This last year has come and gone. I celebrated my 44th birthday with Angie. We drove up to Anaheim. On the way up, we stopped at Farrell’s Ice Cream parlor. It has been MANY years since I have been there. I remember going a lot when I was younger. When I went to college their service went downhill and so did the quality of the places. I remember one evening when a cockroach ran across the window sill next to where we were sitting. That location was shorty closed down by the health department. All but one Farrell’s closed. I believe the only location left was the one at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. A new company bought them out and has gone back to the roots of the business, they have even kept in touch with the founder to make sure they get it all right. There are now four locations, two in California and two in Hawaii.
We had to wait about 30 minutes in line. Once we sat down, we ordered dessert. I had a banana split sundae. While we waited, there were several presentations for birthdays and pig troughs. If you order a pig trough (basically two large banana splits) and finish it all yourself, they embarrass you with a public presentation ending with a ribbon presentation and announcing that you “Made a Pig of yourself at Farrell’s”. As we were leaving we saw the running of “The Zoo”.
After Farrell’s we headed up the freeway to Disneyland. We checked into our hotel for the night. The next morning we got up bright and early to have breakfast and then head to the park. The line to get through security was outrageous. It is about -100% effective because they don’t search you. They just make you open your bags and they quickly peak inside. They clearly are not looking for dangerous items as they don’t check pockets or jackets, etc… Oh well… One of these days they will get it and give it up. The line went quickly even though it was really long. We went to the ticket window and picked up my free admission ticket.
The day was spent at Disneyland. The morning was not too crowded. The line waits were about 5-10 minutes. We took the Holiday Guided Tour. This was a great tour. I highly recommend it. We walked down main street. We stopped at the candy store and learned that they have vents below the kitchen that pump candy smells out to the street. MMMMMMM….
We were able to cut in front of the lines for It’s a Small World, Haunted Mansion and The Disneyland Railroad. It’s nice to get the VIP treatment. To top it all off, we got front row seats to the holiday parade, with actual seats!
Dinner was at the Big Thunder Ranch. If you have not eaten here you should try it out. It’s an all-you-can eat restaurant with lots of BBQ food (Ribs, Chicken, Sausage, Beans, Slaw, and Corn Bread). They also put on a musical floor show. We relaxed and ate dinner, then we went to ride the Jungle Cruise (now that the sun was down), Buzz Lightyear and Indiana Jones and the temple of the forbidden eye. We had a fastpass for that so we got ride on the ride. We saw the castle lighting ceremony as well. That was something we had never seen.
This was the first time I have been to Disneyland on my actual Birthday. Normally, we do not go to the park at this time of year because of the crowds. It was crowded. I heard they actually were at capacity. Regardless of the crowds we had a good time, because we didn’t feel like rushing around and waiting in every line. It was a very pleasant trip.
As many of you know this has been a hard year. The end of 2008 was extremely difficult with my job and carried over into 2009. What was once a very pleasant place to work turned into a bitter unwelcome work environment. I left their employment the beginning of September. Looking back, I really needed to leave shortly after starting there, but I was convinced to stay and ride it out. This was extremely bad advice to take. When your boss quits two days after you start working for them should be a huge wake up call.
I also started my masters program at National University. This turned out to be a horrible program as well. I blogged about this previously, so I won’t bore you here.
My technical problems got worse through the year and I had to waste months of my time trouble shooting problems with low-end techs, because they would not listen to me and address the real problem unless they went through this process. I am at least happy to report, I only have two technical problems left to solve… One more day left this year to solve them. Yeah!
I received two wonderful gifts this year from my wife. The first was a fantastic new lens for my camera. I am totally in love with this lens. The second is a banjo. I have already started learning to play and will be doing a separate blog thread on my experience learning to play.
So with what I can consider my worst year of employment and technical troubles behind me I look forward to a much more exciting 2010.