June 2008 Archives

More Disney photos. Just what you wanted on a Monday afternoon...

:)

Sunday we decided to go to Hollywood Studios. First we had to have breakfast. I had made reservations for the Ohana Friends breakfast there at the Polynesian Resort. It's 'family style' which is sort of like a buffet all you can eat, except that they bring it to the table for you. It's also a character breakfast. While we ate, several of them stopped by so the girls could get their autographs and pictures taken with them.

During our first visit as a family to Disney back in 2005 we seemed to run into Stitch several times. He was inside a remote control trash can that Pete got into an argument with. It was one of those 'had to be there' moments but it was pretty damned funny.

So do you think they were happy to be there?

Clearly I had not had enough coffee. Damn, and I need some of that hair die for men as well. I didn't realize just how gray I was getting. That's fucked up for someone as young as I am to be going gray already.

I was going to post more about the day but that's enough photos. I will post about Hollywood Studios tomorrow.

So I came across this site called flooble that lets you generate random blog posts and decided to check it out and give it a try. Hey, it beats writer's block, that's for damn sure. The results are below...

Today I was listening to a radio program about ingratitude on the African subcontinent. I was very interested by the topic, so I began explaining my friend Archibald about it, and he interrupted:

"Get out!.. No kidding?! Don't tell me you're into the African subcontinent too!"

But then when I got to the part about the ingratitude, Archibald subsided and began sobbing. But then just now, Archibald's father told me that the reason Archibald was so freaked out was because he had to study ingratitude in class. Occasionally Archibald can be quite strange like that, but I need to make this work...

Link of the day: Blackout Pics | Randomly generated by Flooble Instant Blog Post Generator

Not quite rated "R" but not quite safe for work...

I just don't know what to say...

Image via Wikipedia

Back in August of 2007 he spent five days cleaning up the streets of Manhattan in order to fulfill his community service for falsely reporting a break-in at his New York home.

Seems kind of stupid to me. It's not as if he's going to hide a bomb up his ass or something, although as someone that likes to whitewash the back 40 I guess you never know...

Saturday was our third day at the park. After having stayed up pretty late the night before we slept in a bit. Besides going to the Animal Kingdom today we also had the Pirates and Princess party to attend that evening. I honestly don't remember where we ate that morning, now that it's been almost a month. Had we eaten at one of the character breakfasts I would have taken pictures so we must have eaten there at the Polynesian Resort where we stayed that week. We got kind of a late start to the day.

The girls didn't particularly enjoy waiting for the bus...

We had a pretty good time at the Animal Kingdom but we cut it a bit short that day and didn't get to do a whole lot of stuff. Pete and the wife did get to ride on Everest, maybe more than once if I recall and Pete loved it. The wife I think was feeling a bit ill by the time they got off...

While I didn't get to go on the safari ride there is a walk in the Asia section you can go through and I managed to get a few pictures of the animals there.

These damned bats were hanging around. The fucking things were huge...

I had a hard time getting a shot of this green tree frog in it's aquarium.

This guy was hanging out taking a nap in the heat...

...and I did manage to get a picture of this Komodo Dragon lying around in the sun.

There is this pretty cool fountain in the Asia section section that all of the kids were playing in cooling down a bit.

It doesn't matter when or where, RePete is always ready to pose for a photo shoot...

We also rode the Kali River Rapids, which is my favorite ride there. I'm not much into roller coasters and I usually end up hanging with RePete anyway, but water rides I love. It was pretty hot and muggy, so we left the Animal Kingdom around 4pm or so and went back to the hotel to clean up and change after a short nap.

The Pirates and Princess party was at the Magic Kingdom and ran from 7pm until midnight. You actually had to purchase separate tickets for the event, so it wasn't crowded in the least. I think we were all pretty tired before we ever even made it to that or we would have had a much better time.

This was taken in front of Cinderella's Castle late into the evening...

All week long by the time we finally rolled in to the hotel (this time it was after midnight again) the girls passed out...

Sunday we went to Hollywood Studios. I think we all enjoyed it much more than the last time that we went, but I will post some photos from Hollywood Studios next week.

I much prefer to post my own photos but as I have nothing fresh to share, this'll have to do...

So back in May the powers that be 're-aligned' our organization. I probably wrote about it a bit. I dropped two of my stores and picked up two more. No big deal. It put me working closer to home and was a bit of a raise. The only bad part is I have psycho woman working for me, but even that wasn't too bad.

A couple of us are getting moved around again and while I'm not particularly happy about it I will be a good boy and do what I am told without too much bitching. I am losing my store in Villa Rica, GA and picking up the one in Tallapoosa, which is almost to the state line. It means probably one more tank of gas a week and considering gas prices, that's a big deal. I guess it's a good thing they reimburse me for all of it but it also means a pay cut for probably a month, maybe two. After that I will be OK. In addition to the new store I am also getting a new manager in one of my other ones, so it's basically another new district. I'm interested in seeing how this progresses over the next few weeks.

I have almost finished the application for promotion. It's not really an application as much as it is a self-assessment among other things. I will most likely have it ready to mail in by Tuesday. Once they receive it my vice president will have to sit down with me and give me an interview, at which point either he will say I am ready for promotion and put me on the list, or he'll give me a development plan to work on and I have to go through the whole dog and pony show once again.

I still seem to not be interested in blogging in the least. I go through this for a while a couple of times a year. Sooner or later I will get past it and start blogging regularly. Not for lack of material that's for damn sure. I can at least post more about the Disney trip anyway I guess, and upload some more photographs.

So I posted last about our third day at the Magic Kingdom. The girls had a great time, as did we and they got to meet all manner of Disney characters.

RePete and Holder rode behind Pete and myself on Dumbo...

While we were on Dumbo I put my camera on continuous shoot and took around 30 pictures. I had to stop because it was starting to make me queasy but it was pretty interesting. If I had thought about it I would have just caught it on video.

Pete had to try and pull the sword from the stone...

We had to have a much needed stop in the play area at Pooh Corner for the girls. I have already posted a couple of the photos with RePete playing in the water. Here are a couple more of the area.

Here are the wild animals...

Later that evening we had supper at Chef Mickey's, located in the Contemporary Resort which is pretty close to the Magic Kingdom. It's also the hotel we stayed at last time. One of my favorite pictures is the one with the three kids standing in front of the Mickey ears behind the resort. Of course the Marine wasn't there this time but we did manage to get a photo of the rest of us at the same place...

Got this one of the girls at the same place.

The girls were very happy to meet Minnie Mouse at Chef Mickey's

After supper we went back to the Magic Kingdom. All of the parks either open early or stay open late a couple days a week just for the people that are staying in one of the resorts there and MK was staying open until 2am on that Friday. We made it until right around midnight, at least some of us did. This is shortly before we left...

That was a pretty good clue that it was time to leave. I will post more about the 31st later. Saturday the 31st we spent the day at the Animal Kingdom and then went back to the Magic Kingdom for the Princess and Pirates party they have been having this year.

So I am still in non-blogging mode. Although I profess to working on templates for the site I haven't even done much of that the last 48 hours either although I am certainly plan to this evening. Good intentions rarely got anything done.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had sent in my initial application for advancement at work. They sent me back a questionnaire to fill out, which is the next step in the process. I have as yet to fill it out but I have pulled it back out of my desk drawer to fill out. It includes a work history recap (just positions held within my company) and explanations of any breaks in service, some questions such as "what are the most important things you look for when hiring managers/associates", "which management skills do you need to develop and how can we help", lists of goals, whether I can relocate, etc. a 38 question self-assessment and another page to list my performance recap for the last six months. Nothing particularly difficult but it will take me a couple of days to get everything together that I need to fill it out. I am certainly not adverse to relocating but depending on where the division is I would be taking it might be a bit tight. With the wife signing a contract each year to finish the school year we might be stuck in two different places for several months. Another roadblock is the fact that we sort of own our house and selling right now would be a bitch.

Over the next few months a new division is going to be created just west of me, between here and Birmingham and I also hear the the current division manager that has some of those stores might also be leaving, which would mean an opening much sooner than I thought. That's one of the reasons I dug the paperwork back out again. It would mean having anywhere from six to ten stores and probably another $20k per year, putting me in the six digits. Can't complain about that. It would also put me that much closer to being an officer of the company (bwahaha). Not too shabby for someone that started out washing fucking dishes 21 years ago.

That's what's been on what passes for my mind lately, other than the usual bullshit. I know I have pretty much quit bitching about my managers and some of the more colorful employees but I just felt that it was in my best interests to do so.

I think I will work on the site for awhile...

I know I haven't posted much lately, other than a few memes and some of the new pictures. I've been pretty busy at work since I got back from vacation.

I am also working on a new set of templates for the blog and since I really am pretty much clueless it takes me awhile. Shadowscope V4 will be rolled out at some point in the next few months. I am going to try and streamline some things. Really I just enjoy tweaking the place and changing it every once in a while. I have kept this theme longer than any other but I feel like it's time for a change. Once I have the site up and running with the plugins I want and everything working properly I will copy the templates over here.

David McMahon is an Aussie who is an author and photographer among other things. He also asks a weekly question in an entry/meme entitled Weekend Wanderings which you can answer during the course of the next week. Another quick writer's block knock, not that I ever lack for things to post, only the want to...

This week's question is "when did you last complain about the weather?"

That would be TODAY!

Somewhat...

I love the change in weather and while I will bitch the entire summer about how hot it is, I prefer the spring and summer over the cold of the winter anyway. I suppose Autumn is my favorite time of the year but the older I get the more I seem to like the warm weather. 90+ is a bit much though and that's where it's been here all week since I got home from vacation. It's almost as if I brought the warm weather with me.

I can't go on vacation anywhere without getting at least a few tramp stamp or thong photos, particularly during the summer. While not officially a tramp stamp since that is the term for a lower back tattoo, nothing stamps you a tramp like ink on the back of your neck...

Hell, might as well put an OZZY tattoo on your damned forehead...It's not that I dislike ink, hell, I have a couple of tattoos of my own and had I a bit more disposable income would probably have more. You have to be a bit more choosy as to where they are located and what they look like.

The post I wrote about our third day in Florida really was just the morning. I realized quite a bit into putting pictures into it that I was going to have to start breaking some of these up and posting them at intervals, so I shall.

After we had breakfast at the Crystal Palace we set out to explore the Magic Kingdom a bit further than we did a couple of years ago.

We started out in Tomorrowland, where Space Mountain resides. The wife wanted to get Fastpasses so that we wouldn't have to wait in line for too long. While we were there we rode the tram thing and just sort of hung out for a while. The Mad Hatter's Teacups sit right between Tomorrowland and Fantasyland. It's one of our favorites so we made sure to ride it.

While we were in Tomorrowland we also rode the Buzz Lightyear ride. It was a frigging blast. Basically it's an arcade game and a ride all in one. Pretty cool actually.

Afterward the girls ended up behind bars with Emperor Zurg...

There seem to be a couple of different photos with the girls behind bars during the week. That's all I'm going to post for today. Time wise it's about noon on Friday. I will pick through and post some more tomorrow. Considering that we took somewhere in the vicinity of 700 photos I have a couple to pick through. Believe it or not I actually took a lot less than I normally would during something like this.

Image via Wikipedia

It got me to thinking pretty seriously though about things you shouldn't stick up your ass. I should write about it. What a great bit of community service that would be, I mean lots of sites have pictures of things that have been stuck up other people's butts but really, how many web sites have a list of things you shouldn't stick up your butt?

I suppose there are several but I will attempt to address some of them myself.

1. Old fashioned glass coke bottles - They may be all smooth and easy going in but those curves just lie. Once it goes in it never comes back out and really, what happens when you sit down? Broken green bottle in your ass.


2. Gerbils - Just ask a certain old actor who shall remain nameless here. *cough* richard gere *cough*. fuck it, I lied.


3. Balloons - While it might seem really funny to watch someone try to inflate one of these guys with their flatulence the backdraft can suck these bad boys in and really mess you up. Just say no!


4. Ben gay or any other heat rub - BAD fucking news. You just thought it was bad when you got it on your balls...


5. Golf Balls - while they might seem like little ben-wa balls those little indentations would tend to collect feces and other stuff and then just get stuck in your anal sphincter and lodge there until your ass explodes.


6. Pencils - Two words. Lead Poisoning.


7. Velociman - While it's certainly a job I doubt it's the one he's looking for.


8. A professional Model - Remember that plugin I recently said I use. You know, they one that suggests tags, keywords, related entries and photos while I am typing a blog post? It's called Zemanta. What the fuck does that have to do with all this? It suggested a photo called Anus of a Professional Model. It's at fucking wikipedia. Go search for it if you don't believe me.


9. A 21 year old woman - Now it's suggesting a photograph of the anus of a 21 year old woman. While I might find it enjoyable to explore the anus of a 21 year old woman intimately I don't think I want to include it here. Besides, if you stick a 21 year old woman up your butt what would the wife say?


10. Ants - They bite.


11. Watermelon seeds - remember when your dad would lie to you and tell you that if you swallow the seeds you would end up with a watermelon in your belly? Imagine the vine growing out of your asshole.


12. Richard Gere - Worse than the hamster. really.


13. Loaded Firearms - The clench would be the hard part.


14. Raisinets - While they might look like dingleberries, don't be fooled.

I say it was day three but it was really day three of my vacation. It was the second day we were at Disney. We started the day pretty early.

This was taken out on the dock in front of the Polynesian Resort. You can take a ferry over to the Magic Kingdom from there as well as to/from several other resorts. I wasn't entirely sure how often the boat ran and we were running short on time so we ended up taking the monorail to MK instead. The reason we were running short on time is that we had reservations at the Crystal Palace shortly after 8am, even before the park itself opened. The Crystal Palace is buffet, which is cool and it's where Pooh and his friends hang out, which is even cooler. I'll bet Tigger holds doors open for people and doesn't worry about offending people by helping them out if they are bleeding in the street...

The little Piglet that RePete is holding is kind of an interesting story. When we took the kids back in 2005 I bought her a Pooh. She's never really shown that much of an interest in Pooh. Of course she will occasionally play with him but for the most part he's just one more fucking stuffed bear to contend with when cleaning her room. Anyhow, Pooh is in several pictures with her from that trip, which she spent 90% of in a stroller. She was two and a half after all. That's a lot of walking for a toddler. Anyhow, I had asked her if we should take Pooh back with us since he might miss his home. She thought that was a wonderful idea. So I forgot his sorry ass and left him at home. She was cheered up when I offered to get her Piglet so that he could report back to Pooh on our vacation and come to live with us and keep Pooh company. The fact that he is small and pink certainly didn't hurt. If you can't tell already, Pink is RePete's favoritist color. Piglet went EVERYWHERE with us in Disney, although I had to put a stop to it when we were ging to the water park on our last day there.

Apparently Zonker scared this dude so bad at the Atlanta Airport that he ran off and went to work for Winnie the Pooh in Disney World.

The star of the show finally made his way over to our table...

We had plenty of eating time with lots of characters and the girls completely filled their autograph books. As a matter of fact if I had thought about it I would have dug up their books from last time and still had room.

After breakfast we headed out into the Magic Kingdom. Right outside of the Crystal Palace there was some sort of 'Dreams' show going on in front of Cinderella's Castle.

Hell, Walt, I got a dream for you. How's about an adult Disney where I can bone the Disney Princesses? Some of them weren't too darn shabby. Heck, I would even settle for a couple of the dancers up there...

Good thing this blog isn't kid friendly...

Back to the subject at hand. We went on a bunch of rides and had a blast but sometimes the most fun is found elsewhere...

What ever happened to men behaving like men and women behaving like women? I'm not talking about women's lib or any other sexist claptrap. That's not what I am referring to at all, it's just the first thing that came to mind. What I am referring to is why aren't humankind more kind? Why aren't neighbors neighborly any more? Why are we a nation of fucking pussies that are more concerned with what we are comfortable with and not hurting other people's feelings to the point where other people could be getting fucked in the ass right in front of us in the middle of the street and we would avert our eyes and those of our children because we aren't "comfortable" with it rather than saying "hey dude, why the fuck are you fucking him up the ass? It don't look like he's enjoying it very much."

Don't believe me? Just ask Angel Torres in Hartford, Connecticut from the video below...

Never heard of Angel Torres? Me neither until today. He's the retired fork-lift operator who went to buy a gallon of milk at the grocery store Friday afternoon and got hit by some jackass chasing another car in Hartford. That kind of stuff sucks but unfortunately it happens. We all hope it just doesn't happen to us and that either we just have to read about it or that we are the ones that get to help out the victim. Therein lies the problem. Nobody could be bothered to help out Angel Torres and it wasn't a case of people not noticing it or seeing him lying there in the middle of the street. It's a bit hard to deny what a bunch of fucking scumbag pussies the people in Hartford are when it's all on video.

I found a link to the story at CNN and according to what one witness, Bryant Hayre, told the Hartford Courant he didn't feel comfortable helping Torres who was bleeding and conscious. Didn't feel fucking comfortable? Mr Hayre, I've got to tell you, you are one of the biggest pussies I have read or heard about in quite some time not counting several million other liberal pussy fucking democrats of which I am now sure you must be one. Who the fuck else waits for the government to come help the dude that's lying broken and bleeding on the street instead of rendering aid while you are waiting but the mommy mentality that has invaded our goddamn pussified feeling society. Clam up your fucking feelings for a couple of minutes and do some good helping out other people for a change. Probably a damned queer to boot.

We are all so worried about 'feelings' that sometimes we forget how to be human. I was holding the door open for this woman that looked like she could kick my ass the other day and she looked at me as if I had two fucking heads. I wanted so badly to tell her "heck lady, I hold the door for everyone, even dudes, so save your goddam lesbian men-hating looks for someone else and take your thunder thighs on inside the fucking building." Then I realized she probably really would have kicked my ass so I just went on my merry way. It's not about being a male chauvinist, it's about being polite and while I will gladly admit to being in the club for male chauvinist pigs I will also gladly admit that there is plenty of shit that women can do even better than I can. I am very comfortable in admitting that but I also feel that being polite to others is a skill that some folks need to learn. Apparently they left politeness, friendliness and helpfulness out of the queer lesbian school of etiquette.

Oh, that's right, that's what the Boy Scouts teach. All I can say is that thank god I was a boy scout so I could learn something about being prepared, and that don't include carrying around a tube of fucking KY, but I digress...

I ran across this second news report from the AP this morning (Friday). Apparently the son of Angel Torres is asking the general public for help in identifying the driver of the car that hit his father leaving him paralyzed.

I suppose I can go back to posting some Disney pics now...

The first couple of days of my vacation were pretty uneventful. Wednesday I spent the morning running around, taking the dog to the kennel, packing and repacking the car, doctor's appointments and filling prescriptions prior to leaving town. It seems like a lot to be doing on the very day that I was leaving town but it was also my first day off of work so I had not had the chance to take care of any of it prior to that day.

I actually managed to get a nap in prior to the wife coming home from work as well, which was going to be needed. I planned to drive to Lake City Florida and spend the night, which is exactly what we ended up doing. Prior to that we stopped somewhere south of Macon for dinner. I had picked up cold cuts, boiled eggs and other goodies. Last Wednesday was our actual 20th anniversary so if we were going to be on the road I wanted our celebration to be nice. We drove on and made it to Lake City around 9pm or so and spent the night at...Best Western I believe it was. I would have to find the receipt to be sure. It certainly wasn't anyplace I would remember. Just another generic hotel room with crappy too soft beds and a continental breakfast.

We made it to Disney before 11 on Thursday morning...

Once we got there we immediately drove to the Polynesian Resort to check in. While it was too early to actually get the room and put our stuff in there I knew that we could get our keycards which contain ID, park tickets, room keys, and meal information. I also had mine linked to my bank account so that we could just charge any purchases to the room as well. Very convenient. Once we had checked in the bellhops locked our stuff up and we changed so that we could head off to one of the water parks, Typhoon Lagoon. It was OK, I think the girls enjoyed it a bit more than I did.

We hung at the water park for a while and once we were able to check in to the room we took the bus back to the resort and I took a nap while the girls went swimming.

I am almost sorry I napped, but I was pretty beat from the drive and then hanging at the water park. The wife got to watch the Space Shuttle lift off in the distance from the beach while I was asleep. I don't guess you could see much more than the smoke but cool nonetheless.

After they woke me up we went to eat supper and then hung out on the beach to watch fireworks.

They also do this light show on the lakes on either side of the magic kingdom that is pretty cool as well. Some things never change I suppose. I can remember the light show out on the lake when I went as a child 31 years ago. I guess Disney World was about five years old at that point. We stayed in the Camp Wilderness camp ground when I was a kid. My version of camping now revolves around a hotel room with air conditioning and someone else to prepare my food.

I am hopefully still in Disney World at the moment and completely away from computers and the Internet, although I am sure to find a way to post at least once...

I am sort of updating each of the posts that I did via my cell phone while we were on vacation. I will have updated versions of most of these that were actually taken with a camera later on Flickr. Anyhow, we had breakfast at the Crystal Palace at the Magic Kingdom one morning and I shot this one there.

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I took this with my cell phone and posted it right there but the sun was so bright I could barely see what I was posting. Goddam this is an awful photo. Good thing I never uploaded this one to Flickr!

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