The Beatles song
There was a point in time when that was my favorite Beatles song
Or at least one of my favorite Beatles songs
I was also very very fond of here comes the sun
And bang bang Maxwell silver hammer
Which was very fun to sing
And I can't remember how old I was if I was around 9:00
And my mother would get very upset when I would sing the bang bang Maxwell's silver Hammer song because
It was so very violent
But I have this very vivid recollection
We were going to Walt Disney world
and I'm not really sure why we were going to Walt Disney world
I mean of course we were going for a vacation
And this was like the year before or the year after we went on the cruise I don't remember
I don't think we had gone on a vacation prior or after those two years
I was living with my father and I think before the first vacation and I think the I think the cruise was first and then was Walt Disney world but maybe it was the other way around I just I'm not sure like one was nine and the other was 10 or one was eight and a half and the other was nine and a half I don't know something like that
And I guess prior to that I was too young and you know she didn't want to be stuck taking me someplace
And after that I had gone to live with her and so then I guess there was additional expense and there was no money for vacations I don't know
But I think those were the only two vacations that we went on when I was a kid
I think everything else was an art show we were working or going to visit her parents or something
And it was funny because I don't think either one of those trips were my idea
But I mean I watched wonderful world of Disney on TV and you know I went to Disney on parade when I was littleer so I mean I wasn't I went to bunches of Disney movies I was an adverse to Disney but I can't remember having any specific desire to go there
And after we got there I don't really remember enjoying it all that much I mean it was really hot Orlando or Kissimmee or whatever is one of the few places in the country that's hotter than Houston
That I've been anyway
And what I mean by hotter isn't hotter exactly it's a combination of hot and humid that makes it just unbearably uncomfortable New Orleans is the other one New Orleans is just unbelievably hot and humid
But New Orleans has interesting stuff so there's reason to go there even though it's uncomfortable
But Orlando / Kissimmee I'm less enthusiastic in fact at this point if you were offering me a paid vacation to go there I would be like no thanks that's fine and I desperately want to go somewhere
But we we stayed at the admiral Ben Bow pronounced like ben Bo
and I'm not 100% sure that I spelled it right but that was how you pronounced it it was a motel I think and my mom was very excited when we got there because the attached bar was still open
But Disney world I mean the rides were okay and a few of them were pretty cool had you know animatronics or special effects but mostly not that exciting and you had to wait in line for like I don't know a hundred years in the heat to get on to them so I was not really a fan
I'm really not sure why that was what we did and I never wanted to do it again wasn't all that enthusiastic about doing it as we were doing it
But I think that might have been the first time I ever flew on an airplane
Which now I hate to do
Airplanes are packing yourself in with a bunch of other people and you can't move and it's you know very uncomfortable and there's just nothing good about it your ears pop
well there is one thing that's good about it That's that you get wherever you're going reasonably quickly compared to driving
but the thing is I like to drive and I don't necessarily really like to get places quickly I like to have a process of getting there so driving isn't necessarily you know unpleasant it's just that you might not have the time
but whatever I had not flown anywhere before so it was new and I was a kid so I didn't feel cramped into anywhere everything was big and spacious
And so in a way that was the most exciting part of the trip
And they had like an in-flight radio or music something wasn't a radio exactly but it was music You could listen to with the little headphones which is very cool because they didn't have little headphones yet then they had you know big things that look like giant radio earmuffs
I mean they probably did have them
but I had never experienced little earphones so it was very cool and they had on the music this big section of Beatles songs and I loved the Beatles
And it had you know here comes the Sun and
Had a bunch of em
I don't remember all the ones that it had but it also had Maxwell's silver hammer and so it was just like and in fact that might have been why those were my favorite ones at that particular time but I don't think so I think they already had been but it was just so awesome to be on the plane for the first time and it was like you know really exciting we were going someplace so then it must have been it must have been the year before the cruise anyway I don't know I don't know it must have been because I would have flown for the crew so I guess Disney Disney world must have been first that makes a certain amount of sense
and I guess since I wasn't all that enthusiastic about the kid thing the next year she just thought we'd do something a little more grown up and it was awesome The cruise was awesome I thoroughly enjoyed that
it was funny though because she wanted me to help with like the travel planning which was a lot less easy to do when you didn't have internet which there wasn't any internet but somehow rather I managed to research it I don't know how and so I was like okay well we should go on the Royal Caribbean line which was a really nice cruise line and it went to really interesting looking places right and she's like oh yeah we're not going to do that
Because I'm sure it was very expensive
because if I researched it and that was the one that I thought we should go on it was probably one of the nicer ones and I remember when we were coming back off the cruise you know on the little van that takes you back to where you parked or whatever or back to the airport or wherever the f*** we were going back to there were some people who had been on that cruise and they gave me some kind of little like brochure or something that I kept for years because it just looked so awesome
But we went on like a princess cruise line or something and but it was it was great I'm not complaining about it I just thought it was funny that the one I picked up she wanted me to help pick it out and then when I wanted to go on was the fancy one
but for some reason thinking about that Beatles song made me think about being on the airplane for the first time and getting to hear those Beatles songs and how cool that was I haven't thought about that in years and years
and when I was thinking about it I'm like you know that's really not a very good story you know there's not really much of a point to the story it's just hey I wrote on an airplane and I listened to Beatles songs and funny little earphones and it was the coolest thing ever and it was so much better than going to Walt Disney world which everybody seems to think is amazing but which I just was not that into
and years later at Starbucks when they were doing the leadership conferences they took us to Walt Disney world but of course at that point they were like you know all the different parks and we had one day might have just been no I think it was a whole day that we could go to the park and so you could only go to one really and I was like you know I don't really want to go to any of them I really want to go because you know it's amusing parks and hot and it's lines and whatever and but when my mom and I had gone they were just starting to build Epcot and they had like it wasn't like a separate thing that you could go to yet it was part of the regular Walt Disney world park because they didn't have enough for it to be a separate park yet and there just wasn't very much there and I was pretty disappointed in it when we went there but they had this one thing that was like a soda machine that had drinks from the Coca-Cola brand drinks from all over the world and that to me was very cool that was you know at least as cool as the hall of the presidents or the haunted house ride which were the only other two things that I had really enjoyed enough to be worth mentioning
But that soda machine was so cool and not you know you could take a little taste and not all of the sodas tasted good to me a lot of them didn't taste very good but there was this one that was from Israel that was like a I mean it was a lot like Schweppes bitter lemon honestly it was very tart and lemony and but maybe not quite as bitter as Schweppes bitter lemon but it was like not sweet you know not it wasn't like sweet lemonade it was bitter or tangy or tart or whatever I don't know how is the best way to describe it
And I really liked it and that connected to in third grade in social studies we learned about kabutzes and I was fascinated by them because it was like a commune right but it was like a worker commune and if you had kids you didn't raise your kids there were people who raised the kids and there were people who went and worked in the field and I don't know for some reason that was just one of the most fascinating and cool things I had heard about in school or social studies and so I was all ready to go and live on a kibbutz
it is spelling this different every single time it hears me say it I'm certain I'm saying at the same way every time I have to look this up
Kibbutz
so I was all ready to go live on a kibbutz and
And the Israeli soda was the best soda
So that experience
Led me to decide that where I would go when I was with the Starbucks group was Epcot and nobody else went to Epcot I was the only person that went to Epcot and it was so Disney you know it was like it's like you're traveling around the world seeing all these foreign countries and I guess I knew it was that but the the stuff that I had seen with my mom was like the future pavilion or something and that was a pretty minor part of when I went back but but it was like you were going to all the countries in the world but just like a caricature of them it was kind of disappointing
And we went back to Orlando a second time The time we went to Disney world we stayed on the Disney properties in a Disney hotel which is really expensive and you know one night I needed to eat and the I mean you could get things that were reasonably priced outrageously priced food at pleasure Island and that's what I mostly did but it was one evening that for some reason I didn't do that and I went to the restaurant on the property and oh my God it was so expensive and it was not good it was like $60 for dinner and it was not even good it was just meh
And I don't think it was that trip I think it was the next trip where we were supposed to go to universal studios park I think I think was the park and I was just like man I'm not going to go I'm just going to stay in the hotel room and one of the other district managers found out I did that I guess she made her whole group go together so they could have group fun and she found out I didn't go and I think she tried to get me in trouble but there have been nothing at all in the information that we had that said you were required to go it was supposed to be a perk for you and I didn't want to go so I didn't go I stayed in the hotel room and that must have been after I had just seen you because I said I will watch baseball and I hadn't had any reaction or interaction with baseball since I've been a kid and then I started watching it was a Cincinnati reds were playing and it was who was pitching oh my god it was a red-headed guy and he was kind of famous hang on I'm going to have to look it up I can't remember his name
well I'm trying to look it up maybe I don't know what I'm talking about I can remember his face and I thought he was somebody that I had heard of before and I would have said his name was Larry something but probably that's not right and I was sure he was a picture and I think it was maybe his last year and he was going to be retiring or he was pretty close to retiring but I just don't I just don't see a name that I recognize
So I'm remembering at least one piece of information incorrectly
But I think it was that trip that the very best thing was we were staying in this really kind of big hotel and it had a breakfast buffet
And they provided " breakfast "
And of course you know they wanted you to go and mingle and fraternize and then they can be sure that you're going to be there on time and everything but the food was like it was like pastries and coffee and it might have even been brought in by a local Starbucks store as opposed to pastries that were you know from the catering at the hotel I don't know but at the breakfast buffet they had fruit
And normally the fruit at a breakfast buffet is pretty lackluster but this was a fancy hotel in Florida and they had like star fruit they had other fruit too but I had never had star fruit I don't think and so to go and eat this beautiful beautiful fruit all by myself at the breakfast buffet before I had to go and do the awful corporate conference was the best part of that trip and then just saying f*** it I'm not going to go to the park I'm going to sit in the hotel room and watch baseball was the second best part of the trip
And that's all over the place
But I don't have a full coherent story All I have is these little bits of stuff
But it's almost 5:00 again I don't understand how I can go on for like an hour more than an hour
I love you sweetheart 💋
Goodnight
