ill blogging for the holidays

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So I’ve been sick the last couple of days … what fun! Not nearly as bad as my first year in Florida when I spent Christmas Day passed out in bed, mind you, but certainly not having a very good time with it all, either. It all hit me out of the blue Sunday night when we got back from the parks to our hotel room and I was miserable straight on ’til morning … we actually ended up leaving Monday morning instead of spending our last day at Disney, but part of that can also be attributed to the fact that it was only 45 degrees outside when we woke up, and we both agreed that even in good health that’s just way too cold to spend the day running around Disney World! 🙁

But it was a fun couple of days while it lasted, and we definitely both needed the vacation and some time for just the two of us. Candlelight Processional was really good again this year (our celebrity host was Andie MacDowell). I particularly enjoyed watching the orchestra play, as we were closer to the front this time around, and I made a vow to get there even earlier so we can sit in the middle up front next time to provide an even better view. Regardless, it’s a good show regardless of my own personal beliefs and I’m glad that it’s becoming something of a tradition for us.

We didn’t too much for rides, as we spent more time looking at Christmas decorations and taking photos, but there were definitely some notables in both directions. Spaceship Earth was doing a soft-opening since its refurbishments, and I wasn’t really impressed by the new version at all. I’ll save my rants for a full-fledged column of sorts, but let’s just say that as it stands, I enjoyed the post-attraction games more than the attraction itself. :< Everest was wild as always and I’m even getting better about putting my arms up on rollercoasters – kind fun when you just let go! Also, not exactly an attraction, but IllumiNations at Epcot was particularly “special” Saturday night, in that we ended up getting pelted with ash during the last part of the show … apparently it was either too windy or not windy enough, and as much as we both love that show, we agreed that had it been our call, it would’ve just gotten cancelled altogether that night.

Back to pictures, though … I took quite a few over the course of about two days – actually 729 to be exact! In my defense, though, I’ve gotten a little bit more serious about taking pictures over there in that if I see something that I like, I’ll take a dozen or more shots instead of just one to make sure that I get something worth keeping – especially with all of the Christmas lights that we saw over the weekend. I just finished going through them tonight and surprisingly found about 200 of them weren’t bad, which sounds like a great time to segue into my new photo galleries:



View Photos from ICE! @ Gaylord Palms Resort

View Photos from Our Disney World Christmas … 2007 Edition

I’ve been doing a lot of uploading over the past couple of weeks – I guess I never really realized just how huge my previous galleries were, but I’m currently at a little over 800 photos online and probably have another 500-600 to go, not counting archives for Disney and the Everglades. Those are getting saved for last because I’m pulling out images here and there to also include in separate galleries of solely Disney images – the shots without family and friends, that is – because a lot of people always seemed to like those and I eventually want to try throwing up a little advertising to see what happens. So feel free to explore anywhere around the Gallery as it is from those links, but just understand that there’s a lot still to be done and if you get any errors along the way, feel free to let me know! My photo galleries are sort of my first controllable step towards getting content back online and hopefully I’ll have more to say next week, but in the meantime enjoy the happy Christmas pictures and be merry… 🙂

ending on a geekier note

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http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2086153791&size=o

This is pretty cool – a poster depicting 56 variants of geekiness by Scott Johnson (of the webcomic Extra Life)

He’s also selling them as posters here – http://myextralife.com/56geeks/ – could make a neat Christmas present for that very special geek in your life!

also, FINALLY a new LiveJournal theme!

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I’ve had the last one for what, three years now?! This one caught my eye because of Christmas and all, but I must admit that they’ve got a lot more themes now than they had when I first picked the green and brown one, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find a replacement in another month. In fact, I already saw a couple when I was discovering this one.

Now if I could only get somebody to draw me some new icons…

touchy about tipping

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I know I’m probably going to push a few buttons with this post, but I’ve just got to know … does anyone else think that holiday tipping is just a little bit excessive???

I ask because over the weekend, we’ve gotten solicitations from two people already that honestly would’ve never really came to mind – our garbage collector and the newspaper delivery person. The garbage collector probably rubbed me the wrong way the most, as I went out to collect our empty garbage can Saturday afternoon to also find in our driveway a little card in a plastic bag filled with rocks to hold it down, with the card saying happy holidays and thoughtfully listing our specific driver’s home address. Now that I think about it, I guess I have seen the newspaper one before, as today I picked up my Sunday paper in several pieces spread across the driveway because the bag had broken and amidst the papers was a similar card and return address.

Now I should note that I thought I was pretty good at tipping where I was supposed to – wait staff at restaurants, bartenders, valets, whoever cuts my hair at Supercuts, and even the bus driver at the airport – because I’ve always known these to be service industries where tipping is accustomed. Mind you, this makes sense to me because these people either A) make a lower than normal wage and tipping makes up the difference, such as in the food industry; or B) do something that they don’t have to do, like the bus driver at the airport welcoming us home and lifting our bags onto the shuttle bus for us. What I don’t get is the rest of the folks who also seem to expect tips, even though they already make a normal wage. People who work behind the counter at delis or convenience stores who then put out “tip jars” are a good example of this…

I don’t know, I guess I’ve always just considered how much I pay for garbage collection to cover all the bases, or likewise with the newspaper and the “delivery charge” that they automatically tack onto my bill as it is. I do reporting at my regular job and I certainly don’t get tipped for every single chart or spreadsheet that I e-mail out! Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way … that it should be considered more of a Christmas bonus than just a tip, but it still just sits funny with me. According to the charts at the bottom of this article, we’d be looking at almost $100 just on the low end of holiday tipping if we opted to follow this trend. Does it make me a Scrouge to think that that sounds just a little crazy?