I will get to the callouts a bit later but right now I want to make sure I get the next chapter in.
Sunday early evening, our last night in DisneyWorld with a penitent and slightly irritated Smidgy.
After she was basicly told that she "Won't get this back at the end of the semester" she wasn't too pleased, not on our last night.
But what she didn't know was that I was still holding the very last bottle that almost got left behind, no, not a missing Malibu Rum but it was another Meyer's Rum, yet I haven't told her that yet.
"All in good time, my dear."
(picture the witch saying that)
But as we're walking down Main Street and she's still cranky I'm not helping.
As folks would pass us I"d hook a thumb towards her and say, "She's been baaaad."
"Don't look at her, she's been baaaad."
On our way to ride Buzz Lightyear I told her to give me her LAST REMAINING BOTTLE so she doesn't lose it from her baggy pockets.
After Buzz, she started up again.
"Geez, why did he have to take the Malibu, I was really saving that the whole trip."
"I know, I'm sorry."
"And why couldn't he have given it back to me?"
"I know, I'm sorry."
"And now I'm down to one bottle left for the whole night."
"I KNOW, I'm sorry."
" I mean really, what, is he going to drink it late,,,"
" I know, I'm sorr,,,, Well you're the nimrod who had to go and try to hit on him by flashing the inside of your pockets for him!"
Whoops! I cracked.
At first she was taken aback, then her shoulders slumped and she nodded, "I know."
I still wasn't done being a jerk yet;
As we walked along to the DSA in the back by Space Mountain I was quietly singing;
" I would while away the hours, consulting with the flowers, confirming with the rain,"
She couldn't quite hear me so she leaned in closer.
"With the thoughts I'd be thinkin I could be another Lincoln if ,,,,"
"Ok, I get it. Very funny."
Being OCD I couldn't leave it without finshing it, who knows what would happen if I didn't so I had to say really fast:
"Ionlyhadabrain."
Sitting at the smoking area, a woman and her young son joined us. She lit up a smoke while he looked at a park map. Soon, the woman told her son that "Don't worry, we can't stay here long, we have to bet back to Buzz Lightyear before our fastpasses expire."
That's a Smidgy opening if I ever heard one.
While she was telling the woman all about fastpasses, I started talking to the young boy.
"Are you having fun here buccaroo?"
"Oh yes."
Hmm, a kid of few words.
"Are you being good? Unlike this lady over here?"
"Yeah."
"What's your favorite ride so far?"
"Spiderman."
"Thank you very much, nice talkin to you kid."
We finshed up and saw COP, then rode the people mover. I think I mentioned before that I liked the older narrative better, now it's just an infomercial for Tomorrowland.
It was just starting to get a little dark and I could tell it's going to be packed tonight. We have already used our fastpass for Buzz but still have BTMR and Splash passes left.
With our Sunny D's all up and emptied, whe thought we should get a bottle of pop and split it. Here's the problem;
She's got rum, I've got whiskey.
She wants Coke, I want Sprite.
She still wants Coke, so I want Coke too.
Whiskey and Coke it is!
While whe went off in search of a pop stand, I told her I'd meat her by the smoking area at the exit of the Race Cars.
And I went over there.
This is usually a pretty busy DSA, but not bad right now.
Plus, it's got a great view of the racetrack.
The race track is 4 lanes wide, they have all lanes going right now cuz of the crowd and I'm leaning up against the fence only feet from the outside lane.
Then, to my surprise and joy, a previously never seen by me Disney entertainment act began.
It seemed they had temporarily shut the ride down, as no new cars were going by me. I looked to the left where the boarding area is and nope, none coming at all.
Oh wait, in the very outside lane, the one closest to me, comes two guys pushing and empty, dead car.
This was not too easy, especially with the car banging into the dividing rail that runs right down the middle of each lane to keep the cars in place.
And you k now those steering wheels are almost useless,
it takes about 20 seconds after you turn the steering wheel before the actual wheels move at all.
As they got a little bit closer, I couldn't help myself:
"Brilliant!" "That will really save on gas!"
They looked up at me and gave the mandatory little smile, then put their heads back down and kept pushing.
Right smack dab in front of me, they stopped.
I thought for some reason they were going to say something to me, but they started talking amongst themselves.
From what I could overhear, somebody named Smiggy had closed the door on the seatbelt, preventing the dome light from turning out and ran down the battery.
But the one guy was pointing towards the infield and it was clear they needed to get the car across all four lanes and off the track, and quickly.
I was really curious how they were going to do this with each track having the damn rail down the middle, not gonna push the car over those things.
One guy stayed with the car, the other one ran and jumped over all the rails and went to a control panel in the infield area.
He pushed a button on the panel, and slowly a fifteen foot section of rail on all the tracks descended into the concrete.
I thought it truly was clever, then they managed to turn the car and push it across all the lanes and off the track totally.
He pushed the button again, the rails all went back up and the cars were coming again.
Smidgy came back with the Coke, I poured a bunch in my Sunny D bottle, then since there was really no one around us, I dumped both of my little whiskey bottles in there too.
Since Diane still had the bigger Coke bottle, she threw out her Sunny D bottle and dumped her little rum bottle in with it.
Then she gave me a dirty look.
"What's that for?"
"You know what it's for, you got two of them and I only got one."
I held my closed fists out in front of me, upside down.
"Pick a hand."
"Why?"
"Just pick a hand."
"Why?"
Sigh,,,,,,"Last chance, just PICK A HAND!"
She tapped my right hand.
"Good choice." I opened my left hand with the little bottle in it. "It's yours."
I almost lost two fingers as she snatched it away.
"What do you say?"
"Who's your buddy?"
"What do you say?"
"About time," was her response finally.
"Your welcome."
No, she really was very grateful, thanked me plenty for bringing it and giving it to her.
It was time to get moving so move, we did.
Ok, this is a kinda aside:
You know how anybody writing about Disney will use abbreviations and acronyms a lot? Like instead of typing out Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, they will just type BTMR.
Obviously, it saves time when writing it, and so many hotels, parks, rides and shows are all now known by their acronyms.
But it doesn't do squat for the reader.
If I type
MVMCP, you don't "read" M-V-M-C-P, no, instead your mind will say to you when you come across MVMCP as Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party.
So the abbreviation does no good for the reader.
I am going to try to change that programming we all have.
This is just a baby step, can't change the brain's hard wired syntax all at once, but we will start with Richie Cunningham's best friend.
Yes, you read that right.
As many of you know, I have a bad habit of changing the names of rides, like Casserole of Progress, Primevil Hurl, Mission Spray or 'Snorin.
But this time it's going to be for the better, we can finally READ one of the acronyms and this is where we are now headed.
To Richie Cunningham's buddy.
Anybody got it yet? I'm sure somebody has.
From now on, when we read the letters for Pirates of the Caribbean, we will no longer have to say it in our minds in long form, we will just read, Potsie.
P-O-T---C.
I know, I know, I need help, and badly!
I'm not sure if it was cuz I was such an insensitive jerk earlier to Smidgy, but payback started coming and it didn't stop!
It started at Potsie.
When we got there, a big Brazillian tour group was also obviously heading there too and we rushed on ahead of them. We kept rushing through the line because I could hear their chanting and yelling behind me and I didn't want to deal with it. With Diane in front yelling, "Left, left, right, stairs up, right," I was doing ok for a while. My eyes were still in daylight mode I guess but I was doing just great listening to her until I ran into a wall.
With my face.
Didn't hurt too much but knocked my glasses sideways.
I readjusted them on the run and we soon caught up with the main queue in front.
With the tour group now standing right behind us.
We haven't waited at all on this ride in ages and ages, usually we just go up and get in a boat but not tonight.
The tour group was quiet for a couple of minutes, we moved up close to the boarding area, then one of them started up with the chanting thing again.
Within seconds a cast member who I guess had just had it with them came over and yelled, "Shut UP".
Shut up they did and there was some quiet applause.
At least this time I was able to see Johnny Depp in the ride, it was much better than when we rode it during the day.
From here it was time for Splash Mountain, otherwise known as S and M.
Well, at least it was for me.
This time we had no reason to hurry. We handed over our fastpasses and walked the walk up near the front.
And right before the loading area, you make a right turn from inside the building to get there.
I walked forward, made the right turn and slammed the right side of my head against a rock wall outcropping.
This time it did hurt, and I also knew I bent my glasses up somehow.
But can't do anything about that now, we rode, but at least we didn't get too wet this time.
But I was really feeling like I was in the middle of some kids "Whack A Mole" game.
Whack-a-Nebo
For about the twentieth time on Splash Mountain, we looked for the little gopher that supposedly sticks his head down from the ceiling and yells FSU, but we came up empty on that again.
For that matter we havent heard the native on Jungle Cruise that supposedly says, "I love disco." '
But we keep trying.
Anybody seen or heard these things?
By the way, there's a kinda phone booth under Astro Orbiter right next to TTA. Pick up the phone and hand it to your kid and say, "It's for you."
After SM, I couldn't wait to see what happens on Big Thunder.
I always have a problem getting through this queue when you finally go down the ramp to the train.
But with Smidgy's help, I made it ok, my eyes were finally getting better for night, but it didn't seem like they were getting better the same way they used to do.
With our drinks now long gone and having just had a few snacks and the funnel cake in the morning we decided to go over and eat at Columbia Harbour House.
I love the fish basket here, but we haven't eaten here since we took the Keys to the Kingdom tour with Tiggerwannabe and her son back in '07.
And the only other time we have eaten here, a guy behind me made sure to get my attention first and then did his best Mt. St. Helens' volcano exploding imitation.
Boy, was he good too,
I'll leave it at that.
But here at CHH, a lot of people don't realize there's an upstairs, it's a lot quieter plus if you can get a window seat it's a great view of the Magic Kingdom below, that's where we sat tonight. Even upstairs there's a big condiment table, not exactly a fixin's bar but it had all you would probably need.
We got out of there before the parade came through and made it over to Haunted Mansion.
HM was good again, but I really had to work at trying to see what I KNOW is there.
From there we went back through Liberty Square to the DSA that they put for some reason on the wooden bridge that will take you along the pond to Frontierland.
We had a couple of smokes there, and then the fireworks started and we stayed there to watch. They are ok, again, not Wishes but I still can't really figure out the storyline with the 3 fairy godmothers.
When the fireworks were over, we really weren't sure what we wanted to do, we went back over to the Splash area to check out the lines but they were loaded.
Ok, let's go see about the Jungle Cruise line, that's always different in the dark.
It sounded like a plan to us.
That's when I found out, like Iago, the Tiki gods weren't done with me yet.
As we were crossing the bridge by Splash Mountain, it seemed to be almost pitch dark to me. I couldn't see a thing. There were some lights, but all they did was shine in my eyes, they did nothing to show if there was something in front of me, what I was about to walk on, or anything.
All they did was shine in my eyes.
That's when I got hit by a bus.
We were holding hands, walking slowly when all of a sudden I felt Diane's hand tighten, then immediately I got creamed by something. I mean just blasted.
Even after it happened it was still too dark for me to really understand what happened, Diane had to fill me in.
It was from a woman running, pushing a stroller ahead of her. This was like the Cadillac Escalade of strollers, a Hummer if you will.
She rammed full speed right into my shins, Diane didn't see it coming until the very last second herself, that's why the tightening of the hand.
When it impacted my shins, the woman pushing lost her grip because it stopped so suddenly in the bottom front that the back and handle flew up, which then hit me in the chin.
Bottles and crap flew out of the stroller, the woman ran around picking them up, muttered "sorry," and took off again running. She was gone like it never happened.
Diane yelled out, "HEYYY!", and you could hear the woman yell over her shoulder, "I said I was sorry."
Wow! If there had been a baby in the stroller he would have gone through the windshield, if it had one.
I just stood there, shocked.
Smidgy asked, "Steve, are you alright?"
"Looks like I picked a bad day to run out of painkillers."
"Steve, really, are you allright?"
"Since when does the Monorail take a shortcut through Frontierland?"
"STEVE, ARE ,,,,"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. And you? How's the wife and kids?"
Funny thing was, what looked like a potential disaster didn't hurt much at all, maybe Disney is acclimating me.
The handle hitting my chin was nothing, and there must have been some padding on the front of the stroller or something because my shins weren't all that sore.
At least not tonight and no, there wasn't enough booze to numb me.
But it did kind of suck the spirit out of me, everywhere I could see people were running all over the place, it was packed, seemed like a madhouse and getting worse instead of better.
This is what happens when "Early May, early September, early February people, in other words, LOW CROWD time people," take on July.
We continued on through Adventureland, saw the wait for Jungle Cruise was a half hour and decided to skip it, ended upt going back to the resort.
Back in the room Diane said "Now remember, we don't have to worry about packing tonight, we can do that in the morning. "
"Right", I said, "Good idea".
And within 5 minutes I was cleaning out my drawer and stuffing stuff in my suitcase.
Cant' help it, that's the way I am.
Smidgy made us each a drink that we took down by the pool which we had just about to ourselves.
It was a beautiful night, the pool sat there shimmering, looked inviting. I looked around, now everything seemed so bright and clear, the lighting seemed just perfect on the staircase icons. I grabbed Smidgy's hand and said let's take a walk.
Went over to Broadway, I wanted to see the marquis again.
Yep, "Beauty and the Beast."
I just couldn't believe it was over, had to shake the upcoming tears out of my eyes, grabbed Diane and gave her a big kiss.
"Wow, what was that for?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"For being my wife and putting up with me."
goodnight again, dear readers.
then married me 21 years ago 
. She taught him all the things NOT to do...just like Nebo probably learned a thing or two the first round.
I am no parrellagram(sp) I am sooooo an English teacher so I better be tuning in for the next chapter...
I couldn't help but quote you on the Rainman comparison ~ funny stuff!
When you spend most of your life up north and it gets to be this time of year and everything is still green and it's 80 outside, it's a little bit weird.
, then
Well it is now official... We are arriving on Deceber 9th... Still 1 day earlier than planned but probably not early enough to get to meet you and Smidgy 
