Pictures

Vacation! I had some business to attend to in Chicago, then some friends and I went to Florida in March (2005) to play at Disney World.

I changed planes in Salt Lake City on my way to Chicago. I took this picture at the airport there because I love how the mountains are so close they look like a fake backdrop.

Here's my house in Chicago. As you can see, it's now on the market and some of the stuff I needed to take care of involved the sale. It looks like we've found buyers. Yay!

And I helped Sarah with some things involving the house she's buying. It's in a very nice neighborhood. Yay Sarah!

I stayed with Sarah and her cat Bug while I was in Chicago. You can tell from this photo just how happy Bug was to see me. I'm allergic, so the feeling was kind of mutual. But really she seemed to remember me - after all, she didn't hide under the bed the whole time.

Then it was off to Florida! We arrived kind of late in the day, so all we had time to do was have dinner and play on the transportation systems at Disney World. Bus, ferry, monorail... ok, I don't think we actually took the monorail that night, but we made many, many jokes about it.

Oh, the above photo was taken inside the lobby of one of the Disney hotels. It's an homage to the architecture of hotels in the national parks. I had to see it, since Old Faithful Inn was in my back yard growing up.

This cracked me up! It's a "thermal feature" inside the lobby of the hotel. It has a fog machine and bubbler to make it look like it's boiling. Outside, the hotel swimming pool is in a "geyser basin" with a fountain that goes off regularly.

In the morning, we were off the MGM Studios. I was quite impressed with the security at the park entrances. This is the line to stand in to get your bag/backpack/stroller searched.

And _then_ you put your park ticket into the little machine and put your fingers into the little "biometric reader" so it can match the ticket to the person. What a friendly welcome.

The three of us all made it through security, so we stopped to take a picture to celebrate. Sorry about cutting your face in half, Dean. That's Sarah on the left.

Then, of course, we had to get the picture where it looks like Dean is wearing the huge magician's hat. We are, after all, at Disney World. We went on a ton of rides... but evidently I neglected to take any pictures of that. Also, I know you can buy pictures of yourself actually _on_ some of the rides, but there was really no point, since my superpower on this trip was evidently being able to obscure my face every time one of those ride cameras took a picture.

Hmm, this picture is a little better when it's bigger. That's a futuristic-thingy on the left there, and Cinderella's castle on the right. I thought it was a funny that I could get the two in the same frame.

Here's a better picture of the castle. We were mostly in the Magic Kingdom after dark. The lights on the castle kept changing color. We joked that it was so you could tell who was visiting at the time. Red for the wicked stepmother, blue for Sleeping Beauty... etc.

Also, it rained a lot while we were there. To get into the spirit of things we bought the Disney-issue ponchos with Mickey on the back. We also followed directions and took pictures at the places labeled, "Kodak Picture Spot." Isn't it nice of them to tell you when you need to take a picture? (This was at Animal Kingdom, by the way.)

This scary topiary of Evil Bambi was also at Animal Kingdom. How do they manage to make a baby deer look so scary? (Bambi's back, and this time he's going to get even.)

This picture didn't come out very well, but it's another hotel lobby. Very, very impressive. There are (real) zebras and giraffs right outside this huge wall of windows.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm easily amused. This was a sign in Epcot (though they were all over Disney World) that really made me laugh. I didn't realize how overt Disney Co. was about encouraging overconsumption.

Look, more security measures. This gentleman was at Epcot keeping us safe from the potential snipers on top of the Amerca! theater. Things I learned at Disney - overconsumption and fear. (Did I mention that we had a lot of fun?)

Even in the rain and darkness we were checking to see if Dean could pull the sword from the stone. You never know who might be Aruthur returned. (Sarah didn't try. I think she didn't want the responsibility of being a Legendary king.)

At last we had to say goodbye to Disney and begin our trek homeward. This is not my hotel room at Disney. I didn't think to take a picture of that nice, comfortable, clean, non-smoking room with its cute little balcony where we could watch the fireworks at Epcot. No... this is the hotel room were I stayed in Salt Lake when my travel plans got messed up by the rain/snow mess.

But at least Delta was nice enough to give me an "overnight kit" along with my stinky hotel room (it was late, all they had were designated smoking rooms... a designated smoking, wheelchair accessable room). None of these items is branded. They just have labels on everything in black type. "Toothbrush," "deoderant." And it was all made in China. Very surreal at midnight on a travel day that began at 7am.

The good news was that I got to fly home in daylight (and no snow) over Yellowstone Park. I couldn't resist taking pictures out the window of the plane. Isn't it pretty? Refreshingly rugged after Disney World.