Adventures in Non-Wonderland

This blog is a long time overdue, and I chock it up to being pulled in too many directions and being distracted.  So, let’s time travel a bit, to the beginning of December.  I get a phone call from my sister, who normally never calls me when I’m at work, or when she’s at work, so I figured it was something important.  She told me about a great opportunity with one of our friends who’s a screen-writer.  She had an offer I basically couldn’t refuse.  My sister works for US Scareways, so she has the ability to put me on a plane for less than $700, and with last minute fares that is what it would have cost.  This conversation took place on December 1^st.

The following Monday, the 5^th, I was pretty much all set.  I had packed a bag for overnight, told my boss I’d be MIA for the rest of the day and part of the following morning, and at about mid-day, I booked it out of my office.  I am not as familiar with National Airport (I know the real name is Ronald Reagan International Airport, but I’ve lived here too long to call it anything other than National).  Flying standby has a certain air to it.  There’s that feeling that you may not make the flight, but that you’re also going to jet off to someplace exciting, hopefully, and pay far less than most people.  Thankfully, my destination has an hourly shuttle, so I was never in any danger of missing the flight.

Once the one o’clock flight boarded, they gave my boarding pass and off I went.  This was also the point where I was reading the final Eragon book, and was surprisingly interested in the outcome (I was still early on, later I realised the let down).  The flight was less than an hour away and once I arrived at my destination, I was surprised by the warm weather. 

After I dropped my bag off at the hotel, I grabbed a car and went into town.  Now this is the part where I unfortunately have to give up my secret location, but it is half the fun.  I am not the most knowledgeable traveller, so I often entrust my trip planning to others, but since I was flying solo, quite literally, I had to plan for myself.  I’ve been to New York City many times, but mostly my sister has us running at a marathon pace, never really enjoying anything.  Lucky for me I got a great driver who took me right next to my first destination, the Nintendo World Store.

There is only one Nintendo World store in the world, so it was pretty cool.  Truth be told, it wasn’t the first time I’d been there, but as a proud new owner of a 3DS, I thought I had to go.  I mostly got things for my niece, a cutie onsie with a Koopa Troopa on it and a plush Koopa Troopa that she could play with (read put in her mouth, but she’s not yet one, so can you blame her?).  I also bought myself a cute Nintendo World t-shirt.  More importantly, for those of you who are fans, I took pics of the Zelda display that was there.

After that, I met up with my and my sister’s high school friend, Kelly Jean, who writes screenplays and is a member of a group that allows her access to what I’d say are hard to get into events.  We had dinner and then headed to the Time Warner building to the event being held by the BAFTA’s.  It was interesting to see so many people queued up on a Monday night in downtown New York, but given the person appearing, it wasn’t all that surprising.

We sat down in a modest auditorium; I’d say maybe two to three hundred people might have been able to fit.  Before the presentation began, there was a brief video trailer, one I’d actually seen before; you could call it a ‘mega’-trailer, one that’s made for a feature that has many instalments.  Being the fan that I am, most of you reading should be able to guess which few fandoms this might be.

Once the trailer stopped and the lights came back up, the guest of honour was announced in the building and this being the second time I’ve seen him in person, it was exciting to watch Daniel Radcliffe bound down the stairs and up onto the low stage to thunderous applause.  What followed was somewhat of a whirlwind, in all honesty.  The interviewer was utter rubbish.  He asked the same questions any die-hard Harry Potter fan knows the answers to.  It was beyond annoying to listen to Radcliffe answer the same tried and tired questions about how he felt being a star, what was it like growing up in Potter and the like.  But despite that, there was a freshness to the answers.  Radcliffe showed no signs of every having heard the questions before and answered them easily and with a good bit of humour injected.

I think the parts that stuck out for me were the moment he double-checked with his father on an answer, his parents were both in attendance, and his candour about his latest project on stage, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I haven’t seen a ton of footage on that, so seeing it finally was interesting.  I also had seen Equus, so getting to hear his thoughts on that project was interesting.  I was really hoping for some of his other friends to show up, but that didn’t happen.

Also, sadly, there was no chance for any kind of photo op or autograph session.  Though truth be told, I already have Mr. Radcliffe’s autograph thanks to Artbox.  Google it and you’ll understand what I mean.

I do apologise for the lack of timeliness on this blog post.  I have been agonising writing it since I got back, but thanks to a quick and rather debilitating cold, I was unable to collect my thoughts.  Even now I’m sure I’ve forgotten something of note.  Needless to say, one night in New York, alone or with friends, is always memorable.

Vacation Reflection

I think I have too many places I’m placing my thoughts, it is getting harder to keep the topics separate.  But I know I should shout out to my recent vacation.  I flew down to FL to spend some time with the fam.  I feel like I learned a lot about some of those members, as you often do when things go into crisis mode for one person.  And I am a firm believer, that when things get difficult, true character is revealed, and I was able to witness and learn from it, which is really all I can take away right now.

I went back to Harry Potter World, but also went to the main Universal, thus getting my money’s worth from the annual pass.  It comes with free parking, so I’m on the fence about getting another one next year.  It was nice to just float from one park to the next.  I also got to meet the Penguins of Madagascar (I know, they’re not really real, but let me imagine) and I changed my profile pic on FB to reflect that, but still kept the Caps love with my Mike Green t-shirt.



I told Alex to get out of the picture, you should have seen the look on his face!

We also attended a rather extravagant wedding for a close family friend.  She did an amazing job and since it was a destination wedding, took care of a lot of the days that normally one would fend for on his/her own.  The time between events was filled, for us, mostly of driving too and from the time-share, which wasn’t quite in the city the wedding was in.

I have to say, I looked decent, but not great – I didn’t end up finding a hair salon, but since the events were all outside, the wind did murder on my hair anyway.

I spent some of the down time reading and playing games.  My 13-year old cousin let me boggart his XBOX360 for a couple days and I OD’d on the Gears of War 3 Beta.  I’d never played the game before, so it was a steep learning curve.  I also brought my PSP and played Metal Gear Solid PeaceWalker for the first time in almost a year.  That game is surprisingly fun and difficult.

More of note were the two books I read.  Whooper Goldberg’s dreadful ‘Is It Just Me? – which the answer is no, but don’t tell us about it and ‘Thirteen Reasons’ by Jay Asher.  The latter was really well done, though if you’re the depressed type, I wouldn’t read it.  The story follows a character who receives a series of tapes from a classmate who committed suicide.  A dark piece of content, but the nature of delivery really had me intrigued.  The author had the characters following a map and listening to the tapes.  It really peaked my interest in the sense that this would be an amazing interactive experience.  I’ll let the thought bubbles keep germinating on that one.  It isn’t a new idea, but it is doable in this day and age.

No time for anything more, but enjoy the day!

How I Met Your Charmander

I had a rare treat this past weekend, getting to travel with a stuffed charmander - a gift for my 2-month old niece!  Apparently there was some confusion on the plane, but I digress.  I bought the charmander on e-bay for her, and was surprised that I had a bidding war going on with someone (so I'm not the only one crazy about bidding on charmanders).

I didn't buy him his own seat, but as circumstance would have it, there was an empty seat between me and an elderly gentleman sitting next to me.  You should always be sure to keep your charmander in an upright position, securing him using a safety belt across his lap.

I was able to safely secure him in his seat.

He didn't fuss once, but sat quietly in his chair enjoying the flight.  Once we got close to landing, I wondered what a charmander would look like hanging out of an over-head bin.  This is not a safe location for charmanders.

I'm still surprised no one on the plane really said anything to me about this.

The air host did comment that apparently the flight crew was commenting that there was an 'animal' in 9B - I was sitting in 9C.  I also appreciated that the guy next to me never really minded that he was sharing a row with the orange guy.

Once I got to my destination, the Crowne Plaza in Glendale, AZ, I thought he might be tired after a long trip.

I was also giving my niece her own Cookie Monster, everyone needs one of those too.  Once we got the rental car, again we made sure to secure the charmander in the vehicle, especially while driving with the top down.

Thanks goodness for safety belts!!

Once we finally got to my sister's place, charmander had to have a look around at his new surroundings.

 

Charmander saw my niece in this, but soon realised he wouldn't fit...

Charmander is, right now, just a little too big for my niece's things, but she should grow into having her very own charmander.  So, lesson learned here, make sure your charmander has enough room to sit comfortably in an aeroplane and convertible car, but also make sure he understands that all things for babies aren't for him too.

Across the River

I consider myself an avid traveller, but of late, the idea of flying makes me uninterested.  I don’t think I suffer from depression, but I just can’t force myself to think about making flight plans, getting assaulted by security or taking travel sizes of things only to other places.

It isn’t like I have never had a good time travelling.  The last real trip I took was a vacation to Florida to Harry Potter World.  While it was cool, the relaxing part of the vacation was great.  I sat next to the pool, read a book and didn’t worry about things.  Of course, I brought my work laptop, at the time, and did work when I got bored.

I think I have a disconnect issue.  I used to with my old job.  Since I’ve changed jobs, I try not to think about work after hours.  I don’t feel the compulsion or feel and desire to give back.  But this post isn’t about my new job, though I could drone on about it for hours.

No, this is about travel.  Have I become one of ‘those’ people?  Have I become afraid to fly?  Afraid to leave the US of A?  I hope not!  I remember going to all sorts of cool places as a kid, most notably India and Russia, but the most fun was London, which is still a great spot.  I have fond memories of Prague as well, bitter cold, but a great landscape and history.  Travelling truly should be the life-blood of all.  Children should be brought up to want to go places and do things.  Not just go visit some random mouse in Orlando.

There are such amazing things to see and do out there.  I know my next trip, most likely, will be to Arizona to see my sister, but I should really aim to make a trip, once a year, to someplace.  I know I love to video game; good Lord I could do that for an extended period of time.  But I think it’s important to disconnect, from everything.  Just take a moment, step back, and assess life, assess if I’m any closer to my goals, as yet undetermined.  Maybe that’s not entirely true, but I know I do want to have the most toys in the end.

I haven’t been abroad in a good long time; maybe I can plan a trip to see a friend in the Middle East.  I wonder if my passport is still valid.  I think for another couple years.  Wow, that was a lot of pointless rambling…but that is the title of the blog.