Photography

June 1st: Hollywood Studios

More Disney photos. Just what you wanted on a Monday afternoon…

🙂

Sunday we decided to go to Hollywood Studios. First we had to have breakfast. I had made reservations for the Ohana Friends breakfast there at the Polynesian Resort. It’s ‘family style’ which is sort of like a buffet all you can eat, except that they bring it to the table for you. It’s also a character breakfast. While we ate, several of them stopped by so the girls could get their autographs and pictures taken with them.

Lilo and the girls

Mickey and the Girls

Mickey and the Family

Stitch and the Girls

During our first visit as a family to Disney back in 2005 we seemed to run into Stitch several times. He was inside a remote control trash can that Pete got into an argument with. It was one of those ‘had to be there’ moments but it was pretty damned funny.

So do you think they were happy to be there?

Happy Girls

Clearly I had not had enough coffee. Damn, and I need some of that hair die for men as well. I didn’t realize just how gray I was getting. That’s fucked up for someone as young as I am to be going gray already.

Need more coffee...

I was going to post more about the day but that’s enough photos. I will post about Hollywood Studios tomorrow.

Zemanta Pixie

May 31st: Animal Kingdom

Saturday was our third day at the park. After having stayed up pretty late the night before we slept in a bit. Besides going to the Animal Kingdom today we also had the Pirates and Princess party to attend that evening. I honestly don’t remember where we ate that morning, now that it’s been almost a month. Had we eaten at one of the character breakfasts I would have taken pictures so we must have eaten there at the Polynesian Resort where we stayed that week. We got kind of a late start to the day.

The girls didn’t particularly enjoy waiting for the bus…

Waiting for the bus...

We had a pretty good time at the Animal Kingdom but we cut it a bit short that day and didn’t get to do a whole lot of stuff. Pete and the wife did get to ride on Everest, maybe more than once if I recall and Pete loved it. The wife I think was feeling a bit ill by the time they got off…

While I didn’t get to go on the safari ride there is a walk in the Asia section you can go through and I managed to get a few pictures of the animals there.

Tiger at the Animal Kingdom

Tiger

These damned bats were hanging around. The fucking things were huge…

bats

I had a hard time getting a shot of this green tree frog in it’s aquarium.

Some kind of frog...

This guy was hanging out taking a nap in the heat…

Maybe a wild boar?

…and I did manage to get a picture of this Komodo Dragon lying around in the sun.

Komodo Dragon

There is this pretty cool fountain in the Asia section section that all of the kids were playing in cooling down a bit.

A bit of water fun

It doesn’t matter when or where, RePete is always ready to pose for a photo shoot…

Darn it's hot, but I'll pose any time!

We also rode the Kali River Rapids, which is my favorite ride there. I’m not much into roller coasters and I usually end up hanging with RePete anyway, but water rides I love. It was pretty hot and muggy, so we left the Animal Kingdom around 4pm or so and went back to the hotel to clean up and change after a short nap.

The Pirates and Princess party was at the Magic Kingdom and ran from 7pm until midnight. You actually had to purchase separate tickets for the event, so it wasn’t crowded in the least. I think we were all pretty tired before we ever even made it to that or we would have had a much better time.

This was taken in front of Cinderella’s Castle late into the evening…

Pirates & Princess Party

All week long by the time we finally rolled in to the hotel (this time it was after midnight again) the girls passed out…

Asleep after the Pirates and Princess party

Asleep after the Pirates and Princess party

Sunday we went to Hollywood Studios. I think we all enjoyed it much more than the last time that we went, but I will post some photos from Hollywood Studios next week.

Zemanta Pixie

Wordless Wednesday

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Waterfall

Waterfall

Lily Pads


Wordless Wednesday

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I may have posted this already, or one like it, when I was discussing the wedding last month but I adore this photo.

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Wordless Wednesday

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This is my open-trackback post for Wednesday and Thursday March 26th-27th (now that Wednesday is half over 🙂

Leather Jackets

My biggest Christmas present this past year was a new leather jacket. I love my jackets. My friends and a girlfriend chipped in and bought my first one for my 18th birthday. I still have it. Well, the Marine does anyway. I can’t zip it up around my gut anymore unfortunately. 23 years ago I had that washboard gut look, now it’s a bit more warped, thus the new coat. I’ve always like bikes if you couldn’t tell from pictures. As a matter of fact, here’s one of the Marine and myself about 18 years ago.

Chris and Richie 1990.jpg

Makes me feel kind of old, actually.

If you’re interested in finding a decent leather supplier you might want to check out The Bazaar Online. They have leather motorcycle jackets as well as just about anything else you might want including chaps and pants, vests, boots, gloves, wallets, purses and packs. The’ve also got a selection of novelty helmets and DOT approved helmets as well. Go check out the catalog if you are interested. I like the fact that they process orders the same day and offer the lowest price guarantee around.

Just remember, I don’t have a vest that fits anymore, and I need a pair of boots. Father’s day is coming and I wear size 10…

Workin’ at the car wash

Today was actually a pretty decent day. I was a bit stressed out but only had one smoke this morning. I may be getting the hang of this thing after all.

I really haven’t done a heck of a lot this evening since I got off work. I stopped to wash the car, guess that was the highlight of excitement on this spring-like evening. It was around 60 when I left work and I was able to ride with the windows down and the sunroof open. Very nice.

Mr Stretchy Cat has been allowing Pete to drag him around the house in a laundry basket this evening. It’s hilarious. There is a heart shaped red balloon tied to the basket by a string which is what the cat wants and why he is allowing the indignity.

Although the wife is watching TV I have been going back and forth between watching and surfing the web, mainly news sites. I am also back at scanning photographs as well. A couple of them here.

This one was taken 21 years ago. I have posted about driving my friend Chris back to California at the end of his leave. This was shot at an overlook at the Grand Canyon as we passed through the area. Couldn’t very well be near the Grand Canyon and not stop to at least take a picture, now could we?

Richie at the Grand Canyon

I hate that this one has faded a bit. The exposure was off and using a cheap camera as well I am sure. This is Pete and the boys washing my 1972 Duster. This picture is probably eight or nine years old I suppse.

workin' at the car wash

Going to keep on scanning, maybe it will give me something to post tomorrow 🙂

Late Sixties

I’m back to scanning some photos. You can’t find cartridges for the printer I use locally anymore. I’m sure that I can probably order them online but I find that the more and more I use it for work I have been wanting a printer anyway.

Since I got a gift cart for Wal-Mart at the awards banquet tonight I decided to use it to buy an HP scanner/copier/printer combo. The prices on these things has dropped immensely. The last time I checked was five or six years ago and they were about three or four times the cost.

Since I now have a scanner that will work with Windows Vista I can start copying all these old pictures. Here’s one from the late sixties. That’s my great-aunt and myself.

Richie and Big Helen Late Sixties.jpg

This is about the only thing I am going to post today. As I mentioned, I had a meeting tonight and being as how it’s been a long day on top of feeling like shit I am going to bed as soon as my managers call me with their sales and staffing.

I bummed a smoke around 7am, another around 11am and then got one from one of the managers after supper tonight, around 6. Not too bad. I had a pretty hard time with it today and have been in an extremely foul mood but I think I may have forgotten to take the Chantix this morning. I’ve caught up tonight and maybe tomorrow won’t be such a hard day. If it’s any worse than today I may end up cussing someone out at work.

Wish me luck as I am going to try and go without having a cigarette at all tomorrow.

Friday in the Bahamas

The trip down to Nassau was fantastic! Just what I needed but not nearly long enough. That combined with the nasty plane ride home was enough to slightly tarnish the trip. Oh yeah, and I’ve been fucking cold ever since I got home.

We dropped the girls off early at school on Friday morning so we could get down to the airport. The drive down wasn’t too terribly bad, we managed to get in the airport at around 7:30 Friday morning. It was actually very crowded and we had to wait through the line at security forever. Once we made it through the obligatory cavity search and managed to get to the gate I took one of the Xanax and settled down to wait for the plane. The ride down was pretty uneventful and I actually enjoyed it once we had been in the air for awhile. The Xanax didn’t do shit to calm me down but I seem to be getting a little better at flying. At least I thought so until the flight home.

The airport in Nassau looks like it was built around the time that JFK was hanging out in the Bahamas although they seem to be trying to update it. We had to wait awhile to get through customs but we did have these guys hanging out playing the entire time.

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Can’t help the graininess of the shot. I was afraid one of the security guys was going to stomp my ass if I turned the flash on.

Anyway, once we made it through security and out into the general terminal, Breezes has a booth there that directed us to a shuttle bus. They provide transportation to and from the resort as part of the deal.

I really regret not renting a car or scooter while we were there. The caves where the pirates used to hide their shit and the villas all along the coast were truly a site to see and I would have liked to stop and take more photos than I did. We spent an inordinant amount of time either walking or riding the bus and while it’s nice to let someone else do the driving, perhaps a taxi would be the best bet. A tad bit more expensive but at least they will stop when I want them to.

We got to the resort around noon and check-in isn’t until 3 so they stuck armbands on us and let us roam around to check the place out until we could get our room. We tried their native brewed, called Kalik. It pretty much sucked. If you like Budweiser with a higher alcohol content and more carbonation you might like Kalik. It was probably closer to Corona than Bud but it was still crappy piss water. I much prefer Sam Adams and Guinness as well as other dark, full beers. They also had serve-yourself daiquiri dispensers there so I settled on Pina Coladas. I didn’t drink much on this trip anyway. I wanted to make sure and enjoy the island in my own self-created stupor without adding too much alcohol to the mix. The water was too cool to get in, either the ocean or the pool, so we just sort of hung out. It was pretty overcast when we arrived and it had started drizzling shortly after we got there. You can see the rain arriving in this photo.

Nassau, Bahamas 004

Normally you can see clearly to Long Cay and to the right the coastline as well, that’s rain coming. It never did rain very hard unless it was while we were napping, which we did shortly after we finally got our room, which was closer to four rather than the three p.m. check-in time. It was actually starting to get pretty fucking irritating that they didn’t have the room ready. I think we were both crabby and tired.

After a nice nap we checked the place out some more and then had dinner. There are a couple of different restaurants in the joint as well as the buffet. We chose the buffet and the fare was actually pretty decent. Nothing to write home about but I certainly had my fill. We made a trip to the Crystal Palace Casino right down the street where the wife won $100 on the slots. Some of that was profit 🙂

After the Casino we hung out on the beach for awhile where they were doing a circus show. Two of the four acrobats couldn’t be there so it was OK, but nothing fantastic. After that we just hit the sack. Flying screws with my ears and we were both tired.

I will post more pictures and more about the trip later this evening. I’ve got a bit of house cleaning to take care of and then I have some work to do this evening as well. I have posted most of the pictures to my Flickr page if you want to see them before I post them here.

Even More Snow Pictures

I ended up having to go in to work this morning for a few hours to make sure that everyone was staffed. I managed to get out of there shortly before 9 and stopped to shoot a few pictures prior to going to the doctor for a flu shot. I know it’s late in the season for it but better late than never.

After the flu shot I had to go get chest X-Rays. I am on my fourth day of the Chantix and the urge to smoke seems as if it’s lessening. I have smoked for 28 years now, most of it around three packs a day and my doctor wanted to see what my chest looked like I guess. Four more days and then I quit.

 

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