8 posts tagged “vacation”
Well, I'm off. Off for a week's stay in the pristine wilderness -- with essentially NO internet access. (Imagine!) I mean if I GET to internet at all, it'll be an unexpected treat.
I mean we're not gone YET -- Precious Princess has to graduate from Safety Town, after all -- but I'm now embarking on a frenzied packing extravaganza, and should NOT be procrastinating on the web, any longer! Should NOT.
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Eh - applied to 3 more jobs since last update. The 6th one is a bit of a stretch, given the nature of my experience; I'm quite sure I could DO it, but not sure I can convince THEM I could do it. I'm hopeful that I could at least get a callback or an interview at any of the other 5, but not so sure about #6. But what the hey, reach for the stars, right?
Decided that 2 others that at first looked decent, aren't right for me. One of them was just -- not a good fit. Couldn't rustle up much enthusiasm for either the company or the job, and, well, that's not a good attitude to sell yourself with. I'm definitely overqualified for the other one; I could do the job that job would report to, or maybe the one above that. But, the company itself looks like an excellent fit, so I favorited them & will check back frequently to see if anything more senior opens up.
I gave them all my cellphone & will follow up with them over the next couple weeks while on vacation, and hopefully have some interviews lined up for when I get back.
Depending on how all that goes, after that I'll begin Phase 2 if necessary: Personal local networking. *shudder* You know I'm an introvert, and I hate the idea of begging my friends for jobs; but, personal networking is what really works. And if they already know me and like me, then, they can at least tell me if their employer is hiring, and who to send the resume to, and give me the skinny on the corporate culture, and put in a good word for me, and all that. Well -- time enough after vacation to tackle that.
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Okay, cheers, everybody! Take care of yourselves, & your loved ones, & your various and sundry pets, and the world! Back with ya in a week or two!
Last week at Epcot, a surprise attraction (for me at least) was Minnie's Butterfly House. A temporary butterfly-friendly garden set up inside a kind of tent, with a big box of cocoons waiting for their inmates to mature. Then when they do, they stay inside the tent where you can see them up close and personal.
I would have spent a lot more time in there and gotten more pictures, except that it started raining. I wish I had recorded the names of these butterflies, but there's only so much you can do when you're wrassling a stroller and 3 rambunctious kids in a butterfly house!
Okay any men who like to visit here -- duck and cover! An overpowering cloud of estrogen may waft out of your monitor if you continue viewing!
Grandma and I took Precious Princess to a Princess Lunch at Epcot.
The day before, at the Magic Kingdom, I had bought her a Belle princess dress and tiara. I confess, I steered her toward Belle even though she has never seen the "Beauty and the Beast" movie, entirely because Precious Princess is a brunette and so is Belle. So I thought Belle's dress would be a good color for her.
At the Princess Lunch, as you entered the Royal Banquet Hall there was a Disney princess waiting to greet you in a lushly-decorated little alcove, and a professional photographer waiting to capture the moment. Of course, you can take your own pictures too, and I did. Later, as you eat, four other princesses come to your table and greet your little girl, and you can take pictures with them too, only not in the formal background
It was, like, the most amazingly weird coincidence, BUT, just GUESS which princess was the featured princess who greeted us as we came in???
And I must say, Belle was amazing. Our table was right near the entrance, so we were witnesses to the parade of little girls and their families who trooped past this woman over the next forty-five minutes.
And every single child she greeted as if she had been just waiting and hoping for them to show up. Every single one, including my own precious princess. Whether her feet hurt, or she was hot under that wig, I don't know, but she greeted the last child as kindly and graciously as she had the first. She never for a single moment forgot that for these few minutes, she was working magic for that child. She kept it fresh and new for each child, no matter how many countless hours and days she herself had done it.
Disney magic. They really do it well.
Precious Princess enjoyed the tableside visits from the other princesses as well, especially Cinderella -- that's her favorite movie.
All in all, I have to say, the Princess Lunch was fabulous. In every sense of the word.
I'm really glad we did that while she still believes in magic. Next time we go she might be too old.
Loved the Kennedy Space Center. I always love the space center!
I was born in the post-Apollo-11 era.
My entire life, I have known that not only could humans reach the Moon, but it was an accomplished fact, and it was our country that did it. My entire life, I have loved the thought of space, and humans in it. A human diaspora, making our way through the unknown wilds of space, and carving out our place in it.
I love going to the KSC; it literally gives me chills to see these rockets, this quaint technology that nonetheless hurled frail humans to the Moon and back, and kept them alive to tell the tale.
For the first time, I took the bus tour to the Saturn V facility and and got to experience that. They have the Apollo 11 mission control room all set up with the original banks of computers, and you stand there and they replay the last few moments of that countdown, and you hear this bone-rattling roar, hear the windows rattling behind you, just as they must have done when that mighty rocket actually fired up... and even though I knew it was make-believe, I felt a part of it. Tears stood in my eyes as I felt a part of that historic event.
Then you go out into this enormous room where they have all these displays about the Apollo program, an actual Saturn V rocket suspended overhead, a Lunar Lander, a Lunar Rover, a piece of Moon rock that you can actually touch. All kinds of things.
And I loved it, every minute of it. I'm sincerely glad we have a museum devoted to this event, and that I got to go see it.
But, as the day wore on, something else began to nag at me.
Finally I put my finger on it.
That something is this: Apollo 11 was nearly 40 years ago.
40 years, and in all that time only 12 human beings have set foot on the Moon. The last one was 30 years ago.
We haven't been back since.
Why not?
Why don't we have a Moon base for mining helium-3? It's an element rare on Earth but relatively abundant on the Moon, and would enable safe fusion for cheap power. Cheap, safe, and plentiful power for a power-thirsty world. Cheap, safe, and plentiful power to enable farther journeys into the outer reaches of our Solar system.
We needn't strip-mine the Moon; we only need enough to get us out to Saturn's atmosphere, and there we can scoop up helium-3 without ever reaching the planet's surface. Once we get the infrastructure in place...
But even more than the practical benefits of cheap, safe fusion power, we need to get humans back onto the Moon, and from there to Mars, and from there to who knows where, JUST BECAUSE.
Because we can.
Because we need frontiers, to fire the imagination, to make us proud.
How could we go there, send a dozen men up there, and then turn our backs on it? How?
I realized something during this trip to the KSC.
The Moon is for my children, not for me.
I'll never go to the Moon. I'm too old, too broken-down, and I don't have any technical skills that would be in demand on the Moon. I'll probably never be wealthy enough to afford a Moon vacation even when Virgin Lunar offers flights there to those who can pony up the dough.
I'll never go to the Moon, except in my imagination. Except vicariously, through those who have gone.
Those who will go.
And darn it, I want them to go. I'm not that old, not old enough to be satisfied that for the rest of my natural life, no human beings will set foot on the Moon.
I want them to go.
Oh, also, I DIDN'T gain any weight on this vacation! And that's an accomplishment on the Disney Dining Plan, where every meal includes dessert but not salad.
I chalk up that success to the Food Poisoning Diet: For 24 hours I did not absorb a single nutrient, and was able to eat only sparingly for another two days after that.
Yet still, a good time was had by all, even ME, even THOUGH I was the only one who...
- Got food poisoning,
(Me, an hour and a half after dinner, riding the oh-so-quaint -- and also SLOW -- boat back to my own resort from the next resort upstream: "Right now my dearest ambition in life is to get back to my own hotel room before I hurl!" And I managed it, but only just.)
- Got a shard of glass in my foot (and it's still there! Doctor's appointment this afternoon to get it out...), and
- Lost my sunglasses (Prescription ones too)
Guess it says something for the Disney magic that all that could happen to me and I STILL can't wait to go back!!
(either that or they've replaced me with a pod person -- bwa-ha-ha, you'll never know until it's too late!!!)
Miraculously, all the kids stayed 100% healthy 100% of the time. So I just kept telling myself, "Better me than them... Better me than them..." And believed it, too!
Pictures to follow, later; I haven't downloaded my camera yet.
Highlights of the trip:
- Kennedy Space Center -- I love space!! But you knew that already
- Sea World -- I love cetaceans!! But you knew that already, too
- Princess Lunch at Epcot -- with Precious Princess, of course! Adorable, utterly.
- Epcot generally -- I always love Epcot.
- Disney's Hollywood Studios -- enjoyed it way more than I expected.
- Ditto Downtown Disney -- I expected to detest it, and didn't; would even plan to go back on a future trip.
- Hanging out with friends who moved away from Ann Arbor nearly 5 years ago (Gosh! has it been that long???) and who now live in Orlando -- the husband works for Disney. So we did our bit to help him stay employed and maybe even get a profit-sharing check this year. *rolls eyes*
Little bits of this 'n' that, from vacation.
My fellow vacation-goers thought I was crazy to take these shots -- neither scenic vistas nor classic kid cuteness, but just quirky little images that appealed to me. I just found them wonderfully evocative of two weeks "at the beach" with as many as 7 little kids under the same roof (ranging in age from 2 to 8).
None of these shots was staged, I just happened upon them!
Just got back from two weeks at the Outer Banks, North Carolina. Aaahhh...
Well, we actually arrived home on on Monday, but we've been busy since then. Unpacking, first day of first grade, unpacking, first day of preschool, unpacking... Still have a lot to unpack.
Finally got my pictures downloaded from my camera -- all 579 of them -- no, I'm not kidding. Gotta love digital!! Just snap away with wild abandon; I always do.
Herewith, my favorite beach shots:
Okay, now I grant you, these last two could have been better executed. But, considering that I didn't have a tripod (!), nor have I yet figured out how to do the manual-focus capability on my new camera, all in all I'm pretty happy with them. Anyway, for me, it just serves as a memory jogger for the real thing.
Kid pix to follow, over the next few days.
