Monkey Meditations
- Ideas for McD/Culter Counseling: Appear on American Idol; winner stays and losers leaves
- I know this happen earlier this month, but I wanted to say something about it
- I like Tait a lot, so I am glad he is now the front man of Newsboys.
- However, it is very hard to think of the Newsboys with Peter Furler. We enjoy seeing him lead the band and we really enjoyed his talks. He is a powerful speaker.
- Ideas for McD/Culter Counseling: Have Henry Kissinger meet with them
- I love spring time in Colorado
- One day in the upper 70ies and the next 17 inches of snow
- I am not sure why everyone keeps acting like it is a surprise. This is not a new pattern in Front Range
- Ideas for McD/Culter Counseling: Go on one those team building retreats with a rope course
- How goes you NCAA Brackets Picks?
- I am first in both groups I am in. I have 3 of 4 teams in the final four
- However, I don’t think I will win, but I have hope still as long as UNC does not win it all
- Ideas for McD/Culter Counseling: Shock Therapy
- We had our Fantasy Baseball automated draft
- My team has a lot of holes especially in pitching
- So I feel like the owner of the rockies without the being rich like their M&M brothers are
- Ideas for McD/Culter Counseling: Make them choice a career from those shown on Dirty Jobs
- Kris mention this on Facebook – Information Age Prayer
- I found this so sad
- That we think so low of prayer that is just a bunch of word that we pay a computer to say
- Ideas for McD/Culter Counseling: Jerry, Jerry, Jerry
LikeDUCKED EM UNDER THAT COOL CLEAR WATER THEN HE DID IT AGAIN
Orlando, FL Trip: Day 5 – March 20, 2009
Sorry for the delay, but the resort room we were in had horrible Internet. If it had dial-up, it would be faster than what I have in the room. So my entries for the trip will be after the vacation. I will try to have the pages of pictures link at the end of the trip blog entries.
Many, Many, Many Years ago my high school senior trip was to Southern California. Without a doubt, my favorite part of that week was our visit to Seaworld in San Diego. Most things in life have changed since “back in the day”. However, one of the things that stay the same is I still really enjoy my visits to Seaworld. This time it was in Orlando as part of the trip and was the first time since my senior trip I have been to a Seaworld.
We purchased single day tickets, but they could be used again in a seven day period. So Jay and I went twice. The first time was Wednesday evening for a few hours with Mindy (the conference was done for the day so she was free from work). Then Jay and I went again on Friday morning for about four hours while Mindy was working before we had to head to the airport.
Both times were really fun. The only things that were repeated on both visits was that Jay rode the Kraken roller-coaster each time and we saw the show “Believe: The Spectacular Shamu Show”. Otherwise, during our two visits we visited different parts of the park. Wednesday night we saw the Sharks, Sea Lions, and Dolphin Nursery. Then Friday morning we saw the Penguins, Adult Dolphins, Manatee Rescue, and the Wild Arctic Area.
One thing that really surprised me was on Friday morning. We got there before the park was officially open. So we only allowed to a certain area before it opened. At 9:00 AM, as they played the National Anthem. I expected it at the spring training games, but not at Seaworld. It was very unexpected and cool.
At both Shamu shows we got soaked. Well, I got soaked at both. Jay did not get very wet on Wednesday, but Mindy and I got hit pretty good. Friday morning when it was sunnier they a lot of different things including multiple soakings. We sat pretty close both times. It was great.
From Seaworld we went back to the hotel, picked up Mindy, stopped and had lunch for the first time at Five Guys Burgers (that information is for Monkey Pen Member Rick), and went back to the airport. The flight home was pretty easy and getting home was very nice.
Overall, a great trip. It was nice to have big vacation for a change. Now, I just need a bailout to pay for it all.
As usually so my blog readers are the first to know that I have the photos pages of the trip up. I put a lot on there as it was hard to decided what not to include. So there are four pages of photos and two videos taken at Shamu shows on the Page 4. One of the videos is Jay and I getting soaked on Friday morning. I hope you enjoy.
SPACE SHUTTLE FELL OUT OF THE SKY
Orlando, FL Trip: Day 4 – March 19, 2009
Sorry for the delay, but the resort room we were in had horrible Internet. If it had dial-up, it would be faster than what I have in the room. So my entries for the trip will be after the vacation. I will try to have the pages of pictures link at the end of the trip blog entries.
This is the day of the trip we went outside of the Orlando area. We made the hour and half trip to visit the NASA Kennedy Space Center and Cocoa Beach. I got this tip as a place to visit thanks to Nicole from church.
After getting through security at the NASA Kennedy Space Center, we took the bus tour you can take. It takes about three hours if you do the whole trip. There are three stops on the trip. The first stop one was at LC-39 Observation Gantry for a panoramic view of center. The second stop Apollo/Saturn V Center provides media shows, displays, and the control center for America’s work to get to the moon. From there you could go back to the main visitors area or you could to an optional third stop. We went to the third stop which is about the International Space Station.
Then from there we went back to the main area and checked out some of the many sites there. My favorite was probably the Astronaut Training Experience, which offers a feel of what the space flight experience is like. When you leave the Space Shuttle Launch Experience area, there is a silver plaques for each Shuttle mission. The two missions that ended up in the lost of the Challenger and Columbia were in gold instead of silver.
There were lots of memorials to those who gave their lives for the space program. A course there were a lot for Challenger and the Apollo missions. There were not as many for Columbia. It kind of made me wonder if we have become more uncaring about the lost of lives then we use to be.
From the space center, we headed down to Cocoa Beach to get a little time at the Atlantic Ocean and beach. There were a few surfers there, but not that many. There were houses all along the beach. I wonder what they cost, but it is probably one of those things if you have to ask you can’t afford it. So I just enjoyed the sand and water as much as I can since I am not really a beach kind of guy. They really bore me. Give me mountains any day, but if I am at the beach I should do my best to enjoy it.
HOUSTON MEANS THAT I’M ONE DAY CLOSER TO YOU
Orlando, FL Trip: Day 3 – March 18, 2009
Sorry for the delay, but the resort room we were in had horrible Internet. If it had dial-up, it would be faster than what I have in the room. So my entries for the trip will be after the vacation. I will try to have the pages of pictures link at the end of the trip blog entries.
This was a very busy day for us. We went to Gatorland, to another spring training game, and Seaworld. However, since our Seaworld ticket allowed us to go again in a seven day period, we went back Friday morning before our flight home. So I will talk about our adventures at Seaworld on the last blog entry about the trip.
Gatorland was recommended to me by a guy on my softball team. I thought it might be a little cheesy, but we went checked it out. However, after being there I really enjoyed it. The place was much bigger than I would have guessed, so we were able to send a lot of time there. It was very cool to see all the alligators in a wildlife setting like that. Jay and I had a good time there.
Not far from Gatorland is the spring training home of the Houston Astros. So we went there to see the Astros take on the New York Yankees. Osceola County Stadium was celebrating its 25th year as the Astros Spring Home. To me, it had more of a feel of what I expected for spring training. The fans were close to the field and had good access to players.
As we took our seats, I glanced to see which pitcher was warming up for Houston. To my horror it was none other than Mike Hampton. So now I am stuck having to vote for him again as the Astros were playing the Evil Empire. That just plain hurt. Then unlike most games I saw Hampton pitch while he was here in Denver, he looked really good. He throw five shutout innings. When he left the game, he spent a long time signing autographs. More than I saw any other player do. I have to say, he was very kind to the fans and took a lot of time to sign things.
After signing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch, they sang “Deep in the Heart of Texas”. According to the Astros fans behind us, that is what they do in Houston after “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”. It was funny, as it seemed a bit out of place signing it in Florida.
The Yankees made a comeback after Hampton left and won the game 4-1. We then were able to get out of the parking area pretty quickly and back to the resort with little issues. From there, we meet up with Mindy (who was done with the day of conference she was down there for) and we headed to Seaworld. However, as I said that will be another story.
YOU MAKE ME WANT TO BE BRAVE
Orlando, FL Trip: Day 2 – March 17, 2009
Sorry for the delay, but the resort room we were in had horrible Internet. If it had dial-up, it would be faster than what I have in the room. So my entries for the trip will be after the vacation. I will try to have the pages of pictures link at the end of the trip blog entries.
Tuesday was my first ever spring training game. It was also the closest to Disney World I would get while in Orlando, FL. Champion Stadium is the spring training home of the Atlanta Braves and is at Disney Wide World of Sports that is part of Disney World. What that means is the parking is crowded, but they did not charge us anything to park.
Jay and I did not get that early, so I did not get to see what it would like to get access to the players. However, the stadium is not really setup for the fans to have access to the players from what I could tell. It is just too big and away from the field to really be that fan friendly. Overall, it is very nice sport facility that is setup for baseball, lacrosse, soccer and other things.
Bringing out out the lineup card for the Braves was former Rockie Dale Murphy. A course, the Braves fans around me seem to think I should consider him a Braves great not a Rockie player. Still I know he ended his career in Denver. It was fun to annoy some Braves fans off before the first pitch. However, the Mets fan that were at the game really did a much better job of annoying Braves fans with their typical New York attitude.
Throwing out the first pitch was Arizona Cardinal Wide Receiver Anquan Boldin along with Pluto (remember we were by Disney World). I am not really sure what to make of that. I am guessing Fitzgerald would get to throw out a first pitch in a real game not a spring training game. He would probably be out there with Mickey not Pluto. Getting a B-Level Disney character during a unimportant spring training game is the kind of thing that can hurt an NFL players ego. He might want to be traded after not getting his favorite coach, er, I mean favorite Disney star.
Since it was St. Patrick day all the players wore green hats, played Irish music, and painted green clovers on the infield dirt. All the shops had special green shirts and hats to sell. Then a course they had green beer bottles for sale (since I don’t drink I don’t know if the beer was green). I am sure the selling of all that extra stuff would have made St. Patrick so proud.
The weather was sunny and hot with no shade in the seating area. We went and sat inside the concourse and walked around for awhile. We still had a pretty good view of the game, but no radios or TVs were out in the concession areas.
The game was a pitching dual with Braves starter Jair Jurrjens throwing six scoreless innings. The game was 2-0 Braves going into the 7th because of a Josh Anderson two-out homer that hit a mini-van past right field. The Mets scored one in the top of the 7th, but the Braves got three in the bottom of the seventh. The final was 5-1 in a pretty fast game.
We got free Vitamin water when we left the stadium. That was very, very nice as the heat really was draining. Getting out of our parking space took about a hour. After that it took another 20 minutes to get to the highway, but once we got there getting back to the resort was easy. I did like that day of driving in Orlando as it was the only day we did not have to pay the toll-road many times.
Back at the resort, we enjoy the evening by getting dinner and hanging out near the pool as the next few days would have less leisure time.
LIKE A BIRD FROM THESE PRISON WALLS, I’LL FLY, I’LL FLY AWAY
We made it to the land of hurricanes, humidity and Mickey just fine. The flight to Orlando was fine. Nothing too exciting to write about. Here are few nice photos of the flight.
Next up for the trip New York Mets vs. Atlanta Braves.
PALM TREES ARE GROWIN’ AND A WARM BREEZE A BLOWING
So this week will involve a little time away from home and life in Colorado. I will be going from this weather:
To this weather. Not a big change. In fact it will probably nicer here in Colorado.
However, getting to see some spring training games for the first time in my life, a visit to NASA, and maybe a few other places should be fun. It will nice to have a vacation. I really am needing one.
This is the view from near our house that I will be giving up for a week.
