My first week in Bradenton...

Alrighty, so I'm in paradise! This place is awesome! The weather is beautiful. We've had rain on and off all week, but it's not bad. It'll rain a lot for fifteen minutes or so, and then it clears upand is suny all day. I talked to my mom yesterday, and she was saying that the high in Fort Collins was only 55 degrees. Nothing but cold, dreary, dark rain for three days straight. And I just go outside and stand under a palm tree and smoke a cigarette. Oooohh, I love it!

So I started out the week by looking for a job. I thought that I had a job coming out here, but that changed. Color Wheel is a paint company based in Florida that is owned by the same corporation as Kwal, where I worked at in Fort Collins. Well, I thought I would be able to just transfer. I was in contact with the District Manager out here, and one of their stores close by had an opening. Well, I got ahold of him on Monday, but he told me that they had already filled the spot. Needless to say, I was just a little perturbed. I was kind of hoping to have a job right away, but oh well, it is what it is. My car shouldn't have made it out here, but it did. I'm here for a reason, and have a purpose, and now I'm just trusting that God will provide a job for me. I'm still looking though! Beating the pavement, going to all the different paint stores around here. Hopefully I'll find something in the next week or two.

I love it here, but it is different. It's tough not having anyone that I know around. I know my grandparents and my aunt that I'm staying with, but it's not the same as being around the people that you've known all your life, ya know? I just can't wait to find a job and get into my own place so that I can get some sense of normalcy going again.

The only bad thing that I can see about Florida: hurricanes. I'm not worried about them here in Bradenton and Sarasota, but it can still bring on some crappy weather, even if it hits on the east coast. Just now actually, I saw on the news an update on tropical Storm Fay. It's expcted to hit Florida sometime on Monday, and could possibly develope into a category 1 storm as it passes by Sarasota and St. Pete. I'll keep ya'll posted on what it does, but it could get interesting, so keep us in your prayers!

Tomorrow morning I'm going to go to Aunt Anne's church and scope it out, see if I like it and all. I really miss my old church Rez. Those sermons and Pastor John really were something else! Hopefully I can find a church around here that is similar to that. I think we might also try to get out to Disney World tomorrow afternoon, so that'll be fun!

Anywho, I've gotta go and watch Phelps win another gold medal, so I'll leave it at that!

Disney World day five...

And now onto day five at Disney World. We slept in pretty late and then went to IHOP for breakfast. After that we headed back over to Downtown Disney for the arcade. That place was awesome! Tons of old arcade games, along with a bunch of new ones. I hugged the pinball machines most of the time. I got the #4 high score on Spider-Man pinball. Woohoo! Some bragging rights!

So we hung out there all day long, and then headed out for Bradenton. Finally got in at close to midnight. It really started to hit me on the drive just how much I missed my family in Colorado. My nephew Zane and my niece Gracie. My parents and my sisters. This is a really big change for me. Our family is extremely close nit. Hell, Sarah was my roommate for almost two years! If that’s not being close to your sister, I don’t know what is! It’s tough being away from my family, but I had to do this for me. I was going nowhere in Colorado, and now I have a clear direction and a purpose, something to work towards.

It’s still gonna be tough though….

Disney World day four...

Okay, day four in Disney World. We had to get all of our stuff packed up last night so that we could check out of our resort this morning. Almost done with Disney, and then onward ho to Bradenton! We went to the Magic Kingdom this morning and finished off all of the rides that we had yet to do. Hit up the Haunted Mansion and Thunder Mountain Railroad, and, of course, rode Space Mountain a couple more times. :-) That’s not the fastest, best rollercoaster in the world, but it sure as hell is fun!

After that we headed over to Epcot. We only did a quick run through the World Showcase the other day, so we wanted to walk through it a little slower this time, and see more stuff and take a lot of pictures. We ate dinner in Morocco at a place called Marakesh. I had the Lamb Sausages for dinner, and holy cow, it was delicious! During dinner they had music and a belly dancer for entertainment. It was funny looking at some of the guys with they’re wives or girlfriends sitting around watching the belly dancer. The guys would be clapping along with the music with a big smile on they’re faces, and the women would just be staring at they’re food the whole time! Funny seeing them getting jealous like that ;-)

After that we headed over to the UK and hung out there until the fireworks started. There is a little pavilion that sticks out on the water in between the UK and Morocco that is an excellent place to sit and watch the fireworks. I was walking by it when some cast members were roping it off, so I stopped and asked them what was up, if there was some kind of a special event going on. There was a wedding reception, and the couple had reserved the pavilion to watch the fireworks. I had my Happy Birthday button on though, so they gave me tickets so that we could sit down there for the fireworks! That was pretty cool!

After the fireworks, we hung out for a little while longer and then decided to call it a day. We all wanted to go check out Disney Quest still, which is a five story arcade in Downtown Disney, so we got a cheap room at the Motel 6 in Kissimmee for the night. And by cheap, I mean cheap! The air conditioner didn’t work and they didn’t even stock the bathroom with bars of soap! Big difference coming from a resort t Disney World to the Motel 6.

Disney World day three...

Alrighty, day three, and we’re starting to get sore and tired from doing nothing but walking all day and standing in line. Ah, the price you pay for a few minutes of thrills at a time! ;-) We went to Animal Kingdom this morning and rode Everest and went to see the 3-D show “It’s Tough to be a Bug!” I love that Everest ride! It’s too short, but it’s really cool when the animatronic Yeti reaches down like it’s gonna grab you. Fun stuff! Ty and Trap hadn’t seen the Bug’s Life show yet, so that was really cool. The 3-D shows that they do in Disney are really impressive. They don’t just rely on the action going on onscreen, they have animatronics that pop out of the ceiling, or they splash you with with water when that happens onscreen. It really adds another dimension to the realness of the thing.

Well, like I said earlier, we were getting pretty tired of staying up until one in the morning and getting up a six to go do more stuff, so we decided to take it pretty easy today. After we got done at Animal Kingdom, we went back to the resort and just hung out at the pool for a couple of hours. It was kinda nice to take a break like that. We had already done just about all the rides, so it was great to be able to sit back and relax for a little while.

In the afternoon we went back over to Hollywood Studios to look around again. We ate at Pizza Planet for dinner. It was nice to spend less than ten bucks on dinner for once this trip! We rode some more rides and then went to stand in line for the new Toy Story ride. It was 11:15 pm when we got in line, and 12:45 when we got on the ride. Now, the ride was cool, but it certainly wasn’t worth the hour and a half long wait at midnight! Maybe if it was in the morning, and we weren’t so tired, but not at midnight. ;-)

Disney World day two...

Okay, second day in Disney World! Today we went to The Magic Kingdom in the morning (gotta love those Extra Magic Hours!) and then to Epcot in the afternoon. We ate dinner at the Mitsukoshi restaurant in Epcot Japan. Now that was some amazing food! This picture is of my sushi flower that I had for dinner. Prettiest food I’ve ever eaten. Making sushi really is an art form, just in the presentation alone.

After Epcot we went back to the hotel and swam for awhile. We rode Space Mountain a bunch of times and a couple of other little things, and then Mission Space and Soarin in Epcot. Soarin was cool, because of the effect and the feeling of flying in a hang glider, but I absolutely hated that ride! You see, I don’t have a fear of heights; I just have a fear of falling from them. I’ve never been on Soarin before, so I had no idea what to expect from it. You sit in these seats that just have a seatbelt and your feet are dangling there in front of you. That’s all well and good when your on the ground, but then they lift you up over this huge screen and start rocking the thing back and forth, and side to side, and I’m sitting there trying to grab onto something to keep myself in the seat! We’re going to go back to Epcot again on Thursday to ride some more rides and walk through the world showcase again.

Ugh, I hate heights….

Disney World day one...

We had planned on waking up really early at about six in order to get ready and be at Hollywood Studios first thing for when they opened early. Well, we actually got there at about 10:30. Needless to say, we all slept through the alarm. More specifically, I turned it off when it went off, with every intention of standing right up after that, and it never happened. ;-)

We got there eventually though, and it made for a very fun birthday for me! We rode all the rides that are there except the new 3-D Toy Story ride. That one had ridiculously long waits on it all day long, so we’re just planning on going to tomorrow night. They’re open three hours later than the general public if you’re a resort guest, so we’ll hit it up then! Anywho, I’ve been collecting shot glasses from every state we visited, so I decided to grab one from the Rockin’ Roller Coaster and the Tower of Terror rides to add to my road trip memorabilia. I also got a guitar pick for my new Strat *excited giggle* from the Rockin’ Roller Coaster ride!

It was Ty and Trapper’s first time in Hollywood Studios, so obviously neither of them had ridden the Tower of Terror before. For those of you reading this that haven’t been, you sit in the elevator shaft, and it takes you through a short passage way where they have some awesome holographic stuff going on, telling the story of the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Everything goes pitch black, and then they drop the elevator that your riding! Up and down, up and down, chicks and small children screaming the whole time! I didn’t tell Ty and Trap what to expect at all either! Ahh… what fun! Very frightening! ;-)

After we were done, tired, and hungry, we headed over to Planet Hollywood for dinner. I’ve never been inside one of those places before. Nice restaurant with entertaining stuff to look at all over the walls. Ty got a little tipsy on some wine though! It was funny hearing him stumble over some of his words all night! ;-) We got back to our room at the nice early hour of 1:oo am though, so we had plenty of time to sleep it off.

It is now seven in the morning on Tuesday, I’ve had my coffee and a muffin, and am ready to do it all over again today!