Sheep Guarding Llama

We were all quite thankful to wake up in New York this morning.  No more flying for a while.  It is very nice to be back and not having any vacation activities needing any of our attention.

I do have one big project today, that is a failed hard drive on a server here that needs to be replaced lickety split.  I found that the drive had failed on Friday while we were in Florida but there was nothing that could be done from there.  So I did all of the appropriate backups and did everything that I could to prepare for a complete failure and ordered another drive to be overnighted, which means that it arrived yesterday, so that today the drive could be replaced.

I am also back to my normal work schedule today so I am doing everything that I can to get caught up on anything that is pending or lingering from while I was out of town.  I was working the whole time but it is impossible to remain as focused and efficient when doing that and, at the very least, my email management has gotten sloppy and I am very much backed up on all of my email accounts.  So anyone who is waiting on emails from me, I have not likely forgotten you and will be getting back to you throughout this week as I start to get caught back up.

My Aunt Sharon and Uncle Leo came up today to spend some time with Liesl.  No one got to visit with me as I was stuck working, a lot.  But that is expected.

This evening was spent working on the failed hard drive.  It was a software RAID set that failed which means quite a bit more manual work to get everything back and ready for action. There is a lot of good learning to be done in times of failure like this so I actually had Dominica go through the software portion of the swapping process so she did that and then it was up to be to do the physical hardware change.

The server is actually mounted to a ceiling mount which is a little hard to deal with when you need to open it up and swap in and out drives.  Especially when they are not hot swap drives.  So I had to power the machine down, open it up, climb a ladder and do all of the swapping with my arm extended and being pretty much unable to see what I was doing.

To make matter worse, I swapped the wrong drive at first.  Argh.  There is no visible indicator on this type of box so it is just a chance that you take.  Not fun.  Once I got the drive physically replaced and checked out we were able to begin the rebuilding process.  I had Dominica do this piece as well, which only takes a few minuets.  Then it was time to wait.

The drive rebuild process took many hours and I was not able to start up all of the downed processes and systems to do a check out until around two in the morning.  I am sleepy but I am happy knowing that the drive has been replaced and there is nothing further to worry about from that machine.  That failed drive has been hanging over my head for five days now and that is not the kind of thing that you want to be worrying about.  So I am much happier now.

Our plan is to be packed up and on the road back to Peekskill tomorrow evening after work.  We are really dreading getting back to Peekskill.  Once we are there there is just so much work that we need to do 🙁

This is it, our final day in Walt Disney World for 2009.  Dominica’s parents were off in the wee hours of the morning leaving only Dominica, Liesl and I here in Florida waiting for our flight late this afternoon.

This morning we had to pack up, get ready and get out of the hotel room.  This was extra challenging since I need to work today and need to do so from the hotel.  So I was on the laptop all morning getting as much work done as I could knowing that I was going to be knocked offline as soon as we checked out of the hotel because they don’t use wireless here but Ethernet only.

I worked until the last possible second and then we were out of the hotel and off for lunch.  We had been toying with a couple of ideas for food.  Dominica went down and talked to the concierge and the concierge desk told us that the bus ride to the Animal Kingdom Lodge was really quick and that we could just walk in and eat at Sanaa.  We were very excited to learn that Sanaa would be an option.  Sanaa is the new addition to the restaurant selection over at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and if it is anything like Boma and Jiko (and Tusker House in the Animal Kingdom park itself) then the food would be awesome.  We had been really disappointed that we were not going to get to eat at Sanaa when we had made the initial Disney plans so this is a huge win for us.  It really worked out well because no one else would have the least interest in coming over here to eat.

So we hopped on the bus and over to the AKL we went.  Sanaa is not in the main resort but is located in the new Disney vacation club structure at the AKL so the whole area was brand new and totally new to us.

The Sanaa restaurant was beautiful.  Great theming and it has its own savanna separate from the savanna that you can view from Boma and Jiko.  The food is Indian prepared in a South African style.  A neat idea.  Indian – South African Fusion.  Dominica went for a trio of traditional Indian dishes and I went for the sustainable fish which was an arctic char served in a fish broth.  We also got a naan sampler.  Dominica liked her food and loved the bread but did not find it so good as to be truly excited.  My arctic char, however, was simply amazing.  This fish had to be the best meal that I had in Disney this entire trip without a doubt.  If I could eat two of any one meal, this would be the meal.  Just absolutely delicious.  It was extra special as it was a unique dish that you cannot get readily anywhere else.  Arctic char is pretty rare on its own and the preparation was quite unique.  Just a great experience.  We got dessert as well.  Dominica getting the trio dessert sampler and me going for the unique orange-ginger cake with passion fruit kulfi which was really good too.

After lunch we returned to the resort to be completely ready for our return voyage home.  We had some time to kill so shopped a little in the hotel shop and then sat outside and enjoyed the weather a little.  It was not long before the Magical Express picked us up to take us to Orlando International Airport so that we could catch our flight back to Buffalo.  We flew down on JetBlue and are returning on Southwest.

Our flight took off at six thirty.  Delayed just five minutes, no real concern.  The flight back to Buffalo was uneventful.  Liesl was, thankfully, completely tired still and fell asleep literally as we left the runway and did not wake up until we were on the final descent into Buffalo.  It could not have gone any better.  I held her pretty much the entire time as she was asleep in my arms at the beginning and we dared not move her.  So it was a bit of a boring flight since we could not talk and I could not read or do anything but I got a chance to just zone out and snuggle my baby.

We landed in Buffalo, picked up our luggage and dad was right there with Oreo ready to pick us up.  Oreo was very, very excited to see us (or smell us or whatever as he is pretty much deaf and blind at this point) and Liesl was very excited to see her grandpa who was very thankful to get to see a baby who had been sleeping most of the day and was now very happy.

I drove us back from Buffalo to dad’s house in Peoria, New York.  We stopped at McDonald’s near the airport to get dinner to eat as we drove.  It would have been about a quarter to eleven when we arrived back at dad’s.  We were very ready for bed.  We just set up Dominica and Liesl in the guest bedroom and Oreo and I took the floor by the fireplace in the television den and we were off to sleep in no time.  We are very thankful to be back in New York and are not looking forward to the impending panic of packing, selling and apartment hunting that needs to be done in the next three weeks.  Our target for Texas is three weeks from today.  Three weeks.  Twenty one days.  That is very little time considering we were in Florida this morning and are still hundreds of miles from our home and have not yet even begun thinking about what we are going to do about moving to Dallas.  Ugh.  We are not looking forward to the next few weeks in any way whatsoever.  This is going to be very, very rough indeed.

At the very least, though, we have officially survived Disney 2009.  Ten people times ten days equals one hundred Disney people day equivalents of stress.

This morning Liesl appears to be doing a bit better.  She got some sleep last night and is at least not getting sick on us over and over again.  So perhaps she is on the road to recovery.  It is a work day (Sunday) for me so we are just relaxing in the hotel room while I work as much as possible.  Dominica went out and did laundry for a while trying to get our clothes and Liesl’s stuff cleaned up a bit.  Liesl fell asleep on the hotel bed behind where I was sitting and spent a few hours sleeping snuggled against my back.

Liesl ended up sleeping until three in the afternoon.  She really needed the time to rest and heal.  She was much more herself, and very hungry, when she finally woke up.

Once Liesl was awake, we rallied the troops and were off to EPCOT.  We met up with the Toccos in the UK.  Dominica and I had gotten there early and had gotten a fish and chips to split.  We originally had had dinner reservations at Kouzina’s tonight, being the new Kat Kora restaurant that replaced Spoodles on the Disney Boardwalk.  But our dining plan has us left with tons of snacks and counter service meals that must be used up today before midnight (because most of them belong to Dominica’s parents and they switched rooms today so their meals are going to expire while technically our own do not expire until tomorrow night) so we are skipping the reservation and just grazing through EPCOT’s World Showcase instead.  I really am not heartbroken.  I had always wanted to try Spoodles but having a “celebrity” restaurant is just a huge turnoff to me.  I have a natural aversion to things that feel gimmicky or heavily marketed and so restaurants that are famous for their owners and not for their food not only don’t sell me on their products but make me want to avoid them completely.  It is like those Apple commercials for this Macs with the stoner kid telling you how all the cool kids have Macs.  It just makes me feel like I would be embarrassed to own a Mac regardless of whether I think they are good or not.  Apple would sell more stuff to me if they just stopped all the hype.

From the UK we walked over to France and went to the pastry shop and got some pastries to split.  We sat in almost the same seats that Dominica and I sat at in the rain in 2005 on our first Disney trip together.

Then we walked through the World Showcase stopping in Morocco so that Dominica’s parents could see what an awesome area it is.  There is definitely nothing in the World Showcase that compares to Morocco, they did such an amazing job there.

We continued around the World Showcase but could not find anything that everyone wanted to eat so we decided to head on down to The Land and get food in the cafeteria area there.  It was a bit of a hike.  Dominica’s feet have been killer her for days.  These long Disney trips really take a toll on her.  She can never find shows that are really comfortable for her for the large amounts of walking that have to be done here.

We were able to get some different food at the Sunshine Seasons food court.  Nothing really stood out as being totally amazing but I found a tofu noodle bowl that was completely different from the one in Tomorrowland but was still quite good – but not nearly as good as the amazing one that I had over there several days ago.

After we ate, Dominica’s dad and I took Liesl on Living with the Land, which as all of my readers know is my all time favourite Disney ride.  It is pretty much not updated at all this year from our trip a year and a half ago, which is a disappointment but the ride is still good.  I really like Living with the Land because it has all of the best bits of what Disney does – awesome dark ride mechanics, dramatic water and artistry in a darkride and interesting educational stuff – without the things that they consistently get wrong – loud noises, pointless weird made up theming, action that doesn’t relate to the ride, etc.  It is extra cool because it mixes the best dark ride work that Disney has done with a revolving restaurant and then real, live labs.  It just has everything.

Dominica’s parents left EPCOT ahead of us to go back to the hotel.  This is their last night in the hotel and they need to be up really, really early, like around three thirty, to catch their Disney Magical Express that will take them to the airport so that they can fly home.  So if they do not get to bed really early they will not be able to get up in the morning.  We do not fly out until late afternoon so we get some time in Disney yet tomorrow.

We decided not to stay in EPCOT, though, after seeing the long line for Spaceship Earth which was the only ride that I was really interested in doing yet.  So we just headed back ourselves.

Before going back to our own hotel room we walked down to the Toccos’ new room to get or drop something off – I don’t remember exactly what the errand was.  Up until now we had only seen the Calypso area of the All Star Music which is the two hotel buildings directly against the main building surrounding the guitar pool.  Dominica’s parents are spending tonight in a room in Broadway which is a good walk back away from the main building.  So we got a chance to walk through most of the resort and to check out the theming.  The theming back in Jazz and Broadway was way cooler than up where we were but the walk is so far that it does not justify it at all unless you are driving everywhere and use your car rather than going through the bus stop all of the time which is out front.

Then it was off to an early bed for us.  We are very tired.  This week has worn us out.

Our massive Walt Disney World Trip 2009 is winding down to a close.  Today is the Grices’ final day in the parks as they fly out first thing tomorrow.  That is five of our ten people so we will be running a skeleton crew tomorrow and then on Monday it will be only Dominica, Liesl and I.

Today is Saturday.  I did not manage to get today off since I took yesterday evening off.  Otherwise I would have been off today without any problem being the weekend after Thanksgiving, but I had pulled some favours yesterday and am returning them this morning.  No problem, it had to be done.

While I stayed behind in the hotel room to work, Dominica and Liesl joined the family as they headed off to EPCOT for the final day there.  Our schedule is pretty easy today, casual day in EPCOT and dinner at Whispering Canyon at the Wilderness Lodge.

I worked until lunch time then was able to jump on a bus and head into the park to join everyone.  They were in Mexico, the EPCOT World Showcase, when I got there.  Dominica and Emily were just hunting down some place to get lunch and were looking into vegetarian options at the San Angel Inn’s outdoor cafe.  So I joined them there and we settled down to a nice outdoor table with Floridian birds pestering us.  Dominica and I just got vegetarian burritos (yes, I know, not actually a Mexican food, but TexMex at least.)  Liesl really enjoyed the burrito.

For dessert we tried one of the popular Disney churros that are everywhere, Emily ordered it, but it was disgusting and none of us wanted to eat it.  I have no idea why people like these.  It is tough and tasteless and the raw dough in the middle is a little bit gross.

After lunch, Madeline and Emily went and did a few Kim Possible missions while the rest of us just sat in either Mexico or Norway and relaxed.  I walked over to China to the Joy of Tea and got one of the amazing mango gingeritas and enjoyed myself.  Bennie went and got a margarita from Mexico.  I warned him that they were rumoured to be no good but he said that they could only be so bad.  Once he got one, though, he said that they were far worse than he thought that they could possibly be.

After the girls did a few Kim Possible missions they were mostly frustrated with the system and we all went back down to Future World to use the Fast Passes that they had gotten earlier for Soarin’ which no one had managed to do yet, I don’t believe.  Dominica’s mother and I stayed outside and watched Garrett and Liesl while everyone else rode.

When they were done with Soarin’ Francesca was feeling pretty worn out (being pregnant in Disney will do that to you) so we decided to call it a day in the parks and go back to the resort to relax before going to dinner.

Back at the hotel, Dominica wasn’t feeling very well and was trying to nap.  I did a little work and was watching Liesl.  I left her with Dominica for just a little bit (sometimes you just have to have a bathroom break) and while Liesl was playing on the bed, she suddenly got sick.  Really sick.  We didn’t even have enough time to get it cleaned up before it was time to go get dinner.

We were not sure if Liesl was really sick or if something had happened.  She had been playing on the bed and had gone off the side, as she often does, with Dominica catching her so Dominica was not sure if she had squeezed her or choked her or something that triggered her getting sick.  So we could not make a good judgment call as to her condition.  We decided that she was acting fine so we just went ahead on to dinner assuming that everything was okay.

Liesl was fine until we got onto the bus.  The moment that I stepped onto the bus carrying her, she got sick again.  What a mess!  Poor Liesl.  This is going to be a tough evening for her.

We ended up getting out to the Wilderness Lodge earlier than necessary.  But you have to do that, the variance in travel times is just too great.  While we were there we took the family on a real quick walk around so that they could see what a cool resort it is.  This is the resort that Dominica and I (and, in a way, Liesl) stayed the very last time that we were here in early 2008 when we were pregnant with Liesl.

We did some shopping.  It was really cool because we discovered that there was a Disney wood sculptor there with a lot of her work on display.  All of the wood was from fallen branches and she had some really amazing stuff.  It was really affordable too and she was there herself this evening signing pieces that were purchased.  So we hunted around and found a really adorable piece that is one of the bears from the Country Bear Jamboree that we bought and had shipped to Peekskill.  We like to get one piece of something that is really cool from Disney each time that we go so that we have a memento of the trip.

While we were shopping in the gift shop, Liesl got sick yet again, this time in her stroller.  What a mess.

We got in to eat.  All of the adults except for Dominica and I got the all you can eat meal which is, without a doubt, the best bang for your buck meal for carnivores in all of Disney.  Dominica and I both got the maple glazed trout which is really good.

Liesl got sick again as we were finishing our meals.  Dominica and I decided that we just could not subject her to being out and about any more, we were really sorry that we decided to come out at all but we really were not sure how bad she was because she was acting like everything was fine.  So Dominica rushed her off to the bathroom to do as much cleanup and changing as possible and I ran around getting the bill paid, sending food home with the family and running to the store to pick up our package and make those arrangements.

We made it home without her getting sick while on any additional moving vehicles but she did make a mess on me while we were waiting for a bus.

We got back the hotel and Liesl just got worse and worse.  She was definitely quite unhappy at this point.  She had been for quite a long time without food and drink staying down so she was hungry and thirsty and feeling awful. We were realy afraid that we were heading back down the road towards dehydration and a trip to the emergency room but she never seemed to get bad enough to warrant that.

Dominica’s father stopped by to drop off our desserts from the Whispering Canyon and stayed for a while to hold and comfort Liesl.  The front desk sent housekeeping up with a total change of linens and towels for us and they made up the room and changed the bed where Liesl had gotten sick.  How great it is having twenty-four hour room service, even in the lower cost resorts.  That is a life saver.

We were up late and eventually able to get Liesl off to sleep.  It was very late and we were all very exhausted.

It is so hard to believe that it has already been a full year!  One year ago today it was Thanksgiving and we were in the hospital waiting for Liesl to be born not knowing if she was doing okay or not as they believed that she was under stress and we did not know if she was going to be a boy or a girl yet.  After one year it is impossible to imagine life without her.  How can it only have been one year?  Then again, how is it possible that I have now been a father for a year, three percent of my life?

Today is a Friday but it is Black Friday so it is almost, but not quite, a holiday.  So there was work to be done but very little of it.  A rather relaxing day if it was not for all of the other things that need to be done.

For lunch today, Dominica, Liesl and I went out to Downtown Disney and met up with David Scammell (whom I know from SpiceWorks and having hung out together in Austin several weeks ago at SpiceWorld where we both won Spicy awards,) his wife and daughter.  We met in Downtown Disney and went to Cap’n Jack’s there for lunch.  Nathan Parker and I actually ate at Cap’n Jack’s, although I believe that it had a different name at the time, back in 2000 when we came to Walt Disney World for one evening while we were working at a healthcare convention in Tampa.

Lunch was very tasty and it was really nice to get a chance to hang out and to have our families visit.  Liesl and David’s daughter Hannah are very close in age and so got along a bit.  Liesl loves having other kids to play with as she never, ever has any back home.  We are so very isolated in Peekskill.  It is probably best that we are getting out of there when we are (which is in just three weeks.)

After lunch we hit Goofy’s Candy Company or whatever it is called and did some shopping there.  I needed to get back to work and the Scammells needed to get about their day as well and Dominica and Liesl had to get back to Disneying it up with the family so it was not a long lunch gathering but a nice chance to get together.  David and I had actually planned this lunch previous to us knowing that we were going to end up running into each other in Austin.

I worked from the hotel until it was time to head off to Liesl’s big birthday party dinner.  I had arranged to have this evening completely off from work so that there would be no concerns about rushing or missing anything.  So I was done but about a quarter after five.  Not that there was much of anything going on this evening and most everyone else was taking the time off as well but still.

So at around five thirty we packed up and headed out to get to the Contemporary Resort for our dinner at six forty five.  We arrived via monorail on to the Grand Canyon Concourse.  This was one of, if not the, first time that I have gotten off of the monorail at the Contemporary since my family stayed there on our first Disney vacation in 1987.

We had to wait a little while to get into Chef Mickey’s.  Once we were in we had to wait a really long time before we could eat, even though it was a buffet, maybe as much as forty five minutes before we were able to start eating after we had gotten to our table.  It took that long before they even cleared the table of the bills left over from the previous party.  It was a rough start to the evening.

The food at Chef Mickey’s was excellent – much more normal American food that most everyone was happy to have.  We had Mickey, Minni, Donald, Pluto and Goofy all come by to visit as well.  We were already completely “charactered” out by this point.  We had already seen the ones that the girls wanted to see and the effort of dealing with more characters was more than anyone really wanted to deal with.

Dominica had had a birthday cake special ordered for Liesl.  Unfortunately, they lost it and we had to wait for an hour before they found it for us and, when they did find it, it was frozen.  The cake itself was amazing and the baking and cake decorating people did an amazing job.  It was an eight inch round hot pink chocolate and raspberry cake with a huge white chocolate statue of Minnie Mouse on it.  It was awesome.  We took a lot of pictures.

It was way more cake than we could eat, though, especially with it being frozen, so we had more than half of a cake left to take with us when we went.  Although it took quite a while before they were able to get us our bill so we were stuck sitting there for a really long time.  When the bill finally arrived they had undercharged us!  So we started to deal with that.  At this point we had been at Chef Mickey’s for three hours already (for a buffet meal no less!!)

Dominica, the girls, her father and I wanted to go into EPCOT for the evening as it is extra magic hours there tonight.  The rest of the family wanted to go back to the resort to rest.  It takes more adults than that to manage getting all of the stuff that needed to be carrier, Garrett in his stroller and Francesca (being pregnant) back to the resort so one of us had to go back with them.  As I am the most able to maneuver my way around Disney World without the slightest fear of getting lost and can move the quickest of everyone I went back with Bennie, Francesca, Garrett and Dominica’s mom to the resort, dropped off the cake, grabbed a coat as it had turned really chilly this evening and rushed over to EPCOT leaving Dominica, her dad and the girls at the restaurant to sort out the bill while I did all of this running around.

It took more than an hour for me to go from Chef Mickey’s to the All Star Music and then to EPCOT.  Even at night with no “traffic” it takes that long to get anywhere in Disney.  I raced through EPCOT and found them just going on to Mission Space.  They had only done Spaceship Earth thus far (which ended up meaning that I never managed to do that on this trip.)  Getting the bill sorted at the restaurant had taken another half an hour after we had left them there.  Half an hour, just to get a bill fixed that they had messed up in our favour.  We should have just taken the money and run.  Here is a tip Disney: never punish people for trying to save you money.  I’m definitely not going to make that mistake again.  Next time Disney doesn’t charge me for something I’ll remember that they have owe me a lot of time where we were forced to “work for them”.  If they are going to punish us for doing the right thing they can just deal with people not doing the right thing. Disney needs to do the right thing in return.

So dinner, between them not being ready when we arrived, taking forever before we got to eat, losing the cake, not bringing the bill, messing up the bill, etc. took three and a half hours of physical, sitting at the restaurant time, for a buffet.

After Mission Space it was off to Mexico to ride the Gran Fiesta Tour which the girls did not enjoy.  They thought that that was very boring.  Imagine how bored they would have been on the Rio del Tiempo which the GFT replaced!  It is true, though, that the GFT is neither thrilling nor informative but is really just a cheap dark ride that is rather pleasant.  There is plenty of time during it for the ride to inform you about Mexico but instead they play music, show Disney characters from two movies that no one under thirty has ever heard of much less seen and have some minimal animatronics only barely better than It’s a Small World.  While the GFT is a much needed update to the RdT, it is still very much a “how little can we do to get away with calling this a ride” sort of situation.

After the GFT we hit Norway again because the girls could not remember being there at all and we rode the Maelstrom again.  Once we rode it they remembered having been there.

We were all worn out and at midnight decided to just call it a night and get back to the resort.  It was quite cold and Liesl was pretty unhappy camping out under a stroller poncho just to keep warm.  The buses were not likely to be running too frequently so we did not want to have to stand around for a long time.  So back to the hotel we went.