"And so, Mr. Nebo, you do realize I could very well bring you up on charges of abandonment, leaving the scene of a trip report, and just plain being a selfish jerk?"
"Yes your Honor, but may I explain?"
"Umm, NO!"
"But, but,,,"
"You are hereby sentenced to a parking lot view at ASSports, will post on at least five other trip reports, and clean off Jaime's car when it snows."
"NO! Not Jaime's car! That's cruel and unusual punishment."
I'm sorry, the only thing I have to say for myself is that it's been beyond hectic in this household lately. I've been frantically looking for work since I put it off so long, got a job for a brief while with the hopes it would last longer but the parts supplier cant come through for a few months now, and I'm outta luck. The one I've been hoping for, that may eventually transfer down to Lakeland, well, they just love me.
They love me so much that they want me to sit tight for a couple of months untill business improves. They just can't use me now.
All computer time has been spent researching either jobs or what we found out in Florida. Hey, we were just about on the verge of moving now, until reality set in wearing the face of a local realator.
Reality is not a pretty thing.
No offense, Janice.
Our chances of selling now are slim to none, and at 20 thousand less then these homes sold for 2 years ago. Then there's the matter of all the money they want me to put into this place, central air, new paint, new carpet, well, so much for buying our little dream house outright.
It really didn't matter right now anyway though. Our daughter in law is having a tough pregnancy, and no way are we leaving town now with her in and out of the hospital on a frequent basis.
The bottom line is we will be here another year or so, life will return to normal, and so will the trip reporting.
Believe it or not, I haven't even gotten to most of the comments posted about the last thing I wrote, I will, but I need to get back to normal here first, and that means continuing on with the december report. So, if you're still with me, I believe we left off at Whispering Canyon, I fell asleep, Diane looked like an idiot in a picture, and all was right with the world.
Saturday found us back at Epcot again, with the highlight a lunch at the new Teppanedo, remember, we are still on the dining plan.
In the past, I have never been that big a fan of Japanese cuisine, just didn't like it at Benihana's when you ordered steak, and they would chop it all up and toss it on your plate with a water chestnut and bean sprouts camoflage. I mean garnish.
But tastes change as you get older I guess.
Or maybe it's the fiber, heh.
It was a lovely day, very sunny if a little chilly, we slept like rocks last nights and felt a bit refreshed today, and didn't even try to make rope drop, just laid around in bed and sat by the pool in the morning before we left for Epcot. We are going to have a nice lunch, listen to some of the story tellers, visit some shops, and later have a couple of cocktails and see the special Illuminations, that they pushed back until nine thirty.
Sounds good, doesn't it?
I should have known. Bad things happen when we eat at Japan.
Remember last year, when they wouldn't let us leave because of no credits left on the dining plan due to a double swipe of the card from a dinner at Cap'n Jacks?
Well, unfortunately, today didn't go so spiffy either, but we couldn't blame it on Disney this time.
We blamed it on Diane.
Ok, I blamed it on Diane.
(here we go, "Did you make Diane cry again?")
No, I didn't. She didn't need my help this time, she did it on her own.
But that comes a bit later.
Teppanedo's was outstanding! It helps when you can order the most expensive thing on the menu, too.
The place looks pretty much the same to me, but the cooking area of the tables is a little smaller so you don't have to worry about burning yourself on the grill anymore.
Eating here is a lot like riding the Jungle Cruise, it all depends a lot on who you get for a cook. Unfortunately, ours was way too full of himself, and either thought we weren't worth the effort, or was suffering from a bad hangover.
He told us how he was one of the only cooks they retained from when it was Teppenyaki, that he has worked in countries all over the city, has a P.H.D. in building onioin ring volcanos, and tried to talk Emporer Hirohito into bombing Universal Studios instead of Pearl Harbor.
Remember what I always say about the Japanese at Disney World, how nice they all are?
He was the exception to the rule.
Well, I guess my body language let is be knownst that I tired of his bragging, thus we didn't exactly hit it off from then on.
As he was building a 5 level high onion volcano, and the rest at our table our "oohing and ahhing", I've got my chair pulled up to the next table near the corner, and said really loudly for all our table to hear, "Hey Diane, look at this guy next to us, he's got to have a volcano twice as high, and he's even got lava coming down the sides of it!"
Naturally, everyone at our table looked over there and started watching the other guy. Next thing you heard was a cleaver coming down way too hard and splitting his little volcano in two. I got the feeling he saw my face in the volcano.
The great part was he gave me the worst "glare" that even others at the table caught. The woman next to me even said, "uh oh, your in for it now".
Ok, cool, I like to play games, besides, we're on the dining plan.
I smiled at him, played all innocent, and was still in the drivers seat for one big reason: The table next to us was about ten minutes ahead of us in preparation, so I knew what was probably coming up.
Just as he was ready to start slicing and dicing and do his knives tricks with the veggies, I said with the most sincere eager face I could muster,
"Can you juggle the knives like this guy over here can too?"
It was amazing how quickly people moved their chairs away from me when he immediately started tossing the knives around.
We both ordered tempura, which I've never had before. It's nothing to dislike, just seemed a bit bland to me. For entrees, Smidgy got the sirloin and shrimp combo, I got the filet, most others at the table had either chicken of just shrimp.
But one other person had the sirloin, and now I'm going to keep my eye on it.
He had 3 steaks brought out to him by a server, and was told right away which ones were which, but you could tell yourself pretty easily just by looking at the slabs of meat sitting there. He cooked the shrimp and chicken dinners first, then started on the steaks.
And I"m watching, "Always Watching".
All of a sudden, he's mixing all the sliced up pieces together, and to me, it was now, "Ok, game over"!
"Hey, what are you doing?"
ANd I got an answer I never in a million years expected to hear from a Japanese man, much less an employee at Disney. "What's your problem?"
"I will tell you my problem." "Are you going to go through 3 sliced up steaks to pick out which one is mine when you put it on the plate?"
"Diane spoke up right away and said "He has the fillet".
Incredibly, he just glared at me, and started to try to pick out which little hunks of meat were the fillet, and which ones were the sirloin. I just started laughing. His face was almost beet red now, and I was keeping an eye on his hands and where the knives were. "You're not giving much help here "cooperation wise", are you?" he said.
Wow! So to use one of his early self embellishments, I said, "No, I have a P.H. D. in wiseguy wise."
Then he looked at the orders again, as if to show he didn't notice that one was a fillet instead of sirloin, and had another fillet brought out. My original steak ended up on Diane's and this other person's plate along with their own.
Your welcome.
This was one of those weird confrontations that normally would really upset the normal person, including me, but it was just so ridiculous that it just struck me as funny. Yes, as he was cooking my "New and Improved" steak, I never took my eye off it, or his mouth if you know what I mean.
Or the knife in his hands.
Normally, I would never ever do anything to tick off anybody who has anything to do with preparing my food, too many ways for them to get even.
But he was helpless, although if he ever saw me again at the Teppanedo drive through I'm sure he would give me a "special sauce" on my order, free on the house.
By the way, the steak and the rest of lunch was really good, and outside a couple of the other diners there thanked me for the entertainment.
After lunch, we tried to listen to a couple of the storytellers, but that got old kind of quickly, and we watched the Chinese acrobats instead. Most of the next couple of hours were just walking off lunch, sitting by the fountain and taking it nice and slow.
Did you ever try to catch one of the leaping fountains on film?
No, I don't mean on a digital, where you can easily check to see right away, I mean on film, where you find out weeks later, and then try to remember why you took this picture. See if you can find it.
We still have a lot of time before the fireworks so we decided to take a walk out the International Gateway of Pancakes. A stroll over to the Boardwalk got me a picture of the carousel there.
Then, on the way back, I saw the most incredible thing.
Of course, my timing sucked, it was too soon after lunch.
What it was is a little kiosk (don't you love that word?) over by the water side of the boardwalk, that sells corn dogs.
CORN DOGS!
The elusive favorite treat of mine that I can never find anywhere down in Disney.
And now I'm stuffed.
Great, it figures. But you know what? At 4 bucks a pop, it's just as well, I'm not spending that much for a "lobster dog" much less a weenie on a stick.
Sometimes, I like to wear a pedometer on Epcot days, because those are the biggest readings on that thing days. I should have today. We went back into future world, and did Mission Space again.
The non-dying version. What's fun here is the Space Race game that takes place at the end of the ride. It can take a while till they get enough people to play it, but it's really a lot of fun once you get the hang of it. I couldn't beging to descibe it, just that you have simple little puzzles to fix in a short time period, the faster you fix them, the better for your team.
I thought I was doing pretty good with a final score of 17 puzzles solved, until I looked at Smidgies machine and saw she posted a 21, which was tops in the room. Next time you're there, try it, you don't have to do the ride, you can go in the ride exit door through the shop.
Then, we're back into World showcase, and browsing the shops.
I splurged for a couple of fiesta margaritas by Mexico, and after we drank a little, in the smoking area nearby, I showed Smidgy the wonders of what a little airplane bottle of rum can do to a slightly alcohol deficient extremely expensive fancy drink.
I lost Diane in Germany for a while, I just got so caught up in staring at the price tags on the glass figurines and castles. She found me in the smoking area by Italy, and we went over to Morocco for a cheaper drink and then wanted to see OFF KILTER.
The latter part never happened.
Remember what I said earlier?
Well, it's time.
As we're in line for a Pina Colada in Morocco, Diane was going to put the drinks on our room key. That didn't happen either.
In line we met a woman who is also from our area, a teache who even remembers one of our sons, and the three of us were talking. When it came time to order, Diane ordered two drinks, and the fanny pack came out.
Then the look of confusion came out.
Followed by the look of fear.
All I got was "Put it on your card, I'll be right back." And she was gone.
Our new friend in line looked at me quizzically, all I could do was shrug and say I have that effect on woman. I paid and just stood off to the side trying to see where she went, be she was gone from sight.
The next 15 minutes were spent sitting on a bench holding two drinks.
Finally she came back, I saw her running by and barely stopped her and got the story.
She lost that little card with the picture of the castle on it.
The room key.
The charge card.
The dining plan card.
The park tickets card.
Turned out the zipper broke on her pack and she didn't realize it, so we tried to figure out when she last used it, where we had been, etc. etc.
She had bought a pair of earrings in Germany, and used the card there.
Ok, it's probably still there, let's go check,,
Uh uh, she already had run back there.
Well, the next hour was spent backtracking, checking garbage cans, and mostly staring at the ground as you walk. Now, I'm starting to panic, thinking that somebody is ringing up a ton of stuff and charging it to us, so we went to guest services and had a stop put on it.
Nothing bad came out of it in the long run, except an hour or so of anxious moments. The next morning at the resort it was replaced, and the missing card was never heard from again.
Once we were assured everything would be ok, we got our favorite spot by the bridge near Mexico, and watched the special Illuminations.
And, HOLY COW, special it was. They added a five minute major finale to the end of the regular show that just blew us away. We then outdid ourselves on the fireworks getaway, and caught a bus pretty quickly, and got back to the resort with enough time left to spend some quality moments with our good Pop Warner friends.
Coming up, much needed callouts, then we finally get to meet some great Dissers. No, Jill and John, didn't forget about you. goodnight,
