DISNEYLAND!

I travelled to LA this past weekend (extended) to visit my good friends Orion and Sarah who live in the Hollywood section of town - perhaps you are familiar with it? I didn't get to hang out too long but I had a whirlwind tour of the place from both of them with lots of good eating and sight-seeing. It was a great trip - other than the beating that the Chiefs took at the hands of the Colts. Orion and I are both big Chiefs fans so it goes without saying that Saturday afternoon was a big glum. Also, I slept on their air matress on the living room which was unexpectedly comfortable - I nearly always have horrible back pain when travelling but on this trip - nada! Thanks air! Perhaps this is the way to go for me when travelling.

On Friday after I woke up trying to adjust to the time, Orion and I travelled to Disneyland where I'm pretty sure I haven't been since 1986 when the Hawks were in the Rose Bowl. It was quite different than I remember. Now there are huge parking structures, a virtual town around the place, and an entirely new park across the way. After paying what seemed like a huge sum to me we went into the park and I began snapping pictures:

Here is the entrance - just like I remember it... swarming with hoards of people.

Here is the first ride that we went on - the cliche riddled Jungle Cruise... I don't know if it was our captain or how they are directed but that bad boy had more cheesy jokes than a Don Rickles show. Nothing had changed either. I think i'd read that they made it more PC. Not really. There are still a bunch of "native people" in fezes scrambling up a pole, holding shrunken heads and the like. Plus he still fired some rounds off at the hippo. I bet more people complained that it wasn't like it used to be than did about it being insensitive. Oh Disney...

The place was swarming with people. Orion and I had imagined we might luck out on a Friday and beat the crowds - no dice. We were able to hit 8 rides in 7-8 hours. And that was using fast pass. We did, Jungle Cruise, Tiki Room, Indiana Jones (awesome), Pirates of the Carribean now with new and improved Johnny Depp character, the Haunted House completely made up with Nightmare Before Christmas stuff, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (we got the Winky car!), the Matterhorn, and Big Thunder Mountain. We also had Funnel Cakes at the Mint Julep bar in New Orleans Square. There are only 2 places in the whole park to eat those. What a shame. We learned this at the information booth where Orion asked about directions to a bathroom. After being directed towards 2 or 3 of them, we found one, basically right in back of the booth which she'd failed to mention. Here is Orion standing outside of it. As you can see, he is quite proud of himself:

We didn't get to go on Space Mountain (75 minute wait and the FastPass was out) and Alice in Wonderland. Those are the 2 others I wanted to visit. Oh well. Perhaps next time. I did get these other shots that I like:

The Hawai'ian "gods" outside the Tiki room... I thoroughly love the retro-ness of these, especially the fire god that looks like it could easily burn young children or the stupid (see background). Also, I enjoyed the new stand sponsored by Dole where you can buy $5 pineapple whips while you wait. Orion and I made Orange-Whip jokes... see Blues Brothers if you don't get it.

This whale has a sweet eyeball that moves - I wanted to touch it... but didn't.

The MATTERHORN - it's all about the Yeti... and the yodeling.

Don't forget TOMORROWLAND - which is more like, 60's land... now featuring Neon

All in all a pretty fun time. I do have to say that by the end of the afternoon - the Disney "magic" was wearing a little thin on me. You can't do anything in that place without paying for it. I'm surprised they don't have a fee when you sneeze. And watching the people mindlessly roll their strollers around (they have stroller corrals now) and drop $$ left and right didn't make me proud to be an American. You have to just take it for what it is and let it go at that. The word "magic" just gets thrown around a bit too much for my tastes.

What was really magic, was when Orion took me to the record store he works at... AMOEBA. Now that place is magic! What a sight. After taking me behind the scenes and showing me all the catalogging and work areas - which was amazing in it's own right, I spent at least an hour going through used and new DVDs/CDs which allowed me to find used versions of all kinds of crazy stuff that i've been looking for. I spent way too much money and got a tote bag and t-shirt for free! Thanks O! If you ever get out to Hollywood, please go here. We also went to 2 comic stores which were also a blast: Golden Apple and Meltdown which included Baby Melt - a totally sweet section of baby/kid stuff.

We ate at a bunch of good places as well - the 101 Coffee Shop being one of the coolest. Went to so many cool stores, etc... I don't have time for it all before I need to jump in the shower here. Thanks to Orion and Sarah for sharing their space with me and hauling me around. It was a blast and I wish we could do it more often.

Sticky Rice?

LAST WEEKEND:
Carrie and I traveled to Madison, WI last weekend for a vacation that I wish we could do every year. This was the first time we'd gone since 3 years ago when we drove my brand new truck up. It's 3 hours on the nose and I love the drive up there. We went with the purpose of getting some Christmas shopping done, going to Whad'Ya Know at the Monona Terrace and just enjoying the city.

Friday night when we arrived, we checked into the Lowell Center where we stay - kind of the Madison version of the Iowa House. It's not too fancy, but for $80 a night it's pretty good. And the location is awesome. You can walk right out onto the State St. mall. We ate at the Great Dane Brew Pub which is a favorite of ours (and many others.) It's what a Brew Pub should be - excellent beer and excellent food. Carrie had some sort of vegetarian thingy and I had a delicious BBQ meatloaf covered in Onion Rings... mmmmmmm.

On Saturday morning we headed to the Marigold Kitchen - another favorite that Carrie discovered. It's very cozy and has delicious food and friendly people. Bottomless cups of coffee and their apple smoked bacon are yum! After a leisurely breakfast we headed to the Terrace for the radio show. We milled around a bit and called Sue to get her Christmas list (again - I forgot it.) We were second in line for the show and sat right in front. About 1/2 way through, Carrie got picked to read the 4 disclaimers and I was selected for the quiz. I WON! Big surprise - never heard anyone lose. You can hear the show here. Listen to PART 2 at about 15 minutes in. (December 2, 2006 show.) You can listen to the whole show too. I have it on CD if anyone wants a hard copy. Like an idiot, I didn't bring the camera and Carrie could have gotten a sweet shot of me right on stage - oh well. I have the CD anyway, and a signed copy of his book that Michael wrote "YO ROB, INSPECT THIS!" in. It was a great time.

After the show we did an afternoon of shopping on State Street and a little area to the South of Camp Randall stadium as well. All of it was very cool but perhaps the coolest store was a little kids clothing store called Wild Child. It was absolutely awesome. Great hand decorated clothes, cool German toys, neato baby carriers, and all thoughtfully done - organic fabrics, etc...

Sunday morning we headed home but not before stopping for breakfast at Mickie's Dairy Bar which is S of the stadium. Sorry Hamburg Inn but this place is even better. I had the most delicious blueberry pancake ever. Carrie had a sort of strange chocolate chip one. And the eggs and sausage were delicious.

The drive home was beautiful and sunny. A fun time if anyone ever wants to join us for the next go around.

GLAZED OVER

First off, i'd like to say that both Carrie and I are sad that we don't (and mostly SHE doesn't) blog as much anymore. We going to try to do better to keep people informed.

This past week... exactly a week ago, in fact, my Dad and I began working on the windows at our house. I had become annoyed with the prices I was getting for quotes from window companies and decided to order them from Lowe's myself. I was able to get 10 Pella vinyl windows for about 40% of the price. And they are all Low-E, double hung, double lock, etc... So I was pretty happy.

2 weeks ago they came in (the Lowe's robot called me) and Dad and I got started. I had ordered obscured-vis for the bathroom so I decided that we'd do that one first. The window came out pretty easily - pretty much what we expected and very similar to the old basement windows that I installed. We just cut through the old aluminum frames and ripped the whole thing out.

After we did that, we were able to clean up the wood, old glazing and aluminum with lots of scraping and cutting and then vacuuming the entire thing. What we discovered at this point was that my measurements were going to be slightly off - the existing wooden frames were slightly narrower than I'd anticipated and the dimension was hidden inside the old aluminum frame which was offset. That was kind of a bummer but there was nothing that could have really been done about it. So Dad headed to Contractor's Tool & Supply to purchase a Bosch pocket router which is a tool he'd been wanting anyway (I suspect he had fun playing with it and getting to use a new tool so much.) This was a godsend because it had a rail on it and allowed us (him) to go around the frame and rip a smooth section out on all sides. The first window was a bit of experimentation and work but we got it in by evening and I caulked it up and repaired all of the inside woodwork.

The next day we started bright and early and ripped through the windows all day, after a brief morning trip to Lowe's to get a bunch of caulk, and a few other supplies. By the loss of daylight Wednesday evening we all but the picture window installed which was really nice. Things went much smoother with our new method. Carrie took some shots of Dad and I working together.

I spent the following day getting lots of batt insulation stuffed into all of the sides followed by a nice tube backer rod for the caulk. The windows sat like that for a few days through the holiday and then Ron and Dad came in Sunday morning to help with the large picture window. After and hour or so we got that bad-boy out of there with only one small corner break. It was seriously glazed into the old frame. We then did the usual routing and cleaning and got it all screwed in. The rest of the day I spent doing lots of caulking inside and out and by nighttime I had everything sealed up. All that remains now is to get the inside touch up painting done and then I will probably repaint the white aluminum outside in the Spring (unless we get another warm spell.)

Things look so much better on the house and I know Carrie and I will love not having to do storm windows anymore, not having to put up plastic and (hopefully) not having condensation and frost all over our windows. I'm sure it will cut down on energy costs too and they look a million times better. Also, the double hung allows us to wash the windows from inside so i'm sure they'll be much cleaner a lot more often.

Lastly, I want to say how much fun it was working with my Dad. The time I got to spend with him I wouldn't trade for anything. Even though it was a couple days of hard work it didn't seem like it at all. It was mostly just fun. It's something that I wish I could do every day. Thanks Dad.

GAMEDAY WEEKEND

I know you will all be shocked to see that I am actually doing one of our blog postings. Hopefully I will get off my dead ass and start doing more of them in the future. Carrie and I are both busy with work so we don't get to do this as much as we'd like...

Last weekend was a huge weekend in Iowa City. ESPN GameDay was here for the Iowa football game against Ohio State who is #1 in the nation. At the time, Iowa was ranked #13. The game didn't go as well as we liked, but it was a one-in-a-lifetime event nonetheless. The entire city was absolutely nuts for 2 days, everyone was talking about the game.

On Friday afternoon, my friend Brian and I went down to the early GameDay presentation at Hubbard Park on the U of I campus near the student union. GameDay had set everything up down there and it was packed all afternoon. Then on Saturday morning, the official show took off and Carrie joined me down there along with John Downing for the festivities. The atmosphere was awesome, but the best part had to be the signs. Carrie and I are posing here next to one of our favorites. Not pictured was probably my top votegetter - "Troy Smith likes Unicorns" (with a nice rainbow.)

At the game the atmosphere was absolutely insane. The stadium was full to the brim about 45 minutes before kickoff which is about 45 minutes before it's usually full. The crowd was loud all game and often hurt my ears which is unusual as well. I have a picture here from our seats where Will and I were sitting:

Unfortunately we lost the game. But yesterday for homecoming we beat a hot Purdue team 47-17 and got ourselves back on track. The Hawks are looking good and it's been a fun year so far. We went to the parade on Friday night which Henry really seemed to enjoy. He spent a lot of time looking for Herky... which he's quite good at saying by the way. More to come...