Our Big Holiday Trip -- What We Learned

So, as I promised last time, here are some things we learned from our Orlando vacation:

1. Travel is tiring; fun is tiring. So don't try to go full-steam-ahead the whole time. We got in late Saturday, so Sunday gave us a good post-flight recovery. We also took some time on Monday to figure out what exactly we were going to do. Then Tuesday and Wednesday we had very long Disney days, and flew out Thursday. If (when?) we go again, we'll mix quiet days into the travel-park mix. Maybe stick Sunday right in the middle. Something like that.

(At Universal Studios' City Walk)

2. There is SO MUCH to do in Orlando that unless you have a good couple of weeks, you'll want to be selective. Pick a focus. Either spend your time at Disney World or go with a Universal Studios/Sea World combination. We ate at Universal Studios City Walk (that's a lot like Downtown Disney) when we first got in, but the rest of the time we spent at Disney.

(The City Walk is a space between the rides areas with restaurants, clubs, and general park atmosphere)

3. Choose your hotel according to your focus. If you go for a Disney vacation, you may actually want to look into a Disney hotel. That way you could go back to your room and rest in the afternoon when you're worn out and the parks are most crowded (then maybe you wouldn't need a whole quiet day).

Plus you wouldn't have to schedule your time around a shuttle. One night we missed the early shuttle back to our hotel and had to wait for the later one. We didn't have tickets into Epicot, where all the buses and shuttles meet. The hour and a half until the next shuttle wasn't really enough time to go back to Animal Kingdom for dinner, or to Downtown Disney, which doesn't require tickets. But I asked the very nice Customer Relations guy for any suggestions (ie a nearby restaurant outside the gates?) and he gave me tickets into Epcot, telling us about restaurants just inside the gate. This all brings us to point 4, which is

4. Disney World is a whole city of several neighborhoods linked by big highways. Buses run to every part, so you can get around. But figure in the travel time. If, say, you're going from Epcot to Animal Kingdom, figure it will be a good 20 to 30 minutes each way. To me, then, it wouldn't be worth paying an extra $50 per ticket per day for the park hopper. Unlike at Disneyland, you'd lose a lot of time in transit. Plus, there's plenty to do at any single park, I think, especially if you're new to it all, as we were.

(Waiting for either the Everest roller coaster or the Kilimanjaro Safari. All lines look about the same)

5. Don't get so caught up in having fun that you only remember to take pictures while you're waiting in line or sitting in the restaurant. And don’t forget to keep your camera batteries charged, or have back-ups.

(Waiting for our food at the Rainforest Cafe. Every 20 minutes they have a storm--thunder and lightening--and all the animals come to life. Lots of fun, not exactly low-key and quiet)

6. The week before Christmas is actually a good time to go because

(a) even though Orlando can get chilly (bring jackets for the evening!), it's mostly warm and beautifully green--which, if you live some place like Oklahoma, is refreshing 'round about December.

(b) the place is decorated for Christmas, and at Epicot they have Christmas concerts and storytelling.

(a soulful Christmas concert)

(c) it's probably more crowded than, say, in the middle of November, but most people planning a Christmas Disney vacation will be coming the week AFTER Christmas. The waitress at Rainforest Cafe told us that Tuesday the Animal Kingdom attendance was 37,000, which was down from the weekend and would be even less the next day. But the following week they would probably be at capacity, which is 45,000. That's just in Animal Kingdom, which is the smallest of the three main parks. Imagine what the total attendance must be.

(a traditional, Christmas-eve church service style concert)

Big Holiday Trip -- Getting Started

Boy, if I don't get going, it'll be next Christmas before I tell you about our Big Holiday Trip.

Uchenna had to use up two weeks of vacation by the end of the year or lose them forever. Rather than hang around Oklahoma for that time, he opted to go somewhere warm. I agreed that was a very good plan. So the week before Christmas we went to Orlando. Then, for Christmas itself, plus a few days after, we spent with family in Dallas.

I sometimes forget how much work it is to plan a good vacation, especially if you're trying to be economically efficient while still having a good time. Then, throw in a couple different locations, and you end up with a lot of moving parts. But then we did go, and it was great!

I'd been to Disneyland, but Uchenna hadn't. I'd never been to Orlando, but Uchenna had a conference there a few years ago. It's a big place, so rather than a blow-by-blow, I'll tell you what we learned. Keep reading to find out!

Holiday Review

We had a lovely, restful New Year. To know why restful was lovely, you need a sense of our holiday season.

(A new house provides a new setting for your old decorations, so they can look both familar and fresh)

Okay, the first part of the season was the normal holiday craziness. For instance, we invited a couple of couples over for Thanksgiving. This is a first in our married life--we've always been the guests. We're pretty good at being guests. This time we tackled the turkey.

The smallest turkey I found was a 13-pounder. We could've gone for just a turkey breast (I realize now), but we like the dark meat best anyway. We decided to brine it, but even in our largest bowl, major portions of bird stuck out. So we invested in a stock pot (and shoot, since we were getting specialized kitchen equipment, we also got an electric knife. Power tools for the kitchen. Can you tell Uchenna was the driving force behind these purchases?). The next step, of course, was finding a place for the big pot in our fridge, along with all the other feast food. It took some rearranging, including removing the fruit and vegetable drawers, but we made it fit.

(The big pot is resting on the floor of the fridge. Turkey + brine = too heavy for fridge shelves.)

I think it took another week to eat all that food. Uchenna doesn't want to see any more turkey, not even hidden in tetrazinni, until at least next year. At least.

For another first, we put up Christmas lights outside our house. This turned out to a project. To prepare, I bought lights and an outdoor timer socket to plug them into. Pretty snazzy.

So the first Saturday in December we got up bright and early to create our masterpiece in lights. As soon as we walked outside we realized why everyone on our block had put up their lights the week before. Okay, they probably hadn't known that while Thanksgiving weekend was beautiful and balmy, the following Saturday would be grey, freezing, and WINDY. But that's how it was. We perservered.

(Turns out this random pipe sticking out goes to the sprinkler system. Not exactly insulated.)

(See on that short, fat bit of pipe pointing down to the right, the line along the top? That's a crack, that's not supposed to be there. We'll have to replace that nobbly thing before spring watering.)

Actually, the first thing we saw as we stepped out the door was water spraying everywhere.Did I mention it was freezing out? I mean that literally, because the water in our sprinkler system had frozen and burst its pipe. Turns out you have to shut off the water and drain the pipe BEFORE the first hard freeze. Just when we think we've got this homeowner-thing down, we get new opportunities for learning.

Anyway, after that, and discussing our different creative visions, we put the LED lights around the two little trees, and the traditional lights along the bushes (it seems the different kinds of lights have different color palattes). It was immediately apparant that we needed more lights, more extension cords, and--I think--about three trips to the store. We never did get the string of snowflake lights to attach to the brick arch. It was a long day, but we liked the result.

And finally (I don't mean finally for the holiday, just for this posting, which is getting out of hand), we went to the company's Christmas concert by Aaron Neville, which was a lot of fun, especially from our second-row seats.

(Our local Community Center, with a large and lovely auditorium. It reminds me of the auditorium at T.J. High, which you may recall was impressively large and professional-looking for a high school)

I think one of the best musical deals around is a hitman who hasn't brought out a hit for a while: they're seasoned, professional showmen, but they don't command an exorbitant ticket price in some huge arena. So the audience gets good music for a lower price in a more intimate setting. And since the company hosted, it was free for us. Even better. There were a few Christmas songs thrown in, but mostly this was a jazz concert. The saxaphonist (Aaron Neville's brother, apparantly) was especially awesome. So not a typical Christmas concert, but great fun.

Stay tuned for our next exciting episode, in which we take our Big Holiday Trip.

Happy Anniversary

I sure am getting behind--I keep meaning to write about our fun anniversary, and that was over a month ago now.

The anniversary itself was on a Thursday, so we kept it simple (to start with) and went to Tulsa for dinner. I had to show Uchenna the online menu to convince him that the Cheesecake Factory served more than desserts, but once we got there we both quite liked it. Perhaps a tad pricier than our usual, but good for a special occasion.

Since we were by a full-sized mall (not a common occurance) we perused the sales for anniversary gifts. You can't beat coming home with yummy left-overs and a new red sweater.

Uchenna had taken Friday off, so we slept in the next morning, then took off again, this time for Oklahoma City. It takes 2 1/2 hours to get there, which somehow feels significantly longer than the two hours it takes from Ponca.

There's stuff to do in Tulsa, surely, but we know OKC better and besides, that's where the temple is (which we've tried to make an anniversary tradition). After the temple Friday night we wanted to find a cool little place with live jazz, but apparently we don't know OKC that well after all.

The next morning we went downtown to the Crystal Bridge, a tropical and cylindrical green house. True to its name, it has a bridge through the treetops two stories up. It also has a waterfall. Pretty darn cool.

(An outside view of the glass-clad cylinder that is the Crystal Bridge. It has a bridge inside, but the building itself is also a bridge in that it spans a pond; as you walk around the pond, you walk right underneath the building.)

Uchenna pointed out lots of plants he knew from home--it was like a reunion of old friends. We saw banana trees, cocoyam, pineapple plants, opetemmuo (that's the Igbo name, we're not sure it has an English name), big bamboo trees, and others too numerous to mention. Uche told me how each one grows and how they're used. Like the enormous cocoyam leaf that can act as an umbrella in a pinch. Now I know what to expect when we go to Nigeria.

(We're sitting in front of the opetemmuo--the long stalky plant on our left. On our right is a little thatched hut. On the bench you can see our coats, which we needed outside but which were too warm inside the green house. That's how you keep tropical plants happy, I guess.)

(Up on the bridge amidst the tops of the trees--can you see the coconuts in the tree behind me? I'm squinting because it was so bright up there.)

(Back outside. There's Uchenna at the end of the bridge. And if you look carefully, on the right you can see the sillouette of a person walking along the water, under the building. And you can see daylight from the other side.)

Afterwards we walked around the park outside and enjoyed the crisp weather and fall colors--a perfect fall day, just like the day we got married.

(Fall foilage, with a tall building in the background to remind you that you're still in the city.)

Boy, are we safe

As much as we like Spring--weather turning warmer, days getting longer, foilage coming back to life--the threat of tornados ruins it for us.

When we went to buy a new house Uchenna was determined to safeguard his family and his peace of mind. But there are very few basements around here. In Ponca, they said it was due to high water table; here in Bartlesville, it's because you hit bedrock pretty quick. Apparently, excavating through bedrock is incredibly costly. In spite of these challenges, Uchenna found a solution: he negotiated for a steel safe room to be installed in the garage. Just keep that in mind if you ever have to strike a deal with him--he can sure barGAIN (as he says).

So a week after we moved in, the safe room company rep came to check out our premises. He declared our site acceptable, with good concrete and plenty of space. It's a relief to know we have good concrete, since that isn't usually addressed in the inspection (light sarcasm), but we didn't quite believe him about the space. Because once we pulled the car in (which we somehow neglected to do while shopping for the house), the garage shrunk dramatically.

After he left, we kept measuring. I set up a box so that it created a wall four feet out from the back of the garage--the alleged size of the safe room--then pulled in the car and made sure the garage door would close without taking off the back bumper. It was good, but barely. No room for crooked parking.

Then a couple of weeks later, the safe room itself showed up. The installers had to push back the appointment by a day, because the day before we'd had torrential (and I don't use that word lightly) rains. Our appointment was in the afternoon, while the morning appointment was at a new construction site. They had tried to talk that guy into rescheduling, but I guess he had to keep to his construction deadlines. Anyway, the equipment got impossibly mired in all the mud and took the rest of the day to get unstuck.

So the next morning two guys brought the safe room. Basically it's exactly what it says it is: a steel safe the size of a small room. More like a closet, actually, but "safe closet" is unweildy to say. Also it has a deadbolt rather than a combination lock, but more on that later.

They maneuvered the shiny white box, still smelling of fresh spray paint, into the before-determined spot and bolted it into place. It looked like heavy work--pushing the heavily laden dolly, drilling through concrete, pounding the bolts into place, and vacuuming up all the concrete dust (okay, that last one was more like the cool-down).

(He's using a version of a stud finder to find possible rebar. There wasn't any, but the concrete was at least a couple of inches thick, so it was all good.)

They gave me my briefing. Let's just say they take security very seriously. The safe room and its location are registered with the American Storm Shelter Association, so if a devastating event occurs, the Association can alert first responders to the site of possible survivors. That's almost a direct quote.

(On the top you can see the air vents and at the back you can see an electrical input. You can plug in an extension cord on the outside and a light or a fan on the inside. But as the installer pointed out, during a storm you often lose power anyway.)

Then there are the deadbolts: three of them, with a ledge on the outside of the door that makes the bolts impossible to reach and therefore cut through. Also the keys can only be duplicated at one particular locksmith shop in Tulsa, and then only by those people previously authorized (Uchenna and myself--I had to write our names on a little card that they'll apparently keep on file). So we can be sure that in the event of damaging winds (including tornado) or human attack (which we're not concerned about out here but, hey, it's good to know), we'll be safe in our safe room.

One final note, we really do have enough room to park the car. Shwew. We aim for that gap to the left of the steel closet and drive in slowly. If we remember to stand up that black plastic tube (an attachement to our leaf blower), we inch forward until we knock it over. Otherwise we just guess. We could also bump right up against the wall of the safe room, but as I said before, that doesn't leave much room for error (about an inch and a half leeway when you line it up straight). And as the very presence of the safe room attests, we aren't interested in risk.

Birthday

Yesterday I turned four-oh. A little hard to believe, but I'm trying not to dwell on the number. I have whole theories on the deceptive, seductive nature of numbers anyway. What is important is that it was my special day. Go me. And thank you to everyone who left happy birthday wishes on my Facebook wall.

Last year was lots of fun, with a bunch of people coming over for cake (mmmm, cake). But as they say, you can't step in the same river twice, especially when that river has relocated to a new city where you don't know anyone yet. I considered bringing cupcakes to the scripture study class that meets Tuesday mornings, but didn't get around to it. It wasn't that it's such a second-grade thing to do. Mostly, I didn't want to call that much attention to myself this early in the game, and besides, I was out of cupcake papers.

While one might think it would look bleak, thanks to a certain sweet husband, the birthday did not suffer. I was sitting in the aforementioned scripture study class (sans cupcakes) when my cell phone rang. It was a local spa telling me that my husband had arranged a massage for me and when would I like to make the appointment? Woohoo.

Then we went out for dinner. Since we're less than an hour from Tulsa, our dinner options have greatly expanded. Uchenna's parents are visiting for a little while, so the three of us picked up Uchenna early from work and headed into town. There's a quaint little shopping/dinning place right downtown (surrounded by huge bank and hospital buildings) called Utica Square. We'd heard it advertised, so we figured this was a chance to explore the city a little.

We ventured out and did eventually find it, though we ended up seeing more of Tulsa than we'd intended. Our GPS got a little mixed up. They're not infallible, it turns out (in fact, our GPS thinks we live in the middle of an open field. We put in our "current position" as "home" and it shows a little house surrounded by a lot of nothing. Once we reach the last acknowledged intersection, the voice instructs us to "navigate off-road"). So we had to be creative with our instructions to the GPS, ask a passing pedestrian, and go up and down Utica Ave a couple of times.

After all that adventure, we decided to mix in a little of the familiar and chose PF Chang's (mmm, lettuce wraps). That's always a lively place, and besides, with four of us, it was very festive. So it was a very lovely birthday all around.

Notes from a new house

You know how you can't really know someone until you live with them--whether you decide to room with a friend or marry the guy you're dating? It's the same with a house. Even if you look at it carefully multiple times (even if you sneak in to microwave your lunch while it's still a model home), you can't know how it feels to live in it until you actually live in it.

For instance. The front door has these plain glass panes. When we saw the house before, we didn't notice how see-through the door is because the builders hadn't yet put in blinds (Uchenna negotiated for those--very essential) so all the windows were blank and un-shuttered, anyway. But the first night here we felt completely on display, not to mention the fierce late afternoon sun that filled the front room. There's no convenient, separate entrance way to block view or light.

In fact, if you stand there at the door you can look straight into the master bedroom. I started to change once, looked up and saw out to the street, and went diving for the bedroom door. Once was enough to learn my lesson: if I'm in the bedroom at all, that door is CLOSED. Actually, I think there's a thing like wallpaper for windows, gives it a frosted look. We'll have to look into that.

(The view from inside the bedroom. The camera creates a handy veil of light to screen the door, but believe me, if you were standing here you would see the front yard, the street, and the house across the street.)

Another for instance. The tile in the kitchen and hardwood in the living room are very lovely, but it's called hard for a reason. The first night, my legs were aching from standing around on hard surfaces all day. But after that I was fine. I don't know if it just took me a day to toughen up or that I wear my sandals now most of the time as a precautionary measure. Anyway, I'll say I'm acclimatized. Although we still don't pray out in the living room. Too hard on the knees.

I can also tell I'm getting used to the house because I can finally get the car in the garage without backing up a couple of times or getting out of the car to see if it's all the way in.

(Can you see the many curved tire marks showing where I had to back up and try again? Of course Uchenna got it right the first time.)

I'm still feeling tempted to label all the light switches, but I remember this feeling from the last time we moved. And at our old house I did eventually learn which switch went to what (and which went to nothing), so I'll try to be patient. Although I wouldn't mind an excuse to get a label-maker.

Finally, along with the blinds we also asked for a wooden privacy fence, which the builder granted. We still think it's a good, practical idea, though we hadn't realized how enclosed it would make us feel, or how we would miss the great view out over the open field. We also didn't know the fencers would show up and start pounding away at 7:30 on a Saturday morning--and again at 7:00 on a Sunday morning. Way to antagonize our new neighbors before we even meet them.

(We still catch a small glimpse of the world beyond. Uchenna says we just have to make the view inside as good the one outside, with trees and flowers and things.)

One useful piece of information we learned from watching them work: this soil is ROCKY. If we want a garden (theoretically), we'll have to build up beds on top of the ground. Does it often take a jackhammer to dig postholes?