Citizen of the World

This 5-day trip to Disney was a lot of fun! We did Epcot for 3 days till we were so full of the park that we didn't have anything left to do. We did all the movies we'd never done (Canada, France, etc.) and discovered parts of the pavilions we didn't know existed like in Morocco, Norway, and Japan.  We didn't do everything in Japan or China, so we did leave some things for later visits. Plus, Epcot is always changing up stuff in Futureworld (at the front of the park).  They had a really cool educational Piggy Bank game to play.

Next time, I think we want to spend more time in Hollywood Studios. We did one 3/4 day there, as usual, and that's never enough; we've never done the outdoor shows or The American Idol Experience. Hollywood Studios is more geared for older kids and adults than the Magic Kingdom.  We spent one full, full, full day in the Magic Kingdom - till like 1AM.  When you stay on Disney property, the parks provide extended hours so you can be in the parks - either before/after the parks are officially open; they're called "Magic Hours".  During the Magic Hours, the ride lines go down and you can get on EVERYTHING till your heart's content (you have to flash your hotel/resort key). We went on It's a Small World 3 times, I think, and Space Mountain 2 times (well, Matt did - my back was out). In Tomorrowland, we were all able to go through Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (a definite precursor to Toy Story's Midway Mania) about 5 times.
It's always fun to do the parks with the kids, too. They know the parks really well, too. Michael (11) and Samantha (13) have been probably 25 times and Gianna (5) has been probably 7 already; Gianna got her first haircut there - at about 8 months old!! We always do at least 3 character meals (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) where characters come to your table for pictures and autographs. Yes, the characters sign these little autograph books - great marketing for Disney!! 
Disney is always starting up new collecting schemes. The one that Michael and Samantha slowly got me into was the pins and lanyards. All over the parks and in all the Disney stores, there are these great quality pins of all the characters (hard to find Winnie the Pooh, though), signs, vintage signs and park names, elements of the parks - like Cinderella's castle, the monorail, a turkey leg (it's a thing at the parks), the rides, the areas of the parks (Adventureland or Tomorrowland, etc.).  Some of them are so cool, but stepping outside the Disney frenzy and fervor, you realize they're absolutely wasteful.  Still, I've bought like 12 of them over time. The kids have EASILY 100s of them. 100s.  OH!  And AT the parks, the characters (any employee working around the park) will have their own lanyard with pins that only characters can purchase. The characters have them to trade with the kids running around the parks. Then the kids get the coveted "character pins".  It's a great marketing scheme.  The pins that the characters get from the kids, then go back on the shelf for sale!  They're making money hand-over-fist at the parks.One thing that's always fun to do - for us - is to wear our Pride Mickey. When we wear those, everyone comes out of the woodwork. We strike up conversations we'd never have otherwise. Sometimes, we also get a little special-er treatment, such as getting a roll of  stickers to win the kids' sticker contest or get seated in a restaurant without reservations (happens more often than we realize, actually). We also found "family" throughout the parks on rides with their families or at the tequila bar in Mexico - that was a fun evening for sure!  We were told every time we came across a "family" member that we were there a week early.  LOL  Gay Days are June 2-4 this year.I catch myself feeling the pull of the Disney fervor more and more. And by the end of each trip, I'm sick of Disney stuff but still wanna look at it and shop around.  It's a love-hate relationship.  The Disney stores spread around the country's malls and outlet centers provide very different stuff than you find at the parks. That stuff is not nearly as good as what you get in the parks, either - from quality, quantity, and selection. They want you to be at the parks because they make SOOOO much money off every person or kid that goes there.

They even make money off the seniors that go. Matt's Aunt Jenny (who loves Donald Duck - below at Chef Mickey's) went with us this time without her daughter - she's probably 83 now. Matt's sister rented her a little scooter that she could use every day and get recharged overnight for the next day. She drove that thing around the parks all day. Granted, you have to have a little finesse to drive them and park them, but at least she wasn't thoroughly exhausted every day and could keep up with the clan more easily. At the parks those scooters rent for $75 a day - on top of all the other fees - hotel, food, park entry.  This scooter Tricia rented was about $25 a day and was really sturdy. Thing is, if your scooter's not Disney property and your battery dies in a park, you're really screwed. But, thankfully, that never happened!Notice the sidewalk pic (above)? That picture was taking moments before Jenny almost whacked off her head on a chain!  Yeah, that's the picture of Jenny entering what we now call, the "Death Trap For Scooters". She rounded one of the inner corners and got spooked when the scooter jolted a bit. Instead of releasing the accelerator, she clamped down, speeding the scooter INTO a section of chain! It took FOUR BIG BURLY MEN - including Matt and me - to move her on her scooter and the scooter away from the chain to a safe place. Jenny had grabbed her neck, releasing the accelerator (thankfully) and one of the men quickly threw off the scooter key (so it wouldn't move anymore). From where I was standing with the kids, it looked like Jenny was having a seizure and we all jumped into action. She's OK, but beyond her purchases for the weekend, she's got some pretty bruises on her arm, shoulder, and neck to prove she had a fight with a chain and won!  That was surely a scary Disney moment!

Getting there and being in the hotel alone is pretty pricey. You can get a meal plan which is - in the grand scheme - economical (I think you can get this even if you're not staying on Disney property - somehow tied to your park passes). If you're paying to be on Disney property, you can take advantage of lots of "free" things - like Disney's Magical Express (AWESOME!), which takes your bags when you arrive in Orlando and transports them to your hotel room within 3 hours of your arrival, and when you arrive at the airport, they transport you to your resort. Same when you leave, but you can check in for your flight at your resort and you don't see your bag till you're at your home airport. Matt and I did that and took off to Epcot for almost the full day before we boarded the plane to come home!  We squeezed in a couple more things - like lunch in Morocco (EXCELLENT!) and a couple of beers in England.  We found out this time around that the restaurant in the Japan pavilion is AWFUL! AWFUL! AWFUL!Very memorable trip indeed. I took many fewer pictures this time around, too, than in times past, because I've now got them all - except the new goofy pictures of us in the parks, with each other, with the kids, around the characters, etc.  Oh, but at Epcot, this weekend we were there was the last weekend of the Epcot Flower Festival! Many, many Disney characters were highlighted around the park and World Showcase as topiaries.  They were (most times) really well done. The peacock under the Epcot ball was hard to photograph, but was really breathtaking.  I was pretty disappointed with the Bambi topiaries in a butterfly net house, though, because they weren't made of any flowers or plants at all!  But all the major ones were pretty good. There's also a Mickey topiary at Hollywood Studios that I captured and show at the end below.

When I'm at Disney, my inner kid comes out - fully.  Even the kids told me that I'm a bigger kid in Disney than they are!! LOL  I think that's fun.  When I get on the plane to go to Disney, I completely shut off from work and any stress around town that I've been feeling leading up to the trip - it's all gone.  It's truly always a de-stressing trip!!

We probably won't return to Disney World until 2014, when they finish the NEW FANTASYLAND!  They removed Toontown, which is probably good - it was very much a little kid's place. The new Fantasyland looks like it's going to be really cool!  They're also expanding a section of the Grand Floridian Resort, where we've not stayed yet. The picture below shows the expansion. There's also a video of our time in Spaceship Earth at Epcot and here's a link to our game you can play that we posed for (if our game doesn't show up, enter the code KQCQ2FMXMMRH8Q for our game). Enjoy!

Money is fascinating. The history of money tells the story of civilization, commerce, governments, economies. It's hard to imagine the world without money and everything being taken care of, but more and more people are using credit cards, online bill paying, and check cards, such that money isn't as noticeable. When I'm in another country, I try to save a little bit of the money (a coin or a bill) as a souvenir.

It's fun to pay attention to your bills!
Do you ever go to WheresGeorge.com? Do you know what it is? WheresGeorge.com is a fun site to enter your US bills and see whether they've been and where - after you've spent the money - they end up. How often do you see the stamp on any of your bills like this?

Someone somewhere along the line of this website and tracking mechanism decided to make a red-ink stamp - like you see on this one-dollar bill section pictured above. I don't have one one of the convenient stamps; I've see that people have sometimes taken to writing "WheresGeorge.com" in red ink on the bills they catalog. Anytime I find one of these "marked" bills, I try to enter it into the system as soon as possible. If I have nothing to do on a given night, I'll enter all my bills ($1 mostly, $5 sometimes, and $10s & $20s). It's fun to see if anyone has also entered any of the unmarked bills.

It's fun to pay attention to your coins!
When I was a little boy (yes, I was once) growing up in the 70s, before more TV channels than you could surf in one day, and cell phones or computers, my dad got me into "looking coins", as he called it. Dad sat me down at a gray metal military-looking folding desk. Then, with a wide smile, he whipped out a couple of rolls of dimes, nickels, or pennies onto the desk's surface. The nickels and pennies were more numerous. He was bringing me up to be a numismatist!

I opened the wrapping carefully so the coins didn't go everywhere, one roll at a time. He told me, "Go through and look your coins to find oddities." I took that "look" to mean carefully scrutinize every coin, front and back, to see the oddities. The most blatant were always easy to spot: different mints, various minting years, different pictures on the fronts and backs, and sometimes missing things - like the mint stamps. There are multiple minting facilities, but for the people's currency, it's either "P" for Philadelphia, which is prevalent on the east coast, or "D" for Denver, which are prevalent in middle America and the west coast. If you're in Texas or Chicago, it's hit or miss what you'll find, for instance.

This past Christmas, my dad gave us kids all some coins he saved for us from years ago. I've been periodically spending time looking my coins - pennies, nickels, dimes, half-dollars, dollar coins, etc. After I'm done, they're all going into a (FREE!) safety deposit box. Here are some pictures of new pennies! Have you seen these? I think they're really cool and it's fun that the US mint is noticing a rise in coin collecting as a result.

How would YOU write animal sounds?

Chicken laying eggs = Bwok-bwok-bwok-b'kawk! Bwok-bwok-bwok-b'kawk!
Rooster = Rau! Rau! Rau-rau'rau-rau'rau! (less of that "Cock-a-doodle-doo", you know?)
Horse = Whehn-hn-hn-hn-hnnn... p-p-p-p-p-pppp
Pig = rn-rn-rn-rn (groveling); Rehnn! Rehnn! Rehnn! (running); Rehnn-rn-rn (irritated)
Brown bear = Wah-wah-waaaaaah (pant pant pant)

I woke up this morning to the wonderful sounds of some birds singing and they brought me back to my childhood in the springtime again (much like an earlier post back around Christmas '09 when I was at my sister's house).

I just realized that I hadn't shared the link to the BEST website for bird songs I've found yet (this one used to be the best site, but they've removed the listening pages). If anyone else has one, shoot it my way. You can play all the songs simultaneously and it sounds like you are IN THE FOREST or in a wooded park and you haven't even left your house. It's wonderful - especially on a cloudy, rainy, foggy day when your husbear's still asleep and you're lethargically nostalgic.

... or even uncles who think that little kids with teapots are "the most adorable things..."
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Cup of Tea

One day my mother was out and my dad was in charge of me.

I was maybe 2 1/2 years old and had just recovered from an accident.

Someone had given me a little 'tea set' as a get-well gift and it was
one of my favorite toys.

Daddy was in the living room engrossed in the evening news when I
brought Daddy a little cup of 'tea', which was just water. After several
cups of tea and lots of praise for such yummy tea, my Mom came home.

My Dad made her wait in the living room to watch me bring him a cup of
tea, because it was 'just the cutest thing!' My Mom waited, and sure
enough, here I come down the hall with a cup of tea for Daddy and she
watches him drink it up.

Then she says, (as only a mother would know.. :)

'Did it ever occur to you that the only place she can reach to get water
is the toilet?'

A childhood friend's mom died on Oct. 10. I just found out about it today. A flood of memories came rushing in about her and her son, Tony. He and I grew up together in NC and his mom was always so sweet to me. She taught me how to roll up my sleeves (as silly as this is) so they wouldn't unravel. She also made awesome soup - thick with ingredients and not too soupy.

Here's to a lady who will be missed and who left an indelible imprint on her world:

She worked at the local newspaper for 43 years in a number of capacities, and most recently was a features and lifestyle editor. She worked simultaneously in admissions at the local hospital for 23 years. She was a member of the NC Press Club, held various offices, and had been honored with the Communicator of Achievement Award. She had been a board member of the Family Support Network of Eastern NC and member of the county's Women's Commission.

Simply amazing. Here's to you Rosalie!