Countdown: 8 Days

As we're getting down to the wire.... well, nothing's really all that different. Except I have to focus more on getting a job back home. Currently the job search is not going particularly well, but we'll see what happens when I get back home and start pretty much plastering my CV around town. Like, seriously. Keep me away from glue mixtures and lampposts.

Anyway, so I went to the sing-out, and then... I have no idea what I did after. Or the next day. Apologies if I did something with someone's who's reading this and they remember it. Oh, somewhere in those days I went with Taryn, Ben, and Selina to Whispering Canyon Cafe at Wilderness Lodge. It was pretty good, but we had a lot of food really late, so I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I would have if it were a regular meal time and I wasn't going home to bed right after. Friday and Saturday I went to work (that might also have been when I went to Whispering Canyon - I'm really not sure offhand, and I'm too lazy to actually go get the notebook from my room to check the date). Sunday was the beginning of five days off! Woohoo! I did pretty much nothing, and it was GLORIOUS! Just because I could and I had the time to make it worth it, I PAINTED MY NAILS. Oh yeah, that's right. Rebel, right here. They were dark red, too. I played a lot of video games the first couple days, and Taryn and I did a couple more restaurants. -- Oh, and I just remembered that Thursday/Friday was the opening of Toy Story 3, so I went to the midnight showing of that, and it was awesome! Best of the three, in my opinion. -- On Sunday we went to Mexico, and it really wasn't that great. Definitely not somewhere I would go again. The food wasn't overly fantastic, and the service was kind of nonexistent. Monday morning, though, was breakfast at 1900 Park Fare, and it was reeeeeeally good. We met characters, and had ice cream! Yeah, that's right: they had a sundae bar at breakfast. I was moderately wired for a while. They also had 'Lobster Benedict,' which was like Eggs Benedict, except that the poached egg was served on half a biscuit and it was covered in a creamy lobster sauce instead of hollandaise sauce. Then we went home and Taryn went to bed and I played video games all day. She was supposed to come over later that day to play, too, but she slept through the whole day, apparently. Tuesday I don't remember for the most part, except that I texted Stef in the evening to see if she wanted to do something and we ended up going to Cirque du Soleil, which was SO AMAZING. I loved it! And we got a discount on tickets and were sitting so close to the stage that when the silks number was on and one of the performers swung out, the silk actually fluttered inches above my head!

Wednesday was Stef's birthday, so I met up with her and Jennifer at Magic Kingdom for some random fun in dresses and tiaras. We met Princess Tiana, who was rather sassy with Prince Naveen and it was highly amusing, and went for lunch at the Crystal Palace with Pooh and friends. We had a lot of fun with the characters there, too, especially Tigger. I've discovered that I'm just as addicted to the kids' macaroni and cheese as I was when I lived off of it on the cruise twelve years ago. Thursday was another relaxing day before heading back to work.

And work pretty much brings us to now. I have to work a PM tomorrow, and then I have my last two days off of my program. Which is really really weird to think about and I have a list of stuff I have to do. And sometime soon I should probably start packing. I put a couple sweaters away today, but I don't think that really counts. I'll probably be up earlier than I want to be in the morning, though, because we have an inspection tomorrow so something tells me I will be awake involuntarily. Stupid noisy housing and their stupid invasive inspections.

Countdown: 3 Weeks

So it's been an interesting couple of weeks, waffling between busy and boring. And sometimes I'm bored while I'm busy (ie work some days). But my contract is winding to a close, so I'm trying to pack as much as I can into my last few weeks. Also trying to pack as much as I can my last few weeks. I do NOT want to leave that til the last minute. I have way too much stuff. Awesome stuff, but too much of it nonetheless.

So back on the second, Heather came to visit me! ...And by 'me,' I really mean 'Jeremy,' but I claimed a day with her because, as I put it, "I saw her first!" So we had an absolute blast. We went to Le Cellier for an early lunch (Jeremy served us; Eli (Courtney E.) was displeased), and then walked around World Showcase two and a half times. Along the way we stopped in at the Japan pavilion to open pearl oysters and in Norway to ride the Maelstrom. We also saw quite a few characters. World Showplace was open, so there we met Max, Meeko, and Wendell (one of the Country Bears). I had yet to meet Marie in France, so we went to meet the fluffy kitty, who was just as fluffy as I thought she'd be. Then we had our best character encounter EVER. We were walking across the bridge between the UK and France, and Heather glanced over at International Gateway and wondered out loud who was there. I turned, and there was a crowd lined up, but whoever it was, they were kneeling so I couldn't see anything. Then Heather bolts down the path, and I run after her, wondering why the hell we're running. She informs me, mid-sprint, that it's Jack Sparrow. Jack Sparrow, who is only a meet-and-greet character on the cruise. Jack Sparrow, who my sister was determined to meet while she was here (again, Tiff, I'm sorry!). It was AMAZING. We were kind of hyperactive the rest of the day. Well, as hyperactive as you can be in boiling heat with a massive humidex. People were leaving that day, so we went back to the restaurant for the sing-out, and then Jeremy was done his shift, so he joined us. We went over to Magic Kingdom for our collective last Wishes and Spectromagic (they changed the fireworks and parade, and that was happening while Heather was on the cruise with Jeremy, and I didn't have time to see it again before it changed). We also rode Splash Mountain to cool down. I barely even got wet, which was a bit of a disappointment, considering. Heather's neck turned green from her necklace, though. I have a picture and I'm holding it hostage on my computer for possible blackmail material, should the need ever arise. We went to stake out spots for Spectromagic, and that's when we noticed the GIANT STORM rolling in. So we all left the park without seeing either night show (the parade would have been cancelled anyway, and who wants to watch fireworks in the rain?).

The next day, Kelly came to visit me! Kelly from home, not the Kelly I met down here. She was visiting the parks with her family, but they were all parked out, so it was just the two of us. We walked around World Showcase, not doing much because there's not much to do, and then headed to Magic Kingdom (we got fastpasses for Soarin', but they weren't good until later in the day, so we decided to leave her car parked at EPCOT and then come back and visit the Land before leaving). We rode the TRONorail! It was so awesome! The TRONorail being the monorail that runs the EPCOT circuit with the TRON promo overlay, for those of you who don't speak fluent Mel and haven't seen my Facebook pictures. Kelly realized how many things they missed at Magic Kingdom, and I pointed out all my favourite Hidden Mickeys. I took her on Jungle Cruise, and we got the terrible skipper again! Why is it every time I take someone on this ride for their first time I get the worst possible skipper, who has no enthusiasm and barely tells jokes?!?! Seriously, this guy sounded like he was reading from a prompter. I wanted to wrestle the mic out of his hands and take over the cruise for myself. Gah! Some people really need to rethink their placements and transfer (to Country Bears). Honestly. ...I think I'm done now. So we toured MK some more, and then it was about time to head back to EPCOT. We hopped back on the monorail (no TRONorail this time) and hoofed it over to The Land. Soarin' was a blast, as always, and then it was time to say goodbye. I did something else after she left, but I have no idea what it - Oh! I went over to the Turf Club at Saratoge Springs for dinner, to cross another restaurant off my list. It was good, except that I forgot to ask for my strip steak with out blue cheese, so my steak kind of had traces of dirty gym sock on it.

After that, it was work, work, work until my next weekend. On Wednesday I went to Le Cellier again, this time with Stef and Jen. Neither of them had eaten there before, so it was a lot of fun seeing them try new things. Steph Rose was our server, and she was fabulous as always. We got fastpasses for Soarin', which one of the two had never been on. I think it was Stef, but I'm not sure. We went to the Japan pavilion for chilled green tea, which was super-awesome, and went around World Showcase. Afterwards we went to Magic Kingdom (that happens a lot...) to see the Main Street Electrical Parade and the new Nightastic! fireworks. We staked our spot quite early, right against the Liberty Bridge on the Liberty Square side. We were provided with unexpected entertainment when crowd control tried to stop people from crossing the bridge into the parade path, and people would run under the rope while the guy was telling some other people that it was closed. One time security was there and saw, and went running after a couple. SO FUNNY. The crowd control guy was also wearing flood pants, which was a great source of amusement to Jen. The parade was cool, but it's a lot shorter than Spectromagic, I think, and there's that whole 'To Honor America' float at the end that just loses my interest completely. I wasn't expecting much of the fireworks, given what I'd heard. Which was just that they go off to Pirates of the Caribbean music. I thought it was going to be kind of dumb, because as Kim put it, "Pirates is cool, but people come here for the magic, and just watching fireworks with Pirates music isn't that whole Disney magic thing." I may have paraphrased some of that, because there was a lot more of her repeating herself, as well as a good many expletives that I probably shouldn't repeat because I'd like to keep this as PG-ish as possible. But anyway, the fireworks far exceeded my expectations. It starts out with the Fairy Godmother and Three Good Fairies, and then Captain Hook comes in and attacks the castle (fireworks actually go off from the castle; it's super-cool) and that's when the Pirates stuff starts, and then Tinker Bell saves the day and there's a big finale. It's really, really awesome, and it's nice to see something new. It was at the point where I could have my back to the castle and conduct the fireworks for Wishes. Or I could be at a resort, where you can't hear the music, and sing the whole track based on what I was seeing.

Thursday was an interesting day. You may recall the Tower of Terror challenge that Mel and David did back at the beginning of the year. Well, when Mel left she threw it down to me, so I had to attempt it some time before I left. Taryn was supposed to do it with me, but she was in Canada last week. I felt horrible for planning it without her there, but it kinda hit me when one of my managers took time off for his daughter's graduation that SCHOOLS WERE GETTING OUT. Which meant crowds. Which meant an even likelier failure. No one else could make it, so I ended up going by myself (which ended up a good thing because then whenever they called for a party of one to fill an elevator I could bypass about 20 people). I was there right for opening at 9 AM and just kept riding and riding. However, I didn't get any cast member help until late in the day (a friend of a friend of a friend), so I failed epically. I quit at around 6:30 PM, when it started to actually hurt, with 20 rides under my belt, and 44 unfinished (I'll do the math for you: I was aiming for 64).

Sunday night Stef and I went to the movies and to House of Blues for dinner. The meal was really good (especially the dark chocolate cheesecake), but the server was mega-creepy. We saw Prince of Persia, and it was actually really good. I love the stunts, and I respect Jake Gyllenhaal for doing them himself. But there are way too many snakes in that movie, and I spent the entire movie with my feet curled up underneath me.

So now I'm sitting here typing this up before going to take a shower and then head out to EPCOT for another sing-out. And maybe I'll go see the Electrical Parade again. I need pictures from the other side of the floats!

5 Weeks

...is roughly how much time I have left here. Oddly enough, I'm okay with that. It's been fun, but I'm ready to move on to something new. Plus I want out of housing.

Anyway, so on Thursday I went to lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern with Selina, Erica, Ashley, and DeAnna, and we had fun sticking the Mickey glitter they'd sprinkled on the table for my celebration on our faces. It was a pretty good lunch. I had an awesome pot roast, and a gooey toffee cake with ice cream for dessert (which we shared, along with a chocolate birthday cupcake they brought out while bringing unnecessary attention to me). We watched the parade, and did a few rides.

Friday was the beginning of Star Wars Weekends, so I went around being really geeky and getting pictures with lots of Star Wars characters. I was super-happy that my timing was perfect for getting a picture with Wicket, since he's the namesake of my dog.

Saturday I went for dinner with Stefanie to Shutter's at Caribbean Beach. The appetizers and bread were amazing, and the entree was pretty good. I had ribs with some kind of vanilla sauce, which was a little weird, but still good. My key lime tart at dessert was really delicious, too.

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I worked. Wednesday I had to go shopping for a new dress to wear to Citricos with Taryn, but before dinner I met up with Jen and Stef at Hollywood Studios to do some rides and some drawing at the Animation building. I'm addicted now. It'd been a while since I'd picked up a pencil to draw, so it was super amazing to just sit there and relax for 25 minutes at a time and draw a character. It was still early for my reservation, so when the girls headed over to Downtown Disney I went with them. Plus I'd found out at dinner the other night that Stef had never been in the Christmas store, and that kinda broke my brain a little. After looking into a few shops and stuff, I boarded the Grand Floridian bus, which was super freezing cold. When Taryn got there, we headed upstairs to Citricos. We each had this drink that was fruit juice mixed with sparkling wine (yum) and a cheese trio platter to start. Neither of us really touched the blue cheese because blue cheese is nasty and who wants to eat mold anyway? But the lemon ricotta was good, as was ...whatever the other cheese was. I kept my menu, but that's all the way in my bedroom. For our entrees, we both had the chicken breast, but I had mine with the risotto, and Taryn had hers with potatoes. It was a REALLY good chicken. I had a tiramisu for dessert, and I'm rather upset that the caffeine and sugar never set in, because I kinda really needed them.

Thursday I was going to be lazy, but then I managed to get a reservation at Mama Melrose's at the Studios. I've never been able to get in there, so I jumped on the reservation. For a party of one. Which wasn't actually as awkward as I thought it would be. It was pretty good food, but nothing overly special. Just your regular, run-of-the-mill Americanized Italian place. Then I went to draw for a while (Mickey and Scrooge), and then walked over to EPCOT, where I was meeting Selina for dinner. We went to Germany, which was really cool. When you walk into the restaurant, it looks like you're at an outdoor festival, and there's a band that plays German instruments (they totally play the things in the cough drop commercials), and it's a buffet. I did find that a lot of the food was on the plain side, since they don't use a lot of spices, but it was still good. And the Bavarian cheesecake at dessert was really awesome.

Friday I worked, and then did nothing. I think. If I did anything with anyone and I'm forgetting, I'm sorry! Saturday Amy invited me to a mystery dinner theatre place on I-Drive, and since I haven't really been off property since I got here, I figured it was a good opportunity. Plus Amy's cool. So Matt, Amy, Jackie, and I all headed over there, through long weekend Saturday traffic. Which means we were late, but we still got in. I've never done mystery theatre before, so it was really, really awesome. And the food was good too, but that kinda wasn't the focus. I guessed the murderer wrong, but it was still so much fun!

Last night after work I went out with Taryn and Adam to China, which was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. I hadn't heard good things from many people, so I was a little wary of it, but it was on the list, so it had to be done at some point. But the food was really good! And our server's English was really good, too. I had Kung Pao Chicken for dinner, and a ginger cake for dessert. The cake was really light and really sweet. We went to movie night after that (since I was out late enough with people who reminded me that it was movie night, since normally I don't realize until it's too late), and we watched Fantastic Mr. Fox, which makes about as much sense at Pink Floyd's The Wall, but it was hilarious so that made up for the lack of sense and random one-liners running rampant throughout the film.

And now I'm sitting here eating Kraft Dinner before work. Man, I can't wait for Canadian KD. American stuff still tastes weird. It might be the margarine.

Part 3

Thursday was my last day with Mel. We started out very early at Animal Kingdom, eager to pack the day as full as we possibly could. We did Kilimanjaro Safaris and saw more animals than I've ever seen on there before, and way closer, too! We even got to see the baby white rhino! Still no lions, though. I'm pretty sure we did Everest at some point, and we definitely went to see Flights of Wonder again. We went over to Camp Minnie-Mickey just as the previous Lion King show was finishing its load in so that we could sit at the very front in the next show. We played games on Mel's iPod and attempted to stay in the shade. We did manage to get those front row seats, though, and it was uber-awesome. Timon paid special attention to us during the show (we were wearing our tiaras again, which felt a little out of place in Animal Kingdom, but whatever), and we were so close to the monkeys and dancers! We spent some more time walking around before it was time to take our places for the parade (it's kinda on the lame side, but Mel wanted to see it, so we went). We managed to snag a bench in one of the narrower parade areas, so we were not sitting on the ground, we were shaded, and we also ended up surrounded by a family of ducks! They were so cute! Now I understand why my sister took so many pictures of baby ducks when she was here. We left Animal Kingdom fairly early so that we could go home and freshen up before Mel's final Disney restaurant, Narcoossee's. I'd already been there, but it was a fantastic place and I definitely did not mind going back. Especially since we were on the dining plan, so I didn't have to order one of the cheaper menu items. We both had the surf and turf dish, which had two small filets and a giant lobster tail, as well as some awesome veggies. It was sooooo amazing! For dessert I had a chocolate mousse, and I think Mel had a creme brulee thing. We headed back to the resort after that, and packed up our stuff to prepare for an early departure. I woke up Friday morning and headed back home to drop my stuff off before heading to work. Of course, getting into my apartment was a fun ordeal because they'd changed my locks while I was gone, so I didn't have a key and had to wake Francesca up to let me in.

After work on Friday was Goofy's Mystery Tour, a special annual cast event that involves teams of four participating in a themed scavenger hunt around Hollywood Studios after the park closes. It also involves fifty multiple choice trivia questions of varying difficulty levels. Oh, and your team is bungee corded together. No biggie. I put together a team of some of my favourite people here: Selina, Taryn, and Adam. By the time we'd exited the theatre (with Taryn in the lead, taking the longest and most awkward way possible) we'd pretty much figured out coordinating our walking movements. Problems only arose when we had to turn or sit down. We came in 179th out of 250 teams, so I'm quite proud of us (and even though other Canadian teams ranked higher than we did, we totally had more points than some of them, so :P ).

After that, it was back to boring work. A couple weeks ago I bought those shape-up shoes, so I've been enjoying wearing those around the parks. They're really comfortable! Last week, Selina, Ben, Adam and I went to the Studios to meet Lotso, the bear that smells like strawberries from Toy Story 3 (which is gonna be super-awesome). The other day Selina, Taryn and I went out for dinner at Boatwright's at Port Orleans Riverside for some awesome Cajun food. Monday was Dan's birthday, so some of us headed over to one of his favourite restaurants, Sanaa, for an awesome lunch.

And that brings me up to date, so quit your whining for a while!

Part 2

So where was I? Sunday. Right. Well Sunday was shopping day, so we had to do some running around so that Tiff and Christian could get all their souvenirs for people. We also rode Tower of Terror again, because it's just that awesome. After we finished up at the Studios, we went to the resort to do some stuff exchanging between rooms, and then met up with Mel at Magic Kingdom to finish up the things that they wanted to do there. We did the Tiki Room, and Haunted Mansion (because I wanted to; they'd already done it), and I don't quite remember what else. Tiff and Christian headed back to the resort for a swim because it was really hot, and Mel and I headed to one of her last restaurants on her list: The Plaza Restaurant on Main Street. It's a lot of sandwiches and casual stuff like that, and it's super tiny, but it was really good! Weirdly enough I had a vegetarian sandwich because it sounded so good. Dessert was super-huge sundaes, which I'm still not sure how we managed to eat. Then we staked out a place for Spectro and Wishes, and Tiff met up with us at the spot. We then went to do a couple rides during Extra Magic Hours, since we were all resorts guests and could do so, and said our goodbyes and headed home.

Monday was supposed to have been our breakfast at The Wave, but I was very tired so we slammed the snooze button and then later headed to the pool before I had to work. I got burnt. That kinda happened a lot that week. Tuesday we had lunch at Olivia's Cafe at Old Key West, and that was pretty awesome. Then, again, I headed to work. Wednesday was our Magic Kingdom day, as well as dinner at California Grill at the Contemporary, so we just made another reservation for The Wave that morning. Despite hearing people complain about it all the time, we had a pretty good breakfast. It's extremely ugly in there and needs to be brought out of the 70s, but the food was good. Then we went to Magic Kingdom for probably the most fun I've ever had in that park. We donned tiaras, and hopped the horse-drawn streetcar to Cinderella's Castle. We were seated at the back, with the barber shop quartet behind us, and they talked with us and serenaded us with princess songs the whole way. It was SO COOL. We ran around everywhere, making sure Mel got in everything she needed and wanted to do before she left. Everyone was calling us 'Princess' and talking to us all day, which was really, really awesome. We watched the parade from the edge of Main Street before Liberty Bridge, and characters came up to us during the parade to bow to us and wave! I got elbowed by a small child and slightly rammed by a stroller (same family, same ten minutes). After that, I did the Hall of Presidents for the first time, because we were extremely hot and it was air conditioned. There wasn't much else to do at that point, so we decided to meander over to California Grill in the hopes that we'd spend enough time in the air conditioning when we got there that we wouldn't be gross by the time of our reservation. On Main Street, though, we were stopped by a guy from guest relations who asked us if we wanted to do a Main Street scavenger hunt. We've got the time, so why not? Out of a sheet of 20 questions we had to blindly choose 5 and find the answers to them somewhere on Main Street. Thanks to that hunt, I now know when the Emporium was "established," how much the football game costs at the train station, and when the next horse auction is. We weren't sure if we were coming back to the park or not, so instead of writing us a fastpass for any ride we wanted, we each got a coupon for a free plushie! So we explored the plush section of the Emporium before making our choices (Donald for Mel and Stitch for me). So NOW we're heading to California Grill, a signature restaurant, sweaty, wearing tiaras, and carrying stuffed toys. ... Yeah. That's really classy. But it's Disney, so we weren't too bothered by it. And we were seated at a 4-top, so Donald and Stitch got seats so they wouldn't have to go on the floor. We had a really amazing view of the parks from our table, and the food was really good. I can't say I understand why everyone raves about it, but it was good. We decided during dinner that this day was too awesome to end so early, so we went back to Magic Kingdom for a little while longer. Mel told me to get lost for half an hour, so I took my book and sat in front of the 'Partners' statue and read. She showed up with a package tied to a(n extremely obnoxious) Mickey balloon and handed it to me. Inside was a birthday button (which she made me wear) and a beautiful glass Maleficent figurine as an early birthday present. I was so thrilled! She wanted to do Laugh Floor one more time, so we did, and I was picked by one of the monsters. They said I had a chandelier on my head, which, admittedly, was kinda true. So I got to make a fool of myself in front of tons of random people. And then we ran to get a good spot for Wishes, which we left partway through so that we wouldn't have to wait five buses to get home.

Part 3 coming soon.

......

*cough*

Uh.... Hi, guys!

...

Yeah, okay, so it's been a while. For most of April, that's because there was absolutely nothing going on. The majority of April was a very boring month. Well, not BORING boring (except work, which is almost always a little mind-numbing), but nothing-out-of-the-ordinary kind of boring. It was Mel's last month at Disney, so we did a LOT of running around the parks like small children, looking for characters and eating probably the equivalent of a sports bike, if not a dirt bike. For those of you who have seen my pictures on Facebook, you know this to be the truth. Lots of photos.

Towards the end of the month, we celebrated Mel's birthday by going to the Garden Grill in The Land at EPCOT. It's a family-style restaurant with characters that REVOLVES. Yeah, it totally does a 1-hour circle through the Livin' With the Land attraction. For me, this was slightly disconcerting because I was seated with my back to the scenery, so every once in a while I would turn around and not see anything remotely like what I'd seen the last time I had a casual glance. The characters all had fun with Mel's Mickey balloon when they came to the table, one chipmunk even going so far as to try to steal it! She got it back, though. The food was pretty good, and the cool thing is that most of the ingredients actually come from the pavilion itself. Or, at least, that's what they say. Not sure whether or not I completely believe this.

A few days later, Tiff and Christian came for a visit, which I was stoked about. They flew in on a Monday, but I didn't get to see them until the Tuesday. We did EPCOT for the morning, and I took them on Soarin' (Tiff freaked out a little bit, which was highly amusing, but I think she had fun anyway), and we did Test Track, and a whole bunch of other fun things. In the early afternoon I abandoned them to head to work, and they finished the boring park without me. Wednesday we were up bright and early to head to Animal Kingdom, where I got severely burnt and we didn't see any lions. Seriously, the lions haven't been out lately, even early in the morning. It makes me sad. I love the lions. Anyway. So we saw animals, did Everest, I finally got to go on Kali again (it'd been a while, since it was so cold; I got soaked what good), and we saw Flights of Wonder for the first time. I think Tiff only stopped in the first place because the woman doing the preshow had an owl on her arm, but it was worth it. It was such a great show, and so funny! At park closing, it was time to head over to the Lodge for our reservation at Boma. The food was pretty good. Tiff and Christian liked the Orange Mush, which we think involved sweet potatoes, but we're not entirely sure. I liked the nut sauce for the pork loin. We walked around the Lodge for a bit after, and then we headed back to Animal Kingdom to take our respective buses. Friday- -

Oooh, wait! Somewhere in those weeks before Tiff came was my program graduation party thingy. They have massive graduation breakfasts for about three months of end-dates at a time, and we all get together in a resort ballroom dressed all fancy, and we are fed breakfast, and we can get pictures with characters in graduation robes, and we get Mickey hats with tassels on them. It was awesome. After that, a large group of us headed to Magic Kingdom to take photos in front of the castle and stuff. It took some time to coordinate a picture of us throwing our hats in the air, but eventually we got it. And then scrambled to find all our hats before someone trampled them (thankfully we'd gotten them embroidered, so we knew whose was whose). We'd barely eaten the breakfast because we were so busy photographing one another that we were all kinda starving by this point. So thirteen of us (Sean being the only guy in that number) boarded the monorail (some still in uncomfortable heels and others, like myself, having resorted to flip-flops) and headed to EPCOT so that we could carry on the Canadian tradition of eating at Le Cellier after grad. Then we all kind of disbanded, some to drink around the world, and me to meet up with Mel and some of her friends from home who were visiting.

'Kay. Now we're back to Tiff's trip. So Friday was... Hang on, I missed Thursday, didn't I? Oh, plus either Tuesday or Wednesday night was Mel's throw-out, so I went to that. I was handed down the Tower of Terror challenge (60 rides in one day), so I have to start planning that soon before it gets too busy here. Thursday we went back to finish up Animal Kingdom, and Mel joined us since she didn't have much left to pack. I remember us going on Everest, but not much other than that. That night we did the Spirit of Aloha at the Polynesian, which I've discovered is a lot more pleasant when you're not soaking wet and freezing. Who knew? Fire dancer still rocked. And NOW we're at Friday. ...Which I don't really remember. At all. I know I was working, and I think we went to see Fantasmic that night. Maybe. Yes. Because Friday was Magic Kingdom day, but it closed early with no Wishes or Spectromagic, so we went to Fantasmic because the weather was supposed to be bad the next day anyway. Which it totally wasn't. Oh! I know why I don't remember Friday. Because I had to get up hella early to help Mel move all her stuff out and get to the resort we were staying at to check in before heading off for my AM shift. So I was kinda half-dead. And yes, we did go see Fantasmic that night. Mel met up with us at the Studios for that. Saturday morning I headed off to work, and Mel took my place at breakfast at 1900 Park Fare with Tiff and Christian. This kinda irked me that I couldn't have time off to be with my sister when other people had time off constantly for this, that, and the other thing, so I begged and pleaded for them to let me have Sunday off to spend my sister's last day with her. But anyway. So I worked my shift, and then met up with the three of them at the Studios. Again, not remembering much. We ate at Pizza Planet.... Ah! And I got to do Toy Story, Rock'n Roller Coaster, AND Tower of Terror with them! Which was awesome, because those are all the best things to do at the Studios. And we met some characters at the Animation building, which is always a fun time. I finally got to meet Genie, who is not an easy character to find.

And I have to go to movie night now, so I'll end this here. I could just save this and continue it later, but I figure posting this will get people off my back for a least a couple days. Maybe. Possibly. Just a little bit?

Oops

'Kay, so it's been almost a month. Oops. I might've meant to update this before that. But I got distracted. So this is me updating now before more people start yelling at me.

So Mom and Aunt Bonnie came, and we had a super-fantastic time. We did some really cool stuff that I'd never done before, like have dinner in Cinderella Castle or eat at my workplace (yeah, surprisingly I'd never gotten around to doing that). We also did things that Mom and Aunt Bonnie had never done before, like Toy Story Midway Mania. I soundly beat them both times we rode. Also, somehow I managed to get Aunt Bonnie on Everest with me. I don't she appreciated it very much by the time we actually got on the ride, but I was highly amused. We met some characters and had an absolute blast. By the end, though, we were exhausted. Or at least I was.

So I went back to work for another week of food running. I honestly don't remember much of those days off. I spent most of them sleeping, I think. Eh. Someone will remind me later if we did something.

The week after, though, was insane. I started server training, and it was uber-intense. I was doing well for my first three days, but then on my fourth day, the day on which we have our assessments, I totally bombed. It was awful. I was forgetting things, I had no sense of timing whatsoever. I - Oh, I got my ice maker working again! Woo-hoo! Anyway. Back to the week of horror. It was so bad that I wanted to quit. At the end of day four, it was decided that I would do another day of training and then see where we went from there. Thing is, my day five would be with Lauren, the scariest woman at the restaurant and definitely our toughest trainer. She tough because she wants us to do well, though, so I suppose it was a good thing. I made it through the day without crying (barely), and we came to the decision that I would start out serving on my own in a two-table section, rather than our usual three- and four-table sections. Plus, after a seven-day workweek, I had two days off to refresh myself. Luckily these are the same two days that Mel has off, so I got to spend two full days on a mini-vacation-type-thing with my roommate! We had so much stuff planned. We decided to go to Animal Kingdom, which we did, and had an amazing time. We got there and headed straight to Tusker House, my last restaurant on my list for Animal Kingdom, and ended up with a fantastic server from Leamington. Then we stopped by the DVC booth because Mel was interested in signing up for a presentation/open house, and she stood there and got sunburned on one side while I was chatted up by the cute cast member at the booth. We got on Kali River Rapids, which was super cool because I haven't been on that in months! Plus, we got, like, 10 character photos that day. We had a dinner reservation at Maya Grill at Coronado Springs, so we went there (food was okay, service was kinda terrible) and then went to Hollywood Studios to catch the late Fantasmic. Plus, I started pin trading a bit with some cheaper pins I'd bought, which was a lot of fun. The next day we had high tea booked at the Grand Floridian. So we headed to Animal Kingdom to get a few characters we'd missed that we knew would be there in the morning, and then went over to Magic Kingdom to hop the resort monorail. We had an amazing time there! The tea selection was insane, the sandwiches were delicious, and we had the biggest bowl of strawberries and fresh cream that I've ever seen in my life. Ros, be jealous. Then it was back to Magic Kingdom for more rides. Along the way, Mel got jealous of all the fun I was having pin trading, so we hit up the pin trading store in Frontierland to get her all decked out for pin trading. We totally became "those people." We had an absolute blast! So now we're kind of addicted to pin trading.

On Sunday I food ran, because we all decided it was a really stupid idea to start my serving on my own on Easter. Then on Monday I missed my first turn because we didn't have an assignor, so I jumped on the board. I miss assigning. But I still got two turns out of each of my two tables, so that was great. And I didn't even start to tear up at all. Yesterday was pretty good too. Last night Mel and I went to Downtown Disney to check out the pin trading store there, and saw the sign for the Kingdom Keepers III release. And the author was there signing books! But the line was cut off for the night. But he was going to be in Epcot the next day! So we bought the books and went to Epcot today. But Mel had to work, so she handed her book over to me, and I took them both to stand in line. I'd been reading mine, so the dust jacket was off of it, and he remarked on it when he was signing. I told him that the snake on the cover creeped me out (which is entirely true; it's icky). He was highly amused. And now I'm doing laundry.

Because Craig Demanded

So apparently people other than my family read this, and now they're getting on my case to update, so I will.

Um, lessee.... I honestly don't remember the rest of my Do Nothing Day, but I'm pretty sure I succeeded in staying away from the parks. Oh! Yeah, I did. I played Final Fantasy VII for the rest of the day. ... Shush. I had fun.

On that Wednesday was Lyndsay's sing-out, so I headed to work for that. I had booked Taryn and I for the Spirit of Aloha dinner show at the Polynesian that night, but then things came up and she ended up having to work. So while I was at the restaurant, I scrambled to find someone who was working an AM to go with me. Selina said she would come, so after hugging Lyndz I headed out to make sure the show wouldn't be cancelled for the night (it was really cold and rainy) and she was meeting me there. She got there, and thankfully the show was still running, so we headed out with everyone to the open air theatre in Luau Cove. The food was absolutely amazing! The appetizers were fresh pineapple, pineapple bread (which I haven't had since moving out of Toronto, so that was fantastic), and a salad with some kind of mango dressing. The entrees were equally as awesome, with rotisserie chicken, barbecue short ribs, Polynesian rice, and veggies (which we didn't touch). Dessert was a mousse cake thing in the shape of a pyramid with raspberry sauce on top to make it look like a volcano with lava. So cool! And the show was really, really awesome too. The first couple parts were a bit after-school special, introducing a weak plotline to serve as a purpose for the random singing and dancing. Whatever. Also between acts, the band would play Polynesian music to keep the theme going. Well, maybe "Polynesian" isn't the best word. Some of it was traditional-sounding stuff. And then there was the Hawaii Five-0, which I'm pretty sure was only identifiable to me and all the old people in the audience. The last part of it, though, was when they did all the traditional dancing, and that was uber-awesome. I mean, what's not to love about great music, awesome dancing, and shirtless men? ...My point exactly. I'd been talking about the fire dancer all night, because I knew there was one, and Selina was worried that they wouldn't perform that because of the rain. But they did. Yay! I was SO excited about that one, and it wasn't a let down at all! Eventually it came to an end, and we journeyed back home (for me, to get out of my extremely wet and cold pants).

Thursday I stayed home again and played video games after getting my groceries. However, my PS2 was being finicky and decided that it didn't want to read the Final Fantasy VII disc, so I had to switch to Final Fantasy VIII. Which I'm now almost done. Just the final battle sequence to go.

Another three days of work, which started to wear me down again. It was really quiet at home, too, because I was the only one in the apartment; Mel was with her family, Yukiko was in the Dominican, and Francesca was going to New York (which ended up being Puerto Rico because of the snow). Sunday, as everyone knows, was The Big Hockey Game. Things were tense (in a good way) in the restaurant all afternoon. We had constant updates from three different sources (including the chef and his blackberry), and when we won, the whole place went nuts. We actually had quite a few Canadians in the restaurant at the time, which was cool, and all the staff in the dining room burst into a rather boisterous rendition of 'O Canada' (led by Patrick). It was so much fun! Movie night was cancelled because of the closing ceremonies, but Ali and I still wanted to watch a movie, so she brought over a bottle of wine and we watched Star Wars. Kind of. We were both falling asleep by the time Obi-Wan died.

I'd been talking about getting up early and going to Property Control (old Disney stuff they're not using at resorts and stuff anymore) with Ali, but I'd told her that night that I wasn't feeling great and should probably get as much sleep as possible before work. Well, it's a good thing I did because I woke up Monday morning feeling REALLY awful. I was nauseous, my throat was raw, I'm pretty sure I had a fever, I had a headache, and every joint and muscle in my body was in a lot of pain. My first thought when I woke up was, "Oh my god, I was hit by a truck in my sleep!" Then I realized that this was a silly thing to think, because I live on the second floor. So then my thought was, "Oh my god, I have mono!" This, also, was a silly thought because there was no reason for me to be the Patient Zero, and I didn't know anyone else who had it. So, okay, I'm just really sick. I pretty much had to literally roll out of bed to make it to the phone to call in sick, and then spent the entire day sleeping on the couch. I spent Tuesday the same way, and was starting to feel much better until bedtime, when my ear started to really hurt. So, fine. Wednesday morning I got up and went to the clinic. Turns out I had a sinus infection (which I'd suspected by sometime on Tuesday), and was given, like, four medications to take. After getting some drugs in me, I headed over to work for Ali's sing-out, and then headed to Magic Kingdom for a bit with Ali, Heather, Lindz, and the Pitman brothers. I took a nap when we got home, and then went to Ali, Heather, and Lindz's throw-out. They're still around, so it doesn't really feel like they're gone yet (Heather doesn't even finish work until next week); I don't know what I'm going to do when they actually head out on their road trip home.

Thursday Taryn and I went to Kona Cafe at the Polynesian for lunch before she had to go to work. Our server was none too awesome, but whatever. The appetizer and dessert were both amazing, but the entree was actually kind of a let-down. So we've decided that we'll go again sometime, but we'll sit at the sushi bar, order the wing appetizer as an entree, and then just get dessert.

Another four days of work pass. There were good moments and bad moments, and they all end up blending together after a while. Especially working such long hours. On Sunday (I think) Mel actually came back to work after her cruise, so it was nice to see her again. And she came back home the other night. As much as I love my other roommates (kind of; some more than others), it's nice to not have to slow down and think about what I say before I say it so I don't have to repeat myself. Monday night was my six month mark, so Amy and I went out to T.G.I. Friday's (the others from our arrival group couldn't make it) after work. On Tuesday I got groceries and then did a whole lot of nothing. Mel came home and she told me all about her cruise and stuff. It was nice to have her home again.

So, it's Flower and Garden Festival time at EPCOT, which means that everywhere in the park are ridiculous topiary sculptures and tons upon tons of flowers. On Tuesday, I went around with my camera and took pictures of all of them. I met up with Carolane afterward at Magic Kingdom and we rode Splash Mountain (for the first time in months! It was so gorgeous outside!) before heading to Downtown Disney. We ended up at Portobello for dinner, which was really nice. And our server was cute, but that really has nothing to do with the price of peas in Persia. I had a really nice ravioli dish, and I made sure that it had veggies in it, since I know that I don't eat enough of them without Ros around to shove them down my throat or Mom to give me a disapproving look.

Today Taryn and I did a pre-Taryn-goes-to-work lunch again, this time at the Captain's Grille at the Yacht Club resort. Our server was weird, but the food made up for it. There was so much and it was all so filling! We ended up taking half our entrees away in takeout boxes so that we would have room for dessert (which was awesome). Then I hopped over quickly to All-Star Movies to make sure everything's all set for when Mom and Aunt Bonnie come on the weekend. And now I'm sitting here warming up after getting really wet out in the rain. And listening to my roommate complain to her mother on the phone. I have no idea what she's complaining about, but I can tell she's complaining, and I'm pretty sure some of it is about me because I caught the words 'computer,' 'couch,' and 'playstation.' Whatever.

A Few Weeks Later...

Okay, I have no idea what happened to 'updating more often.' I was totally gonna do it! Then again, I kind of have the memory of a goldfish and the attention span of a two-year old, so that might have something to do with it. Every time I resolve to update this thing, someone swings something shiny in front of my face. Whatever.

So Dungeons & Dragons was a total blast, in a really, REALLY nerdy way. I won't really bother you with details, because 94% of you don't care about how well we actually seemed to do in out first encounter. But for those few of you who do care, I will say that I was playing a Level 5 Female Half Elf Paladin. Patrick created all our characters for us, and included pictures! Yay! I love mine; it's on my wall. She has green hair and a giant sword. Midway through our second encounter, we stopped to make tea and refresh drinks and whatever, and Ali passed out on the living room floor in the middle of a conversation. We decided that the game was probably over for the night at this point, and proceeded to geek out a bit more in Patrick's study before waking Ali up enough to get her into the car.

Wednesday was my last day of training, and Heather was my trainer! Yay! I still can't carry three dinner plates, OR two dinner plates plus a ketchup saucer, but I think by the end of that night I might have been doing three dessert plates. And at one point, I totally lost a plate of scallops in the dining room, which was when I decided for certain that no, taking three entree plates is NOT a good idea. But no one gave me a hugely hard time about it (though apparently there was some major griping outside my hearing), so whatever. If people are so worried about me dropping stuff, they can run their own food. That night, we had to say goodbye to Craig, Kelly, and Pierre-Luc. That really sucked big-time, especially because I spend at least two days a week hanging out with Craig at movie night and games night (when I remember what day of the week it is and go). But at least I have them on Facebook, so we haven't completely lost touch.

Thursday was my first non-training shift, and I think I did rather well. I only took what I knew I could take, I didn't drop anything, and I don't think anyone wanted to kill me by the end of my shift. I figure that's a pretty good day.

Friday Heather and I were both off, and we'd made a couple reservations when we were hanging out before the Throw Out on Wednesday. She had one restaurant left at the Grand Floridian, so we were having lunch there, but by some fluke we also managed to get into Chef Mickey's for breakfast! So Ali and Heather and I headed out that morning to the Contemporary to have an awesome buffet with Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, and Donald. So much fun! The people sitting beside us were a pain, but mostly we ignored them in favour of the characters. And Mickey waffles. Then Ali went home to bed, because she was sick and barely had a voice, and Heather and I trekked over to Magic Kingdom to finish the last two attractions on her list there: The Enchanted Tiki Room, and Cinderella's Carousel. Of course, we did Haunted Mansion, too, but we've both done that too many times to count. We boarded the monorail and rode all the way around the track to the Grand Floridian for our lunch at the Grand Floridian Cafe. It was a really nice place, and the desserts were awesome! Turns out, one of the chefs who was at Le Cellier is now over there, so he came out and talked to us for a bit. Then it was home in the pouring rain to get some stuff done. Friday night Mel was packing so that she could go check in at the resort she was staying in with her family, but she kept procrastinating. I don't think I was much help, either, really. At one point we hopped over to Downtown Disney for the sole purpose of getting the awesome cookies you can get at Goofy's Candy Co., because one of us had mentioned them, and then we were both craving them until we gave in.

Saturday Ali played taxi once again (I feel so bad for abusing people with cars like this!) for Mel and I as Mel checked in at Animal Kingdom Lodge. Then we had lunch at one of the restaurants at the resort, Sanaa. So good! It's like Indian-African fusion food. I had curry and it was so good! And they have the bread service with the different breads and sauces, and then I had an orange something-seed cake for dessert that was absolutely amazing. I would definitely go back there again, which is good, because I have reservations there for when Mom and Aunt Bonnie are down. Later that day I was supposed to meet up with Drea, since she was coming down with her parents and sister, but they got caught in snow in Georgia, so that didn't really work out, which kinda really sucked, because she'd be the first person I'd seen from home since just before Christmas, and the person before that was my massage therapist...

Anyway, Sunday and Monday I worked, and I don't really remember much about them, except that I was there. Monday night I got a message from Drea asking if I was off Tuesday or Wednesday, which were my days off exactly. So I got to see Drea on Tuesday! I was so happy! We walked around the outlet mall for a couple hours and just talked about everything and nothing. Then she had to head back to her resort, and I headed home. It was quiet at my place, and there was nothing to do. I was extremely bored.

Much of Wednesday passed in the same way that Tuesday night did. I was bored out of my skull. Finally I got a hold of Taryn when she was done work, and we decided to head to a resort to eat. But it was after 8 before we were able to leave housing, so our choices were limited. We'd decided to go to the TTC so that we had our choice of the resorts along the monorail and boats from Magic Kingdom. Our first stop was Kona Cafe at the Polynesian, but the restaurant itself was booked and the seats at the sushi bar (which also serve the full Kona menu) weren't being bussed at all so that we could sit down. So we said forget it and headed over to the next stop on the line, the Grand Floridian. Obviously we weren't going to do Victoria & Albert's, because neither of us was dressed for it. At all. I'm pretty sure I was wearing my black and white Mickey skimmers. Anyway. We thought of Citrico's, but that still looked kind of expensive when we glanced at the menu, and 1900 Park Fare had stopped seating already, so we only had one place left at this resort: Narcoossee's. We debated it for a ridiculously long time before deciding that we might as well, and put ourselves on the list. We were seated in Tom's section, and he was an absolutely fantastic server. We both had a chicken dish, and I honestly can't remember the last time I had chicken that flavourful. It was so good! Taryn didn't like her dessert much, but mine was really good! ....Now if only I could remember what I had, that would be even better. I think it might've been some kind of cheesecake.

Thursday I picked up an assigning shift for Josh, since his brother was in town. Normally Thursday would be my third day off, but I figured, why not? It's extra money, and I'm not going to say no now and then want people to do the same for me when my family's here! Lunch got kinda crazy for a while because I got slammed with parties of four, but I got over it. Dinner was a lot slower than lunch, which was weird, but we made it through. It made me realize how much I miss assigning, though. Food running is all well and good, but it doesn't require the same amount of mental labour that assigning did, and anyone who knows me well enough knows that I'm a very mental person (in every sense of the word).

I've just finished up four straight days of food running now, and my hands and arms hurt what good. I only have one burn from the bread pans, and one tiny one from the food windows in the kitchen. I don't remember a whole lot of those days. Somewhere along the way I started carrying four dessert plates, which is kinda crazy when I still can't manage three entrees. But I think what stands out the most for me the past few days was dinner on Sunday. See, I was serving a table, and the kid from the table behind me on an angle for some reason decided that it would be a good idea to kneel on the floor behind me, where I couldn't see him in the already poorly lit dining room. I stepped back so that I could move around to serve the last steak I was holding, and stepped on the kid. Just wait, it gets better. I went down, backwards, partially on top of the kid, and into the empty table that was next to the table the kid was supposed to be sitting at. And remember, I had a steak in my hands still. SOMEHOW, and I'm not sure I could do it again if I tried, not that I would ever try, I managed to keep the steak perfectly balanced so that it didn't even shift on the plate! Aliyyah, whose table I'd fallen into, calls it a Matrix move, and I'm now known to her as Matrix Girl. I suppose there are worse ways to be known. My arm is kinda bruised and hurts what good, but falling backwards full force into a table can do that.

And now today is my Do Nothing day, because I'm exhausted. We'll see how long that lasts before my attention span and proximity to the parks demands that I go out and do something.

Another Week, Another Job

So. Animal Kingdom. Really early. Never Again. ...Well okay, maybe not never again, but never again in the rain, that's for sure! It rained pretty much the whole time we were on the tour. Eventually I bought an umbrella during our first break on the tour, but even after that capillary action meant that my pants were wet from the knee down. Plus my left coat sleeve was stuck to my arm, and I had to peel it off. Mel had a jacket with a hood, so she didn't opt to share my umbrella until she got to the point where her coat was so wet the water was coming through it. And we're both sick with colds. The tour was fun, though. We had a guy named Glen from Guest Relations take us around the East half of the park and tell us not the story behind the building of the attractions themselves, but the stories that the Imagineers made up for each of the attractions and areas to follow. So we started out on Discovery Island, and talked about the Tree a bit (the Tree is kinda still a sore spot with me right now), before heading to our first major stop: Dinoland, USA. Yay.

For those of you who don't speak fluent Mel N., that 'yay' was extremely sarcastic, so go ahead and read over it again in the proper tone of voice. ...Okay. We're good now. Anyway, that's because in Dinoland, USA is an intense thrill ride called Dinosaur! I have a rather intense fear of Dinosaurs that aren't on a tiny, flat, non-3-D screen (because I do enjoy Jurassic Park), never mind animatronic ones that kinda look realistic and try to eat you. And yes, I realize that they're extinct and they can't actually come and eat me, but I don't care. So, for part of our tour, we're told the story of Dinoland, USA as a whole, and how the institute had developed this new technology called Time Compression (which had me giggling a bit, because that's one of the major concepts during the last battle sequences of Final Fantasy VIII), and how you could actually go back to the age of the dinosaurs. So what's the next thing we do? We go back to the age of the dinosaurs! Now, obviously we have a choice as to whether or not we want to go on this ride, but this is as good an excuse as any to actually get me on the ride, since you have to try everything once (which is the only reason why I've seen the Playhouse Disney show at the Studios). Mel assured me that I would live through the ride. Well, I'm not sure whether or not me being in the ride vehicle actually counts, because I didn't see anything beyond the first ten seconds of the ride. I had my eyes closed the whole time, and at one point I also had my ears plugged and my coat lapels flung over my face. But I survived, so I figure that if I go on it once every time I'm in Animal Kingdom and get familiar enough with the sounds of the ride, I might eventually be able to open my eyes for some of it. We'll see.

Moving on, we did more Discovery Island (kangaroos!), and saw the 3D movie inside the Tree, 'It's Tough to be a Bug.' I'm not overly fond of this thing, either, but I'm not afraid of anything there eating me, so we're good. The last large area on our tour was my favourite section, Asia. We were told the story of the particular part of Asia we were meant to be in, and did the Maharaj Jungle Trek. By this point, everyone is soaked, and it decides to pour even harder. And we have to finish the walk still, because we're only halfway down the trail. There is a tomb halfway there though, so when we're stopped Glen asks us if we want to continue to our final stop afterwards, or just end the tour here, since we're all really, really wet. The last stop is the Forbidden Mountain, so like hell we're gonna skip that! He's surprised at our resilience, but honestly, who doesn't love a good yeti?

So we walk through the queue line of Expedition: Everest and we're told about the things on the walls and all the decorations around us (Mel points out at least three hidden Mickeys). Eventually we get to the front of the line (which had a whopping 5 minute wait due to the rain) and those who want to ride can. Honestly, I was all for it, because I love Everest (to the astonishment of one of the guys on the tour who'd ridden Dinosaur with me). But then Mel brought up a good point: Everest goes outside a lot, like at least half the track is outdoors. Doing high-speed rides in the rain HURTS. So we didn't do it. And we definitely weren't the only ones. Once the weirdos got off the ride and met us in the gift shop, Glen said good-bye to us, and we all went our separate ways. Mel and I went to Yak & Yeti for some hot food, hot tea, and a chance to use the freakishly high-powered hand driers they have there. Then we came back home, I made myself comfy on the couch, and I didn't leave it until time for bed.

Wednesday was much the same (the couch part, not the tour). I got out of bed, eventually I showered, put new pjs on, and sat on the couch all day. I also started on my Japanese books I'd bought in EPCOT the other day, so now I know a whole seven hiragana! Out of forty-six. And then there are forty-six katakana. And after THAT come the 1,945 basic kanji. Just the basic ones, mind you. ...I've got a long way to go.

Thursday and Saturday were assigning shifts. Things went fairly well, and nothing overly exciting happened. Friday was my last scheduled popcorn shift, and I got rained on at about 3:30, and it didn't stop until way after I'd clocked out. Fun times.

Sunday was my first day of food running! Huzzah! I was taught how to read a ticket, the proper way to deliver the food to the table, position points on the table so you're not just auctioning the food at the table, and the tricks to holding three plates at once. Despite knowing the trick to it, though, I still can't really do it. My fingers are too short and stubby to stretch enough for stability! Yesterday was much the same, except that we incorporated the pantry window into our running, and we were taught the closing duties. I have one more day of training on Wednesday, and then I'm on my own. I should be fine, though. Dana and I have made very few mistakes over the past couple days. Today, though, I'm heading over to Patrick's to play my first-ever game of Dungeons and Dragons! ....Just you shush! I think it'll be fun.

Life Goes On

After another few not-so-exciting days of work (firstly because I was a seater and second because I can't remember them), it was time for Tuesday. I like Tuesday. It's my Saturday. Though some time in the week Selina and I went to the Studios and ate at the Sci-Fi. She'd never been. It was my third time. We had fun. Anyway, back to Tuesday. I was up just before 10AM on Tuesday to sign up for a special tour at Animal Kingdom. There are sporadically tours in different parks we can sign up for, some of them for specific rides (there's one in a couple weeks for Haunted Mansion that I would kill to be on, pun fully intended) and some of them general park tours with special insider tidbits. Apparently this one is part of the latter. Registration for the tours is really, really limited, and they open up at 10AM one week before the tour. So basically you set your alarm, sign up, and then go back to bed. Except that instead of going back to bed, Mel and I headed off to Wal-Mart for groceries. Mel's decided to start eating healthier, but it was still amusing to see what was in her part of the cart as compared to mine. After that, Mel had to go to work, and I hung around and had a lazy day. I think. I don't completely remember. I really should update more often so that I don't have these gaping holes in my life.

Wednesday was David's last day. At Le Cellier, we have a tradition for when someone is leaving: during the break between lunch and dinner, when there are as few guests and as many cast members as possible, we make the person leaving stand up at the fireplace and we sing O Canada at them. After that, everyone goes back to their lives. I'd told David I would make him cookies for the road (even though he didn't give me my container back before the throw-out!), so I was just going to head back to the apartment to bake those and kick around and be generally lazy. Aliyyah was walking out at the same time, so I figured I'd head out with her. Turns out, she's heading to Magic Kingdom by herself since people bailed on her. Hm... Magic Kingdom.... cookies in apartment... I wonder which one will win?! So we hit the monorail and headed into Magic Kingdom. Aliyyah was dying to meet Princess Tiana, and so was I to be honest, so we headed over to her character spot (with Prince Naveen, but let's face it, no one cares) and waited in line. We ended up behind this incredibly awkward woman who kept talking to us. It was kinda mean, but after she'd turned away from us for about the fiftieth time, Aliyyah and I began speaking to each other about how awkward this was. In French. Which basically means that Aliyyah was speaking and I was responding minimally, since after five years of not speaking it, my French is a bit rusty. And by rusty I mean it's corroding and looks a bit like orange-y brown swiss cheese, with more holes than rust. At some point in line, Aliyyah realizes that she had charged her camera battery in anticipation for this day, but forgot to actually put it back in her camera. Luckily, I have mine. Eventually we make it up there, Aliyyah fabricates a story about only having been here a few days in Montreal, and I blow that to bits when I say we know each other from work. At EPCOT. Oops. My mouth is so much faster than my brain sometimes. After getting our photos with Tiana and Naveen, we headed to Fantasyland and were shocked to see that after 5pm there were still fastpasses for Peter Pan available. Clear proof that the parks are indeed dead at this time of year. We're a bit hungry by this point, and guess what? Aliyyah's never been to Tony's! Yes, I have a strange love of that restaurant. The food is awesome. Leave me alone. On the way, we stop to watch a bit of the Dream Along With Mickey show in front of the castle. Awkward Girl sneaks up behind us and surprises us at some point during this show. Aliyyah and I are now kinda afraid for our lives, and our brain cells. As soon as the big finish with the fireworks and stuff is over, we book it into the crowds on Main Street, hoping to all that is good in the world that this girl does not follow us. Luckily she didn't and we were able to get a walk-in at Tony's without a problem. We had an awesome meal, and I loved Aliyyah's reaction to the atmosphere of the restaurant and everything. Then we went back to ride Peter Pan, which she'd also never done before, and then headed to the Grand Floridian to check out a couple shops. It was home time after that, because I still had to get those cookies in the oven! Turns out I can make and bake two different kinds of cookies in 25 minutes total. Awesomeness. Soon after that it was time to head to the throw-out to see what kind of stuff David and Johnny were getting rid of. Turns out, nothing I needed or wanted. I was disappointed.

I was assigning on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Thursday actually went rather well, I thought. Friday, though. Oh God, Friday. Friday was a full moon. Thus, people were NUTS. And ALL of my large parties within a two and a half hour time span decided to show up, as did my smaller parties, so I had no tables to combine to accommodate the larger parties. I basically ripped the dining room apart trying to find places for all of these people. It was crazy, and I never want to do that again. Of course, after all that, I come home to even more craziness. My roommate's last day was the same as David's, so she was supposed to be gone from the Commons by 11AM sharp on Friday. You're pretty much treated as a fugitive afterwards, and if you're still staying in housing after you're supposed to be gone, everyone involved can get terminated from the program. Well, she didn't even start packing until Thursday night, and planned to pull an all-nighter to do so. Yet she went out for a while that night. Friday I leave for work, noticing she still has quite a bit to pack, but she's got an hour and a half, so she's probably got a plan for everything. When I return home after 10PM that night, not only is she still here, but her bed is heaped with stuff, as are areas of the living room, and not long after I enter the apartment SHE GOES OUT. AGAIN. AND we're supposed to be getting our new roommate that very night. Well currently that new roommate has nowhere to move into! Plus the cleaning people could barely move, according to Mel. Mel and I are kind of afraid for our jobs, since we know Mila's here when she shouldn't be and if the new roommate comes in and then complains, we're gonna be in trouble. So we go to security, explain everything to them, and then go out to Starbucks to calm Mel's nerves a bit. We know that this is going to be incredibly awkward when we get back, since when we were leaving our other Italian roommate made a comment about hoping that security wouldn't come. When we get back, Mila is out of the apartment (as are the other Italians who were there when we left, at least one of whom was also done her program and could get us in trouble), and Francesca is stuck packing the rest of Mila's stuff while crying her eyes out. Not two minutes after she leaves with the last of Mila's stuff (which took two or three trips, and tons of it is still against the wall in Francesca's room) our new roommate, Yukiko, comes in with her stuff. I can only imagine what would have happened if we hadn't done what we did. Of course, Francesca's mad at us for going to security because she thinks it was too much and we could have just asked them to leave. However, she's missing some vital points that I don't think the language barrier allows her to really grasp:
1) Mila wasn't even home, so we COULDN'T ask her to leave
2) We still know that they're somewhere in the Commons
3) If they're found in the Commons, they'll know that Mila used to live with us, and they'll interrogate us
4) I'm not going to lie to security for their sakes.
But she talked to each of us yesterday, and I think we're good now, even though she still thinks we went to far. But whatever. So long as she's not going to murder us in our sleep, we're good. I think international cast members need to be provided with a fully translated copy of our contract so that they have as good a grasp of the terms as we do as Canadians (and UKs).

Moving on.

Saturday was so-so. I was glad when it was over, though. I'm not used to assigning three days in a row, so I was exhausted afterwards and decided to take an ADO for Sunday. Mel called in sick that day, since she had the cold from Hell, so we had a relaxing day of rest and recuperation. This involved spaghetti and meatballs while watching Tinkerbell, napping, and popcorn while watching A Knight's Tale. And that's seriously all we did all day. ...Well, I talked to Ros and Mom earlier in the day, but other than THAT that's all we did. And I forgot that it was Sunday, so I missed movie night, which really upsets me because it was The Breakfast Club. I love The Breakfast Club!

Today I worked for a while and then took my last-ever (probably, unless something weird happens after I'm a server) ER. Selina and I headed over to France for a nice lunch, which included a visit from Remy (from Ratatouille). I had a three-course meal of French onion soup, quiche Lorraine, and some kind of puff pastry with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream. It was fantastic, and the restaurant is quite pretty. It's also, like, two and a half times the size of ours. Then we headed over to Japan so that Selina could get candy, and I bought Japanese language books so that I can actually start learning the language beyond the random useless words I currently know (I can't really imagine 'ultimate weapon' coming up in conversation too often). So I worked on a couple of the most basic characters before putting it aside for a bit to update this.

I think I'm catching a cold, so I probably won't go to games tonight. I'd rather get a good amount of sleep to prevent this from getting worse, before I have to catch a bus to be at Animal Kingdom at, like, 8AM.

Hi

So I figured I should update this before my family decides to disown me. Of course, if you disown me, this means you don't get to stay at resorts. So there.

Anyway. So last update I was excited about going to the mall. The day of, I was considerably LESS excited about going to the mall. Here's what happened: Selina and I got up at the crack of stupid (aka about 10AM) so that we could catch the first bus and have optimum shopping time. ...Well, that bus filled up at Vista Way, so it never got to The Commons or Chatham Square. I was not amused. It also served to fuel my hatred for Vista Way that much more. Okay, so we go walk around the outlet mall for a while, Selina buys an awesome new coat (it was still kinda chilly at this point), and then we go back to catch the next (of only three) mall bus. THAT one filled up at Vista, and never made it to us. By this time, I am decidedly NOT AMUSED. Okay, FINE. We hop on the next bus heading to Vista and stake out the bus stop there, and hop on the mall bus as soon as it pulls in there. Good thing we did, because it also filled up and never made it anywhere else. So we finally got to the mall and had a mostly awesome time. I bought new books, and I got some new clothes from the awesomesauce clearance racks at Old Navy. I love Old Navy. Then, since the last bus was leaving at 8:30, we went out to the stop at 8:00. At 9:00 I called the dispatcher to find out where the heck this bus was. APPARENTLY it filled up at 8:15 and went back to Vista and we were just going to have to be patient while they dispatched another unit to pick up the extra people. Clearly, given the time we were out there, this is a lie. Eventually we got picked up at 9:20, and I crashed before my AM shift the next day.

I assigned on Thursday. I don't really remember that day. On Friday I worked AM popcorn, but I don't really remember that day either. Seems to me that it wasn't particularly busy that day.

On Saturday, I got off work and came home as Mel was planning to go out to Downtown Disney. She and David were planning to attempt to break the Canada Pavilion record for most times on Tower of Terror in one day, and wanted to make t-shirts at the Design-A-Tee to make it more official. So I accompanied her, and we decided to go to DisneyQuest, since she'd never been and we only stopped in briefly the last time we were on vacation here. We've discovered that the Pirates of the Caribbean game is particularly difficult when she's steering the virtual ship and I'm left to man six guns on my own (we still got the second-best ranking, though; clearly other people suck really bad). And dinosaurs still scare me. It was a lot of fun, though, and we'll probably go back sometime soon before we lose our free admission in February.

Sunday was fun. Selina and I got ERs, and we wanted to do a park. When I'd told Dad about eating in Animal Kingdom, he'd asked what animal I'd eaten, and I said chicken. He bet me there wasn't a chicken on the Tree of Life. I said there probably was. So, since Selina and I couldn't decide what park we wanted to do, we decided to just hop the next bus that pulled up that wasn't going to EPCOT. This happened to be the bus to Animal Kingdom. So off we went. We had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, which was really cool. We weren't anywhere near the snake, which was uber-awesome. Even more awesome was that our table was underneath a giant toadstool, which made me feel very Alice in Wonderland-ish. Small things, small minds. Anyway. So after that, I told her I wanted to do a walk around the tree to see if I could spot a chicken, because of what Dad said. This turned into a three-hour ordeal during which I took pictures of every possible carving on that tree. Final verdict: there is not, in fact, a chicken on the Tree of Life. We had a ton of fun, though, exploring every possible angle on the tree, and walking through all the roots to find even more hidden-away carvings. We headed over to Magic Kingdom after that, because we love Magic Kingdom. That night, we decided that we wanted to do a 4 Park Challenge on Wednesday.

Monday was a holiday in the USA, so the park was crazy-busy, and I was closing popcorn. Whee. When I first got here, everyone kept telling me how much I looked like a girl who had worked here previously. A guest that night also mistook me for the same girl, oddly enough. It was kinda surreal. I really want to meet this girl now. I didn't go to games night because I was extremely tired. Not that I'm not always tired, but this was worse than usual.

Tuesday was grocery day. Yay food! I may or may not have a slight addiction to herb & garlic whipped cream cheese. Also, I needed more peanut butter so that I could have peanut butter and tomato on toast again. Mel and David had headed to the Studios for opening, so once my groceries were away and I'd had lunch, I headed over to meet up with them for a while. Their goal for the day was 60, and it seemed likely, since they were able to stay for Extra Magic Hours (I had to leave them when the park closed to non-resort people). However, what they didn't count on were the masses of Brazilian tour groups. Like, seriously. There are a ridiculous number of them right now. I so don't get it. Anyway, so when I met up with them at around 4PM, I expected them to be almost halfway done. They had just finished up ride 12. I seemed to be a bit of a lucky charm, though, because after I got there the cast members started helping them out. So from 4 until 7, when I had to go, we managed to get in 11 rides. I left them when they were going for ride 24, and apparently they made it to 30 before calling it quits. I still think they're nuts, but it was a lot of fun.

Wednesday was, in a nutshell, craziness. No one had volunteered to join us, so it was just Selina and I meeting up at the bus stop at 8AM to begin our 4 Park Challenge. I believe I explained this concept before, when David, Craig, Kim, and the Pitmans did it, but for those who are too lazy to go through my archives (ie. EVERYONE, including me), I'll go through it again. Four parks, one day. In each park, you must ride a thrill ride, a classic ride, and a random ride (pretty much whatever had the shortest line). You must also use all three modes of transportation: bus, monorail, and boat. In some challenges, people have decided that throughout the day you must have one quick service meal, one table service meal, and one snack. I'd taken this out because we already seemed quite pressed for time when I planned it out, so there was no way we were gonna be able to do it. In place of it, though, I added that we must take a picture with one character per park. Okay. So, we decided that it would be best to start with Hollywood Studios, because of Toy Story Midway Mania. This is arguably the most popular ride at WDW. Like, it has a longer standby line than Peter Pan (for those of you who have been here, you know that's saying something). The fastpasses are always gone by, like, noon. And now I know why, actually. When the park opens, cast members block most of the streets, so EVERYONE there at the time gets herded right to Toy Story. The fastpasses had a 10:00 opening window by the time we got to them, so we grabbed those (the standby line already said 60 minutes - I think that might be their default time) and then bee-lined it past the backlot area and up the Streets of America to hit up Star Tours, our classic ride. We were loaded right onto that, enjoyed it thoroughly (I may or may not mutter the whole thing under my breath while riding), and then (practically) ran over to Sunset Boulevard, where the Tower of Terror and Rock'n Roller Coaster are. Now, Selina doesn't do well with thrill rides. She's a screamer. So she was desperately hoping that the Tower of Terror line was longer so that she wouldn't have to face that one. She'd already done Rock'n Roller Coaster in the past, so it would be significantly less frightening. Luck was on her side. The sign totally lied to us, though, because our 5 minute wait was more like 15. No matter. We were ahead of schedule. When we got out, we were heading over to Animation Courtyard to get in line for Mickey as our character photo. However, there were a bunch of characters out by the sorcerer hat, and Daisy Duck had a total of about two people in her line, so we decided that was a better option. Then it was back to Toy Story for our fastpass time. We were out of the park and on the bus to Animal Kingdom by 10:30, an hour and a quarter ahead of schedule. Upon arriving to Animal Kingdom, we took our first washroom break, after being disappointed that there were no characters at the main gate to get that over with first. However, by the time we were done with our washroom break, Timon and Brer Bear had appeared, so we headed over to the (again) two-person line and blitzed our photo. We fastpassed Expedition Everest, and then headed to Dinoland for some cast-discounted quick service, since we had time and granola bars were totally not doing it for the energy we'd expended in the Studios. Originally we'd planned to ride the mini-coaster in Dinoland (I still can't work up the courage to do Dinosaur, and I wasn't too keen on getting soaked on Kali River Rapids), but that had a huge lineup, so we opted for the triceratop-themed Dumbo-like ride as our random. Then we sauntered over to Africa to ride Kilimanjaro Safaris as our classic ride. The wait was half of what it said it was, and then we were loaded into a car to see a ton of really awesome animals. Like, really. I wish I'd bothered to charge my camera battery so that I could've taken pictures on it, but I was empty-headed and didn't so I was stuck conserving what battery power I had to take our necessary pictures for the day. After that, we STILL had time to kill before our fastpasses for Everest, so we sauntered slowly back over to Asia. Selina did particularly awesome on that ride, only screaming about three times, and then we were done with that park. Somehow at this point we managed to gain ourselves an extra two hours. So at EPCOT we decided to have a table service meal to cut that time down. Well, first we rode Spaceship Earth as our classic (though we did it in Portuguese, which neither of us speaks; I've now done that ride in half of the languages it offers), and then went to grab fastpasses for Test Track. Our thrill ride here was actually the new virtual roller coaster in Innoventions, Sum of all Thrills, so we went in to do that. It was ridiculously awesome. What we built was actually a jet track, and kinda made me want to be a fighter pilot, feeding off of the wish that was already there from having been on Star Tours earlier (honestly, I'm dreading the day the refurbishment is installed and pod racing becomes part of it, because that's just going to make the strange want even worse). I stopped in briefly at work to inquire about a schedule change that was supposed to be happening for the next day, and then we went off to do our character photo. There were a bunch of characters at World Showplace, so we actually managed to get Geppetto and Gideon (from Pinocchio) before heading to the UK to see if they had availability at the Rose & Crown Pub. We got in right away, and were seated in the section of someone I knew. Given how much I socialize in general, much less outside my pavilion, this is somewhat surprising. But Anna and I had training together one day, and had a bit of a bonding moment over how we keep sloughing excess guests off on one another. She was a fantastic server, and the food was really good. Especially dessert! I make it a point to try an entree and dessert every time I'm somewhere new in WDW, and I couldn't make an exception here, despite how full I was. It was a raspberry tart with cake batter and almond paste involved somehow. Anyway. So after that we went back to Test Track, rode that, and then boarded the monorail for Magic Kingdom. However, when we got to the Transportation & Ticket Center, the ferry wasn't running. We were worried, because that was a totally unacceptable reason to fail the challenge. So we decided we would take it on the way home, since the cast members assured us it would be running then, and grabbed the monorail the rest of the way to the park. Somehow, and I really don't get this one, we still managed to be two hours ahead when we arrived at the gates. So don't get it. It shouldn't have been possible. Whatever. So we fastpass Space Mountain, decide that we're too full for the teacups, and go in search of a character (I hadn't had a repeat character photo all day, and didn't want to stop that streak right at the end). Well, 'it's a small world' was a walk-on (gee, I wonder why), so we suffered through that as our classic ride. Then we went over to Adventureland to see if Lilo and Stitch were still available. They were, and they had a shorter line than any other characters we'd seen in the park thus far anyway, so we got that done. We decided to just hop onto Pirates as our random, and that had a much longer line than we'd expected, probably due to the fact that one of the queue lines was closed. We still got on in decent time, and had time to do Haunted Mansion on the way back to Tomorrowland for Space Mountain. It's kind of impossible not to do Haunted Mansion when I'm in that park. We finally got back to Space Mountain, rode it, and then grabbed our snacks (yay free popcorn coupon!). We got trapped in the parade crowd for SpectroMagic, so we watched it whether we wanted to or not, and then stood on Main Street and tried to stay awake for Wishes. Eventually we made it back home, somewhat disappointed that our challenge was not challenging in the least (and I don't think it was for lack of people in the park, since we ran into at least one Brazilian tour group per park).

Yesterday I was greeter, and today I was assignor. Dinner was hell today. Just an observation.

And the quote of the week is...

"Would you take a bullet for a wonton?"

That comes to you courtesy of Taryn while dining at Yak & Yeti in Animal Kingdom the other day.

I think that's probably the only interesting story for the week, to be quite honest. Thursday I assigned; lunch was awesome, and dinner was a disaster. I'd rather not relive that. Friday I was popcorn stocker and FROZE outside. Like, seriously, you have no idea how cold it is here. Yes, Canada probably is colder, and yes, you have snow and we don't (or didn't anyway), but that doesn't stop it from feeling absolutely frigid when the temperature takes a sudden dive from a comfortable zone of about 55-65 Fahrenheit into 24 Fahrenheit. Not. Fun. Saturday, though, it actually did snow in Florida. Not much, and it mostly melted as soon as it hit the ground, but it was all over the news. The fact that the last time it snowed in Florida was '89 probably had something to do with that.

Saturday I was when I went out with Taryn. I got out of work at 3, rushed to Cast Services (where my cell phone was), called her, and set out our plans. I figured that EPCOT could be our fallback park, since it's open latest and I knew a lot of reservations had been open that day from doing searches for guests during my shift. But I've never eaten in Animal Kingdom before, ever, so I just HAD to do it. And it closed at 5. So Taryn hopped our bus line from home, and I booked it over to the Yacht Club Resort to catch the bus from there (I figured it was faster to head over the walkway to there than to go to the front of the park and hop a bus over there). Exactly one hour after I'd rounded the corner backstage to head over there, I was through the turnstiles. Taryn followed not long after. It's now about 4:15-4:20. Animal Kingdom closes at 5. We rushed against the crowds to Asia, and the lobby of Yak & Yeti was pretty much dead. Thankfully, though, they were still seating, and we got an awesome table with a window that overlooked the parade route. Why they were having their parade so late in the day is beyond me, but whatever. It was cool. And the food was awesome! Ros and Carol, imagine a place that looks like a Nepalese hotel, and serves the food from East. 'Cuz that's pretty much what it is. I love it! Afterwards we headed over to Hollywood Studios, where we stood in line for almost an hour for Midway Mania, and then rode The Great Movie Ride, since Taryn had never been on it. Then, of course, we had to do Rock'n Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror. The view from Tower of Terror was GORGEOUS! All the lights were on, because it was dark, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky - it was crystal clear! If only it hadn't been about the temperature of Calgary...

Today has been my do-nothing day so far, but that's beginning to annoy me, so I think I might actually change out of my pj's and go do something for a while. Selina and I are going to Florida Mall tomorrow to raid their bookstore. Yay! New books!