. The whole ball of wax didn’t finish up till 11:30 ish. After the drive home and shower I didn’t get to bed till close to 12:45 am. Compound that with the fact that I will probably not get home from the MNF game tonight until 2-3 am tonight will result in some extreme drowsiness. Luckily I took the day off tomorrow for my bday.

I am pumped for the game tonight. We are leaving work early to get over there early enough to walk around and see the sights. Maybe tailgate, maybe hang with other Eagles fans. Surely it won’t be the same as Green Bay with Keener but I hope to have fun, just a less drunken outgoing kind of fun than I would have with him. Go Birds! I have my camera with.

The weekend was mild, we got a lot of xmas shopping knocked out (online primarily), I went out with the dog on Sunday and picked up a few more items while Ali was at work. She (the dog) is my buddy.

As usual I had a number of things that run into my mind over the weekend that seemed like good blog material and as usual those ideas just as quickly have run out of my head now. If I remember later I’ll try to hop back.

We finally caught the bastard. I honestly never thought it would happen at this point. Another amazing example of our military making us proud. I can only imagine how this will change things over there. I am sure millions of people could not trust the idea that he was really gone and unable to return to power until he was captured. Hopefully the attacks on our men will wind down as it is now apparent that what was will never be again. A great early Christmas present for all of us.

Been very busy lately. Some holiday related, some work related.

I added a couple pics to the holiday page. One is of the nice tree skirt Ali made along with the train I have set up around the tree. Sappy eh?

The other is a picture of our stockings. Now, mine is the HUGE one on the left. Seeing this would make you think my rant about how receiving presents doesn’t matter much was a farce. However I have had that stocking for over 10 years, it is a throwback to when greed was good. I just am too sentimental to throw it out and switch to a normal size stocking, honest…

Last night we went to Ali’s work xmas party. It was held at a local community clubhouse. A beautiful venue with some unbelieveable decorations including a 30 foot high christmas tree. I wish I had my camera with. I made a few rare appearances on the dance floor during fast dance time. I am a TERRIBLE dancer. I need to be way drunk to even have a shot of looking somewhat loose. I only had 2 beers last night so the gears weren’t greased nearly enough. Conversely, my wife is a very good dancer. Regardless she was very happy to see me out there trudging around. The party itself was just ok, not terrible not great. Sucks having it on a weeknight.

I heard who got the boot in Survivor but didn’t see it yet. I have it Tivo’d, sounds great.

Xmas related weekend, wrapping stuff, buying more stuff as well as getting plans in place for our MNF trek to the east coast to support my Eagles as well as our weekend trip to Disney next weekend. December is going to be VERY VERY expensive.

Jingle Bells……

Last night there was a brand new Peanuts Christmas special, All I want for Christmas is a Dog Charlie Brown. It was the best of the modern specials I have seen. They got people to do the voices that sound very close to the originals. It’s funny, entertaining and all around very well done. The only knock is it really isn’t a Christmas special. Christmas is an afterthought in the cartoon. It’s all about dogs. 🙂 Still a strong effort after a string of subpar specials.

Last night my wife and I were discussing how Christmas and what it means to us has changed over the years. First of all, moving to Florida obviously changes the holiday season dramatically. The warm weather makes it feel more like Memorial day. The 1200 mile buffer from our friends and family makes the friendly holiday visits no longer possible. So obviously that takes some enjoyment out of it. Then we talked about the gift part of it. When I was younger, Christmas was pretty much the only time I cashed in. If I wanted something big I better ask for it for Christmas because otherwise it wasn’t going to happen. The older I have gotten the more ability I have had to buy “presents” for myself whenever I want to. (to a degree) Plus I seem to get more of a kick from giving than receiving gifts anymore. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fun to open presents, but it’s nowhere near the excitement level that it brought in years gone by. Another old age reality, deck the halls….