PTR-Cheating on Mickey w/Harry!...OMG! Only a month to go!

[rentayenta]

Which herbs did you grow? Container or in-ground? Depending on the growing conditions, some of mine do bolt to seed almost immediately.

Rosemary, mint, basil, I've tried the gamut. We do containers. It must be the cool air or something. I have really bad luck with them.

 

[PrincessInOz]

I have my rosemary in the ground. It loves hot and relatively dry. The worse you treat it, the better it seems to grow. Think Greece...rocky, relatively poor soil and the occassional wet.

Basil - mine is outside in the ground this year. I've grown it near the rosemary and it seems to be thriving there this year. Usually, I grow this in the pot and leave it inside the house.

Mint - Keep it in the small/medium pot and water from the bottom up, once a week. It tends to run like a weed. I know its a perannial but I tend to throw it out. I haven't grown it for quite a few years.

 

[franandaj]

Beautiful garden. The only presents I ever get in my backyard are doodies from the neighbors cat. He must have trained her to do her business in other peoples' yards. Smart man. I do not even own a pet, yet I have to keep picking up after one.

Thank you! That really stinks about your neighbor! You could consider it extra fertilizer!

Love love love your gardening! I'm especially envious of the fresh citrus.

We live on a half acre and have a huge garden and compost pile every year. The girls have dedicated a few rows to the omeless shelter as their pre bat mitzvah projects. The shelters rarely get fresh foods and seem quite appreciative.


The me thing I cannot grow to save myself are herbs. I must be doing something wrong. Any herb tips to share?

Last year the kids did a pumpkin patch and harvested almost 25 pumpkins. It was so cool.

Don't be envious of the fresh citrus yet, only the lemon tree has actually yielded anything!

I have no tips, I keep killing off my thyme and my sage!

 

[franandaj]

So another Saturday spent, planting, repotting and the like. We also “remodeled” some of the old plants, got rid of a few and tidied up in general. So for the front part of the yard, this is the “before”:

And the “after”:

Skiboy…the basil has not yet grown to the top of the shelf, but we do have a few more weeks until June!

Here is the crew in action!

I added marigolds to the tomato plants to help keep the bugs away, aren’t they purty now?

We finally planted these (zucchini in on the left, cucumbers on the right)

We moved all the fruit trees to the other side of the yard and all the veggies are now on the same side.

This is Fran admiring the handiwork of the fruit trees

You do have to admit that the place looks much tidier!

And we can't forget the Topsy Turvy plants! I'll have to post another picture of the Tomato, as of yesterday it had already started to "lean upwards" toward the sun.

 

[ACDSNY]

I love the Disney touches in the planters.

 

[Pinkocto]

The garden looks great! The crew did not look happy to have their picture taken. I have a version of those tiki guys as bookshelves, they're so cute

 

[PrincessInOz]

Fantastic.

Not sure about the zucchini in the pot. Mine grows HUGE in the ground.

 

[kmedina]

The garden screams Disney Lover. Awesome.

 

[Leshaface]

What a cool presentation on restoring films! I don't think i'd be able to follow along after so much wine

My goodness, you're making me want to re-do our garden now. About a few weeks ago, I decided not to do it this year. It was just so much work, and with me not feeling good, i'm not sure if I would have the energy to tend to them. You did such a fantastic job with putting them in different planters and making them look nice and neat. I'm so glad I never showed a picture of my garden, you would have laughed i'm sure! But now i'm wanting to do herb planters like you've done. Can I just buy any type of plant holder and put the herbs in? And what kind of 'food' or 'dirt' do you buy for the herbs? Also, do I just buy one of each herb or do I need to buy a few and plant them??? SO CONFUSED!!

 

[franandaj]

I love the Disney touches in the planters.

Thanks! They have been just sitting around for years, so I'm glad they are finally being enjoyed.

The garden looks great! The crew did not look happy to have their picture taken. I have a version of those tiki guys as bookshelves, they're so cute

They always look grumpy, they have been planting for a while!

Fantastic.

Not sure about the zucchini in the pot. Mine grows HUGE in the ground.

Well, I don't think they would grow very big, if we planted them in the cement!

The garden screams Disney Lover. Awesome.

What a cool presentation on restoring films! I don't think i'd be able to follow along after so much wine

My goodness, you're making me want to re-do our garden now. About a few weeks ago, I decided not to do it this year. It was just so much work, and with me not feeling good, i'm not sure if I would have the energy to tend to them. You did such a fantastic job with putting them in different planters and making them look nice and neat. I'm so glad I never showed a picture of my garden, you would have laughed i'm sure! But now i'm wanting to do herb planters like you've done. Can I just buy any type of plant holder and put the herbs in? And what kind of 'food' or 'dirt' do you buy for the herbs? Also, do I just buy one of each herb or do I need to buy a few and plant them??? SO CONFUSED!!

I shouldn't take any of the credit. I really didn't do much of the actual putting plants in dirt and putting them in planters. I did more of the "Bring me a rollie thing", "These are done they need to be watered." "Where do you want this Lemon Tree to go?" "Bring me the next plant!" "Where are the pots we bought at Costco?" And then there was the pulling up all the little weeds that grew inbetween the bricks, and sweeping up the muck that had accumlated since the place was last swept, about two years ago.

The real credit for most of the planting goes to Fran and Darcy. However, I seem to do all the ongoing watering. I just hope that we get some decent crops out of this!

 

[franandaj]

So another little OT update.....

Bonnie you will appreciate this more than anyone else. After years and years of using my coffee maker.

I decided that I was getting too old for this crap. So about a week ago I had Fran buy me a new one. Today it arrived!

Now granted it took two K-cups to make the coffee as strong as I wanted with as big a cup. But it's a heck of a lot easier than the old machine!

 

[PrincessInOz]

We succumbed just before Christmas and got something similar. We have the Nespre$$$$o instead of Keurig in Australia and Aldi (the large supermarket chain from Italy) had a knock-off on sale before Christmas. The Aldi alternative is 1/3 the price of the Nespresso machine so DH figured it was worth trying. Aldi provide coffee in different strengths from 3 - 10. I've decided that most times, a 4 is plenty for me...but I do have 6 and 7 for those OMG moments!


Nice coffee cup!

 

[usnuzuloose]

I like how everything is lined up, makes watering easy. I didnt know merigolds kept the bugs away. I was going to try one of those things for making coffee. During travel so I could have my coffee. Great job on the garden!

 

[kmedina]

I never acquired a taste for coffee, so I never bought a coffee pot. For years I thought DH was not a huge fan either until he informed me that he buys coffee all the time, lol.

 

[Leshaface]

Well you all did a fantastic job with your garden. I'm still interested in how to do the herbs though!

I LOVE my Keurig! There are so many great coffees/flavors out there and so much easier than grinding the beans, etc. I was like you too, about using two K-cups in the beginning to get as much coffee as I wanted. Then after a few months, I started being lazy and just brewed one cup and it's saved us a little money from me not brewing twice as much

 

[Disney9.9.10]

Hi there I haven't read your whole PTR yet, but the parts I have were great! I understand your need to go see Harry - I love HP too - but it will never replace Mickey! From what I have read, you have some great things planned, and I look forward to reading the rest!

 

[franandaj]

We succumbed just before Christmas and got something similar. We have the Nespre$$$$o instead of Keurig in Australia and Aldi (the large supermarket chain from Italy) had a knock-off on sale before Christmas. The Aldi alternative is 1/3 the price of the Nespresso machine so DH figured it was worth trying. Aldi provide coffee in different strengths from 3 - 10. I've decided that most times, a 4 is plenty for me...but I do have 6 and 7 for those OMG moments!


Nice coffee cup!

Thanks! I have been toying with varying sizes and settings, I even bought some "Bold" K-cups from Costco, but I still need to make two cups, one on the 3rd (middle of five settings) and one on the 2nd (second lowest of five) to get a good cup of coffee with any strength.

I like how everything is lined up, makes watering easy. I didnt know merigolds kept the bugs away. I was going to try one of those things for making coffee. During travel so I could have my coffee. Great job on the garden!

Thanks, if time permits, I may do a garden update. We are finally having a little down time this weekend.

I never acquired a taste for coffee, so I never bought a coffee pot. For years I thought DH was not a huge fan either until he informed me that he buys coffee all the time, lol.

Funny how you can be married to someone for years and still have those moments! It's been 15 and still I'm finding out about foods I've cooked for years, that it's like, "honey, you know I really don't care for this."

Well you all did a fantastic job with your garden. I'm still interested in how to do the herbs though!

I LOVE my Keurig! There are so many great coffees/flavors out there and so much easier than grinding the beans, etc. I was like you too, about using two K-cups in the beginning to get as much coffee as I wanted. Then after a few months, I started being lazy and just brewed one cup and it's saved us a little money from me not brewing twice as much

All this time and I still haven't answered your herb question! The only thing I can tell you is that I grow herbs that I know I'm going to use. The basic ones are Basil, Chives, Thyme and Parsley, but I've also got Rosemary and Sage going. So far the only one I haven't used is the Rosemary, but I haven't been cooking much since I planted. I try to make sure that they are watered, but not saturated. I let them get almost dry before watering again.

I have a house boy, who helps me once a week with chores and stuff, and sometimes he waters the plants. I need to teach him so that he can take over when we go on vacations, but the first time he watered, he oversaturated EVERYTHING. My Basil never recovered and I had to replant a new plant earlier this week.

I would say that you should just go to the garden store and look at all the various herbs that are available and think about which ones you would use in your recipes. The chives are great the one time we had baked potatoes a week or two ago. I made an Israeli Cous Cous with vegetables and I added Thyme, Sage and Parsley before serving. I've used the Thyme the most.

You can put them in regular pots, just make sure there are holes in the bottom for drainage. You can use any soil although we used Miracle Grow that we got in giant bags from Costco, but I'm sure you could find something equally good at HD or Lowe's. You really only need to buy one pot of each herb from the store. I would grow them in separate pots so as not to crowd them. We have generic plant food that I put on them which is different from the "Tomato Food" and also different from the "Vegetable" or "Citrus" food. Just spend a little time in the garden section of either of those stores on Prosperity Ave and you'll find everything you need. If you can't figure it out, just ask the clerks.

Hi there I haven't read your whole PTR yet, but the parts I have were great! I understand your need to go see Harry - I love HP too - but it will never replace Mickey! From what I have read, you have some great things planned, and I look forward to reading the rest!

Welcome! I will have to warn you, if you try to read the whole PTR, just realize there is a very sad part when the original trip had to be canceled due to illness, so I've had to go back a rebook everything this far. It was only meant to be a year long PTR and now it has been draw out into two years, so there's a lot to read. And a lot of it is OT! Like my next post!

However, a few little updates here. Some of you may have seen this on other forums, but that same little infection that caused us to cancel our trip didn't actually heal up all the way. I will explain this as best as I can with my limited medical knowledge.

When a wound has an infection, the body gives off proteins which are mostly a milky, creamy white substance that you will see in open sores. Evidently these protiens somehow got sealed inside Fran's leg when the wound healed over last November. Following her last RA infusion (which basically stops the body's immune system from working) a sore appeared on her leg with that milky white stuff.

We began to agressively treat it with her taking antibiotics and sending the doctor pictures and she started having a wound care nurse coming on March 28th. When it did not seem to be getting better, she was referred to a wound care specialist whom she saw last Wednesday April 4th. After trying to remove the infected protein cells in his office with local anesthesia, he realized that the protein was much more pervasive and it would require a general anesthetic and hospital setting to clean it up. Friday she went in for surgery, the whole process took longer than expected, but she was released and came home.

Friday night was incredibly painful, and we discovered the next day why. They had wrapped her leg so tightly and under the Ace bandage was a drainage tube about 2-3 cm wide that was digging into her shin so far that it left a giant indentation. Once the nurse removed the bandage and the tube, she was much better and is managing the pain with her normal medications.

Friday we are supposed to go to Las Vegas for a business meeting, but that is up in the air. We want her to be healthy to go to Florida in May, so we'll see about whether we go this week. We can always listen to the meeting via teleconference and not have to drive so far with her not resting the leg and risking future problems.

So now that you are all up to speed, on with the OT update!

 

[franandaj]

So here is yet another OT update, but this one IS Disney related…..

So, Monday night March 19th there was a special Pirates of the Caribbean night. Normally these things start at 6:30 with drinks and Hors d’Oeuvres and dinner at 7:00PM. We are always rushing into the park to get there. Well Fran wanted some limited edition pins, so we set our sights to leave at 3PM instead of 4PM (which is our normal leaving target and we don’t get out the door until 5PM). Well lo and behold we were out the door at 4PM! By the time we parked the car, unloaded the scooter and got through the turnstiles it was about 5:30PM.

I wanted to see if I could get in a few rides using my magic FP. We got new cards and this year they changed the rules quite a bit. It used to be that a member could sign in themselves and one person. Now the member gets their card and the spouse gets an AP of their own. This is all well and good, but in the past, if I wanted to take a friend or my mom or someone to the park, I could use my card to sign in myself and a guest. Oh well, I don’t have that many people who want to go to the park with me anyways. Well this was my first time using my new AP and we weren't sure if it had the magic FP powers, so she came with me just in case. I went to the Star Tours FP machine, inserted my pass and Voila! Out came a FP good right now! I repeated the process with Space Mountain while she bought the pins that she wanted.

By this time it was after 6PM so we decided we should mosey on over to New Orleans Square. There were a number of others waiting to get in, so we sat outside and chatted with folks until they let us in. We were greeted by this guy.

Upstairs they had all kinds of interesting props and decorations

Even the servers were dressed up as pirates!

This Hors d’Oeuvres was called Pirates Shrimp Bateau, it was some sort of shrimp salad in a puff pastry. These were pretty good.

They served a Lychee and Coconut Cannonball, but since I don’t do coconut, I didn’t have any. These Swordfish Fritters were awesome! Everyone loved them and it was hard to get any if you were in the far part of the room. The servers couldn’t make it past the first half of the room without their trays being emptied! See how empty the tray is when it got to us!

This was our table, but we mingled around for a while before sitting down. In fact I think at 7:15 we were still sipping drinks and chatting with friends.

Here are some more shots around the room

So eventually we sat down. The room was so packed with tables, we were not even in the main dining room. We were almost seated in front of the bar. Not our normal table.

We were at the table next to Tony Baxter

The menu was specially Pirate themed

First up was the She-Crab Soup, Pickled Seaweed and Carmelized Hardtack. This was my first experience with Hardtack. Having been a Civil War Reenactor, you would think I’d have tried the stuff. I’m sure this was better than any 1860s hardtack, but it was still wonky. I didn’t get it in the picture, but I found that breaking it up and putting it in the soup like croutons was good. The seaweed, was really tasty! It was served with a Deep Sea, Sauvignon Blanc 2008.

The next course was Yo-Ho Caribbean Jerk Chicken, Forbidden Treasure Rice. This wasn’t spicy at all, it was actually kind of bland. I didn’t eat much of it since there is always way too much food at these events.

Somewhere in this whole time period they started talking about the ride and various aspects of it’s design and maintenance. The first speaker was Dawn Keene who is in charge of ride maintenance. I can’t remember how large her area was, but it was actually quite focused. Perhaps New Orleans square only or even just a couple rides. There are many of these folks each with different rides that they are responsible for. Every night they check every animatronic figure on the Pirates ride, there are 40 of these figures that must be checked. They inspect every boat and every lift. All of the sound effects get tested, and her group even checks every single firefly in the Bayou. They don’t miss a thing, the cannon gets checked, the plants, the treasure you ride past in the caves, literally every part of the ride is gone over with a fine tooth comb every single night. The cleaning crew cleans every single ride vehicle and the Blue Bayou, about 60 people work there every night between the cleaning crew and the maintenance staff.

At this point, they started to show some props and pass them around. The things you can buy in pieces of 8 are the same stuff you see on the ride they have just plussed them up. Take for instance this toy gun and bars of gold. You can buy these same ones that you see on the rides, they have just added a few extra pieces of metal and maybe something to make it look at little bit more worn and piratey.

They also talked about when the ride goes down for a rehab. There are two kinds of rehabs, wet and dry. The wet rehab is much shorter since they leave the water in the ride and just close it down to the general public. With a dry rehab they drain all the water out of the ride and this takes months. They might repaint the flumes, repair the plumbing, any number of repairs that they cannot do on a wet rehab. She told us that all this work and maintenance goes back to Walt's vision, she is keeping that alive trying to make everyone have the best experience possible.

Next speaker up was Kim Irvine, Alice Davis was at the event and Kim introduced her. Alice talked about the design of the pirates costumes. The only costume Walt actually saw was the auctioneer. The figures were slightly larger than life, so she could not use anyone as a model. She had a very funny story that I’m not sure I can share on the DIS, but I will try to keep it as “family friendly” as possible. Alice Davis is bawdy old broad! The sculptors made the men figures unnatural in certain ways. Knowing her costume design Alice told the sculptors that a man wears himself to the right or the left and clothing should be designed appropriately. She told them that, however, the sculptors wouldn't build them that way! With the motion of the figures, eventually certain features of the pirates anatomy ended up showing up through the shirt tops and that they had to cut them off! The room was in stitches when she told that story.

She said that due to the movement, the figures wore the insides of the clothes more than the outsides. She had challenges with fabrics on the inside. While clothes for people need the reinforcement on the outside, animatronics need reinforcement on the insides due to the moving parts. Alice was very resourceful in her thinking and when the ride opened she made sure that there were two sets of clothing. Shortly after the ride opened there was a fire in the attraction. Rebuilding the ride was not such a time consuming process, but they anticipated getting new costumes made was going to be the biggest problem of the rehab. Because she had the second set already made, Alice’s part of the rehab was completed before the other imagineers.

At the end of her part of the presentation it was announced that Alice will get a window on Main St next to her husband’s window.

[Continued in Next Post]

 

[franandaj]

[Continued from Previous Post]

While this part of the presentation was going on they served us our third course which was Captain Jack’s Hangar Steak & Pidgeon Pea Salmagundi served with a La Sirena, Pirate Treasure Red, Napa Valley 2009. This was a really thick stew and was pretty tasty

Somewhere before Tony Baxter started to speak we were served our Dessert. The Wicked Wench Dark Chocolate Gateau which was served with Three sheets to the Wind Rumfustian. Luckily they didn’t serve the drink with the dessert because once I had one it knocked me out! But the cake was awesome! All the little pieces were different kinds of candy and pastry stuff, with different textures and flavors. I ate a little more than half of it

I started at the end with the yellow thing probably got about halfway through. The “water” was really good, especially mixed with the “sand”. I think the mast was a pretzel and it was good with the saltiness and the sweetness of the cake. I also remember liking the flag. The decks of the ship were kind of gooey while the exterior was chocolate candy like and really tasty. I just couldn’t finish the thing!

So at this point Tony Baxter got up to speak, he had a lot to talk about, plus he passed around all kinds of artwork and I will show pictures in a moment. I will try to remember because for those of you who have been counting we had three glasses of wine with the sit down dinner and I’m not sure how many of the pre-dinner wine I had, but I refilled a few times. Also Fran tends to give me her wine during dinner as it gets later, so that she is sober enough to drive home.

I don’t remember a lot of the stories that Tony told us, but this one sticks out in my mind. He was talking about the prop room, where they store all the old extra props. If you are familiar with Tony Baxter, now Senior VP Creative Development, Walt Disney Imagineering, he started out scooping Ice Cream on Main Street. He quickly moved into WED Enterprises and moved up the company from there. He remembered a time when he was young, he was backstage looking down a staircase that was clearly off limits for unauthorized CMs. However, as he peered inside, an Imagineer beckoned him down to come take a look. This man proudly showed him what they were working on, and Tony was thrilled with the experience.

Years later, the situation was reversed. It was Tony beckoning a young lad to come down into the prop room where he showed off the treats and treasures stored there. As he thought back on the experience, he warned us to always keep an open mind in every situation. There was no way he could have known at the time that the young lad would turn out to be his current boss, John Lasseter!

OK, on to the art work and sketches that were passed around. This first picture, I’m guessing is an artist’s rendering that never came to fruition. If it did, I don’t know where it is in the ride.

The next thing they sent around was this diagram of the POTC Ride. You never think about how it is laid out while on it, but when you look at it, the design is ingenious. The initial part of the ride takes you through the outer perimeter and once you pass through the walls of the city past the pirate ship you zig zag back through the ride not realizing how you are backtracking on your previous progress and remaining inside the entire ride. What an awesome use of the small space that was available for this attraction. Notice how the ride is divided into Scenes, this is so neat how each one is planned to stand on it’s own and tell a complete story.

I’m going to back track a little bit here since I’m not sure how much of this is common knowledge. In his original plan for the Pirates attraction, Walt envisioned this as a walk thru, museum type of attraction. Several things changed this and most of it had to do with the World’s Fair in New York. With the creation of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, they mastered the animatronics thus allowing these figures to be used in the Pirates attraction. With the creation of It’s a Small World he learned that he could triple the capacity of the ride volume by “floating” his guests through the ride instead of the guests walking at a much slower pace.

This sketch storyboards the scene with the Auctioneer and the Red Head.

These are more storyboards for the treasure room, the pirate ship and the chasing scene.

I love this next one, it shows you just how intricately the dog is designed. I will give you the text that is written around the sketch since you might not be able to read it online. From the top moving clockwise:

Eye Blink HD36, Eye Turn HD58
Head Nod Servo Actuator Hydraulic Research P/N 10050
Head Turn Servo Actuator Hydraulic Research P/N 10050
Rod End Heim, HF-Z
Head Tilt Servo Actuator Hydraulic Research P/N 10050
Tail Wag Bodine Motor Cat No. 88194E-068B

And on the small Dog
After removing Screws Lift Side Plate up to Gain access
(5) Screws Total
---------------------
(3) Screws located on center back as shown
(2) Screws located on center of chest as shown
Screw location for head opening same as FA-4B, sitting dog.

Now I don’t really understand a lot of the notations, but it’s amazing just how many little motors and things are inside the dog, and it’s only one of, (what 40 did I say earlier?) animatronic figures overall!

Now this is an early sketch of the Auctioneer, the passage of time and the amount of wine that evening has caused me not to remember when they decided not to use a homely looking girl and instead use a Jessica Rabbit type of knockout, but I don’t think any of us need to question why they made the change. I remember as a little girl being on that ride and wanting to BE that beautiful red head. In fact there are many pictures of her in my photo album from that first trip to Disneyland.

Another sketch of the auctioneer, the woman is a little different, still not the finished product.

Here are some sketches of the various drunken pirates. Did the one with the chickens make it in? I know there is the one with the cats and with the pigs, but I’m not sure I remember chickens.

More sketches of familiar scenes.

I don’t think the flames are coming out of the jug, when this made it into the ride….

The text under this one reads:
Magistrate’s Lady
She opens the shutters and yells, “Do not tell heem, Carlos! No, no, no…”

And the other window: “A Shot is fired – a puff of smoke comes from window box. The flower pots jump up and she slams the shutters closed.” I never noticed the flower pots jumping, I’ll have to check it out again!

And more that go along with that scene.

Here is a picture of them assembling the “treasure room”

And lastly a young Alice Davis and her son

Now somewhere during those pictures they brought us the dessert drink. It was some kind of rum hot toddy. I bet it had a good kick to it, but sadly I have enough of a tolerance not to notice a drink’s potency. It was really yummy warm and tasty with whipped cream on the top. One of the servers who likes us was on his way back to the kitchen with a half full tray of drinks and gave me another one which I happily gulped down. I think all the pictures had come around by that point, but I’m not sure. If not I would have been in no condition to keep taking pictures. I think I was falling asleep at the table! I should have known the amount of alcohol they allowed us to have would be explained in my next paragraph. You can’t take a bunch of drunks behind the scenes!

Now I had high hopes that we were going to get to do a walk through. About 10+ years ago we did and it was great. However the park was open until midnight. I was hoping we could get a ride on, but again the park was open until midnight so they couldn’t just put us on the ride without making a lot of guests angry. People who were seated at Tony Baxter’s table told us that he wanted to take us down to the prop room but that OSHA put a stopper on that one right away. Stupid government! I wish they would let us sign release forms and just put ourselves in peril!

Oh well, at least we had a wonderful meal and learned a lot of interesting things in the process! Until next time, thanks for reading!

 

[Pinkocto]

Another fabulous dinner and presentation!!! Pirates has always been one of my favorite rides, what a treat! Were the props you showed in the beginning from some of the movies?

I can't believe they wrapped the drain so poorly. How is she doing today?