The Happiest Living Hell on Earth

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

It was a Disney World family vacation.

For a short while now, Melanie and I have been discussing the possibility of going on a family vacation to Disney World. As Florida residents, we’re eligible for discounts that make such a grand vacation relatively feasible. This is especially true given that Peter and Creegan are still young enough to get into the Disney World parks for free. With this week being spring break, we had considered booking a hotel and going down for a few days, but we never quite committed to the plan because, among other things, we weren’t sure how reliable our van would be. As last week drew to a close and spring break officially began (for me, that would have been last Thursday at about 2 p.m.), we continued batting the idea around, changing our mind about 1,000 times over a two-day period. Things were slightly complicated by the fact that some good friends of ours wanted us to go down with them sometime next month. We wanted to buy a four-day pass to Disney World (where each of the four days can be used at any point between now and the end of May), but we weren’t sure if we should try to drive down there more than once or if we should just try to cram it all into one super vacation. The former option would make it easier to fit in with school and spread out the fun, but it would ultimately cost more for gas and hotels. The latter option would be cheaper, but perhaps more grueling physically and psychologically, plus difficult to arrange with school.

Early on Saturday evening, Melanie and I had decided that we would try to go down only once, and that we would wait until next month so we could go with our friends. We gave up on the idea of driving down to Orlando on Monday or Tuesday, as we had been considering. Then, quite late on Saturday night, Melanie and I got about as spontaneous as we’ve ever been and decided that not only would we still go this week, but we would leave the very next day, on Sunday afternoon. We had never considered leaving that early in the week, but quite simply, we had been wanting to do something fun during spring break and we figured why not just do it. So we did. The next day, just after 4 p.m., we took off for Orlando, telling Eddie and Peter only a few hours before that we were going on vacation. It was quite fun.

The fun lasted up until about the time we actually got to Disney World on Monday morning. As Melanie so graciously and frequently reminds me, attitude plays a big role in how positively or negatively one’s experiences are. But let me tell you, it was hard to enjoy that first day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. We stayed at a hotel located just two miles (literally) from Disney World, a hotel that offered a complimentary shuttle to the park. (This was a huge perk, we thought, given that parking at Disney World is $14 per day.) We took the 10:05 a.m. shuttle that picked us up right in front of our hotel. It would be two-and-a-half hours before we were actually inside the Magic Kingdom. Why? Well, as it turns out, the shuttle only takes you to Epcot, from which you must utilize the complimentary Disney transportation systems to work your way to Magic Kingdom (or to any of the other Disney parks). That sounds all well and good, but it was an incredibly laborious experience. First, after departing our shuttle, we had to walk quite a ways to get to the actual entrance to Epcot. Then we had to wait in an incredibly long line to have our bags searched. Then we had to wait in line for the monorail, which takes you not to the Magic Kingdom itself, but to the parking and transportation center. Once you get to the parking and transportation center, you must either take another monorail (which has another huge line) or take a ferryboat to get to the Magic Kingdom. Getting off of the first monorail, there were about a million people milling around. You couldn’t tell which way to go. You could see signs above the monorail and ferryboat loading areas, but you had no clue what lines were going to get you to those things. Nobody was standing around guiding people. It was pandemonium, as far as I could tell. We wanted to try the ferryboats, just to have a change of pace. We tried moving away from the line that seemed to be directly in front of the monorail boarding system. But, as we moved further and further down the line, it didn’t seem like there was ever a new line. It all seemed to be one massive group. We didn’t know what we were doing, but fortunately for us, we somehow ended up back in the line, further up than we probably were supposed to be. We kind of just blended into it. I don’t feel that guilty about it, because the line was totally disorganized and tons of people kept ending up ahead of you that weren’t originally ahead of you. Rather than being a single-file line, the line was about ten people wide, so you couldn’t tell who was with whom and where they were going, exactly. Gaps would open up several feet to your right and a few feet ahead of you, and suddenly someone from a mile back behind you in line would fill that void. It was quite chaotic.

In the end, we thought we had fallen back into the original line that we had been trying to avoid, which we originally thought was for the monorail. It ended up being for the ferryboat (which made us happy, I guess), but it was as long or longer waiting for the ferryboat as it ever was waiting to go on a ride at the Magic Kingdom itself. Once we actually got on the ferryboat and to the Magic Kingdom’s main entrance, we had to go through another line for a repeat bag search. Then we had to go get in line at the ticket will call office, to pick up the passes we had ordered online. By the time we had those tickets and had officially passed through the turnstiles at the Magic Kingdom’s main entrance, it was after 12:30 p.m.

Let the fun begin? No, not quite. We knew we wanted to hit Adventureland first, but we had barely gotten into the park and walked a few feet before we were abruptly stopped and told we had to wait for a parade. We had to stand there for about ten minutes while a collection of dancers and half a dozen or so familiar Disney characters on floats went by. We weren’t really interested in the parade, so it felt like nothing more than yet another delay. As it would turn out, the non-stop parades would prove one of our worst enemies on the trip, hindering our progression through the park at several points. In fact, between the time we officially entered the Magic Kingdom (approximately 12:35 p.m.) and the time we boarded the complimentary shuttle back to the hotel (7:45 p.m.), we enjoyed a total of five attractions. Only three of those were rides, and one of the non-rides (the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House) we didn’t even have to wait in line for. Is that obscene or what? I think so.

Admittedly, the poor use of our time was partially our own fault. Then again, there was no way to know we were doing things stupidly. You have to go through all the craziness of visiting Disney World before you learn how to do it much better. By then, it’s too late to gain back the hours that were arguably wasted. For one thing, you’ve got to avoid going back and forth. We were trying to be smart when, for instance, we grabbed a “Fast Pass” ticket for the Jungle Cruise ride. Fast Pass tickets give you a pre-printed one-hour window during which you can return to the respective ride and board it almost immediately, without waiting in line. It worked great, except that we basically spent the time between getting the Fast Pass ticket and actually riding the ride (over 90 minutes later) walking across the park and back without doing a dang thing other than eating a $4.29 corn dog. (We passed on the $3, one-ounce bag of potato chips. No joke.) After eating lunch, we thought we’d pass the time by heading to the Haunted Mansion. On our way there … whoops, it’s another parade! Road closed! Oh good, this nice Disney employee is guiding us into the closed-off area and telling us to go ahead. Wait, what’s this? Now another Disney employee is mad at us and telling us we’ve got to get out of the road we were just directed into. He points us over to the other side of the road, onto a sidewalk that is packed with people eagerly awaiting the parade. We can hardly get through them, what with a baby stroller and all. The Disney employee has to yell at people to move for us, and even then, there is barely room at the back of the crowd of spectators for a single-file (at best) line of people to walk in one direction. People are indeed walking, but not in the direction we’re trying to go. Thankfully, after a few minutes of trying to push our stroller upstream, we are directed to a closed sidewalk along with a person in a wheelchair. We bypass a massive amount of people this way, but it doesn’t get us terribly far. We see that the Haunted Mansion wait time is 40 minutes. I’m tempted, and Edison is convinced he wants to go in it, but I’m also 99.9% certain he’ll back out at the last moment. I don’t want to invest 40 minutes into that. So, we decide to work our way to Fantasyland and see about doing the Peter Pan ride. Unfortunately, this requires a little bit of backtracking, too. When we get to the Peter Pan ride, the wait time is an hour. At this point, we only have a few minutes before we can use our Fast Pass for the Jungle Cruise (way back in the Adventureland area of the park). We decide to grab a Fast Pass for the Peter Pan ride, since it is offered. We don’t notice until the Fast Pass tickets print that the return time is 9:20 p.m. Um, never mind. Scratch Peter Pan off the list. Let’s go back to the Jungle Cruise.

Way too long later, we are back at the Jungle Cruise ride. We get onto it fairly quickly, which is really, really nice. The ride doesn’t last long and is a bit different from what I remember as a kid. They have changed it, and it doesn’t seem much worth the time, really. We decide to make our way to Tomorrowland, which we still haven’t visited. Finally, we have some decent fun. We wait in line to go on the Astro Orbiter, which is basically flying rockets that you can make go up and down. Peter goes with me and is a bit freaked out. (The centrifugal force makes you feel like your rocket is about to tip over.) I try to calm him by pretending we’re birds. Melanie, Creegan, and Eddie are in the rocket in front of us. Eddie, too, doesn’t want to make the rocket go up and down, but after the ride is done, he hails it as his favorite activity of the day. Both boys may have been hesitant about making the rockets go up and down because of an earlier experience that day, on Aladdin’s magic carpet ride. The two rides are similar, in that you basically fly around in circles and can make your vehicle go up and down. Eddie made the magic carpet go up and down a few times, but it was more abrupt than expected and it freaked both him and (even more so) Peter out.

What have I left out? Oh, we visited a Monsters, Inc. show, which was basically stand-up comedy performed by cartoon monsters on-screen. It wasn’t exactly a movie, because they would actually put people from the audience up on a big screen and have the on-screen cartoon monsters interact with them a bit. Clearly, people were backstage with a microphone and making up some of the stuff on the spot as they talked to the people in the audience. But it was still a cartoon, not people in costumes or anything. It was mildly entertaining, though probably not the most exciting thing for Edison and Peter. Eddie laughed a few times, though I think he was laughing more because he could tell a joke was told than because he understood the joke.

At that point, we thought we had better start heading back to the monorail so we could work our way back to the shuttle pick-up area. We had no idea how long it would take going back the other way, so we ended up back a lot earlier than we needed to be, unfortunately. Still, I don’t know that we would have had much time for anything else. As the day progressed, the wait times seemed to increase at each ride. I’m a bit disappointed that we didn’t go on any rides that involve watching stuff, like the Peter Pan ride, Pirates of the Caribbean (which Eddie refused to go on because he was certain it would be terrifying), the Haunted Mansion, or even It’s a Small World. Those types of rides are what stand out in my memory from visiting Disneyland as a kid. The good news (or is it?) is that we plan to return to the Magic Kingdom next month. We’ll do things much better next time, including shelling out the $14 to park at the park ourselves. I’m sure this will be hectic, too, but at least we won’t have to work around shuttle schedules. We’ll also have a good idea of exactly what we want to do, and we’ll head straight to it, starting on the opposite side of the park than we did this time around. I’m hopeful that it can be a much, much better experience.

Later, I’ll write about our second full day in Orlando, during which we spent the day at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. That was a much nicer experience. I’ll also post some pictures, though we kept with tradition and hardly took any photographs.

The Space Between

Every once in a while, as I lie in bed trying to sleep, I drift off to that special place in between wakefulness and dreaming. Often when I haplessly mosey into this murky territory, my thoughts turn into a string of ludicrous non-sequiturs that would do Lewis Carroll proud. Now and then, however, rather than going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, I think all but my logical side shuts down. There have been a few times when, as I linger in somnolent limbo, I am struck by what I regard as profound insights. Usually, it’s when I’m pondering something to do with philosophy, and then as I lapse into semi-sleep, I find that my logical brain carries on without me, almost automatically, and it sees connections or makes inferences that are rather astonishing. In many ways, I feel like I’m just listening to my brain as it computes things and spits out the results. I’m very much an observer, or so it seems. Unfortunately, because I’m delicately balanced on the precipice of sleep whenever this occurs, the insights are typically lost. Even if I were to try to wake myself enough to grab a pen and paper and jot down the brilliance with which I’ve just been inspired, to do so would almost certainly cause me to lose hold of the ingenious thoughts. By the time I scrambled to the surface, reverse-plunged my head back into the warm air of full-blooded consciousness, and gulped the air of lucidity back into my mental lungs, I’d find the deep thoughts I was trying so desperately to preserve had long since slipped through my fingertips and sunk back into the deepest recesses of my mind, never again to be recovered. What a crapper.

Last night, I had no such brilliant thoughts, but I was entertained by my semi-conscious thought processes. Not quite a riddle, not quite a deep thought, I came up with this little gem:

“Round” turns five words into six.

There’s something hauntingly beautiful about it, don’t you think? I was also treated to a half-dream in which I was driving around in a parking garage in Seattle. At some point, some guy tried to get into my car when I was going kind of slow. It was kind of creepy, and I thought I should circle around and crush him by pinning him between the hood of my car and the wall. But then I was disturbed, thinking that if I pinned him hard and punched the gas just a little bit, to make sure the pressure killed him, his insides would probably start shooting out of his mouth and all over the windshield. Pretty silly, eh? LOL!

Potpourri No. 30

Random tidbits o’ life:

Ah, Summer
It’s February in Florida, which means the first signs of summer are upon us. As in years past, the shortest month in the calendar has given rise to the first sunbathers by the pool. Lately, I myself have been wearing t-shirts and shorts and driving with the A/C on. It’s uncomfortable not to, which sucks considering we’ve got about six months of steadily increasing temperatures to look forward to. Currently, afternoon temperatures have been reaching into the high 70’s, and tomorrow it’s supposed to top out at 79 degrees. Crazy!

So What Else is New?
Guess who’s sick? Trick question! The real question, of course and as always, is who’s the sickest? That’s a tough one right now. Melanie’s just starting to get over something terrible, and I think I might just be descending into it. In a family of five, it seems impossible to fully exorcise illness from the home, which sucks a donkey. I somehow thought I might scrape by this round with barely a scratch—or scratchy throat, I should say. My throat had been sore and swollen for a few days, but nothing major. It seemed to be getting better, but last night, my throat suddenly feels like it’s coated in sand. It’s not sore again, but it’s obnoxious and I’m occasionally seized with coughing fits that leave me seeing stars and tasting blood. I assume it’s salt and not blood, but I always think of blood when I’m hacking my lungs out and get that distinct flavor in my mouth. It would have to be snot, methinks. Or, maybe I’ve just got tuberculosis! LOL!

Taking Teaching to a Whole New Level
Some exciting (dreadful?) news this week: I’ve been given a teaching position for the latter part of the summer semester. That means I’ll have full responsibility of a class, the first time in several years that this has been the case. During my time at Georgia State, I taught seven classes completely on my own. But my teaching gig this summer will be quite different. First of all, I’ll have as much control over the course as a genuine professor would. At GSU, we grad students didn’t have much say over anything other than what work-appropriate clothes we wore while we taught. The syllabus, textbook, lesson schedule, exams, etc., were all selected and written for us. Very little was left up to us. At FSU, I’ll be calling the shots. That’s cool, but it’s also a lot more responsibility and work on my part, so I’m sure it will be stressful. But, funny enough, I think I’ll have a TA of my own to help me out. Wow, I’m growing up! But anyway, another huge difference between my time at GSU and my upcoming teaching gig is that I’ve now been assigned to teach a 3000-level class. A symbolic logic class, no less. Reductio ad absurdum! Symbolic logic is not my specialty, by any means, but I guess that’s beside the point as far as the department is concerned. It’s assumed that I know the material at this stage of the game, and of course, I do. I’ve taken symbolic logic twice, after all. (“I’ve been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy!”) I took it at the U of U even though I didn’t have to, and then I had to take it as part of my master’s program at GSU. I always kind of liked the subject and did exceptionally well with it, but it’s also one of the most intimidating subjects I’ve ever studied. It can easily confuse people, and I’m not excluded from that. I often have to think through matters of symbolic logic very slowly, and I can’t help wondering how inept I might sometimes appear to my students this summer. But that’s OK. It should be quite an experience teaching the class. An overwhelming but interesting and good experience.

It’s Official—I’m a Twit
Yup, I’ve made a Twitter account. Why? Why ask why? No reason, really. I decided to follow a bunch of celebrities just for the heck of it, and also because most of them excel at being witty in 140-characters or fewer. (Bam! Bet you thought I’d say “less”!) Probably everything I put on Twitter I’ll also put as a status update on Facebook, but in my experience, Facebook status updates are much easier to miss. One reason is the fact that Facebook friendships are practically meaningless, so people have way more Facebook friends than they could ever keep up with. Another reason is that status updates on Facebook have to compete with updates about someone’s horse dying on Farmtown or with the results of someone's survey to determine what kind of legume best captures their personality. (You are a garbanzo bean, but your besties call you chick pea!) On Twitter, depending on whom you follow, you’re not getting so much excess baggage and fluff. That’s nice … even if it is pointless.

Two-Line Poetry
While walking home from the bus stop the other day, I thought maybe I should start writing simple, two-line poems. It would give me a chance to be more artsy without demanding too much of my time. And, as we’ve all learned from haikus, short and simple can be truly beautiful, just like Dudley Moore. So, anyway, I came up with these gems. Hope you enjoy them!

TURTLE SOUP
Suntan while you can, little turtle
For tonight, it’s turtle soup

SILENT REJECTION
I thought she’d never ask
Turns out I was right

The end!

Gettin' Baked

Warning: this post is bi-polar. The next paragraph has basically nothing to do with the one that follows it. It is the second paragraph below that is the real subject of this post.

Sitting down to write this entry, I am torn between writing about the ceaseless stresses that come with being a relatively poor, married, graduate student father and discussing something much less gloomy. Suffice it to say, the more people in your family, the more often something is wrong. I dare say, this has been the most stressful, and at times dreary and depressing, my life has felt in several years. I’m not in a constant state of sadness or anything, but I’ve felt more despair since Creegan was born than I’d care to admit. Good thing he’s a cutie. It’s not like it’s him causing the problems, anyway, at least not specifically. It’s just that he’s one more person in the equation. Our resources—emotional, psychological, and physical alike—are further tapped. Add that to the endless supply of demands that are upon you—familial demands, professional and academic demands, even personal-development demands—and it’s rough, especially when someone is always sick, an errand always needs to be run, a meal always needs to be made, a van always needs to be taken into the repair shop, an essay always needs to be written, a test always needs to be graded, a call always needs to be made—to the apartment maintenance staff because something’s falling apart, to the hospital billing department because they can’t figure out my insurance, etc. It never ends. I don’t know how Melanie does everything she does, and she does a lot. But as a family of five, it’s harder and harder for demands not to impinge on everyone, and I sometimes don’t know if I can take the stress and/or blah of it all.

OK, I guess I had to get some of that off my chest. You’d never guess that I had decided not to write about stress, would you? I actually chose to write about something happier. And what’s that, you ask? One of my favorite food discoveries of the past year—baked chips. Two or three months ago, Melanie and I were at some friends’ house for a barbecue, and they served Baked Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffles® to go with their burgers. I’ve tried baked chips before, but I didn’t remember caring for them all that much. However, Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffles have long been one of my favorite kinds of chip, so I thought I’d try out the baked variety. To my surprise, I found that I liked them even more than the “normal” kind. I’ve since tried other baked chips from Frito-Lay, including Baked Doritos®, and I find them all surprisingly good. With the exception of Doritos, I genuinely like the baked versions better. That’s happy news for my health, since a serving of baked chips has roughly one-third the amount of saturated fat that the “normal” chips have. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that reducing my saturated fats seems to be having a positive effect on my weight. The cool thing is, even if the “normal” and the baked varieties of chips were equally good (or bad) for you, I would opt for the baked versions almost every time. They really do taste better. (Bear in mind, I’m the kind of person that also thinks French fries, McDonald’s hash browns, and the like taste better if you squeeze them really hard with a napkin first and get rid of a lot of the grease. I’ve been like that for years, so it’s not merely a change in my diet that has prompted me to enjoy the less greasy version of chips. I like the more natural taste.) On the downside, baked chips are a lot more expensive. If I remember correctly, a bag of baked chips is at least dollar more than “normal” chips, and I don’t think you get as much. Depending on how much you eat chips, switching to baked chips could be expensive. Of course, if you eat them very frequently, you’ll be much better off switching to the baked variety.

Walkman

After I ate breakfast and showered this morning, I set my wet and naked body (sorry for the unnecessary erotica!) on the bathroom scale. It is a digital scale that measures to the nearest 1/10 pound. According to this morning’s measurement, I weigh 18.6 pounds less than I did at my mid-December doctor’s appointment. That’s encouraging, because during the week between Christmas and New Year’s (and probably for a few days afterward), I wasn’t very disciplined at all, and up until two days ago, I hadn’t tried adding exercise to my routine. All I did was boost my fiber intake—which on a typical day is now around 30 or more grams per day—and watch my saturated fats. I was encouraged to watch my carbs, too, but I haven’t been as concerned with that. I tracked them for a while, but generally, the kinds of foods that would throw off my carbs were also the kinds of things that would throw off my saturated fats—most notably, baked treats and sweets. Of course, I eliminated regular soda from my diet, which itself probably reduced my average daily carb intake by the hundreds. Other than that, I look at carbs only secondarily, to break ties between which brands of tortillas and bread I should buy, for example.

As noted above, I did start exercising two days ago. Nothing major. I’m going for walks, and right now, I don’t even plan to go for walks on days when I go to school because I walk around a bit on campus anyway. I’m open to increasing this, but for now, I figure this can only help matters. Thus far, then, I’ve only gone on two official walks. That hardly warrants any commentary on my part, but I enjoyed them. And I think I will enjoy them. This morning, it was crisp and cool and a bit gray from the early morning rain. It’s nice to get out there and just walk, enjoying the scenery but also being able to be so in tune with one’s own thoughts. Having an iPod is wonderful for this. (You can’t help but turn introspective when you’ve got music playing right inside your ear canals, blocking out much of the noise from the outside world.) Many years ago, I used to walk on a treadmill and use a Discman. That was clunky, awkward, and the Discman was prone to skip as you would walk. Needless to say, iPods are a tremendous improvement. I love it. And it’s so much easier to exercise when you’ve got John Parr’s “St. Elmo’s Fire” blasting away in your eardrums. (I just wish I had had a banana yellow sweatband and some electric blue running shorts to make me feel even more inspired.) I can imagine myself wanting to go on daily walks for the rest of my life. The major hurdle, of course, is going to be weather. In a very short time, it will be disastrously hot around here, even early in the morning. What a way to ruin a good thing.

I guess that’s all I have to say. I thought there would be more to it, but apparently not. Okay, then.