Long story short, alenxa needed to use up some vacation time, fast, so we ended up taking two weeks at the end of March. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize until later that our tickets for Wicked were smack in the middle (tonight, to be precise), which meant no two-week trip because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of trying to exchange the tickets.
We’ll be going to Las Vegas next week. This week was mostly hanging around, not having to go to work.
Saturday: Helped andrea_wot move into her new apartment. Later drank my annual Murphy’s Stout in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.
Sunday: I went to Wizard World LA. My con report got linked on The Beat.
Monday-Wednesday: Expeditions to Halloween Club (Katie’s planning a new costume for Comic-Con) and Fry’s (new video card). Hooked up the spare monitor my brother gave us when he moved to Florida. Discovered our current switch setup couldn’t handle more than 1024×768 without serious ghosting. Back to Fry’s for a new switch. Watched several more episodes of Battlestar Galactica season one. Invented a drink: 1 shot mango rum, splash of orange liqueur, fill the rest of the way with 1 part pineapple juice, 1 part cream soda, leaving room for a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Thursday: Disneyland — for the first time in maybe 5 years. There are definite advantages to visiting in the off-season, during a weekday… like the 5-minute wait for Pirates of the Caribbean. Thankfully, the changes to align it with the movies were minimally invasive, and the last view of Jack Sparrow demonstrates some seriously impressive motion capture. Some other nice updates to Haunted Mansion and Jungle Cruise. The new “wildest ride in the wilderness!” recording at Big Thunder Mountain, however, is a travesty. Splash Mountain and the train were closed. They seem to be piratifying Tom Sawyer’s island. Pirates, Indy and Big Thunder kept breaking down, but we still managed to hit all three (some of them twice). It was odd to see fruit carts all over the place. It’s actually possible to eat mostly healthy food at Disneyland now. Finished off the day with dinner at the Blue Bayou.
Friday: Took the car in in preparation for the road trip. Then spent the rest of the day hanging out at home. I mostly worked on my website, while Katie mostly tried out new games.
Now I’m looking at the pre-trip to-do list, trying to figure out how I’m going to get everything done in the next two days and go up to LA tonight and get together with friends tomorrow. (And yes, “post to LiveJournal” is on the list. One item to cross off!)