July 2004 Archives

Larisa speaks in her husband's stead

You might call it quirky or weird. Most families have family reunions. Us, we take it a step further and have family conference. Sometimes I joke about how weird we are but I have to be honest-- I found family conference very uplifting this year. Weird or not I'm glad we still do it. Of course it's not all meetings. I'd say most everyone had a blast this year, judging by the excited conversation following each day's activities.

Mmm... so tasty and refreshing. Not to mention terribly high in calories, heh.

The Hulk roller coaster

The Dudley-Do Right log ride

The Dueling Dragons (another fun coaster)

A view from Jurassic Park

Jesse and I, soaked from riding Dudely-Do Right a few times in a row.

The question is, why is Thurl Bailey a celebrity in the SU! world?

Probably only because these demos know he's somewhat famous in the real world. Just say "NBA" and they're lining up for autographs. Besides, you can't miss him-- It's kinda hard to blend in at a convention such as this!

(in the SU! world, my boss is a celebrity... only in the SU! world.)

(at the make & take loop I worked)

Rolling out the red carpet at the convention center. Everything pretty much took shape today with not a heck of a lot of setup left to do. Mar and I finished our work for the day around 3:30pm, so we headed back to our hotel, got into swimming suits, and spent some time at the pool. Mar feels somehow inadequate because she doesn’t have the tan she normally has at this time of year, and so she aims to rectify that. The water at the pool wasn’t terribly cold—it’s probably as expensive to cool here as it is to heat in Utah, heh.

After that we changed and went to the staff dinner (filet mignon, not bad at all), then headed out to the mall / to see a movie. I have to say that while Anchorman has it’s share of not-so-funny pranks and it started off a bit blah, it ended up being hilarious—I laughed pretty hard. The dog is classic as was the showdown between all the different television news teams (with the cameos by people like Ben Stiller as the Spanish news network anchorman, hehe). Overall pretty classic—I may have to see that one again.

Now that is what I call a big butt.

Another blurry night shot from the mall. I like outdoor malls.

Raggedy Ann in front of FAO Schwartz, which is closed down.. I dunno about you but Raggedy Ann looks evil.

First day of setup. The convention center is seriously huge—the biggest in the nation, I believe. I thought it was pretty decent sized when I first saw it, then I realized that it was only an extension of a much bigger convention center on the other side of the road. Sheesh!

So to keep my days “eventful”, some waiter at lunch (Hotel catered lunch) dumped a whole entrée on the back of my shirt—pasta with shrimp, after which he grabbed a towel and tried to wipe my back off. A little embarrassing I guess, but a lot more embarrassing for him, poor guy. Good thing I brought extra shirts.

I should mention that the weather here is very reminiscent of the summer weather in Korea, though I think Korea was probably hotter. I say this because I recall days in Korea where I would walk outside at 10 in the morning and be covered in sweat within a matter of minutes. Here it takes a while longer to reach that point but it still bears a lot of similarities—the mugginess, the way it doesn’t ever really cool down outside after the sun goes down but remains sticky,

Fortunately my hotel room has A/C. The convention center will not have A/C until convention starts, so it’s nice and hot and muggy in there while setting up. After convention starts, though, the worst of it will be walking between the hotel and the convention center—no big deal. Going to Disney World and Island of Adventure, on the other hand…

Mar and I thought we’d hit the mall and catch “The Anchorman” at the theater tonight—but after returning to our separate rooms to relax for an hour or so after dinner, we found we had no energy to go out. Must be the time zone change and climate. So we ended up in my room watching one of my all-time favorite movies: The Burbs.

Well, my flight departed from SLC airport at 8:30am this morning. Had about an hour layover in Dallas, and then boarded my flight for Orlando. About an hour into this leg of the flight, I started to wonder if there was anything blog worthy on my travels to Orlando and concluded that it was pretty uneventful. Knock on wood. Within a matter of minutes the captain comes on the intercom and tells us the weather radar isn’t functioning and that we cannot land safely in Orlando without the radar because of potentially hazardous weather—so instead we were to land in Atlanta. Joy. So they land us in Atlanta and book new international flights for people going to So. America and the Bahamas, while us Orlando-bound people just sat on the plane. They did fix whatever was wrong with the radar (rumor has it that it was just unplugged or something, heh) and after telling us a million times that they were finishing the final paperwork and getting a new head count (since some people had left for other flights out of Atlanta to their destination), we finally got in line to leave… it still took another 20 minutes to get off the ground since we weren’t scheduled to be there. Finally arrived in Orlando at about 7:30pm eastern standard time. It took friggin 10 hours to get from Salt Lake to Orlando. I could almost have flown to Korea in that amount of time. The worst part was sitting on that plan for over 5 hours, half the time not even moving. Oh well—it gave me something to blog about. And with a window seat I got to take a number of cool pics…

Orlando is beautiful though, lots of pics to come, I’m sure… I’ll be a bit palm tree-happy.

I can tell this month is going to be awesome for movies.

Yesterday I saw Spider-man 2 with Jeff, Dan, and Steve (Jeff had free tickets through work again and invited us. Jeff is the coolest.) I'm not a huge Spider-man fan or comic book fan, but I really do enjoy a lot of the marvel movies that have come out lately. Though I thought the first Spider-man was well done, I wasn't awed by it as many.

Now, previews usually look cool. Spider-man 2 looked very cool. I've been looking forward to it for a while now and almost went to the midnight showing just because I'm a geek and miss the midnight showing fan mania. Initial reviews were promising, though I didn't read any myself before seeing the film. People were saying it was better than the first, and others were saying that it was the best super-hero movie of all time.

I'll agree. Better than the first and perhaps the best super-hero movie ever made. Human drama, killer action sequences, and humor all balanced into the best movie I've seen this year. I left the theater surprised by how much I really enjoyed this movie, though I might be missing something by not being a hardcore spidey fan, heh. There's always more excitement when you're a big fan.

When all is said and done, I find myself asking the same question about Spider-man / Peter Parker that I have always asked about Superman and Clark Kent.... what the heck does he do with his clothes when he rips them off to become his superhero self? Does he stop running and hide his clothes somewhere or is that the reason Peter is so broke (besides not being able to balance a part time job and his spidey duties) is that he is always having to buy new clothes after every time he fights crime?

After last weeks rant I had a related experience today.

This time it's a different situation. I'm sitting at my desk working with my earphones in when I feel a tap on the shoulder. It's Colleen, with whom I used to work in another department. She's got a fairly new baby in her arms (has to be within a month or 2 old, I neglected to ask). She'd come to show me her newest Grand-daughter. I smiled and made a really lame attempt to say how cute the baby was. Of course it was cute-- much cuter than newborn "not quite done cooking yet", but it was funny that I just didn't have any of the gah-gah mush in me to respond with.

Some people might tell me that I'll change when I become a parent. I kinda wonder, though... heh.