A Birthday at Walt Disney World

The Disney Blog is running a little contest, and to enter, I have chosen to describe a birthday that I spent at Walt Disney World.

Mine was September, 2002. My friend Daniel was unemployed at the time, I was dealing with a very stressful work project, so we both needed a bit of an escape. We didn't plan to travel there explicitly for my birthday (I would normally prefer that the day just pass by quietly), but Daniel decided that he was going to try to make it a memorable one. With all that extra time on his hands, he scoured the Internet looking for fun WDW birthday things to do. And decided to do every one of them. Well, not every one, but he did try to fit a few into the day.

Of course, it all didn't go as planned. He requested that a birthday card be delivered to the room, and it didn't arrive that day, or the next, or the next... Daniel can be pretty persistent, and kept at them. Balloons and a card were finally delivered on the day we were to depart. I got to enjoy them for about 10 minutes before we checked out. I remember trying to give the balloons away at the Ticket and Transportation Center parking lot, but no one wanted any part of them ("no one" meaning the parents, of course).

We started off the day at the Disney/MGM Studios, where Daniel made sure that I got an "It's My Birthday!" pin. We enjoyed the park until after lunchtime, when we suddenly had to make a detour over to the Grand Floridian. Daniel surprised me with a wonderful chocolate cake from the GF's bakery. He had ordered it a few days before, and understood that they would deliver it to our resort room. However, for some reason, they wouldn't deliver it, hence the sudden side trip. We couldn't carry the cake around with us all day, so we had to eat the entire thing right then and there.

Did I mention that we were scheduled to attend the Ice Cream Social at the Garden Grill an hour later? With our bellies full of cake, facing an early dinner at Alfredo's, there was just no way we could have all that ice cream too, so we cancelled that. We had a great dinner at Alfredo's, though, which included a birthday cannoli and being serenaded by all the Italian waiters. A wonderful ending to a memorable day!

A New Toy

I do love electronic gadgets! It's a struggle resisting the urge to own one of each. However, my recent trip to San Diego got me too close to some of the latest GPS technology - NeverLost was in our Hertz rental car. Pretty cool stuff! I had purchased a small handheld Garmin GPS a few years back, but it contained only very basic maps, and was really more useful for hiking than driving. I knew after our first use of NeverLost that I was going to have to get an upgraded model for myself. It made driving in a strange town more fun than stressful. At times it almost seemed like there was an additional person in the car helping us along.

After a little research, I decided on a Garmin nuvi 350. Reviews seemed to be pretty favorable, and I especially liked that:

• it is TTS (Text to Speech) capable, so it can actually tell you the name of the road onto which it wants you to turn;
  
• it has a built-in MP3 player (Normally I hate when they cram too much stuff into one device (I still don't get camera phones), but since I like to listen to podcasts on long drives, I thought this would come in handy).
  

My nuvi arrived yesterday afternoon, and I just had to take it out on its maiden drive (a quick trip to my sister's house and back). Overall, it seems to work very well. The volume seems reasonable, the voice is mostly understandable. It did make a few strange route choices, but it still got me to where I wanted to go, and I learned a couple of new roads along the way. I think I'll keep it!

I can't believe I'm doing this.

I've always thought that blogs were for people that were craving attention, or thought they were more important than they really are. But more and more lately I've found myself feeling isolated from the rest of the world. I spend a lot of time in front of the computer (thanks to work and the Internet), and way too much time in front of the TV (thanks to my DVR). And I'm kind of on the shy side, so I'm not very comfortable posting on forums and popping into chat rooms unless I have specific information I want to convey. Lots of passive time watching and reading, and very little time interacting with real human beings.

So I thought I'd give blogging a try. Besides giving me a chance to practice my writing skills, I'm hoping it'll make me feel like I am reaching out to the world, sharing parts of my life and my thoughts. And with any luck, maybe someone will reach back in, and I might make a new friend or two. I guess I'm the one who is craving attention now.