Florida -- the Trial Run

On Oct. 1, I was supposed to run the Wine and Dine half marathon with a couple of my girlfriends. Since my foot is still broken, that obviously didn't happen. But I'd paid for my flight and my room and I was due for a little break from my life, so I went to Florida.

I've been to Florida several times before, and I've never been a big fan. But this was Disney, so I decided if I could put up with the people (I'm also not a big fan of large groups of people), I'd do okay. And I did.

It was the Magic Kingdom's 40th anniversary, and they're gearing up to open a New Fantasyland in 2012 that includes homes for all of the Disney Princesses (minus Cinderella, who still has a damn big castle). I didn't go on too many rides, but I did get to do the Toy Story ride (which is pretty much a large screen arcade game) because I ran into one of my student's parents at the front of Disney Hollywood Studios and she gave us her fast passes because the ride was broken, and her girls were wiped out.

We ate at the Prime Time Café in Hollywood Studios. I did learn that you should make reservations for meals about a month before you go down. I'm making them now for when we're down at Disney for Thanksgiving. I haven't told X-man that's where we're going. And rather than come home empty handed I stopped at the Kennedy Space Center shop in the airport and brought him home an astronaut's suit, so it wouldn't tip him off. I mean, he's not stupid. He's seen the photos of me at Disney. I'm just not sure that when I say we're going to Florida in November that it sinks in that we're going to see Buzz and Woody, because, let's face it, in this house, Mickey Mouse -- means nothing. But I now have an attack plan for our Thanksgiving vacation, and as long as everything goes right on our direct flight down from Bloomington, we'll be okay. :-) We're planning to be at Disney on Thursday and Friday and then to go to Sea World on Saturday. We fly home early on Sunday morning.

At school, things are going swimmingly. I got to be the stand-in director on Monday while my boss was out of town. I think it would have been more enjoyable if I also wasn't in my room at the same time. Our numbers were low, so it was okay for me to run around and make sure everyone else was okay from time to time, but I didn't want to abandon my teaching partner.

This week, X-man gets to spend the night at a friend's house while MacTroll and I take the train up to Chicago to see Carrie Fisher do her stand up "Wishful Drinking" routine. I'm rather excited about it. I've been a fan of Carrie's writing since I was 16, and lord knows I was a wannabe Princess Leia since the moment Empire came out.

Speaking of Star Wars! Disney revamped the film in the Star Tours ride at Hollywood Studios. Everything outside the film, was pretty much the same. But inside they had gotten rid of that Short Circuit-like robot and replaced him with a 3D movie with Threepio and R232, with some other Star Wars characters, which was nice. My favorite part of the whole ride was the jump to lightspeed. It was so cool, I was happy that they made us do it twice. :-)

And yes, I got a shirt that says, "Good, Bad, Fuzzy" with photos of Yoda, Darth Vader and Wicket at the end of the ride. It's not funny just because. It's funny because one of my favorite Han-isms is that he's fuzzy on all good/bad things. :-)