Tonight, we had planned to explore Downtown Disney and Pleasure Island just to have a walk around and enjoy a nice simple evening together, however when I checked my email at lunch, I found a little surprise, my hubby had scored us two tickets to La Nouba - Cirque du Soleil. I was stoked. We saw Zumanity when we were in Las Vegas (link) and really enjoyed it, so I spent the rest of my day thinking about what a great time we’d have tonight.

We got to Downtown Disney around 6pm and immediately found the Disney Christmas store. We spent some time and some money in there picking up a few things for my family and us and then headed off to the Lego store. The Lego models around the store are amazing especially the Dragon!

click for the full size photo

We headed off to Fulton’s Crab House for dinner and then over to La Nouba! The show was fantastic all around but the stand out act was Diabolos (YouTube Clip). Those girls were amazing!

I’m exhausted and my feet are KILLING ME and tomorrow is EPCOT. More walking! I hope I make it!

This evening, after I attended my conference sessions for the day, the hubby and I decided to make the most of this trip to Walt Disney World and headed over to the Magic Kingdom for the evening. I must admit I was a bit unsure of what to expect. I’m a huge fan of Disneyland in California and I was not too sure what to make of The Magic Kingdom.

We arrived around 6pm and luckily tonight was “Extra Magic Hours” in the park which means the park is open for three extra hours for anyone staying in one of the WDW resorts. That meant we could stay in the park until 11pm. Once we bought our tickets ($78 a person!!!!) we headed into the park. The park was decorated for Halloween and it looked great. We took a quick stroll around the park and took quite a few photos. It was strange how familiar and yet different the park felt. It was a little weird how much bigger it was and how things were not in the same place. I must say that I missed the history and quaintness of Disneyland, but I understand just how many more people move thru the Kingdom and the other parts of Disney World and it is definitely more suited to that. It was the little things that I noticed, like how different the Tiki Tiki Tiki Room (called the Enchanted Tiki Room at the Magic Kingdom) and It’s A Small World (one of my favorites) are.

After a quick run around the park, we grabbed some dinner and caught the fireworks during dessert. Once the fireworks ended the park began to thin out and we made our way around to the attractions. There were so few people in the park that we didn’t have to wait at all to get on anything. We rode The Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s A Small World, Peter Pan’s Flight, Tomorrowland Speedway, and Stitch’s Great Escape. We also picked up a pair of Mickey ear’s for both of us and walked through Cinderella’s Castle.

We had a wonderful time and I really enjoyed the park. I can’t wait to take my nephew and niece there!

click for the full size photo

The trip to Disney World was not a bad one at all. We left this morning for Orlando on a flight before noon. The flight down was smooth though I felt so bad for the poor kid across the aisle who could not stop throwing up the whole flight!

When we arrived we took the Disney Magical Express from the airport to the hotel. It was really nice not to have to worry about your bag or renting a car. We’re staying at the Disney’s Caribbean Beach resort and it’s way bigger than I expected! We’re in the Jamaica area and the room is nice, nothing fancy but a nice room to say the least. We had dinner in the Old Port Royale and then I headed off to the opening of the conference.

Tomorrow is the first full day of the conference and then we’re heading over to the Magic Kingdom to wander around and check out the park. It’s “Extra Magic Hours” at the Magic Kingdom which means the park stays open for three extra hours for people who are staying at a Disney Resort. That means we should have about 5 or 6 hours to wander around!

More details to come!

I’ve lucked out big time. I have changed positions at work, same company, same department, but new job, and with that job came an invitation to a convention being held at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL!

I’m stoked as I’ve never been to Walt Disney World before! I’ve only ever been to Disneyland. The conference is 2.5 days long and we’re going to stay an extra day and try to take in a park or two! I’ll blog when I can!

Walt Disney World… here I come!

The other night I did something that certainly made me happy but at the same time made me feel unsure of what others might think of me. I bought a new MacBook. I don’t know what it is about me and wanting, no needing to have the latest Mac portable. You’d think after all I went through with the MacBook Air, I would have learned my lesson to not buy a new Mac as soon as it comes out, but I haven’t and as ashamed as I was, I think Pinoyboy summed it up well when he told me, “you are who you are… own it.”

That being said… I love the new MacBook! I did not like the looks of it when I first saw it, but the look grew on me and to be honest now I like the way it looks A LOT. I am pissed about it not having FireWire, as I use Target Disk mode quite a lot, but I’m getting over that. I picked up the $1299 MacBook 2.0GHz last Tuesday at the Park City Apple Store in Lancaster. I had the RAM upgraded to 4GB and ordered a 320GB HDD from New Egg (for $90).

I was worried that moving from my 2.4GHz MacBook to the 2.0GHz would be a problem but it’s not at all. The new MacBook feels even more responsive and quick than my 2.4GHz. I think the new NVIDA video card must be helping out! I can’t get over how much thinner the new MacBook looks. It feels much lighter as well. The new screen is gorgeous and so much more saturated than my last MacBook. The screen is as reflective as the last one however the black glossy border shows a reflection where there as none on the last one but that’s a really small issue.

The only thing that’s been a problem is getting used to the new trackpad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing and works flawlessly, the only problem is I need to change the way I use the trackpad. I used to use two fingers at all times. One finger on the trackpad, and one thumb on the trackpad button. I need to get used to using my index finger to click because when i put my thumb and index finger on at the same time it registers as two finger and tries to zoom or scroll. I know I’ll get it… it just will take some time!

Last weekend was the end of an era for me. On Friday evening we drove up to the Volvo dealer to return my 2006 Volvo S60. I know it seems weird to say that considering I posted back in June about my Sweet New Ride, but I got a new car when we returned my hubby’s leased Volvo, as he did not want another Volvo I picked up my current ride and he drove my much beloved S60 for a few more months, which meant I got to take it for a spin quite a few times in the past 4 months, but no more.

Why is it an end of an era? Well this S60 was actually my second S60. I loved my 2002 so much that I got a 2006 when the lease was up. That means I’ve pretty much had the same car for almost seven years… a record for me! It was a lovely drive up to the dealership, little traffic and plenty of room to open her up and to be honest… I even had a tear or two for the old girl. I hope she makes her next owner as happy as she made this one.

I am just curious if anyone is still reading my blog? I know I don’t post much but is anyone still tuning in?

I invite you to leave a comment if you’re still out there

Today, is the five year anniversary of my blog. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long but it has. I did some poking around and boy have things slowed around here… it took two years to hit 500 posts, just over another two years to hit 1000 and in the last year, I’ve barely written 95 posts.

I’m not sure what all that means but it sure makes me want to blog more. Oh well happy anniversary to me and my blog!

It’s been two weeks since iPhone 2.1 has come out. Everyone raved about how it fixed everything and the iPhone is now what it should have been since the original 2.0 software. The other day while cursing out my iPhone for the umpteenth time, I wondered if anyone else is still having issues with their phone. For me, the iPhone 2.1 update has a few of my issues, left many more still unfixed and introduced even more annoyances into my phone.

Okay, yes applications install faster and my backup goes quicker and I do get better 3G reception at work than I did before. These are all good things, however… my SMS application still takes up to 10 seconds to load, my phone still sometimes disconnects my call when I plug in my headphones and my iPhone still starts playing my iPod when my headphones are removed. Also now I seem to have MORE dropped calls, not less and those dropped calls seem to ONLY happen when I’m on with another AT&T subscriber and the changes they made to the SMS Preview function drive me simply mental.

It used to be that if you had a keylock set, you cold turn off the SMS Preview so that instead of saying the name of wo the SMS was from and the actual SMS message it would say the name of the sender and the words “Text Message”. This allowed me to look over and see if the SMS was from Twitter (meaning it could wait) or from a friend or family member (meaning it could not). Since the 2.1 update if you have the SMS preview turned off, it gives you a message that simply states “New text message received”. Which now means that I have to unlock my phone just to see who the message is from and if I need to answer it. Add to that the fact that my iPhone now reminds me every five minutes that I have an SMS I haven’t acknowledge and suddenly the phone that was the best phone I’ve ever used for SMS is now the most annoying.

I realize that these may be features that people requested, but why could they not have been an option? Why can’t I choose to have the SMS reminder sound? Why cant I have an option for more or less detail on my SMS Preview? I don’t want them to recall or change the features, just give me the choice of what works for me.

Last week whilst in the middle of my marathon work week, Apple announced some new iPod nanos, a new iPod touch and iTunes 8. I used to get so excited when new iPods were announced but to be honest ever since I got the iPhone, I don’t really care much about iPods. I guess it’s because I don’t see the point in having an extra iPod when there is one in my phone!

However, iTunes 8 is something to talk about, at least to me… the Genius feature is brilliant and at the same time the spawn of Satan. I’m not talking about the Genius playlists… they’re okay… sometimes spot on, sometimes way off the mark like doing a Genius play list off The Cure’s Charlotte Sometimes tells me that Swingtown by the Steve Miller Band is a song I’d like to hear… I like them both but… not in the same playlist. What I am talking about is the Genius sidebar. I have found so many songs to buy that I forgot about or didn’t own. iTunes has got me this week with quite a few purchases… oh yes I like this song but that one… oh and that one.. and those two I must have them!!! I’m not ashamed to say I’ve spent quite a bit of iTunes monies this week.