This Is My Christmas Vacation

I'm back and I am thrilled to be home. Actually, I am back for the next 48 hours before we go to the next location: the in-laws. Erg. Guess I won't be doing much checking of my blog there. Thank goodness that's only a 2-day trip. And I say that not because I hate my in-laws, it's just that we always see them after flying to L.A. and after being gone from home for six days and I don't want to travel anymore. It will be weird when we reverse this for next year and we fly after spending four days out of town. This is the update on the vacation so far:

Flight 551. The flight was overbooked. Conveniently, there was too much fog to take off, when, after 30 minutes, no one would give up their seats. After we all cram into the close quarters, there was a bomb on the plane and we had to de-board the plane so they could bring in security. Funny how after there was a bomb on the plane, there were also suspiciously many more people who were willing to give up their seats for a later flight. I think this might be the new proceedure for dealing with over-booked flights-just tell the customers there might be terrorists on the plane and less than 1/2 mile flight visibility and you have more than a few who will give up a few of thier precious hours to give the seats to someone else. But we were excited, so we got back on the plane.

The Grove. We walked from Beverly and Santa Monica Blvd. to Fairfax and 3rd. I'm still claiming that this walk was no less than 2 miles. It's at least 10 blocks. And I have no good sense of distance, but I know it took close to an hour to get there. I ate some really awesome Greek food at the Farmer's Market and we looked at the crazy tall Christmas Tree. I thought about Angry Dissenter and we even entertained the possibility of going to go see a movie there, but we were too excited to sit still. By 3:00, it we decided we would wait for my mom to come pick us up, which made us feel all of 13 years old, but needless to say, she was running late, so we decided to go ahead and walk over to the Beverly Center, which is right by Cedar's, which is on Beverly and 3rd. My feet hurt before we even got to DisneyLand.

Jason Schwartzman. That's right. We passed him while walking to the Beverly Center. I only caught the back of him, while my counterpart was nudging me and freaking out. We have a "leave celebrities alone" policy. So we didn't do anything crazy except text friends with this uneventful news.

DisneyLand Magic Kingdom. The castle is like a child's plaything compared to the one at DisneyWorld. "it's a small world" was awesome, but not as awesome as they said it would be. The best part of the Magic Kingdom is that they transformed the Haunted Mansion into "the Nightmare before Christmas" and it was wicked! I wished the line was longer because they were playing the soundtrack to the movie the whole time we were in line. And there was an entire shop devoted to Jack and the movie. I'm a huge fan, so it naturally made my day. The newly rennovated space mountain was fun, the parade was great, and they cancelled the fireworks at night. The snow, however, was the coolest thing ever! It was small condensed bubbles, that felt like actual snow and tasted like soap.

• DisneyLand's California Adventure. Ahh, Soarin. If you have not ever done this, you have to go to DisneyWorld or DisneyLand to do this. This is a 50 ft. tall OmniDome-type thing that gives the simulated experience of hang-gliding over Californina. You are lifted in the air and you move when the camera moves, the wind blows in your face and you can smell each of the places that you are at. This by far is always my favorite ride. It's thrilling, but all of the smells and sights leave you very relaxed. We rode it twice. The Aladdin show was nothing short of spectacular. You have to appreciate it because most live Disney shows are a mere re-creation of the movie with the same cheesy lines performed live. This was not the case. The story line they used was consistent with the Broadway musical that is or was done and the Genie does these long impromptu lines in the middle of the show which include quips about Churros, Desperate Housewives, and Harry Potter. Even Iago did gave props to the audience. It made the experience unique and seperate from the animated cartoon. If you are a technical theatre buff like my nerdy self, you will also appreciate the flying magic carpet, the 25 ft. tall flats, the trap doors and the fact that the entirety of the set is all lifted into the fly loft. The whole set is on battens, which is impressive. I set a personal best record and I decided to go for it and ride the roller coaster with my friend. I know this is going to sound twisted, but I found strength to ride some of the scarrier rides because my wild friend kept screaming about wetting her pants. Too much fun.
• Flight 1461. This was on the Airbus from L.A. to Denver. This is the 2nd largest plane I have ever been in. I guess United figured they owed me after the bomb scare incident. (Now might be the right time to mention that I am deathly afraid of planes and that one of my few recurring nightmares is being in a plane crash and plummetting to my death, which is why it is a miracle that I even fly after seeing "Lost") It sat nine across with a middle aisle and I couldn't touch the ceiling of the plane. It was huge and freakin' sweet. I did pretty well, and I never even cried or threw up once. I did squeeze off some tears on flight 551. The wild friend, aka wild one, just laughed at me during that flight. She really likes it when people are under stress and she takes those opportunities to laugh at all of us. That's why it was hilarious to see her afraid of space mountain. Hee hee hee. Bitch.

Home. At 1:00a.m. this morning. To the dog who was crying and who was so tired that he rolled off the bed in his sleep twice last night. It was a rough week for Squeaker. That's right. My dog's name is squeaker. It's not as bad as the guy in Old Navy who's dog's name was spanky. And it was some pit-bull-looking dog. How demeaning.

The chronology will continue soon...

P.S. Apparently, my counterpart wants me to add that this is an Eeyore hat, or at least that's what he thought it was until some 7 year old asked him where he got the Stitch hat. So, even though he is seemingly wearing Stitch ears, my counterpart has requested that because Stitch is a Son-of-a-bitch, that you henceforth only recognize his love for Eeyore and not Stitch. There's a story behind that, but I've already wasted too much space.