Thursday's follow up

Okie dokie, lots of pictures this time. Today was wide open. We were late as I had in a previous post. By late I mean 15 minutes after the park opened. So new plan, back to the "unofficial guide" plan. We got a fast pass for the Tower of Terror, dare I say, no time for a picture! Then ran to stand in line for Rockin Roller Coaster. Then we both rode our favorite ride of all the parks, I am of course referring to the restroom. So I stopped to take a pic.



On to the newest area in the Pixar Studio area and we went for Toy Story Mania which honestly is worth the price of admission to the park. It is so much fun. Mandy was in the fast pass line for this for like 20 mins. I actually go in the regular line, then back out to wait on her. We sucked it up and stood there and planned to come back later as well. Good thing, Saturday this wait was 90 minutes. Ours was only about 15-20.



As you can see below, I won. Mandy of course is a graceful loser and then blamed everything on her gun, the cart, her glasses, etc. You get the idea. I will add we had a war wound and I swear I pulled something in my back.....but I won and thats what counts. Because 2nd is the first loser.




I love the Muppet's. Mandy and/or Mom got me the Muppet's season 1 and 2 for Christmas. I was glued to the TV for hours. Poor Beaker. "mi mi mi mi mi"


The top hat from Fantasia. Not the chick on American Idol either.



So we left the park to head to EPCOT because Mandy wanted to see the candy lady in Japan that did the Candy art. She saw it on the Travel Channel when Samantha Brown was talking to her. Which was Jan last year, when we saw Samantha, but no candy lady.


Well we were like an hour or better early to EPCOT. We took the boat from the Studios to EPCOT which take like 45 mins with 3 stops in between but it was a really nice day and seeing The Swan and Dolphin, Beach Club and The Boardwalk is always fun from the boat. Since we did manage to get there early we took a quick walk to England and stumbled across King Arther and the search for the Holy Grail (Grail, Grail, Hugh!) These guys were a riot. I don't know how we ever missed them before. What did we see? "Rubbish!" and the King, "Gitchy, Gitchy, ya ya baby!". You really just have to see it and participate to understand it all. It was my kind of humor.


Finally this candy art lady. This stuff is like 200 degrees and she's tossing it around with her bare hands. She just asks people in the crowd what you want and she just starts shaping. She does this in like 2 minutes, I swear. It's pretty unique little present and you can't buy them, you just have to stand and hope she asks you. After 4 animals, I was done.


After this we made our way back to the Studios to use our fast passes and play Toy Story Mania one more time. Which we didn't know but would be our last this trip. As you can see below, I won again. Mandy was even ahead and I was injured (see above post). I still made an triumphant comeback and won by 700 points and to quote Ricky Bobby - "If you ain't first, you're last. You know, you know what I'm talking about? That there is trademarked, not to be used without written permission of Ricky Bobby, Inc."



Then she felt bad and she cried because I surprised her with flowers. Tee Hee. You can sorta see me in the background of the mirror. Notice our towel animals. We got a duck and a rabbit this time.

Some follow up good photos

I figured I'd add some much better pictures instead of the junky ones my phone takes and some more descriptions about our trip. It's a lot easier to type with all fingers instead of just your thumbs.

I'll try and keep these in order. First and foremost we knew we needed a monorail ride from EPCOT to the Magic Kingdom. So we left the hotel, went to EPCOT, caught the monorail to the ticketing and transportation center then decided on a boat ride to the kingdom since we can't recall ever doing that.

Here you'll see a CAT C-Series MTL hard at work on the beaches of the Polynesian hotel. Ah, does the heart good to see Disney spending money buying this, me making the money to design it, then giving it right back to Disney to come here. I'm sure I probably worked on this machine at some time or another. At bare minimum I was probably standing in our cab sub assembly area when it got tested. Just a safe bet. Pretty sure I can expense this trip now.



The obligatory first shot in the park always has to be the Cinderella's castle. Note the large amount of other people that made their way to FL the same time we did.



Space Mountain: 45 min wait, fast pass ticket line for Space Mountain, 5 mins. The routine is Mandy gets the tickets, Scott takes the picture, it works out well.

The Tic-Toc-Croc from Peter Pan Flight. I love the croc.

Donald coming out of Micky's Philharmagic.

All in all a very good day considering the we woke at 4 something, showered, shaved, flew down, check in to a bus, rode a bus, checked in to the hotel, rode another bus, rode a monorail, rode a boat (thank goodness it wasn't rowed!) Then only had 7 hours or so in there. The best part is using the fast passes and walking by everybody standing in line just so I can say, "Look dear, peasant." I normally get an elbow to the ribs about then.

absolutely last shot

ok so this is our real last shot from the world. we are sitting on the magical express loading other guests so we can all go back to our respective homes. our flight leaves at 7:05 and hopefully we won't be flying through a storm. with any luck we should be home around 10.

last pic

here is our last shot from walt disney world. we are heading to get our bags then catch the bus back to raleigh. it will be nice to do absolutely nothing tomorrow.

Expedition Everest

we made it finally. on and off in 30 minutes and got a fast pass to boot. on to the safari.

AK opening

well we thought we had plenty of time but it seems half of FL got a jump on us. None the less, we made it

how to wash

what would we do without brawny to give us instructions to wash our hands. this entire time i had no clue it was this simple.

spaceship earth

we are heading back for a swim or a nap. one way or the other we are leaving to take a break. we'll be back tonight since the park doesn't close until midnight. hopefully it won't be wall to wall people. as you can see its the flower and garden festival too.

10:30 the line for sorin

10:30 the line for sorin is 60 min and the fast pass line looks to be a 30 min wait. looks like we got our 1 sorin ride in

sorin'

standing in line for sorin' first ride of the day

opening at EPCOT

wishes

we didn't take the camera this evening so we could lighten the load. i did however have the phone. so here is an opening shot of wishes. enjoy.

Wishes fireworks

minutes before wishes in MK.

Flowers for Mandy; Bonus points for Scott

As you can see here I got Mandy flowers delivered to the room completely surprising her. Of all the things I've learned through the years its the surprises that count the most. Any stooge can order flowers on valentines day or her birthday. It takes a lot of thought and planning to make flowers show up in a hotel at Disney World. Bonus points for Scott!

shots from epcot

japan pagoda with spaceship earth in the background.

beach club

storm along bay water slide

Disney's Boardwalk

our favorite place to just hang out. its based on an old jersey boardwalk

the dolphin resort.

Life on the high seas...

leaving the studios

the hat

Disney's Hollywood Studio Backlot

day 2

made disney #1 mistake this morning for high crowd levels. we got a late start. it's 9:15 and there is a 50 minute wait for RR coaster. we already have a fast pass for the towere. hopefully tomorrow won't be a complete bust. this might be an early back to the room day. the park is opened until 10 so we've got some time yet.

Last day recap

Allin all we had a great day. The only ride we didn't make it on was Peter Pan. When the wait is longer than the movie, this is a good sign to skip it. We headed in around 8 which was nice instead off the mad dash at 9. Made it back to the room and eventually made it to the pool to swim in a nice heated pool while watching Bolt projected on a big screen. What more could you want? Well dinner would have been nice. So we made our way down to the all night cafateria and got a good dinner to sleep on. Ah, vacation.

a wise quote from an imagineer

quote from a good book

Big Thunder M.ountain RR

Lunch

mandy favorite meal at pinocchio village.

First Ride!

on the way to the magic kingdom via monorail

Awesome room!

well the room is freakin sweet. its like a family deluxe type with a living room and kitchen. we got a deal on it let me tell you. we even have 2 bathrooms!

off and up out

7:15 and we are on the plane ready to head to MCO and it appears we are surronded by the 7 dwarfs. There are kids everywhere on this flights babies too. The thought, kids going to Orlando. Didn't take long for a Brittton family vote to move back a few rows. Hopefully all will be well.

After

As you can see 52" of high def entertainment pleasure showed up today. If ever there was an excuse to come visit us, this is it.

Now if I can just find the channel up button.... :-)

Before

Well Bristol weekend proved to be full of surprises. Mandy's grandma that is in the nursing home had a bad spell so we rushed in to WV on Friday instead of Saturday. Thank goodness she ended up being OK. I felt like I was in the way and started thinking about my grandmother that passed away in '97. So I elected to go to the race just to be away, not so much to go to the race.

Here is a pic of me hanging out by the fire after everthing is packed up and we are burning the remaining firewood.

A wedding weekend

We went back to good ol' WV this weekend to a friend's wedding. The wedding was very nice. No major issues or even minor ones for that matter. The reception was just down the hall and we had prearranged seating which put me and Mandy with some of my high school friends. Personally I had a blast. I hadn't sat and talked with this group in 2 years or better since our reunion so I had a ton of fun. That was pretty much where the fun ended.

First let me set this up by referring you to some of my other posts. Please feel free to read the weekend at Darlington and how that went and then just any other story I may tell you in passing on any given day. This is where I come to this conclusion. I'm an asshole magnet. I honestly feel like Lord Helmet in Space Balls, "How many assholes we got on this ship anyway? I knew, I'm surrounded by assholes!" We stayed at a hotel for the weekend to save trying to drive all over creation and catch up with everybody. Just in and out of town, short and sweet. No feelings hurt and we could be back before it got dark. So Friday night the noise started above us with what sounded like an Olympic runner doing laps in the room above us. I gave them 30 mins, trying to be a sport, then called the front desk. Security came to my door to confirm I called. Yea, thanks Barny, make me scramble to put some pants on and do the squinty thing while I answer to the door to confirm your phone lines aren't magically crossed and I really did call from this room. None the less he checked then went upstairs and asked them to quieten down. They did, after another 30 mins.

So we woke up, all is well, we went on about our day, came back to the hotel after the wedding at midnight and tried to settle in. The new neighbors beside us were wide open. First I thought, well, maybe they are with the wedding party since a lot of them stayed there too but I had enough evidence to know they weren't. So again, being the good sport I gave them 30 more minutes. This was around 1:30. Called security and reminded them, don't knock on my door. Waited 7 minutes, called the front desk again and asked them what about this don't you understand. Shortly there after with a watchful eye on the peephole they were there. Much like Earnest T. Bass on Andy Griffith at Mrs. Wiley's dance mixer, "didn't take". So I gave them another 15 or 20 minutes and called the front desk again and told them post the guys by the door, call the cops, something. It's 2:30 by now. I also explained they'd better be ready to cough up some cash the next morning because the hotel was built like a piece of Swiss cheese. You could hear everything. So finally I fell out around 3 am and all was quite. We got $25 back at checkout so for their efforts I have them a 'B'.

Any more, before I get into any kind of fit of mild rage I ask myself, is it just me? Am I really this easy to set off? Am I just looking for something to be pissed off about all the time? Sometimes it is just me and I bite my tongue and just gripe about it to somebody else later on for a good story. But dag gone, what gives. Who wants to party at a hotel in Beckley at 2am in March. I lived in WV for 22 years and don't remember any crazy stories of Beckley hotel parties. So this goes back to my first statement. I'm an asshole magnet. I attract the rudest, stupidest, brainless, $hitless, worthless people you can find. I just don't know what it is. It's not that red headed people are mad all the time, it's just we seem to draw out the morons of the world. I'm debating on just staying home from now on. But we can't let them win.


So, "keep firing assholes!".

Macado's

ah, eating at our favorite restaurant, macado's. good old college days food. the best rolling rock around.

Valentine's Day

It's valentines day and I'm sick as a dog. This doesn't surprise me since it seems I always end up sick this time of year. So I finally rolled out of bed and Mandy had made breakfast. She made this cake while laying on the couch post breakfast. I didn't think to take a picture until halfway through it. Hopefully I'll start feeling better by monday, looks like it will be a dedicated lay around the house weekend.

She's finally on the road!

I made her pack up and hit the road and told her I was tired of her crap....Mandy is on the road. 

OK, so that's BS. I'm actually referring to the S-10. I went and got tags for it today with no big problems. I've got 10 days to get a sticker and to my knowledge it should be ready to pass. Hopefully I can get that taken care of on Saturday. We took it out on its maiden voyage to my buddy Casey's house to see him, Heather and Gillie. We got brave and didn't even use a chase/support car. I did turn around a mile from the house to check the wheels because I swore one was loose. You get a little jumpy when you've had a wheel fall off (another long story). None the less it did just fine, there and back and even drove by a cop with no problems. We even went by Little Caesars and got a $5 pizza for old time sake. Ah, the memories. 

Jimmy Buffett tickets! Score - Center Section!

Like a well trained military branch we got up this morning and fired up the computers and printer planning a full on assault of LiveNation.com to buy Jimmy Buffett tickets for April. Economy be damned - I need my Buffett fix!

So it seems live nation and ticket master have split ties and no longer associate, I'm guessing they don't send Christmas cards either. My careful planning had me create a live nation account last night and log in a few times to make sure it all worked right. Good thing because frankly Live Nation is one of the most piss poor sites I've ever been on (next to my play list thing on the right).

The tickets go on sale at 10 and me and Mandy have 2 windows each already on the page waiting to refresh, on 2 computers ready to pounce because its takes precision timing of mouse clicks to get it all to mesh together. So with Disney credit card in hand we start clicking.....error. What the hell?! Error again, and again and again. Curses! We thought maybe it's because we are using google chrome web browser or selecting reserved seats. Nope, turns out Live Nation just really, really sucks. Oh sure, ticket master sucks too, don't get me wrong but at least you got the no tickets available screen or something. For 45 mins we continued the click, reload, error routine. Eventually we got through and I had some good seats, center section rear but pretty far back. After 45 mins trying to get tickets for Buffett, you take what you can get. So we proceeded hoping I could get through before something else crashed.

Now for serious concerts we have yet another plan. Take what you get so you have a fall back plan, then keep clicking like a mad man to see what else you can get. While I'm printing Mandy gets an excellent score and gets center section, down front 10 rows back! $$Cha Ching$$ We earned some more Disney points on the card. My last action will be to check a week before the show when the band and promoter release their reserved tickets back, thats how we got the 2nd row ZZ Top tickets. So now we just have to get rid of 1 set of tickets. I've got them on Craigslist and hopefully will them soon.

Stay tuned on April 24th to hear the story how some drunken loud mouth idiot spilled beer and nachos on me and I got PO'd about it and about got into a fight. Happens every time....but at least it will happen 10 rows back from Jimmy Buffett. Fins up!

Music and more music

Just for the shear spite of not having a myspace account, because I refuse to give in the the pressure, I added a playlist to my blog just to prove it could be done. Sure it looks like crap and doesn't line up for nothing but thats OK, I got it there. So listen to some mind opening music on my playlist from the likes of Todd Snider, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Hiatt, Robert Earl Keen, John Prine and of course, Jimmy Buffett. I've heard most of these guys on Radio Margaritaville and quite frequently listen to it at work. It makes a bad do go a little better and a cold day a little warmer. So listen up to some of these crazy songs in particular "Looking for a Job", (since it seems thats what everybody is doing now) and the story and ballad of the devil's backbone tavern from Todd Snider. It's great. Probably not for the youngest audiences but it's worth the 10 minutes of listening, pretty funny.  Sure beats listening to most anything on the radio today.

Polishing the wheels

Well with the break through of the headlights finally being wired up I figured I'd better get the ol' girl back into shape. So I vacuumed out the inside and put the center console back together. I'm about positive I cleaned this truck before I parked it but somehow the entire inside was just nasty. That will be an entirely different story and well get to that later. On to the wheels.

First, I'd just like to shake the man's hand that invented the Mother's Powerball and billet aluminum polish. Wow. I can't even begin to tell you the difference. I thought these wheels looked pretty good to start with but once I put the polish to them and the power ball it just cleaned them right up. I could probably put some more time into them but they'll look good enough for me. I'm not trying to sale them or win a car show just yet so they'll do.

This is the before, pretty shiny I thought.



This is the after (obviously). What a difference.



I tell you it's unbelievable. I also have a fond memory of having black polish under my finger nails and soaked into every pour so now I smell like polish. After my last set of wheels I polished by hand in my college apartment, I swore I'd never have another set of polished aluminum wheels. I couldn't pass these up and now that they look this good I'm pretty happy about buying them. I'd also like to add my wedding ring has never been brighter!

Let there be light!

Here are the new headlights and grill installed. Hopefully the next picture will be outside and with a license plate on it.

Finally got the headlights mounted and wired up on the ol' S-10. Now it will just be some tidying up and she'll be ready for the road.

a postcard

To all our friends and family, reluctant to come and see us, we just wanted to let you know how warm it is down here. So we invite you to come and visit beautiful, sunny Fuquay Varina, NC.

Snow in NC? Seriously?

Yep, snow in NC. 2 days ago they said this was going to be a dusting, maybe 2". Well it came down good, shut down schools, places of employment and cleared the grocery store shelves of milk, eggs and bread in case there is a mass breakout for the need of french toast I suppose. Even good ol' Caterpillar shut down today due to road conditions. All in all we probably will have 5" of snow when it quites.  We got out and played with the neighbors, their kids, their new Siberian Husky pup, another neighbor and their kid's and yet another neighborhood kid. We had a good time with 7 kids, 5 adults and a dog. Myself, I really enjoyed watching the dog bounce through the snow more than anything, I've seen kids play in the snow. I don't have a dog so its fun to watch him play around. Especially being in his element. Then sometime or another all the kids decide it's time to "get Scott" so I've got kids hanging off me every which way. We had fun and thank goodness I had goggles. 

Mandy also wanted me to add that Friday it's supposed to be 60.

This is our back porch. This was the biggest drift we could find, 4 1/2" of snow.

Mandy standing in the road in the snow.

Myself with all my ski gear. I'm not going down in a snowball battle without a fight.

WDW Blues

Trying to keep up on my blog better this year like Casey has been. 

We made reservations for Dec 09 this year for Disney since we missed out last Christmas. Not this year! We have a refundable deposit and nothing will stop us! So after coming back and telling boB  that we got our reservation, he mentioned he was going down in February, maybe June and September and December we got a little bit of the Disney blues. It's also freezing cold here and I'm listing to Jimmy Buffet on Radio Margaritaville (see Land Shark Lager link below!) and like a sign from above I hear the song "Everybody's talkin" wrote by Fred Neil with the great line in it that says, "I'm going where the weather suits my clothes" and all I could think was, dag gone I'd like to be in Florida right now or lower in the latitudes and warmer. So, to fix both the Florida and Disney fix here are some pictures from our last January trip. I'd like to take the time to tweak them a bit and get them printed out big, 13x19 or so and hang them up. Like the thousands of other pictures I have, they'll just reside here on my computer for a while longer. I'll get to it eventually.

Always let your heart be your guide...

Get home (or to the hotel) by midnight!

Their are 999 haunts....but we have room for one more.

You might be a redneck if....

...you've ever taken a camera to a liquor store.

To those that aren't in the "know" this is Junior Johnson. One of the fathers of modern day NASCAR. To this day he'll tell you the fastest car he ever drove was his shine' car! People, that's saying something! I've been 140mph on a track and he used to do it on dirt roads with the lights off...but faster. He's as personable a guy as you'd ever meet and probably doesn't care how famous he really is. None the less we stood in line outside the ABC store at Lowe's Motor Speedway to get his autograph (the 2nd time for me) on a bottle of legal moonshine sold under his name, "Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon". This picture was when we got 2 bottles for Mandy's dad and brother-in-law, which I guess is technically my brother-in-law too but no need to try and sort it all out. We didn't want to post the picture before Christmas since Mandy's sister, Julie (hi Julie) checks out my blog on occasion.  Out of my 22 famous autographs I have (I just counted them) this is probably one of my favorites. It wasn't like I stood in the sun for hours or had to stalk him to get it, it's just cool to have an autograph from somebody who is kind of a hero to you. Now if I can only corner Jimmy Buffett and Billy Gibbons, I'll be set.

Guess that Bruise!

It's time for another rousing game of: "Guess that Bruise!"

So I lied when I said we didn't have any pictures from paintball. Mind you this is Tuesday night, we played Saturday day. So just like some CSI work we took the pictures with a tape measure for reference. This way you can print them out to scale and look at them for a while to try and determine who's is who's. I know your just dieing to do this and may run a buy a high grade photo quality printer to accomadate yourself. If need be, I may be able to print them out on mine and send you copies. All pictures are of course copy righted, reserved, have applied for patents and may very well have been the 5th Beatle.

BTW - No, these are not nipples! Get your mind out of the gutter!

So it probably didn't take a genius to figure the top one was me, the bottom one Mandy. Mine was on my inner thigh, take my word for it, it hurt. It pretty much put me on the ground when it hit, granted I didn't have far to go since I was squatted Barney Fife style anyway. Mandy's on the other hand is on her lower back to the right. This was a "I'm hit and walking away" hit. There was probably some in the air before she put her hand in the air to declare she was done. There are 2 more above this but not as bad. 

I truely hoped you enjoyed this round of: "Guess that Bruise - where nobody wins and your glad its over!"

Played paintball again today....ug.

No picutures to show this time around but we went out and played paintball again today. My neighbor, Will, went with us and 11 other guys from work met us too. We had a good time and quickly remembered how out of shape we were and how a ball filled with paint traveling at 250 ft/sec hurts. We played about 5 hours I guess and in one game even included a lot of the local kids, the so called walk-ons. These little punks have $300 guns that run on nitrogen and shoot something like 10 times per second. These were also accurate has hell. So when you got hit, you got hit a lot and you damn well knew you were hit and if that didn't work they popped you 5 more times before you got your "I'm out" hand up. That lasted about 5 mins and we said, nope, not again. Ever been schooled by a 12 year old that has no concept his daddy is buying boxes of paint at $40 a pop and he's going through them like I do mountain dew. It's not pretty.

So at last count I had 14 welps about the size of silver dollars so I suppose I did OK. Mandy has a nasty looking dark purple bruise on her back where somebody got her good and her legs were ate up. Will did a little better but his back was dotted pretty hard. ....and yet, we actually paid to do this, we weren't forced into it. Crazy.

Land Shark Lager Widget

Get this widget!

I stumbled acorss this 'widget' while being on my favorite site, Margaritaville.com. This widget allows you to listen to radio margaritaville and has some wallpapers and a screen saver. Nothing to exciting but it looks nifty.

I finally gave the mouse enough money!