Some Pictures - Second Day in Florida; 10/20/10

My friend M had skating lessons (?) in the morning, and we went to watch her.



At the Jacksonville, Beach:

Traveling Noelle:




Burying L:




Checking out a cool crab skeleton:


L burying C:


Seagull in flight:

Disneyworld

A not so summarizing summary of Disneyworld - 10/22/10:

We arrived at Magic Kingdom close to 8:30. We parked, rode the tram to the monorail, and took the monorail to Ticket & Transportation. The Pre-Show was already going when we arrived, but we were able to see the charactres get off the train as we were getting our tickets. Our friends hadn't arrived yet, so we walked around Main Street. Mom bought a floppy sunhat, and we took pictures in front of the castle. There were some characters doing meet-and-greets (Daisy, Goofy, Pinnochio are the ones I remember). We didn't do any meet-and-greets, though I wish we had. I also got out the doll I brought and took pictures of her...and got no funny glances or odd looks. I believe I will be more brave about taking dolls out in public now after that experience.
Our friends got there close to 9:45 if I rememeber correctly. We met them at the entrance, and then walked to Tomorrowland: Space Mountain.
I hated it. I don't like rollercoasters, and Space Mountain was no exception. It didn't even go upside down or hang anywhere. It just was fast, and in the dark. Well, the dark didn't really matter because I had my eyes closed. I focused on two things...clenching the bar really, really tight and breathing slow. Yeah, so I'm not going one of those again. Next, we went to Buzz Lightyear's ride. It was basically just a large video game. Somewhere in the middle, we got stuck and had to wait about five minutes while they un-stuck it. They came on the intercom about every thirty seconds and warned us to "For your safety, please stay seated in your car. The ride will start again momentarily. Star command out."
I don't remember the order of the next rides we did. I know we at some point walked past Alice and the Mad Hatter doing a meet-and-greet. I would have liked to stop there....I like Alice. :-) To the left of their meet-and-greet area was a nice Alice in Wonderland garden display. I took pictures of Traveling Noelle (the doll) in front of it, and Mom said that she overheard someone excitedly exclaim, "Oh look, it's an American Girl doll!". That was the extent of the acknowledgement I got while taking pictures of Noelle. :-)
As for the rides, we went on the Winnie the Pooh ride, Prince Charming's carousel, Snow White's Scary Adventures and It's a Small World (didn't get the song stuck in my head...I couldn't even remember it when I tried). Then we had lunch at Peco Bill's (I had a very yummy chicken wrap), and saw Woody and Jessie from Toy Story doing meet-and-greets. Next, (I think) we went to the Pirates of the Caribean ride. I didn't really enjoy that very much. But it's okay. Goofy was doing meet-and-greets dressed as a pirate at the front of that ride. Then we went on the Jungle Cruise ride. You could tell our pilot/captain/whatever-you're-supposed-to-call-him was reciting a script, but he still was pretty funny with the jokes. He adlibbed a little bit, I think. Next came the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. That was really fun, and very realistic. I've read the book and seen the movie, and they were pretty good with the details about all the stuff in it.
We walked back past the castle and I took a few pictures of Noelle in front of it. They then started up a show, and we watched that a little bit. They had the traditional characters out first (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy), then three of the princesses (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White) and their princes came out on stage and waltzed around. After they left, Peter Pan popped out. We left after that, it was getting kind of warm just standing around and watching. I would have liked to see the whole thing though. I think we went on another ride after that, but I don't remember what it was. We then went and grabbed ground space for the Dream Come True parade. That was really cool...six large floats with lots of the Disney Characters on them, including: Mickey, Minnie, Peter Pan, Pinnochio, Alice, The Mad Hatter, Burt, Mary Poppins, Aladdin (I think), Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, Ariel, Tiana (From the Princess and the Frog), and some more. Characters like Donald Duck, Chip 'n' Dale, the Stepmother and Evil Stepsisters from Cinderella, and some more I didn't recognize walked around between the floats.
I don't remember what we did after the parade. I think we went on at least one another ride, then parted ways with our friends. They went to ride Big Thunder Mounta (we vetoed that and Splash Mountain...one rollercoaster aday is enough), and then we headed over to Epcot on the monorail. I took pictures of Noelle in front of the Epcot ball, and we had a GREAT supper at place called Summer Seasons, then we went on the Living with the Land boat ride afterwards. We then went to the Spaceship Earth ride, which was enjoyable. After that, we went and staked out seating for the Illuminations show. Dad minded our seats while Mom and I walked around a little more. Then we came back and waited for the show to start. It was pretty awesome... a little loud, but still pretty cool. The Fireworks were amazing. We had a tree blocking our view of the sky for part of it, but we still were able to enjoy it. Afterwards, we dove into the sea of human beings all headed for the exit, rode the monorail back to Magic Kingdom, hopped on the transport and went to our car (the lady on the transport said several times that if you couldn't find your car, to make sure to talk to her or a security officer...we had no trouble finding ours, it was the only fire engine red car in half of the parking lot. hehe ;-), and headed back to the hotel.
We spent 13 hours at DW and were exhausted by the end, but it was worth it.
I don't want to go back anytime soon though.

Sunset

Everything outside had a yellow glow...and this was the reason.

The Story of Hair.

Okay, so if you know me at all, you know I have awful hair.
I honestly don't know what I did to deserve the hair I have.
Each indiviual strand of said hair is very thin. But I've got a ton of it. Which means...knots. Tangles. Matting. Dreadlocks. Every time I move my head.
It was getting better. I was starting to be able to finger comb out said knots and tangles, and then brush it out and it didn't take three hours like it did before. I think maybe chopping it all off 2 years might have helped it improve, like it grew back nicer or something. I don't know. But I really wanted long hair. It was getting pretty long, about mid-back length.



Then, somebody suggested the marvelous idea that I should get a perm >glares at self<. A perm? yay! I always wanted curly hair.
So I sat there for two hours with smelly chemicals in my hair and I got my curly hair. It was fine, for the first couple weeks. It came out curly, and then as it dried, it got ripply, and looked very pretty indeed.



Then something happened. I don't know what exactly, but it started getting frizzy. And it wasn't all nice and ripply anymore. I wore it in ponytails and buns half the time simply because it didn't look good. I finally stopped using the gel the lady gave me, whoops, I mean sold me, and that helped...a little. The gel was just hardening it all in and I couldn't pick it or comb it even if I wanted to. Finally, Sunday night, it all came to the climax.
I was combing my hair.
And I realized...practically the whole right side of my head was matted together. It looked fine, from a distance, even close up you couldn't tell, but try and run a comb through it...heh.
That was it. The hair was going. And it was going soon. We already had a haircut appointment with a lady at our church who cuts hair on Tuesday, but the way I felt, I was ready to go Sunday night. :-P On Monday, I spent an hour wincing and yelping in a kitchen chair as Mom tried to comb through it. She was...halfway successful. I finger combed out the rest, and then I jokingly begged her if we could go down to Mansfield (hour away) today instead of tomorrow to get it chopped off.
She said no, but told me I better text the haircut-lady and warn her that she wasn't just trimming, she was cutting.
Tuesday came, and the hair was gone.
This is what it looked like when she was done...



I look something akin to Little Orphan Annie, don't I, with all that pouff? That was just because it got all pouffy from her combing it, and after I got home and brushed it a little and then the next day when I took a shower, it looked a lot better.



I am very happy.