Weekend!
While I had been to Disneyworld prior to last weekend, I had never been to Disneyland and I was looking forward to finally seeing both of them and doing a light compare/contrast of the two different parks.
The main thing I noticed is that more or less every pathway longer than a certain distance is either obscured by a ride or shop or there is going to be a curve in the road before you get to whatever it is you’re seeing. You won’t be walking in that many straight lines… you’re always looping around. It feels like you’re wandering even when you’ve got a definite destination in mind. Wandering does a great job of making you feel like you’re on vacation.
They do a brilliant, positively *BRILLIANT* job of obscuring the lines for the rides. You look at the ride and say “huh, that doesn’t look like there’s that much of a wait…” and you get in the line and, suddenly, you realize that you didn’t see the stuff behind the scenery and there’s a dip that goes down and you turn the corner and oh my gosh there are hundreds of people ahead of us. (The wait for the Adventureland Jungle Cruise had a 2nd floor with a longer line than the one on the ground.)
That said, it does a great job of selling nostalgia. They’re not just selling you your trip to Disneyland, after all. They’re selling you your next trip there by making you remember your last trip there (and if it’s your first trip there, they give you a button to totally announce to everybody that it’s your first trip there and “cast members” walk up to you and tell you to have an awesome day).
As for the rides, the main thing that I kinda wondered was whether Pirates of the Caribbean and/or The Haunted Mansion were more or less the same as in Disneyworld. Yep. They are. There was a fine bit of remembering the last two or three times I went on the rides as I rode on them this time (and, for the first time, I wondered “is this the last time I’m going to see this attraction?”).
All in all, I’d say that Disneyland is a surprisingly awesome experience that, even as you’re manipulated, you’re impressed by the craft involved in how they’re manipulating you.
Of course, after a weekend filled with that, I’m very much looking forward to a boring, boring weekend where not much of anything exciting happens. Chores, errands, laundry.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Photo is “Footrace finish line, 1925” from the Seattle Municipal Archives, used under a creative commons license)
Oh, being there with a little kid *COMPLETELY* changed everything.
There was a meet and greet with Anna and Elsa (which is to say, two born-beautiful young women who looked uncannily like the Frozen main characters in awesome costumes). This is something that wouldn’t have much appealed to me but the kiddo? Holy cow, it was just fun watching her face as she looked at those two.
I ended up making up a joke for her:
Q: What did Elsa do when she got a balloon?
A: She let it go.
I thought that that was, all things considered, a pretty decent uncle joke. As it turns out, I had it explained to me that there might be some things worth joking about, but Frozen is *NOT* one of them.
So back to burping, I guess.Report
On a 1-10 scale of being upset, with with “1” being irritated to discover that all of the “everything” bagels were gone by the time I got to the supermarket, and “10” being an explosive supernova of blinding, cardiac-stopping rage, I would normally land somewhere around a 2 to learn that you had been in SoCal and didn’t shoot me a line to come bend elbows together. I’d have totally made the drive down to the O.C. for you, dude.
But it sounds like it was pretty much all the time available accounted for with family, and relatively limited time in the area to begin with. So I forgive you… this time.Report
@burt-likko
“On a 1-10 scale of being upset, with with “1? being irritated to discover that all of the “everything” bagels were gone…”
When I saw this comment pop up over in GoG, this is what was previewed. I thought, “God, Burt is so LA… all the everything bagels being gone is at least a 4. If not a 6, depending on the day.”
But then I got to this part:
“… by the time I got to the supermarket.”
And then I knew you were REALLY so fishin’ LA. If I was reduced to getting my bagels at the super market, I’d be at an 11.
Good god, man…. how do you live?Report
Dude! I’m sorry! I was there with Maribou’s family! The only time we weren’t with them was when we were in the room showering or sleeping or trying to find them after being separated!Report
@kazzy this isn’t even L.A. proper out here in the exurbs. It’s grocery store bagels, Panera Bread, or S.O.L. So if I have to get sesame or poppy instead of the everything, I can deal.
@jaybird that’s what I figured. Catch me next time.Report
Kazzy, you can get Sarah Lee bagels somewhere other than the supermarket? 😉Report
@burt-likko
You poor soul. I’ll overnight you some bagels.Report
Burt,
Do you want a recipe on how to poach bagels?Report
Yes, and for pizza dough. Note: I’ve graduated from AP to bread flour.Report
Lain is unwittingly announcing her bedtime as 8:00 or so lately. That’s when she has a burst of hyper at the expense of a terrified dog.
This morning we did “story time” at the Library for the first time this week. Lain had a blast with all of the other kids. She wasn’t good about sitting in my lap, but it was okay because there was another that was far more unruly than she was. Afterwards, someone was reading a book that she likes (“Put Me In The Zoo”) at which point she climbed on the woman’s lap. The woman’s kid didn’t like this and walked off. so I watched her kid while she read to mine.
I was the only father there, which reminded me of all of the mother’s groups in the area that appear to be mothers-only, which is kind of depressing.Report
“I was the only father there, which reminded me of all of the mother’s groups in the area that appear to be mothers-only, which is kind of depressing.”
+100.
I am dreading this summer when I am home with both boys — one 4+months and the other solidly in his 2’s — and having little available to me in the way of connecting with other parents/kids.Report
Let me rephrase… I am uber excited to be home with the boys this summer. I am dreading that particular piece of it.Report
Dentist and preparing to go to San Francisco.Report
Wow, one sounds way better than the other.Report
My dentist appointment today was successful! Yours will be too!Report
My docket this weekend consists of a pizza-making party Saturday with another couple, for which I will need a pizza dough recipe (hint, hint, @zic) and Sunday a hike at Vasquez Rocks, which some of you may remember as the place Kirk built a cannon out of a log to fight the Gorn.Report
I’ll try to get that finished tonight.
You’ve at least got the dough recipe from earlier.
(yup, my recipes are easy, and deliberately so.)Report
My mistake on the expertise; @zic is the photographer and you’re the baker, @kimmi . Apologies. I blame the demon rum.Report
I have surgery scheduled for next Tuesday, so this weekend is just chill out, and a lot of walking.Report
Best wishes for a safe procedure and a speedy, painless recovery.Report
Thank you very much @burt-likkoReport
Dude: good luck.Report
Good luck.Report
I’ll be thinking of you. Hope you have the chillest of chill weekends.Report
Thank you Maribou!
And thank you to everyone else!Report
It’s a long weekend here, and unusual-wise we don’t have anything much planned. There’s a friend’s birthday potluck tonight. Maybe I’ll finally get to try the skates I bought a month ago.Report
Ahh… so glad I’m not on jury duty!
Judge declares recess.
Person on trial declares that judge has abandoned ship (see the contended “naval flag” fringe on the US flag), declares himself captain (and thus judge), and dismisses all charges against himself with prejudice.
Substitute bailiff allows person to leave courtroom.
Normal bailiff (not on duty, there for a check) sees accused. Tasers accused.
“How did you know he was fleeing the courtroom?”
“I didn’t.”
Trial is continuing so long that they’ve run out of money to pay the jurors (into its 13th week). Now they’re paying them from the county foodbank.
[no, not pittsburgh.]Report
I plan to spend the weekend worrying about my brother. He’s going to the oncologist Monday. There’s a mass in his lung. (The doctor called it ‘giant’ and my brother apparently felt that it was sufficient, and didn’t ask things like ‘how big is that, in actual units of measurement’). The doctor was apparently unsure of what it is, but pretty much every mass big enough to show on an X-ray has to be dealt with and most of those are Bad Things That Start With C.
On the upside: Never smoked, no family history of cancers at all (other than one guy with skin cancer more than likely due to his teenage occupation as ‘lifeguard unburdened by sunscreen’ followed by years of ‘working outdoors a whole lot’). Symptoms were a three-month long cough (plenty of liquidy infection to go with it — he’s gotten bronchitis once or twice a year for 30 years now) that just wasn’t going away despite treatment. The fact that he’s moved to an inhalor (helping) and whatever it is (the mass, the infection he’s got — one or both) is impeding lung function is just worrisome.
I’m not really sure how to deal with it, other than depressing myself with Google. I worry about him, I worry about his two little kids, I worry about my parents…
Fingers crossed for “benign”. My mother-in-law lost a lung of her lobe to something almost identical (except she had multiple, much smaller, nodules. Not masses) — some weird cyst formed around a fungal infection.
“Giant mass” is not heartening. I guess it beats ‘I’m just your GP, but that’s obviously a whole lot of cancer all over the place’ after seeing your CT.Report
Here’s hoping for good news, and the strength to deal with any news, for you, him, and your whole family.Report
Ah, good luck to everybody involved.
Sometimes I boggle at how far medical science has come in the last few decades and then I am totally disheartened by how far we have yet to go.
Good luck.Report
Good luck and best wishes to you and your family Morat. That sucks big time medicine can to great things at times. I hope this is one of those times.Report
Well wishing, @morat20Report
So I was listening to the first episode of season three of The Good Wife. It opens up with Chris Isaak’s “Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing.”
Two hours later, I start season two of The Blacklist. It opens up with the guitar riff from Chris Isaak’s “Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing.”Report
So Redding just went on a rant about how we wet our pants about the government snooping, but Big Data (Google, Facebook, etc) knows everything about us.
And yet, if this were true, their targeted ads wouldn’t suck so much.
I mean crikey, nobody should know more about me than google, and they’re trying to sell me monitor risers, which they should know I already purchased two months ago and haven’t looked at since.Report
Did they do that sort of thing in the 80’s and we just didn’t notice? Like, both The A-Team and Manimal opening with the starting chords to “Harper Valley PTA” or something?Report
Gah! Our power bill was $500 this month.Report
Ours was very close. Join the club.Report
Never seen anything like it before. Historically, anything above $200 has been cause for alarm.
Another reason I miss the west.Report
Another reason I miss the west.
And you came from a portion of the West where a substantial majority of your electricity was fixed-cost hydro, and the next biggest fraction nearly-fixed-cost coal. And occasionally, when it was cheaper than either, wind. Didn’t matter what oil prices did; didn’t matter what NG prices did; just constant low-cost electricity. The East Coast, with lots of political votes, will eventually punish the West for this.Report
Do you have electric heat? Oven/stove?Report
It’s the heating. Gotta be.Report
All of those plus hot water. We might do better if we replaced all the windows, but that would be a considerable multiple of our highest bill.Report
That’ll do it. We’re on NG for heat, hot water, and the stove (oven is electric); it’s a godsend.Report
If you’ve got roof exposed southerly, I might consider some solar panels to offset that.Report
I need someone to leave a comment to test the RSS app, but nobody is doing it. Slackers.Report
That’s us :^)Report