• Have to get up. So hungry. #
• Off to Universal. #
• In line for the hulk. John is going to going to scream like a wittle girl. #
• Now waiting for spiderman. Lines aren’t bad at all. #
• Twitpic of the hulk. Not very good from this angle. http://twitpic.com/10sp4 #
• These are the slowest moving lines ever. Waiting on jurassic park now. #
• Our photo from jurasic park LOL. http://twitpic.com/10tjo #
• It’s martini time. http://twitpic.com/10u0z #
• Woot! Harry Potter. http://twitpic.com/10ukj #
• Dueling dragons for the second time. No line! #
• After rip saw falls was the last ride for the day. Tomorow the movie park. http://twitpic.com/10vg3 #
• Back in the hotel bar watching the Florida vs Oklahoma game with kieth and an old friend of his. #
• There is a guy in the bar with a PC. So I am not the only goober in this hotel. #
• Tomorrow will be fun. FAR too many drinks tonight! #

HOLY HELL what a nightmare of a day! We arrived at Dulles airport promptly on time, our flight was listed on time. However when no plane showed up, it changed to delayed. No estimate, just delayed. Eventually they gave us a 10:30 departure time, which was an hour and a half later than our 9am departure time. When 10:30 hit and no plane was there, the departure time started moving with the real time clock. I am not shittin you! Someone eventually saw that and shut it off.

Eventually we were told the plane was coming from Boston and because of icing problems, there was a delay. They said the plane was listed as departed, it departed at 8:48, but clearly it wasn’t here. They said they had no info as to whether it was still on the taxi or had taken off. Somehow I find it very hard to believe they basically had no status on a multimillion dollar piece of aircraft, but whatever.

Here I Am Waiting At The Airport

Eventually the airport got conformation the plan had taken off and would be in around 12:30, which it was more or less. We boarded . . . and then sat there! We couldn’t take off because they had to wait on paper work. Uhg.

Here I am sitting on the plane. Notice there is nobody behind me? That’s because most of the plane was empty. After 5 hours of waiting I guess most people either cancelled or found other flights.

We FINALLY landed in Orlando and made it to our hotel at 5:30. We were supposed to be in around noon! Of course with it being the off season, Universal closes at 6pm. So one day wasted thanks to the weather. Oh wait, I’ve skipped over an important part of the story!

What is this a photo of? You know that tunnel you walk through when you get off the plane, the one that takes you up to the airport? Well when we got to the end the door was LOCKED and every time we pushed on it an alarm went off. Yeah, major faux pas and fire hazard.

So as you can see, it’s probably going to be one of those trips. Oh yes, get ready for lots of updates of every little thing that goes wrong The hotel is nice at least, but some things puzzle me. For instance, the wireless in the rooms is 10 bucks a day, but it’s free in the lobby. Of course in the lobby is a Starbucks, a Pizza Hut, some ice cream shop and a bar. I guess they figure they’ll get that 10 bucks and more from people down here, and there are a lot of us on our laptops. At this hour only the bar is open, and it’s looking tempting.

Also you know how hotels say they aren’t responsible for things stolen from your room, and to use the safe in your room as it’s insured? They charge you to use that safe here! WTF? That’s ridiculous if I may say so.

Well all we did tonight after getting in was go to TGIF. We had almost nothing to eat and stuffed ourselves. I later went for a run, determined not to gain wait on this vacation, as well as watched this “13 is Fear” show on The CW. It’s some reality horror show, which so far isn’t too bad! Okay I’m signing out now. Getting up very early to go to Universal tomorrow to make up for what we lost out on today.

Oh one more thing, I don’t think the twitter plugin is working. The newest version has some issues. Last night instead of posting my days posts, it posted almost a months of tweets. Oops! If it does it again tonight I’ll have to disable it.

So I should be in Orlando and at Universal right now. Where am I? At the airport still!

Our plane left from Boston when it should have been landing in Orlando. We have had about a 4 hour delay, maybe 5. I am just hoping the plane gets here and can take off! Another flight for Ft Laudedale boarded, but everyone had to get off because their pilot was apparently on our jet!

I know it was the weather, but the way the airline handled the customers and the complete lack of info was really ridiculous. They set snacks and drinks out for us, and the people working the counter helped themselves to them! Um, no.

What I am really pissed over is an entire lost day in Orlando. Granted we still have 2 full ones, but that isn’t the point. Nobody wants to go to the park whenever we finally get there, they want to get drunk after this. I might go to the park alone.

Not off to a good start and worried what disaster will happen next.

We drove down to Virginia today and fly out in the morning. This will be the second morning in a row I’ll be getting up earlier than I’d like. Actually I’ve been getting up early all week, why I don’t know! I plan to just sleep on the plane tomorrow, assuming someone annoying isn’t seated around us. We fly out at 9am though (leaving here at 6:30am, getting up around 5:30am), so I’ll be awake for so many hours at that point and it might not be easy. We shall see.

Right now it’s a nasty mix of sleet, rain and snow out. I’m worried what this could mean for tomorrow and our plane if things don’t end. It never fails that every time we go away, home gets snow and thats usually the only time significant snow falls. I have been waiting forever for a good snow!

I spent last night looking at all the rides at Universal. I can’t wait to ride “The Mummy” ride! I didn’t realize it was an actual coaster and not some computer simulation ride. Sweet! I also looked at all the park dining options and wrote down every place in every part of the two parks that I can get salads, wraps or low-carb options. FUN! John had Burger King for lunch when we got into Virginia. I so wanted to try the “Angry Whopper.” You know what I had? A vegetarian chicken pattie on Arnold’s sandwich thins. YUM! Actually it was good, but it was no “Whopper.”

Anyway, I’ve turned on the function to post my daily Twitters as a blog post. Hopefully it will work, we shall see. Supposedly the latest version has a few issues and posts the daily blogs twice. Fingers crossed!

First up, I hope everyone had a Happy New Year! Ours was great, we spent it in Philly with friends watching fireworks in the bitter cold (worth it!) then playing Singstar

I spent this weekend trying to get a draft of my sylabus for my class next semester finished to the point that all I have to do over vacation is “ponder and tweak.” That is of course move things around, decide if I like how I’ve laid out the readings and lecture schedule, make sure I have enough leeway for going too far over, and figuring out what can be scratched if I so. I did get way excited about planning out the lectures. I mean I get to talk about “Star Wars,” “Clash of the Titans,” and “Harry Potter” (Hero Myths); ghosts, hauntings and dead people (Death and Burial) in the same class; as well as witchcraft, divination (SO bringing in the collection of Magic 8balls) and voodoo? Are you kidding me? I think I might have more fun than my poor students!

I start teaching 2 days AFTER we return from vacation. Yeah, that’s why the rush and my stress level. I do NOT want to be planning on the cruise if I can help it, I have enough to do with planning first week’s lecture and dissertating as is. There goes yet another work free vacation! Maybe next year?

As for the vacaation. Here are the details. We drive to my mom’s on Tuesday at some point to drop the dogs off. We fly to sunny (hopefully!) Orlando on Wednesday. Wednesday through Friday we are doing Orlando stuff, staying at Universal. Last year we did the Disney Parks, minus the Animal Kingdom. This time we are doing Universal with the probability of The Animal Kingdom (Universal isn’t a 3 day even really). We did Universal on our first cruise, but only the theme park, and this was 7 cruises ago. We never did the movie park there. Of course I’m excited to do “The Mummy” ride Thursday night will be Disney’s “Pleasure Island” party night, as Manequins was way too much fun last year (gay night). However we are missing our vagina this year as my friend Keith is flying solo (last year he brought a female friend Amber). Dustin doesn’t dance well without vagina! No really, I enjoy dancing way more with the real girls, why I don’t know. I think it’s cause we can put on a show without really putting on a show!

On Saturday we board The Independence of the Seas (Royal Caribbean) from Ft. Lauderdale (making the drive that morning). It’s a 8 day 7 night cruise that visits Puerto Rico, St. Martin, St. Thomas and Haiti. Fortunately given my need to get some work done not only have we been to all these places before, we have NO plans to do any “excursions” on this cruise. Excursions are booked and paid tours, some that can take most of your day. I do plan to get off the boat and look around in the ports, especially Haiti and Puerto Rico, but we aren’t booking anything. Wait make that I’m not, the BF (oh hell I’ve tweeted his name and he has a linked facebook profile at this point) . . . John is going to do this dragon zip line in Haiti and possibly a canopy zip line in Puerto Rico. HELL no am I doing those! I did one 2 cruises ago and was petrified! I do plan on making the most of souvenir opportunities for Voodoo props for the class

During the vacation I will do my best to Blog as well as post photos. I say that every year though, once I get on the cruise I sometimes fall short. The cruise internet tends to be slow at times, and you pay by the minute, so photo uploads can be tough. One thing I plan to do is re-instate the Twitter Blog posts for these two weeks. I expect to be Twitting a lot, at least while in Florida the first week. We’ll see about the cruise and if I can hijack free wifi in any of these ports

I’m opting to wear one of my new outfits I got on sale from Express tonight. It’s one of my “I can’t gain any more weight or it won’t fit” outfits. I think it would have fit a bit better pre-holidays too

I just think this is hilarious

I’m back in Jersey, Christmas is over, New Years is around the corner and before you know it; we’ll be on our way to Orlando and then off on our cruise after a few days at Universal.

Christmas was good, but I’m always sad when it’s over. I got a lot of fun stuff. I got yet another nativity, this time a rubber ducky nativity set! Who knew they made such things?

Take the Baby Jesus into your tub!

Probably the fun “neat” gift was a Rovio from my BF. This is a robotic webcam on wheels that you can control through a web browser on your desktop, laptop, iphone, etc. It really is neat! You can also get audio through it and speak through it to whomever you happen to be checking in on. I can even set up guest access privileges to let others drive it, but that idea scares me at the moment

Princess Can Hear Dustin, But Where Is He?

I’m currently on my 9 day diet and exercise fast. I want to try and get back down to where I was BEFORE falling off the wagon right before the holidays! I’ll let you know if I’m successful or not Started back running today and trying my best to eat right! It will be very hard to eat right in Orlando/Universal. The cruise should be easier, but I know the bad stuff will tempt me!

Of course the photo I took of the tree with the presents didn’t come out, and it was the only one I took! I sharpened it as best as I could.

I originally put bows on the dogs head. Nikko could have cared less, Princess threw a fit to get it off before I could take a photo. I ended up tying her up and trying to get photos. This is from the iphone, as it was the only one where she was looking at me. My mom then tied a ribbon around Nikko’s neck, and again he didn’t care. She tried with Princess, but another fit ensued

Merry Christmas!