For the First Time In Forever.....A Disneyland reopening TR, Dark Ride photos and The End 5/8

[tiggrbaby]

Glad to hear that you had a lovely visit with your parents and a special celebration for your anniversary!

Now can you come clean my house?

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

What were once wide open walkways became barricaded with boxes and everything else you could imagine. After seven trips to storage, full trash and recycling bins, and a LOT of consolidating, we finally have a house back.

I know that pain. We're looking at possibly installing new floors and the idea of cleaning up the house to get them in is...daunting, to say the least.

We had a lovely visit which included a SUPER fun dinner party to celebrate mine and Fran's 25th Anniversary.

Congratulations and happy anniversary!

We will be staying three nights at the Grand Californian next week.

Awesome. Glad you were able to salvage that!

 

[franandaj]

So which is better. Being called "What'shername" or being called the wrong name???

I think I like "What'shername" better. At least the person is admitting they don't know my name.

Actually... that's exactly why one guy in my office got fired!

I had an employee working for me who was doing that too, but I couldn't afford to fire people so I put software on everyone's computers that notified me when they went to a restricted site. It was sickening how often he went there....

But there's another reason we can't see that. Well... maybe two?
One I won't go into, but the other is... maybe you can download a virus from a 3rd party? I'm not sure.

Now you have me curious about the one you won't go into!

I'm not relieved! I'm sad you had to cancel.

Well it would have been no fun, it was pouring rain that entire day, so even the plans we had would have been scrapped by Disney, but we did do a reschedule so I do have that "other update" coming up!

Ugh. I think I'll stick with a bike down there. It was sooooo much quicker.

Well except you wouldn't want to travel for 300 plus miles on the bike, and then you wouldn't be able to bring clothes for the week either!

Oh, no? None?

I think that even car races would be cancelled for the types of rain we were having.

It's looking more like it's not "if" you'll catch covid... but "when".

I'm still trying to stay in the "if" crowd!

Well all righty! I'll be prepared to be intimidated!

Unless you don't talk Marvel. Then again if you meet up at Avengers campus like we did, it's hard not to!

I noticed you said "folks" and not "friends"...

I try to speak in gender/affection neutral terms. That way I am not limiting myself to any certain subset. By using "folk", it encompasses people i know and don't know. I never use "guys" anymore because lots of women I know are offended by using that word to describe a group of people.

It's on the list next. That and the Fett.
Right now I'm finally watching Squid Games.

I won't be watching Squid Games.

We are watching DC's Legends of Tomorrow. It's currently on Season 7 and we just finished season 5 last night.

Ah. So...
1. You're already at a disadvantage.
2. You'd never survive with Mark's family.

Oh, I like peanut butter, just not jelly. I prefer butter opposite the peanut butter.

Yesss... sorta.

But for me to go, I'd have to drive 2 hours to Grand Forks (or 3 to Fargo) first. Because if I test positive outside the country, I can't get on a plane to come back. I can however, drive back. The other problem is my work. They are requiring that if you travel, you have to get management approval for an additional two weeks leave after your return. Not a huge problem, except in my office, we're short staffed so only one person can get away at a time. And if someone else has leave booked after yours... someone can't go.

And now all that is out the window with the "no non-essential travel" thing......

 

[franandaj]

Happy New Year!
Happy Anniversary!

Thanks! Happy New Year to you too! (Although a bit belated!)

 

[franandaj]

No apologies necessary! It's much easier to keep up with this way.

Holy cow. This kitty's a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

I gotta remember that one!

"Feral cat? Uh...no speak-a de English!"

Good grief. This is quite the adventure! Hope nobody was hurt in the attempt!

Michael was smart he wore a leather jacket and thick leather gloves.

Looks like Google was very wise.

We've actually had some studies done suggesting the reflective pavement markers are not good in rain--they give drivers a false sense of confidence to drive faster than they should in bad conditions.

These ones on I5 were so worn and lacking reflection that we were having a hard time even figuring out where the road was! Later that evening when we went out to get dinner, there were super bright yellow ones leading to town. Those we could see!

Thank goodness!

I can't even imagine. I wouldn't want any part of that!

I only want kitties that love me. Not one who wants to kill me.

Sounds like fun! I haven't really been feeling Disney fever lately either with all of the price gouging going on.

This reminds me that I owe you an email. Less than 150 days!

Wow! Lots of good news on the horizon. And an early congratulations! In case I forget later.

Thanks!

Ooh, I'll have to look this up. Sounds cool.

You've got some time....

Ah...the collection is now complete.

I see what you did there!

And Hawkeye! That's the newest Marvel show.

Yup. On the list.

I don't think I'd enjoy a spicy drink.

It wasn't very refreshing......

With the bananas in it, it sounds gross.

For me the jelly was the first tier of gross, bacon in the mix was the sc I nd tier and the banana was just the icing on the proverbial cake.

NBC? Was Jimmy Fallon there? The Saturday Night Live cast?

Oh please. You think someone as cool as Jack would hang out with those losers?

Hey, whatever works!

That's how it's done.

When you can't go to Disney any day you want.

 

[franandaj]

I posted from my phone and somehow it got all tangled up but not in a good Flynn Rider kinda way. Sorry.

No worries! Cute way to put it!

 

[pkondz]

I think I like "What'shername" better. At least the person is admitting they don't know my name.

I always get so embarrassed when I can't remember a name. Now I usually go in saying "I'm going to forget your name, so don't mind me when I ask again."

And it happened just the other day. Met my neighbour and asked her name. Met her again a few days later and had to ask. At least now I remember... uh... what's-her-name.


(kidding. It's Maria.)

I had an employee working for me who was doing that too, but I couldn't afford to fire people so I put software on everyone's computers that notified me when they went to a restricted site. It was sickening how often he went there....

I guess when boredom strikes...

Now you have me curious about the one you won't go into!

I didn't dare write about it as I was on a work computer at the time.
What happened was this. A bunch of guys from work had gotten together at someone's house. The were all drinking and someone bet someone else that they wouldn't swim across the pool. (I don't know if it was really cold or dirty from being abandoned or not open yet.) The guy accepted the bet, stripped down and dove in. Someone made a comment about his shortcomings and said "I bet he couldn't even please (name of woman co-worker) with that!"
Unfortunately, the whole thing was videotaped, and put on YouTube. Some people saw it at work and the poor woman was mortified. I'm not sure if any of the guys got disciplined, but they did wind up transferring the woman out of the Province and restricting YouTube access.

Well except you wouldn't want to travel for 300 plus miles on the bike, and then you wouldn't be able to bring clothes for the week either!

True. But for getting around once I'm there (and the clothes are in the hotel room), it would be convenient.

I think that even car races would be cancelled for the types of rain we were having.

Yes, they have been. They've also not canceled them and had major crashes.

I'm still trying to stay in the "if" crowd!

Me too

I try to speak in gender/affection neutral terms. That way I am not limiting myself to any certain subset. By using "folk", it encompasses people i know and don't know. I never use "guys" anymore because lots of women I know are offended by using that word to describe a group of people.

Interesting. On Survivor, for 20 years, Jeff Probst has said "Come on in guys!" It's become a catch-phrase. But last season he asked about it and now no longer says it.

I won't be watching Squid Games.

You're not missing much. It was interesting and overly violent. It was okay, but... I'm not sure what all the fuss was about.

We are watching DC's Legends of Tomorrow. It's currently on Season 7 and we just finished season 5 last night.

Hmmm... 7 seasons is a commitment. Unless you tell me it's "really good", I don't think I'd start it.

And now all that is out the window with the "no non-essential travel" thing......

<sigh>

 

[franandaj]

Clancy is one crazy cat! Wow! I'm glad you were finally able to secure him and get him off to a new home. I'm pretty sure he'd have killed you in your sleep if he had the opportunity.

That's one reason we never slept in that room while he was in there!

That looks like so much fun!!!

It's a great ride, I just wish I was better at it.

That was my reaction based on description and pictures alone.

I read the description when the land first opened and knew that I wouldn't like it.

I love how Disney does Halloween! It looks so cool!

I can always go for some Mickey waffles.

Me too! I think I will in a few weeks!

 

[franandaj]

Nope.
I insist you categorize them by subject, theme, date and time.

You never know what I'll do....I just caught up on my dinner log yesterday. It's a spreadsheet that goes back to 2014 documenting what we had for dinner on a given night. It's grouped by protein type, or whether we dined out and where.

need this for my front yard.

There are people in So Cal who have very similar decorations.

If it's anything like MNSSHPs, then you definitely should go!

From what I hear, it's becom8ng more and more like it.

It's -18F right now. It warmed up quite a bit last few hours

I don't know how you live like that. We seem to be coming out of our cold season. Highs are back in the 70s again here. My 3/4 length sleeve shirts may be retired until after American Thanksgiving this year.

So... good or bad?
You were close, so convenient... or you were close, so crowded and noisy?

Always good. The less Fran has to walk the better.

My kind of buffet.




I repeat... my kind of buffet.

The what????

Not my cup of tea, but it's their signature item.

I get it.

The struggle is real.

Oooohhhh... everyone loves a maze.

The thing that gets me every time is that when I exit the hallway from the bedrooms, I can turn right and walk across the living room. I don't have to walk past the the couch and cat tree forest, turn into the kitchen, go through the dining room to finally reach the living room. There were two dead end paths you could follow into the living room. One ended at the bins where I keep items listed on eBay, the other ended at stuff I was storing until Fran would put it on eBay.

Now I can enter the living room from three different directions!

Oh! Wow! Happy anniversary!!

Thank you!

 

[franandaj]

I cure my own bacon from whole belly and cook with Pork Belly frequently uncured. This looks AMAZING. I'm gonna have to replicate it.

Good luck! That stuff is pretty amazing!

 

[franandaj]

Glad to hear that you had a lovely visit with your parents and a special celebration for your anniversary!

Thanks! It was good times!

Now can you come clean my house?

I'm not quite so good at the actual cleaning part. I'm better at the rearranging boxes and just taking stuff elsewhere. That's why I have a house elf to do the actual tidying up of the stuff after I remove the big things.

 

[pkondz]

You never know what I'll do....I just caught up on my dinner log yesterday. It's a spreadsheet that goes back to 2014 documenting what we had for dinner on a given night. It's grouped by protein type, or whether we dined out and where.

So may I ask why you are doing that? Do you refer to it? Or... ?

I don't know how you live like that. We seem to be coming out of our cold season. Highs are back in the 70s again here. My 3/4 length sleeve shirts may be retired until after American Thanksgiving this year.

We'll have 70s soon. Not later than June, for sure. Maybe even a day or two here and there in May!

Not my cup of tea, but it's their signature item.

Not what I pictured, but that makes some sense.

The thing that gets me every time is that when I exit the hallway from the bedrooms, I can turn right and walk across the living room. I don't have to walk past the the couch and cat tree forest, turn into the kitchen, go through the dining room to finally reach the living room. There were two dead end paths you could follow into the living room. One ended at the bins where I keep items listed on eBay, the other ended at stuff I was storing until Fran would put it on eBay.

Now I can enter the living room from three different directions!

Look at you! You're branching out... literally!

 

[franandaj]

I know that pain. We're looking at possibly installing new floors and the idea of cleaning up the house to get them in is...daunting, to say the least.

We have some cracks in our tile floors and I'm ignoring that in hopes of saving some money. Even more daunting would be moving the furniture to get that done.

Congratulations and happy anniversary!

Thank you!

Awesome. Glad you were able to salvage that!

Me too. I really need some Disney time and time away from home and responsibilities!

 

[franandaj]

I always get so embarrassed when I can't remember a name. Now I usually go in saying "I'm going to forget your name, so don't mind me when I ask again."

And it happened just the other day. Met my neighbour and asked her name. Met her again a few days later and had to ask. At least now I remember... uh... what's-her-name.


(kidding. It's Maria.)

I know my neighbors names only because their mail is missing delivered to my house.

I guess when boredom strikes...

play solitaire, write a memoir...there are plenty of better things to do! And there were other people in the room. Ewww

I didn't dare write about it as I was on a work computer at the time.
What happened was this. A bunch of guys from work had gotten together at someone's house. The were all drinking and someone bet someone else that they wouldn't swim across the pool. (I don't know if it was really cold or dirty from being abandoned or not open yet.) The guy accepted the bet, stripped down and dove in. Someone made a comment about his shortcomings and said "I bet he couldn't even please (name of woman co-worker) with that!"
Unfortunately, the whole thing was videotaped, and put on YouTube. Some people saw it at work and the poor woman was mortified. I'm not sure if any of the guys got disciplined, but they did wind up transferring the woman out of the Province and restricting YouTube access.

Wow! That is a pretty juicy story!

True. But for getting around once I'm there (and the clothes are in the hotel room), it would be convenient.

There would be no other reason than you were traveling somewhere to be on that stretch of highway. The closest civilisation is 45 minutes either south or north with no traffic. Bakersfield is to the north and Santa Clarita is to the south. Calling Bakersfield civilization is a but of a stretch based on several factors. That portion I showed you in the picture is strictly used for people traveling and trucks engaged in commerce. A lot of trucks engaged commerce.

Yes, they have been. They've also not canceled them and had major crashes.

See not safe to go that fast in torrential downpour!

Interesting. On Survivor, for 20 years, Jeff Probst has said "Come on in guys!" It's become a catch-phrase. But last season he asked about it and now no longer says it.

Never seen the show, so I don't understand the context. Was this to a mixed gender group?

You're not missing much. It was interesting and overly violent. It was okay, but... I'm not sure what all the fuss was about.

That's what I figured and don't need anything overly violent to give me nightmares.

Hmmm... 7 seasons is a commitment. Unless you tell me it's "really good", I don't think I'd start it.

Well I didn't really care for it when we first started watching, but I did it because Fran wanted to watch it. There have been a lot of cast changes, and a ton of plot twists, but I'm liking it a lot more. It doesn't hurt that there is a lesbian captain, whose partner that used to head up the "Time Bureau" which fell a couple seasons ago, has now joined the crew. It's a show about time travel and fixing anomalies in the timeline.

In the last season or two they've done some really silly episodes parodying other TV shows, eras in history and other fun stuff. Then there's also some occult thrown in there, and oh yeah, super heroes! I wouldn't go so far as to say it's really good, but when my parents were here, we both missed watching it and spent the day that they left binging Season 5 and almost finished it, but we had to go to sleep.

So may I ask why you are doing that? Do you refer to it? Or... ?

So I've been making these charts to an my dinners since the 80s. I know this because when we were moving, i found college notebooks with dinner plans in them. For about 30 years I only worried about say two maybe two and a half rows which was a little over a week, and I could make my shopping list based on what was coming up for dinner. It was the pandemic and control of my environment which made me fill out the whole page and have suggestions in the sidebar.



Well back in our old house, I kept all the sheets so that when I was lacking inspiration for what to have for dinner I could look back on it. I had to throw away all the prior sheets to 2014 because either at the old house or when we moved in here one of the cats peed on the stack and they were unsalvageable. Somewhere in there I got tired of rifling through pages and pages of dinners and decided to digitize it. Being the spreadsheet and analysis queen, I of course chose Google sheets so I could access it from my phone and computer, and that is my favorite program for anaylsis.

So when I put it all into the spreadsheet (and I think that was either 2018 or 2019), I was astonished to find that over the years since 2014, 40% of our meals at home were Beef/Lamb. Poultry was second, I think in the 20s. I've been trying to level it up and so I keep keeping track.

Also when I'm at a loss for what to cook I can look at everything we've eaten over the past 8 years and pick something I haven't had in a while.

Oh i also now keep track of that and we repeat dinners on average of every 165 days.

We'll have 70s soon. Not later than June, for sure. Maybe even a day or two here and there in May!

I'll be back in Capris in no time!

Look at you! You're branching out... literally!

 

[pkondz]

I know my neighbors names only because their mail is missing delivered to my house.

That would do it, all right.

play solitaire, write a memoir...there are plenty of better things to do! And there were other people in the room. Ewww

There would be no other reason than you were traveling somewhere to be on that stretch of highway. The closest civilisation is 45 minutes either south or north with no traffic. Bakersfield is to the north and Santa Clarita is to the south. Calling Bakersfield civilization is a but of a stretch based on several factors. That portion I showed you in the picture is strictly used for people traveling and trucks engaged in commerce. A lot of trucks engaged commerce.

Okay... so probably won't be on that stretch on a bike.

See not safe to go that fast in torrential downpour!

Okay, okay... point taken.

Never seen the show, so I don't understand the context. Was this to a mixed gender group?

Yes. May have been one trans and definitely at least one gay/lesbian person for sure.

Well I didn't really care for it when we first started watching, but I did it because Fran wanted to watch it. There have been a lot of cast changes, and a ton of plot twists, but I'm liking it a lot more. It doesn't hurt that there is a lesbian captain, whose partner that used to head up the "Time Bureau" which fell a couple seasons ago, has now joined the crew. It's a show about time travel and fixing anomalies in the timeline.

Hmmm... Sounds pretty good. May have to look into it.
I'm currently watching The Witcher and have a few episodes left.

In the last season or two they've done some really silly episodes parodying other TV shows, eras in history and other fun stuff. Then there's also some occult thrown in there, and oh yeah, super heroes! I wouldn't go so far as to say it's really good, but when my parents were here, we both missed watching it and spent the day that they left binging Season 5 and almost finished it, but we had to go to sleep.

Yeah... sounds better and better.

So I've been making these charts to an my dinners since the 80s. I know this because when we were moving, i found college notebooks with dinner plans in them. For about 30 years I only worried about say two maybe two and a half rows which was a little over a week, and I could make my shopping list based on what was coming up for dinner. It was the pandemic and control of my environment which made me fill out the whole page and have suggestions in the sidebar.



Well back in our old house, I kept all the sheets so that when I was lacking inspiration for what to have for dinner I could look back on it. I had to throw away all the prior sheets to 2014 because either at the old house or when we moved in here one of the cats peed on the stack and they were unsalvageable. Somewhere in there I got tired of rifling through pages and pages of dinners and decided to digitize it. Being the spreadsheet and analysis queen, I of course chose Google sheets so I could access it from my phone and computer, and that is my favorite program for anaylsis.

So when I put it all into the spreadsheet (and I think that was either 2018 or 2019), I was astonished to find that over the years since 2014, 40% of our meals at home were Beef/Lamb. Poultry was second, I think in the 20s. I've been trying to level it up and so I keep keeping track.

Whoa.
I'd wager that our poultry intake is the highest. But... cool that you can authoritatively make that statement.

Also when I'm at a loss for what to cook I can look at everything we've eaten over the past 8 years and pick something I haven't had in a while.

I do that... not 8 years worth, but I dig through my recipes and "Did we like this? Maybe? Let's try it again."

Oh i also now keep track of that and we repeat dinners on average of every 165 days.

I'm lucky if I don't repeat in 30.

 

[pkondz]

And.... poop. No Legends of Tomorrow on Netflix, Prime or Disney+

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

This reminds me that I owe you an email. Less than 150 days!

Crap, is it that soon already? I need to start making some reservations.

 

[franandaj]

OK folks! I'll be back with replies and even possibly another update, but I just wanted to say that yesterday was

Single Digits for my WDW trip!
​

Back to your regularly scheduled programming. That's all!

 

[pkondz]

Single Digits for my WDW trip!

 

[tiggrbaby]

Awesome! I miss going to Disney, so I have to live it through your reports.