What Now

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2009

That’s right. You heard me. I’m at Disney World.

You’ll notice that I don’t end that sentence with an exclamation point, right? Well, that is because when it comes to Disney World, I’m not a big fan. For some reason, that makes a lot of people think I’m a Nazi or something, but I promise I’m not a gigantic humbug. (Why do I feel as if I need to cross myself whenever I admit this?) This will make my 4th trip to the house of the mouse, so I don’t feel that I’m not giving the place a chance or anything like that. I’m just not a big fan. I have several reasons for this, and we can talk about it later if you are interested, but I'll keep it simple for now. It follows along with my general feelings about any amusement park: I don’t like getting hot, I don’t like crowds, and I don’t like getting wet and walking around like that for hours. Well, it is going to be hot, and there are going to be crowds, but I have been assured that I won’t get wet. We shall see!

Anyways, so why am I here then? Well, Steve is a HUGE fan of Disney World. He came here quite a few times with his parents and family growing up, and it reminds him of good times. He has wanted to come back for quite a while now, so he talked me into it. Seriously, how could I refuse someone the right to relive good childhood memories? Also, he went to Savannah with me over the summer, so I kind of owed him! :)

We started off our day getting the dogs to the pet resort, and surprisingly that went really smoothly. I guess the dogs have finally realized that they can’t prevent us from dropping them off, so they might as well be resigned to things. After that we ran some errands and got ourselves to the airport.

At Huntsville International Airport.

***I have a sneaking suspicion that I might have singlehandedly raised the Department of Homeland Security Threat Level a notch by accident. I promise I wasn’t carrying anything even remotely lethal, but my boss, in an attempt to spread the word about the upcoming Star Wars exhibit next year, gave me a gigantic pouch full of buttons that advertise the exhibit. She wanted me to hand them out at the Disney World parks we went to, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do that. Number one, where would I stash them while I was there? Number two, that would just be bad form. I knew I wouldn’t actually pass them out at the parks, but I thought that maybe I could just seed some around in public areas and hope they were picked up! I started doing that at the Huntsville airport. I only had four buttons outside of my suitcase, so it wasn’t like I was peppering the place or anything. I left one on a table at a gate and another in the ladies room. Our airport is so small that I knew I couldn’t put a lot of them out, so I hung on to the others for our connecting flight in Atlanta. We hadn’t heard anything about the threat level while in Huntsville, but the minute we touched down in Atlanta, it was repeatedly being announced that the threat level had changed to Orange. I really, really hope it didn't have anything to do with me leaving small, black disks around an airport. My apologies to the Department of Homeland Security if any of that was my fault! ***

I’m glad that we decided to fly, simply because of the time it saved us. Of course, as usual, our first flight out to Atlanta was late.

Connecting flight airplanes are very tiny.

It wasn’t terribly late, but we ended up having to change our connection flight because we were cutting it close in the first place. No big deal, we had counted on the plane probably being late. When we finally got to Atlanta, I was starving. I hadn’t been hungry all morning, so when Steve got breakfast, I didn’t have anything. As soon as we got to Atlanta and found our gate, we set off in search for some food. I was jonesing some Cinnabon and Steve was going to pick us up a couple of burgers from BK. I hadn’t even got to take a bite before our plane started loading. Crap. Steve had already snarfed his food, but I was loaded down with bags of food and a soda as I got on the plane. We were not seated together on this flight, since it was a last minute change, but that wasn’t a problem. However, what was a problem was that I had a middle seat between two women I didn’t know and not enough room to do anything unless I wanted to jam my elbows into them the whole ride. Sadly, that meant that I wouldn’t be able to eat. I probably could have done it anyways, but I was afraid that the smell of my food might be bad for them and I didn’t want to be inconsiderate. I managed to get the food inside my backpack and just hold my soda on my knee. I was so hungry. The flight into Orlando was uneventful, except that we had an incredibly rude set of male flight attendants. I sat as still as possible, trying not to bother the two women sitting next to me. I had kind of dozed off right before we had taken off, but I was woken up by the lady on my left pulling a hamburger out of her bag and eating it. I was so hungry by this point that I wanted to snatch it out of her hand and cram it into my face. I didn’t dare try. She looked like she could take me. I suppose that meant that I could have gotten out my own food, but being the one in the middle, I just kept as still as possible and got out my iPod to watch a movie. At some point, I realized that the woman on my left was playing Sodoku and the woman on my right was reading a book for smart people about politics. Me? I was sitting there watching “Shaun of the Dead” for the elevendy billionth time and trying not to laugh aloud. I felt so gauche.

We finally landed and made our way to the Disney busses that would take us to our resort. I was still so hungry and so very, very tired. I had been up late the night before trying to do all of the last minute things a person has to do before a trip, so I had only slept for about 3.5 hours and that, plus the low blood sugar, was really catching up with me. We are staying at the Port Orleans resort, which is really beautiful, and as soon as we got to our room and got settled, we went to the gift shop to look around and then had dinner. I was literally almost about to faint by that point, so I had to grab my food and sit down way before Steve was through his line. I just barely made it.

This is the sandwich that saved my life.

By the time we ate and came back to our room, I was almost asleep on my feet. With few preambles, we sacked out. Thus endeth my first day of vacation.