So after dealing with all the nonsense at the airport, I drove angrily to Disney World, without getting all excited when I passed through the main gate, or looking around for all the signs and the attractions you can see over the tree-line. I just parked the car at the hotel and stomped into the lobby and as corny as it sounds, all that anger and frustration just vanished. The hotel itself is impressive; I put some pictures up on flickr, mostly for Skip but for anyone who wants to take a look. But better than that was how friendly everyone was — the bellhops, the people at the front desk, the people working at the restaurant. And it wasn’t a case of special treatment for employees, since there was nothing identifying me as an employee. And it wasn’t really anything particularly above-and-beyond, just a general level of friendliness and genuinely trying to make things easier for guests. The cynical-minded could point out that you pay a lot for that kind of treatment, but I just say that it’s nice that it even exists.

The big attraction of the lodge is the ability to see animals in the savannas all around the hotel. I didn’t see all that many — a few giraffes and a couple of zebras — but there were still plenty of neat touches. At night, near the pool, they have a cast member who gives you night-vision goggles to check out the animals. During the day they have cast members in the lobby with smaller displays of insects and other creatures for kids to check out. In the area between the two restaurants, the hosts and hostesses play African drums and invite guests to play along while they’re waiting for a table. And there are various displays about ecology and African culture and history all throughout. It’s exactly what a Disney hotel should be.

One of the worst things about losing my luggage — apart from having to wear the same pair of underwear for three days straight — was being on the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and realizing that I’d become That Guy. You know, That Guy. Mid 30’s to early 40’s. Alone at an amusement park. In the single rider line. Pale, glasses, kinda chubby. Wearing a shirt from that park or a different one, bonus points for a theme park in a different country. Likely wearing a goatee and/or a ponytail and/or a single earring. Waits for the front row, gets off the ride quietly. Walks past the photo booth at the end, glancing at the picture but without stopping. The male equivalent of the crazy cat lady.

And even though I fit all kinds of qualifications (I hadn’t noticed I’ve gotten fat again until I had to buy new clothes), I wasn’t put off by it until I found myself in the front row of the coaster sitting next to another That Guy, except I was the only one in the Animal Kingdom Lodge T-shirt. And then it all came crashing down. The ride was still cool, though.

I wasn’t able to actually get to a park until 7pm, and the parks closed around 8 and 9. So all I saw of Disney-MGM was the Rock’n'Roller coaster once, and the Tower of Terror twice. That was as cool as ever — seriously, it’s so much better than the California version, because they understood that the drop is only the climax of the ride, not the whole ride. After that I took a boat over to the Swan & Dolphin hotel, walked past the Boardwalk over to Epcot, and went in to get some fish and chips and watch the fireworks. Four of my favorite Disney World things back-to-back, not bad for two hours.

The rest of the trip was taken up either by work or by dealing with the airline. Still, nice work if you can get it. And driving around “backstage” was really, really cool. At Disneyland, it was just kind of off-putting, like seeing Space Mountain with the lights turned on. But at Disney World, the parks are so big that the backstage areas are impressive in and of themselves. I’ve been going there for years, and I’d thought I understood just how big and complicated the whole place was. I had no idea — it’s really a big city. With really expensive food.

And the last bit (I hope) about my experiences with American Airlines: I’d gotten a voice message last night, while I was still on the plane, saying that they had my bag and would be sending it to my San Francisco address. I got another call this morning, telling me that the bag was at SFO and they’d be delivering it to my San Francisco address, which was correct, and telling me that they’d be in the area between 8 and 12 and would I prefer them to call me on my cell phone when they were in the area, or just leave it on the doorstep. I got yet another call this afternoon, telling me that they had the bag, but they needed my address. I pointed out that they had already called me twice with the correct address, but they needed it again. Then tonight at around 11pm, a guy showed up at the door holding the bag, said just “hello,” had me sign a piece of paper, and then walked off saying “thank you.”

At this point, now that I’ve got underwear and toothpaste and clean socks, it’s just comical instead of annoying.

It’s 2 AM Pacific and I’ve been up for about 23 hours. The only things still keeping me awake are frustration and the cryogenic conditions of my bedroom. I’ve had about eight different American Airlines representatives thank me for my patience about eleven times, but what they don’t seem to realize is that the last of my patience got used up about eight hours ago, when they told me the carry-on bag that I haven’t seen since Monday was going to be finally arriving in Orlando on Wednesday night at 7:53, 54 minutes after my flight back home was scheduled to leave. Which explains why I was standing outside SFO in Walt Disney World shorts and an Animal Kingdom Lodge T-shirt at 1:30 AM in 50-degree San Francisco September weather, writing blog entries in my head to prevent the onset of hypothermia.
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Tomorrow morning I’m taking a flight down to Orlando to spend three days at Walt Disney World. I’d be a lot more excited, but it is a business trip, even if we are going to get two nights free. And being at Disneyland alone is weird but tolerable, while Disney World is more like being alone in a city. I’ll have the co-workers around during the day and likely at night, but still… it’s a business trip. There’s a weird disjoint there that I’m still wrapping my head around. It’ll be interesting to see it on an “adult” trip; my family and I have been taking basically the same vacation for the past decade and a half, so we’ve got our routine down (go on a ride, complain about how hot it is, repeat until it’s time to go home).

But it’s a business trip on which I’ll get to ride the Tower of Terror as many times as possible, so that’s not a bad thing. Plus, I’ll probably get a chance to see some of the backstage areas (but not the tunnels, because we’re not going to the Magic Kingdom). It was weird going into Disneyland through the back — walking around a bunch of warehouses and alleyways and turning the corner and all of a sudden being in Toontown. Kind of makes the place seem smaller and cuts a notch off the “magic.” It’s still neat to see, though.

And they’re putting us up at the Animal Kingdom lodge, which I’ve never been to but have heard great things about. The downside is that there’s no internet access, so I’ll be blogless for the next few days. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Well, dang. I finished watching the rest of “Firefly.” I can see how the early adopters, and the cast and crew, were upset at its cancellation. But if I were looking to be quoted in trade papers, I would call it “a flawed gem.” A lot of it is just brilliant, and a good bit of it has potential but was badly handled. And there’s this layer of smarm underneath that bugs me.
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Call Rooter Bong, that’s the name, and away go troubles down the… uh… what do you call that… thing? where it’s like the water just… goes away… like… whoa.

The people next door are getting some kind of plumbing work done. Hourly rates are the lowest in the city, but they take a long time. Funny, though, it doesn’t seem that long afterwards.

The difference in hourly rates is made up for by the expenses. Because beef jerky, chips, cookies, and pizza ain’t cheap.

And is it just me, or does “Rooter Bong” sound like the name of a chirpy sidekick character in an Indian animated kids series?

I was looking for something to fill the Sydney Bristow-shaped hole in my heart, and I found Serenity. Err, “Firefly.”

Mac got me the DVDs a while ago, and we’d planned to watch them together but either forgot or got distracted by “NewsRadio” and World of Warcraft. I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying the series. I’d seen the show before, of course — I’m realizing that of the seven I’ve seen on the DVDs so far, there’s only one that I hadn’t seen when it was originally aired. They just didn’t stick with me, for various reasons.

One is that it’s full-to-bursting with Whedonisms, and a little of that goes a long way. When high-school-to-college-aged characters use little catch-phrases and wry self-aware commentary, it’s endearing because that’s how nerdy outcast high-school-to-college-aged people talk. When gruff-but-lovable outlaws do it, it just comes across as fey. That tone of “look at me! look at how clever I am!” was just a little overwhelming when I first saw it.

And that carried over into everything, which was reason two. Having no sound in space bugged me because it was accurate, but too self-aware accurate. It’s a very minor thing, but it just came across as “yes we’re making an adventure sci-fi show but we’re defying convention because we know that there’s no sound in space because we’re so smart.” Yes, the silence seemed smug. That’s probably more a sign that I was burned out on “Buffy” and “Angel,” but there it is. What was more troubling was how they kept doing the shaky-zoom-cam thing with digital shots, which was a gimmicky effect that was the equivalent of lens flare for the late-90’s-early-00’s. (Attack of the Clones used it too, and I hated it.)

And the last is Fox’s fault, apparently, because of the way they presented it. The first episode aired is definitely not the strongest and doesn’t give as good a first impression. And it’s only by seeing the episodes in the order in which they were intended to be seen that the whole thing comes together. The characters really become characters, and their conversations seem less like overly self-conscious attempts to be clever and more like the way these people would actually talk to each other. The attempts at intrigue were deftly inserted, and weren’t as ham-handed as they’d seemed watching bits and pieces out of order with commercial breaks. The characters do stop being one-note, and the relationships do develop realistically.

And there’s continuity! They pick up a herd of cattle at the end of one episode, and they drop them off at the beginning of the next!

So the fans can wail and gnash that the show got cancelled, but I’m looking forward to two more discs and the episodes that I haven’t seen yet because they were never aired. Maybe things will change dramatically once I see it develop more, but at the moment I’m not all that upset that it got cancelled. It just feels more like a story arc than an ongoing series; I don’t particularly care how this world develops, I just want to know what happens to the characters. I want a story with a beginning, middle, and end — the kind of story you’d find not in a series, but, say, a movie.

And I don’t care what Joss Whedon says; the show is such a rip-off of “Cowboy Bebop.” Even if they didn’t intend it to be. Seeing as how “Cowboy Bebop” is one of my favorite television series of all time, that’s high praise, not a criticism.

I’d always heard about the “Seattle Depression,” but I never understood it until I moved to San Francisco.

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time knows that I’m nocturnal by default, and left to my own I’ll gradually switch to up all night (when I’m convinced I get “my best ideas”) and asleep through the day (when there’s nothing good on television anyway). I’m left wondering why I, who’s known me longer than anyone else, would decide to take a job working from home, but that’s a whole separate post if not its own weblog.

So I’ve been getting to sleep later and later and waking up later and later, and getting stressed out on all fronts, and getting more frustrated with work that has become a big impenetrable wall, and always waking up to a big gray fog covering everything. Not even waking up to darkness, which is depressing but kind of exciting. Just the fog that makes everything colorless and faded and seeming like the world just doesn’t exist past my block.

But yesterday I had to get up to go to the wedding of one of Mac’s friends, which meant I was exhausted by 10 pm, which meant I got home and fell asleep around midnight. And today I got up at 10 (and 10 hours of sleep doesn’t seem so slothful when you consider that I got about 4 the night before) and the sun was out! It really comes out in the morning; it was no myth! I felt like Noah getting the olive branch for the first time after several attempts resulting in nothing more than wet, hungry doves.

Sure, it’s obvious to anyone else, but still it’s remarkable to me how much a difference it makes. All the stress I’ve been going through seems manageable. I finally took out the trash and made a more solid resolution to take care of the dishes in the sink. Behind in my work? No problem; I got four good ideas just while sitting here. My jack-ass neighbor planting his fat ass on the steps next door to stare at people? Doesn’t bug me. Reading some right-wing asshole on a weblog saying that Hurricane Katrina and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were God’s retribution against the moral decay of New Orleans and Manhattan, and that Arnold Schwarzeneggar saved California from a disaster by voting against the gay marriage bill? Well, he’s welcome to his opinion!

I love the song “What a Wonderful World” and no matter how many times I listen to it, it still gives me the chills for being so earnest and uplifting. Used to be it was the line, “I see friends walk by saying ‘How do you do?’, What they’re really saying is ‘I love you.’” Today, it’s just the line, “I see trees of green and skies of blue.” A whole lot better than the monochromatic chill and listening to “Like the Weather” by 10,000 Maniacs — I was getting afraid I’d have to start listening to Morrissey or something.

And it’s going to be a long winter.

That’s it? That’s the big climax for season 3? (Of “Alias.” In case anyone reading thought there was a chance I’d be talking about anything else.)

I can’t even tell if it warrants a “spoiler” warning, but whatever.
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