Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is the big day.  Our trip to WDW 2009.  This is our longest, biggest WDW trip since the “second honeymoon” trip of 2005 that Dominica and I took alone.  This time ten people!

We were up around four in the morning.  Ready and out the door by around five.  Still dark out.  Still very tired.  I rode in the back with Oreo and Liesl while dad drove us out to the Buffalo International Airport.

We arrived at the airport by a quarter after six.  More than enough time to get situated and through security at such a small airport so early in the morning.  We got in in no time and grabbed breakfast before flying out.

This will be Liesl second trip by airplane and her fifth take off and landing combination (we had layovers on our way to and from Texas a few weeks ago so she got to do the whole sequence four times on that one trip.)  This is also our very first time flying on JetBlue.  Everyone has been raving about JetBlue for years but we have just managed to never have them be the best airline for us on any of our journeys up until now.  I flew Aer Lingus, (or JetGreen), JetBlue’s European partner when I went to Amsterdam so I knew about what to expect but this was the first time officially doing it.

The flight went really well.  Liesl was awake quite a bit of the trip and, when handed a bag of animal crackers by the flight attendant, she actually said “Thank You” for the very first time!  She is growing up so fast.  One week before her first birthday.

Liesl did very well on the trip.  She is a very good flying baby.  There was another baby, a little younger, flying in the front row across the aisle from us so they talked to each other a little bit on the flight but both napped on and off as well.

The direct flight took hardly any time and we were in Orlando by twenty after eleven.  I like leaving NY early to go to Florida.  We did a trip like this in 1987 the first time that I ever went down to Florida and I have always connected early morning flights headed south with happy memories.  It is just a good feeling to force yourself to get up early, head to the airport and leave the world behind.

Disney’s Magical Express picked us up and carted us off to the All Star Music resort.  Our room was not yet ready and Francesca met us at check in as soon as we arrived.  They arrived very late last night and stayed in a temporary hotel room that they checked out of this morning and they too were waiting for their new room to be made ready.

The girls, Madeline and Emily, were swimming in the “Guitar Pool” when we arrived and they swam for an hour or two after we got there.  We hung out by the pool and then went to the All Star Music restaurant to get a grilled salmon salad for lunch.  Even once we get our rooms we have to wait for Dominica’s parents to arrive as they are coming in from Albany on a flight two or three hours after ours.

We got into our rooms around two.  I am very pleased with our room, 10-542 in Calypso.  It is a handicapped King room and much nicer than I was expecting at the All Stars.  The Grices and Toccos shared a suite, 10-556, just around the corner from us.   Their room was really nice and had a pool view too.  Lots of room.

Dominica’s parents got in around three thirty, I believe, and at a quarter after four we were headed out to the Magic Kingdom on the first of many, many bus trips to that destination from our hotel.  This is Bennie’s, Liesl’s, Garrett’s, Madeline’s and Emily’s first time to Walt Disney World.  So we are half Disney virgins and half experiences Disney travelers.  At the end of this week this will be two entire months of my life spent at WDW!

We got into the Magic Kingdom (after some hassles as they lost Dominica and my tickets once again – the resort gave them to different people but gave us empty tickets so we thought that we were all set) and headed straight over to Tomorrowland.  Our first job was to get some food for everyone as most everyone was pretty hungry.  We hit Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe as they are supposed to have a pretty decent selection of food and are able to handle crowds well being the largest counter service restaurant in the parks.

After food it was time for the Carousel of Progress which was a major hit with the girls and got things off to a good start.  Then we did Buzz Lightyear and I hit a new personal score record: 311,600 points which is about fifteen times higher than I have ever seen anyone else get.  I have become rather a pro at this game.

From there it was the WEDWay People Mover or the Tomorrowland Transit System as they now call it but I refuse to drop Walt Disney’s initials from his own creation just because he is not here to defend the naming of his own ride.  The girls really like the WEDWay too.

Then it was off to Fantasyland.  While here the girls rode the spinning teacups, Dumbo and other rides while most of us sat out.  For a while, Francesca and the girls rode Dumbo and the rest of us sat in Aerial’s Grotto just relaxing.  While we were there, Liesl took her first ever step!  She was standing on a table and took one step all on her own while going from her grandmother to me.  Dominica was not there so she missed it.  Very exciting.  This is a big week for Liesl.

We looked for some food at this point, just evening snacks as it was around eight, but we had a very had time finding anything really good.  The babies, Liesl and Garrett, both got tired and everyone wanted to ride the Winnie the Pooh ride so I volunteered to babysit the kids.  So I ended up all alone in Walt Disney World babysitting two toddlers!  Now that is pretty crazy.

We did not do too much after that.  We got to see the castle all lit up in some amazing holiday lights.  That was very cool.  Then we took the long walk back up Main Street USA and out to the bus back to our resort.  It was probably ten or ten thirty by the time that we got back and were able to start getting ready for bed.  Liesl crawled around a little bit wearing herself out and then we were off to sleep.

Tomorrow we have to be up super early as we are going to the Polynesian Resort for the O’Hana Character Breakfast with Lilo and Stitch.  Lilo is one of my favourite Disney characters, of course, since I am a Linux administrator (inside joke and I’m not going to give the punchline, if you are going to get it then you already got it.)

Getting SGL updates done while here is going to be really, really tough.  I have no workspace in the hotel and have to make due with the laptop sitting on the nightstand and can only use it while sitting on the bed.  Very uncomfortable and really bad for excessive typing.

We were all really tired this morning!  Brian and Tara came up early and we got right to work loading down Brian’s truck with the server cabinet and the servers and desktops that he is shipping back to Philadelphia.  It was quite the load.  Getting the cabinet onto the trailer was not particularly fun.  There were a ton of servers going in the truck as well.  All together there were ten or more but we hunted through them and identified two units that really were no good and we just took some main parts from them and left them behind to be scrapped along with anything else being left at dad’s house.

In addition to the cabinet and the servers was a massive 2200VA UPS from TrippLite, a 2U rackmount unit that is brand new and that has been sitting here for several years.  We hope that it works, it has never, ever been plugged in and powered on.  I am guessing that the batteries are dead, which will suck.  There were also several desktops going in this load.  Maybe half a dozen!  The truck was really full.

After getting the truck totally loaded we drove down to Mt. Morris where Brian and Tara checked out of the hotel and joined all of us at Brian’s USA Diner for some breakfast.  It was on their way to Ithaca where they are spending the day so it worked out really well.  Brian’s is closer to dad’s house than is the Omega so it is pretty convenient.

After breakfast it was back up to dad’s to get back to my regularly scheduled work.  I was able to go through a plastic bin that has been in storage at dad’s today and basically eliminated the whole thing with most of it going straight into the garbage and a few small piece ready to be donated to the Leicester church’s rummage sale.  Mostly old optical CD and DVD drives and a few other computer odds and ends.

This afternoon the Richardson clan (Sharon, Leo, Shirley, Jim, Sara, Steve, Jeremy and Rachel) all came over to celebrate Liesl’s birthday one week early.  They will not have a chance to see her again before her actual birthday so today was the chance to get a family party in for her.  I got very little chance to hang out with everyone, though, as it was a busy Friday evening and there was a ton of work for me to do.

The big news today is that my cousin Sara is, as of today, engaged!  Steve popped the question this morning and they announced it at Liesl’s party today.  Jeremy was late arriving so we all knew about it before her own brother knew.

I ended up having to work quite late tonight.  It was not fun as everyone was here and I had to skip spending time with them.

I tried to get to bed as early as I could but it was not all that early.  Like eleven at night.  Tomorrow is going to be a long day.  We have to be up around four thirty to be able to make our flight to Orlando!  We are all going to be very, very exhausted.

We got up this morning and drove over to Geneseo and had breakfast at the Omega Grill.

Brian and I headed to Tim Horton’s on Jefferson Road and met with a couple people there including Eric Millen.  I talk to Eric all the time but haven’t actually seen him in person in years which is crazy.  Two years at a minimum and three or more years is most likely.  Hard to believe that I can go that long without seeing people but it really happens and happens more and more often these days.

After coffee at Timmy Ho’s we had a meeting and then Brian and I did a quick lunch at Panera Bread, also on Jefferson Road.  I had some work that needed my attention right away so I logged in from my laptop and worked from it before we were able to get back in the car and go back to dad’s house.

I ended up having a really busy evening and we were all stuck at dad’s all evening.  Just too much work to be done.  It was quite a busy night.  We ordered in subs from York Landing and just ate at the house.

I got up and had to get right to work this morning.  I was working and got called by a head hunter who was really insistent on talking to me so I did not even get a chance to shower, shave or change before Brian and Tara arrived.  They had gotten up extremely early and had left the Poconos around four thirty in the morning or so!

I got ready to actually face the world and spent a little time with everyone but had to work this morning until lunch time so I was stuck in dad’s office for most of the morning.  Then for lunch we all drove over to the Omega Grill in Geneseo.  It has been quite a while since Dominica, Liesl and I have had a chance to eat there.  It was a very early lunch.  I only had about two hours of work that I had to cover so it wasn’t a big deal.

After lunch we stopped by at Tim Horton’s to pick up coffee and donuts.  Brian and I had a conference call at eleven thirty that we had to take while there.  Then dad, Dominica and Liesl drove back to the house while I went down to Mt. Morris with Brian and Tara to get them settled in to the Country Inn and Suites that is there at the north end of Letchworth State Park.

We decided that since Tara had work to do and since I had the afternoon off already, having thought that I would be driving this afternoon instead of already being up here, that Brian and I would tour the area so that I could give him an overview of the region.  So we left Tara at the hotel and drove from Mt. Morris up to Leicester and then over to Perry.  From Perry it was over to Mt. Morris to pick up Tara at the hotel then just down the street to Brian’s USA Diner for dinner.  Dad, Dominica and Liesl met us there.

It was back home from there.  I had plenty of work to do at dad’s house so was up rather late as usual even though we were back early.  Tomorrow is a busy day with me working and running all over the place.  It will be rather chaotic.

Work started off normally this morning.  Nothing really to report.  The big IT news today is that Rackspace has re-released Jungle Disk products under their own branding umbrella and has some newly updated enterprise cloud storage options now available.  For those readers who think that I might be using the term cloud storage loosely, this is a real cloud offering and not a misuse of the term to mean Software-as-a-Service while attempting to sound new and hip.  I got an account right away and started trying it out.  So far it is quite impressive.

The original plan was that Dominica, Liesl, Oreo and I were going to drive up to dad’s house in Pavilion tomorrow afternoon.  I worked Veteran’s Day and have a comp day to take tomorrow so it was going to work out well.  Brian and Tara were planning to go up there tomorrow and were going to meet us for dinner or something.  Brian called at eleven and said that they were heading up to the Poconos at lunch today and were going to travel up from there tomorrow morning, though, which would put them way, way ahead of us.  So Dominica decided to see if she could get everything packed and ready so that we could actually do the drive after work today instead of waiting until tomorrow to go.  Of course,  I had taken the time off tomorrow so that we could drive in the daylight and not interrupt our sleeping schedules so much and going tonight puts us back into late night driving but, oh well.

The packing went well and we were on the road by around seven.  In a way it was nice to get going early because it forced us to just jump start our trip and get the ball rolling.  So all afternoon was spent packing and preparing for the trip in a panic.  No time to spare at all now.

The drive up to dad’s went pretty well.  Dinner was at McDonald’s like it normally is when we are traveling.

It was late, like one or two in the morning, when we pulled into dad’s place.  We were all pretty tired so it was right off to sleep for us.

Looking Back: Nine months from now I will hook up my Playstation 3 in our apartment in Las Colinas, Texas and discover that November 17th was the last time that I was able to play Oblivion for nine months.  This was the last day of really “relaxing” to any degree that we would have for a very, very long time.