Monday – Dinner at Sanaa’s

Posted on 4-Jun-09 by heyheyjp

Monday was spent hanging at the pool mostly. We then drove over to Kidani Village to have dinner at Sanaa’s. Sort of weird to park in a parking garage, but guess it beats a hot car or getting wet in the rain. Took the elevator up to first floor to go to lobby, and disappointed how much Kidani looks like a hotel. Great art work, don’t get me wrong, but just door after door.

Since we were there about an hour early, we sat out on the balcony and watched the animals. Finally went down to the restaurant and we were seated almost immediately. We started with an appetizer for two that was great. Pea and potatoe samoas, pulled duck and roasted califlower. The califlower was spicy, but not overly spicy. I had Tandoori Lamb and Pam had the Tandoori Chicken. Both had a great flavor and the 5 grain rice was nice and nutty. No bland white rice. I’m hoping that this restaurant doesn’t have its menu changed because the dishes aren’t appealing to the burger and chicken nugget crowd. It would be a shame to miss out on these wonderful dishes. Dessert was Coconut Rice Pudding for me and Cordamom-Butter Cake for Pam. Both were unusual. The cake had mango and cream, and we were instructed to have a piece of mango and a little cream with each bite. Definitely made the difference. I was expecting the rice pudding to be the consistency of tapioca with a coconut flavor, but it was a nice hearty pudding with firm rice to chew. Very nice.

Carrie, our waitress had suggested that if I was going to have wine with dinner to choose one of the flights that had been designed to showcase some wines that went together well. I choose the Johannesburg Flight which consisted of a Cabernet, a Shiraz and a Pinotage. Again, a great recommendation. Carrie came over at dessert time and told us she just got a printout of an email that was sent to Deb Wills of AllEars.net that had mentioned her (Carrie). She said Deb was seated just over the wall from us. I didn’t want to bother her at dinner, I would hate to be interrupted.

Drove home and spent a nice night just relaxing.

D23 Flowers and Fireworks Event

Posted on 4-Jun-09 by heyheyjp

So I joined D23. $75 to declare that I’m a Disney Nut. You can take a look at the perks yourself at the D23 site, but essentially, the ‘club’ is for the REAL Disney Nut. The only thing going on for D23 members was an Expo at Disneyland, and I wasn’t going to make that, but you do get a nice magazine 4 times a year, and the promise that other events would be forthcoming.

Well, a couple of days after joining, D23 announced a bunch of events. One of them was one that I could actually attend. It was the ‘D23 Flowers and Fireworks Event’. This last month was the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival. As part of that, there is a ‘Flower Power’ concert each weekend with a performer that was big in the 60’s or 70’s. This last weekend was the LAST weekend and Sunday was the LAST concert. Tony Orlando was the performer.

The ‘D23 Flowers and Fireworks Event’ provided VIP seating for the last concert of the day and then a private viewing of Illuminations with coffee and dessert. The website had announced the event, but said ‘check back later for registration information’. For the next 5 days or so I would check back, but nothing changed. One day at work, I loaded the page and kept it up in the background. I would occasionally check back and refresh the page to see if the information was up. FINALLY the link for registering appeared and I signed up. I’m glad that I perservered as I heard that it ‘sold out’ in one day. Now, on the confirmation page, it clearly stated that I was to get a welcome packet at Guest Relations at the main entrance to Epcot. But of course, I overlooked that and only saw that we should get to the American Gardens stage by 7:15pm for the show.

Pam and I drove over to the Boardwalk and parked so we could go in the back entrance to Epcot and get out quickly after the fireworks. I know . . . you’re not supposed to do this. I have no excuse. So we popped into Epcot around 5:00 and grabbed some dinner at the American pavillion. Nothing great, just cheeseburger and chicken strips.

I asked one of the cast members where to sign in, but he had no idea and pointed to the brick building at the rear center of the stage and said he thought we were to meet there before being seated. Pam and I sat in the shade of the outdoor tables at the American pavillion and I saw some other guests with the D23 event pass hanging around their necks. I walked over and asked and they said that we had to pick them up at Guest Relations outside the park at the main entrance. It was only 6:00 so we had plenty of time and took off to get our passes. It only took us about 10 minutes or so to walk to the front of the park and we got in line at Guest Relations that was running only 2 of the 3 windows. A gentleman at one of the windows must have been having trouble with something as we were STILL waiting 25 minutes later. The other window was servicing guests as fast a possible but the line was moving slowly. We were next in line for the other window when the 3rd window opened. We went over and the cast member went to a table of boxes in the back room to get our packet. We got it and made a mad dash back to the American Pavillion.

When we got back, there were a few other people standing back by the brick building, so we stood in a spot of shade. Some other folks joined us and as luck would have it, when it came time to be led down to the VIP section, we were at the HEAD of the line. We went in and were in the first row of the area behind the handicapped seating. Not right up front, but still very close. There were 6 rows of about 25 people each, so I’m guessing about 150 D23 people attending.

While waiting for the concert to start, I went through the packet. In addition to the passes (that we were wearing of course) there were two park maps, two Flower and Garden Festival pamphlets, a letter welcoming us to the event and two Fast Passes for Soarin’ that are good for a ride any time within the next two weeks.

The concert was great, good to hear a bunch of songs from my teens. In the middle of the concert, Tony pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and announced that there was a group in attendance that was the ‘bassman’ of Disney called . . . “D23”. He had us all stand up and during the rest of the concert would occasionally mention us, asking us to join in, etc. Very cool.

After the concert, we were asked to stay seated and then were ushered over to the viewing area just off the bridge by France. Lots of desserts spread out, supposedly favorites of Walt’s. I’m glad he liked ice cream floats! Nice to meet other D23’ers and to watch Illuminations from such a great vantage point. As we were leaving, we each received a bag of D23 pins, not the cloisonne type, very nice.

All in all a great start to the vacation.

WDW Trip Report

Posted on 3-Jun-09 by heyheyjp

Almost 11:00pm on Wednesday as I write this entry about the start of our trip on Saturday morning. We had a problem with Internet access until Pam got a tech up here yesterday to fix the problem. Anyway . . .

We dropped our Labradoodle, Teddy, off at the groomer that boards him on Saturday morning around 7:15. Got home and while Pam was showering, I packed the car, washed the windows and even gave it a quick polish with the spray wax.

We got on the road at 8:30 and made it all the way to Exit 53 in South Carolina around 8:15 pm when we pulled into a Holiday Inn Express for the night. We had stopped for fuel about a half an hour earlier and the stats are all on Fuelly.com. I think we averaged about 43 mpg on the way down. Not too bad for our first long highway trip. I’m really impressed with the VW Jetta TDI. Lots of power for a little 4 banger diesel engine. The diesel fuel was 3 – 5 cents cheaper per gallon than regular unleaded, so that felt even better.

We took off at 8:30 Sunday morning and pulled into Old Key West Resort at Walt Disney World around 1:00pm. I had checked-in online on Friday so they would have everything ready when we pulled in, but I wasn’t confident that we’d have a room ready since check-in time is 4:00pm. But we lucked out and our room was ready. That was great since we were to be at Epcot that night for a D23 Event (more on that next entry).

After we got our room keys, we picked up our Owner’s Locker at Bell Services. The locker was empty since we just joined, but we had brought a lot of stuff down to fill ‘er up! For those that don’t know, head over to Owner’s Locker to get the low down. Here’s a quick explanation though. For a fee, we rent a ‘locker’ (large lockable plastic tub). It stays down here and Owner’s Locker stores it for us. They drop it off when we check in and pick it up when we leave. We store all sorts of stuff in there that we use each time we come down. Now we don’t have to drag the stuff back and forth.

We started unpacking and got ready to head over to Epcot for the D23 Event.

eProductivity and GTD in Lotus Notes

Posted on 29-May-09 by heyheyjp

I downloaded the trial mail database and ran through the preview. AWESOME. If you are a GTDer, then all the terminology is familiar to you. Actions, ticklers, Someday/Maybe – it’s all there. I’ve still only scratched the surface because I tried it at work and can’t apply the template to my real mail file. So I’m going to sign up for the demo template again and apply to my home system. I use Lotus Notes as my mail/calendar system at home and have NOT applied GTD principles to my home life. Sort of stupid, I know. But ever since I got my BlackBerry Bold, I barely get into Notes at home. I keep up on incoming mail on the Bold and very rarely send any mail out. However, I DO keep my Next Actions in . . . well . . . NextAction! for the BlackBerry. A nice handheld solution, it uses the BlackBerry tasks to hold the next actions along with contexts and projects. This syncs with the ToDos in Notes and since the ToDos I believe are used by eProductivity there may be a nice synergy there. I’ll let you know. Maybe I’ll play with all this down in Florida this next week. Since we’re no longer park rats, we have quite a bit of nice relaxing free time.

Oh, and give me a few days to get this site set up. I had a blog running on my server at home, but after switching from Comcast to Verizon, I lost the ability to run a web server from home. ALMOST made me go back to Comcast.