The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves! (my journal)

[toystoryduo]

Hi Don,

Stopping by to see how you are doing.... Hope all is going well. Take care!

 

[DisDon]

Hi Cam, Linda, Jamie, Tracy thanks for your kind words. Today was kinda tough, didn't have much energy for anything, but DS did convince me to come lift with him. Just finished a little while ago, my arms are tired Resting my wrists on the laptop.

Don't know if I mentioned it here, but we're trying to plan a trip to upstate NY for the 2nd weekend in June, right after the kids get out of school. You've probably all guessed that we're LDS (Mormon) and with DW's great JetBlue job we can fly to either Buffalo or Rochester and visit all of the early church sites. I've always wanted to visit these places but thought it would be a long time before we could. The church started in Palmyra, NY, near Rochester, then headed west. We're going to stay a couple of days in the Niagara Falls area, we're excited to see that too, and also head over Kirtland, OH, another church historical area. Its near Cleveland, don't know if that's anywhere near where Tracy lives. When i was about 7 years old we drove out from Utah to visit my aunt and uncle when he worked at Wright-Patterson, lived in Dayton. Went to King's Island, fun place even back then. That was the furthest east and north I'd ever been until last year.

Haha, I forgot to post this before I went to bed, so now its tomorrow!!

 

[eeyore25]

Hi Don,

Good to hear from you Sorry to hear that you were not have that great of a day....today is a new day and it should get better!!! Way to go on lifting with your DS!!!!

Your trip sounds like fun.....I am sure that the whole family will enjoy it!!!

Keep up the good work!

Happy Wednesday

 

[toystoryduo]

Hi Don!

Way to go getting that lifting in! Keep up the good work!

Your summer vacation sounds fun! We live about an hour away from Kirtland. Will you guys have a chance to try out any amusements parks while here in the Buckeye State? There's Geauga Lake in Aurora (owned by Cedar Point), Cedar Point in Sandusky, and King's Island near Cincinnati. The closest one to Kirtland would be Geauga Lake. Let me know if you need any information about Ohio!

Have a wonderful weekend!

 

[eeyore25]

Hi Don,

How was your weekend?

Hope you have a great day

Happy Monday!

 

[eeyore25]

Hi Don,

Just wanted to pop in and say hi Hope all is well....

Have a great day!

 

[toystoryduo]

Hey Don,

How are you doing? I hope everything is going well for you and your family... You'll be in Ohio soon won't you? Did you find some things to do while here in the Buckeye state?

Hope you are doing well... Take care!

 

[DisDon]

Howdy friends, sorry I haven't been posting lately. Busy at work and busy at home. Trip is still on for next week to upstate NY and OH, should be a very nice time. Just sent off DBIL and his family to DLR and points south yesterday, so jealous!!! DW got buddy passes put together for all of them to fly free, he's been doing a lot of work on finishing my basement bathroom, and installed all new auto-sprinkler valves over the weekend. I dug them out and he did the plumbing. When I tried to start the sprinklers this spring, I turned on the main valve, and 3 of the 7 zones were stuck open, couldn't turn them off without shutting off the main. I scheduled a rental car for them from Avis using my Happenings book (www.entertainment.com), got them a free tank of gas with a weekly rental! That's worth a lot more than it used to be!

Bought tickets for a Air Supply concert for me and DW, ended up not going because of "plumbing emergencies". Seems when we bought our big water softener a couple years ago, they installed it in what will eventually be a computer nook in the last bedroom. So my FIL took it upon himself to move it to the utility closet! Would have been fine but some of the soldering on the copper pipes didn't hold and had to do them again. By the time it was done, it was about 9 pm and too late to go to the concert. Oh well, went to movies instead. Saw X3 in the afternoon, and MI3 after the plumbing was done. I liked them both, but thought X3 could have been longer, with more time spent on some of the minor characters. Would have liked to see something truly prodigious out of Juggernaut, he was always one of my favorite bad guys. Missed Toad and Sabretooth. Kelsey Grammer was good as Beast, could have sped up his action shots a little, he didn't look as agile as Beast should be.

Still dying to schedule a Free Dinning trip, I'm running out of time here. Tracy, I'll PM you. My company got bought out by Ingenix, part of United Health Group, huge company. The best result of that is that I gained almost 3 more weeks of PTO, looks like I'll get about 25 days this year and next year will make 5 years with the company, bumping me up to 28 days!! holy cow!

Been out walking a few times with and w/o the family, haven't lifted for a while, been fighting the caffeine, was off it all last week, but had a couple Dr. P's over the weekend. Haven't been weighing, but I can tell by how tight my pants are that I'm staying about the same, maybe just a little looser. That would make me a little loser. I crack myself up!

Bye for now!

 

[goldcupmom]

Glad things have been going OK. Hopefully you can get a bit of relaxing time on your trip.

You're doing well avoiding most of the DP's, too!

Have a great rest of the week!

 

[eeyore25]

Hi Don,

Glad to hear that everything is going good....I read here on the DIS that WDW extending the free dining offer so if you book by 06/25 you still get it!!!!!

Keep up the good work!

Have a great Tuesday

 

[DisDon]

Howdy folks, back from the NY trip, had a pretty good time. Took the redeye out of SLC last Tuesday night, arrived at JFK at about 5:30 am, raining, went and picked up a rental van, drove it into Manhattan. Ok, I'm a long time pizza driver, even drove cab for a couple of years, but that place is NUTS!!! I did get into the flow tho, I actually like it when everyone is trying to move fast. The rain kind of messed up some of our plans, couldn't drive into central park, and didn't want to walk in, didn't have umbrellas, should have bought some i guess. Ended up going to the Museum of Natural History, quite interesting, but got very warm inside, especially on the upper floors. The sea life exhibit was the most fascinating, full size model of a Blue Whale hanging from the ceiling!! Kids were freaked out (ok, me too) by the giant japanese spider crab, 6 ft leg-span, 50 ft. giant squid and even longer giant jellyfish of some sort. Yikes! Some of those freaky creatures from the depths of the sea are just WRONG!

Eating in NYC was a bust, 1st I tried to find some good bagels, but couldn't find the bakeries i looked up on the internet, so just bought some at a place I found in the Village. They were very tough. Kids slept for about the 1st 3 hours while I drove around, so after the bagels we just skipped lunch and went for pizza at dinner time. Went to Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge. I was finally happy to find it after driving around it for a while, but the pizza just wasn't what I expected. It may be the most authentic, but maybe that's not always a good thing. Ordered extra cheese on them, and they still had less than a regular Domino's pizza. Strange tasting watery sauce, oh well.

Rest of the trip was nice, stayed at a Ramada on Lundy's Lane near Niagara Falls for a couple of days, went on the Behind the Falls tour. Drove down to Kirtland OH, toured the early LDS church sites, including the Kirtland Temple. Saturday we moved it on over to Canadaigua NY, place called the Fingerlakes Inn. Toured Palmyra church sites and the erie canal a little. Spent a fortune on food and gas on the trip, soooo looking forward to Free Dining and the Magical Express. Most striking thing on the trip was how green it was everywhere. Utah is fairly desert-y, sagebrush, NY and Ohio seemed almost as green and lush as the pacific NW. Beautiful!

Been on and off the caffeine lately, picked me up a head cold last day or so of the trip. Need to get over that, then get to work again.

 

[keenercam]

Don -- Welcome back! We missed you! So glad you had a great time. Sounds like you packed a lot of activity in. Awesome!

 

[goldcupmom]

Happy Father's Day, Don! And Welcome Back!!

Sounds like you had a great time!

Caffeine-mania will be over soon, so don't sweat it!

Have a great, relaxing day today & a good week next week!

 

[eeyore25]

Hi Don,

Glad to have you back! Sounds like you had a wonderful time!

Happy (late) Father's Day!

Have a great day! Happy Monday

 

[toystoryduo]

Hey Don!

How are you doing? Thanks for your support and encouragement in my journal. If you're interested, my DH might have something for you that would help you make extra money for WDW in September. If you're interested, please let me know.....

Hope you have a great week!

 

[toystoryduo]

Hi Don,

Thanks for the support and encouragement in my journal. How is everything going for you? Please post an update when you can...

Have a great Sunday!

 

[eeyore25]

Hi Don,

hope all is well with you.....how are you doing?

Post when you can.....take care

 

[DisDon]

Well, its a sad day in DisDonLand, had to cancel our Free Dinning trip. Good news is that we've got a nice cruise lined up instead, thought about combining it with the WDW trip, but ended up looking at one out here on the Left Coast. DW said "its my anniversary too, and I don't want to go to WDW" Got lots of good info off the www.cruisecritic.com message boards, boy, those folks are as nuts about cruising as we are about Disney here on the Disboards!! Maybe if things work out good we'll try and hit WDW for MVMCP, we still have the great interline rates available for the WDW resorts. That's one thing we didn't do last year on our trip, didn't want to spend more on WDW over the 7 day tickets we had.

I thought maybe I'd be coming on here to just say goodbye for a while, its more torture than anything when you don't have a trip planned, but then Friday I actually got out and walked in the mall for 35 minutes, and then lifted weights with DS13 that night. He's got football starting this coming Saturday, been slackin' for the last couple months, gonna pay now. Figured its never too late to do a little before practice starts. Been a while for me too, just too freakin' hot here, and been pretty stressed out with company getting aquired, etc. Nicer today, should be a good day for walkin'. Think I'll go and sign up for some exercise challenges. Also been caffeine free for a couple of months now I think, but now I'm stuck on caffeine free Coke from the convenience store with a couple of flavor squirts, lime, lemon, cherry or vanilla, I like them all Gotta quit that too if i want to look good in my speedo! yeah right!

 

[toystoryduo]

Hey Don,

Sorry about the WDW trip, but the cruise sounds great! I hope you and your DW have a wonderful time!

I hope you'll keep coming back here to post. After all, you do have that speedo waiting for you!

Have a great day!

 

[toystoryduo]

Hey Don,

Thanks for the support and encouragement in my journal. How's the speedo program working out?

Hey, if you guys are going to be in WDW in December again, please let me know. We'd love to meet up with your family at Earl's again. We're planning on MVMCP this year too. We went last year and it was one of the highlight's of our trip!

Have a great weekend, Don!